TITLE: Backlash - Teaser
RATING: PG (to R for language)
CLASSIFICATION: X 
DATE: May 2003
SPOILERS: Set post S9 
ARCHIVE: Gossamer, Ephemeral, others please ask
AUTHOR: Joann Humby - jhumby@lineone.net

LEGALLY:
Legally these characters belong to some combination of 1013, Chris 
Carter and Fox. Mulder's soul belongs to DD, for which I'm truly 
thankful.

SUMMARY:
Mulder and Scully are still on the run but time's running out.

Written a while back in answer to the question - "How would you get 
Mulder and Scully back to work in time for a movie?" This is my movie 
teaser!

WARNING:
When it says that this is the teaser scene only - that's exactly what 
it means. 


=========

The radio had entered some kind of timewarp about fifty miles back 
and now insisted on feeding them a strict diet of 1970s disco 
music. Which was OK, provided you both agreed to sing along and to 
ignore the off-key notes that the other hit.

It wasn't even the kind of road where you could read in the car, too 
many twists and turns, too much fluttering in and out of strobelike 
stripes of shade and sunlight. It was the kind of road on which 
Mulder drove and Scully grouched and every now and again they agreed 
a truce and sang along with some awful piece of kitsch.

Pulling from brightest glare into deepest shadow Mulder slowed to 
take the next corner. He'd had just enough time to spot the white van 
that came out of nowhere to appear in his rear mirror when he hit the 
first set of chains.

The tire bursts were only to be expected. The heavy-duty barrier 
across the road suggested extreme preparedness, the second van that 
appeared now in the rear mirror spoke to a large-scale action and no 
possibility of a reprieve. 

Mulder braced against the rapid deceleration but still found his neck 
hammered into the seatback as whiplash struck. The car shuddered and 
twisted and slumped to a halt. He gasped the only word he knew, 
suddenly breathless and exhausted. "Scully?"

Cool certainty in her voice. "Don't worry."

And Mulder choked at that but didn't allow bewildered amusement to 
become hysteria, he shook his head letting it crash into the steering 
wheel and felt his body complain at the new insult. Deep breaths as he 
sat up straight and shifted his gun from its holster into his lap.

Not that it mattered much. Nine rounds loaded and there were at least 
twenty muzzles pointing their way and that was only the ones he could 
see.

Don't worry? How was that supposed to work? How long had these people 
been waiting for them? Who the hell were these people?

"Take it easy," announced the bullhorn zapping through the heat haze 
and penetrating the car even above the band pounding out Y-M-C-A. 

Would it be considered "easy" if he switched off the radio or would 
that constitute provocation? Mulder checked the scene again. No one 
had actually approached the car. There should be a man on every 
window with a machine gun by now.

So where were the advance team? Who the hell were they dealing with 
here?

"OK, ma'am - if you'll get out first. Keep your hands visible, keep 
it slow."

The voice sounded like law enforcement. Mulder tried to filter the 
tone over the clamor of music. It didn't sound military, though he 
couldn't say why. Something was mumbling Quantico in his ear. FBI? He 
tried to see who was holding the bullhorn but could only see an array 
of weaponry pointing at the car.

When was the last time he'd been on the wrong end of so many guns? A 
question that only struck him as too surreal to contemplate after 
he'd already dug up a close enough answer. A military brig just 
outside Quantico where they'd had the bright idea to drag his sleep-
deprived body from the overlit cell and out into a dark deserted 
exercise yard. 

Hands fastened behind his back, they'd pushed him down on his knees 
to wait for dawn. When the sky finally moved from moonless black to 
misty blue the silence had been replaced by the sound of marching 
feet. A series of barked commands and he'd lifted his head to look at 
the twenty rifles trained on his body, shifted his eyes slowly along 
the line to memorize the faces of highly trained men trying to obey 
orders and to forget the rest. 

Just a threat of course, another basic but brutal weapon in an 
arsenal of psychological torture designed to destroy the will without 
yet doing permanent harm to the body. They'd been disappointed by his 
reaction, or more accurately by his lack of one. How were they to 
know that last time he'd been marked out for execution, it had been 
the executioner's sidekick who'd taken the bullet?

Didn't the fuckers know that he didn't die? It was everyone he 
touched who ended up dead.

A sick thought ran through his brain only to be suppressed an instant 
later as too shameful to be acknowledged - at least he wasn't alone 
this time.

Not strictly accurate. Scully was already out of the car and standing 
very still, her hands raised in formal agreement, her chin held high 
in defiant contempt. From the first time they'd met, he'd loved that 
about her. Loved the mix of control and anger. He loved it again now, 
and was grateful not to be on the receiving end.

"Take a step away from the car. Get on the road. Face down, spread 
your legs, keep your arms away from your body. It'll make everybody's 
life more pleasant if you cooperate."

He listened to the orders that the well-trained voice was giving 
Scully, knew from their speed and rhythmic assurance that she was 
obeying the commands. She'd decided to go quietly and Mulder was 
having a hard time deciding if that spelt pragmatism or defeat. What 
about him then? Did he want to make everybody's life more pleasant? 

"OK, sir. Kill the radio."

Gladly - one bullet or two? Mulder reconsidered the plan and decided 
to push the button instead.

"And may we all be truly thankful for that. OK, sir. You next. Get 
out of the car."

Drowning had to be an awful lot like this. Who were these fuckers? He 
stepped cautiously from the car. "Who the hell are you?"

"US Marshals. Now, please, do as you're told. I don't like 
complications."

First the man wants pleasant, now he wants uncomplicated. Mulder 
didn't see why he should supply either. "Are we under arrest?"

"Let's get this over with. The sooner we get through searching you 
the quicker we can all get back into our nice air-conditioned cars."

Mulder looked around at the battery of guns trained on his body and 
felt distinctly underdressed. A T-shirt up against a squadron of 
kevlar. He noted the simple but precise formation they were holding 
and the tense stillness of their positions. It was a show of 
strength, of quiet confidence. No one was twitching to act but 
everybody was ready. 

All good signs, probably. Wouldn't an execution be over by now? And 
these people didn't look like the type who might open fire 
accidentally, not just because they were too hyped or too 
inexperienced to stick to the rules. On the other hand, there was no 
escape route so why annoy a group of people who just had to be 
roasting under the helmets and the combat jackets?

He sagged to his knees and two figures moved forward. One kept the 
shotgun targeted on his head. The second was unarmed, which was 
flattering in its way, clearly the crew had enough respect not to 
want to offer another weapon to their new captive. 

"You can start by letting him take the other gun. Put your hands on 
your head."

Mulder glanced longingly towards the Sig he'd been forced to leave in 
the car and watched the quiet efficiency of the men working their way 
through the vehicle. Returning to the voice as the bullhorn barked a, 
"Now - please," he complied, placing his hands behind his head and 
allowing them access to the pockets of his jeans. The compact Beretta 
was dexterously collected by efficient, latex-gloved hands and 
swiftly passed to another man for removal to a safe distance.

"OK. Now lie on the ground, face down, legs apart, arms outstretched. 
You know the drill."

Which indeed he did. Though that didn't make compliance any easier. 

"It'll save everyone a lot of trouble if you just tell us where the 
weapons are."

"What - and spoil your fun?"

The fun, of course, would be in finding out just how efficient the 
team was. Very was Mulder's first impression. The man with the 
Quantico voice obviously ran a tight ship. So whose ship was it? The 
Marshals like he claimed?

The SWAT team looked like they were wearing FBI issue kit. Trivial 
details like pocket flaps and wrist stitching suddenly seemed like 
the most important things in the world, inter-agency differentiation 
even in textile design. A FBI Hostage Rescue Team? Working with a US 
Marshal team leader? OK.

Hot stuff then and all planned in advance. So who did they think they 
were dealing with? 

He felt his wrists being dragged behind his back. "Is this 
necessary?" The last thing he wanted was to sit with his hands cuffed 
behind him for what might be hours.

"Nick - fix them at the front. You can get up now."

The man carrying the cuffs grunted and Mulder edged slowly back to a 
kneeling position, then pushed carefully back to his feet. The 
handcuffs were in place a couple of seconds later. 

"Get him in the van. Use the ankle shackles to keep him there."

"Hey. You still haven't told me what we're supposed to have done. Are 
we under arrest? What are the charges?"

"Just do it, Nick. Nail him in there if you have to."

The guard's hand bit a little tighter into Mulder's biceps and the 
man's movements became a little more forceful, another kevlar jacket 
arrived to perform a similar task on the other side. This time Mulder 
got the warning and took it to heart. "OK, I'm going."

After the sunlight stepping into the van was like falling into a 
dark well. The man inside the vehicle, already adjusted to the light 
level, pushed him to sit down and made sure that his feet were 
swiftly slotted into their chains.

"Am I missing something here? Or has the constitution been revoked?"

"Give it a rest, Agent Mulder," growled the guard as he locked the 
shackles in place.

Interesting. So the team knew their names and moreover were under 
orders to use their old job titles. 

The van doors closed and for an instant the darkness became almost 
complete again before Mulder's eyes adjusted. He looked across the 
vehicle at Scully and saw the quiet reassurance in her eyes.

Partners still, despite the sickening sensation that he'd driven them 
into a trap and that in any sane world she wouldn't have even been in 
the car. Certainly, she wouldn't be sitting in chains and waiting for 
God knows what was coming next.

He shrugged and did a quick analysis of relative positions and the 
experience and demeanor of their watchers. No problem. 

Dropping to his knees he crawled as close to her as the chains 
allowed. She already had her cuffed hands resting on his shoulder by 
the time the guard arrived at their sides. Threatening body language 
and battle hardened authoritative tones. "Sit the fuck down."

"Or?" questioned Mulder. The only question worth asking.

"I'll make you."

"Why?"

The man towering over him only grunted. The second guard smirked 
briefly before correcting himself back to impassive. Mulder offered 
the faintest of smiles to Scully. 

OK, so they were under orders not to damage them, which was a good 
sign. On the other hand, perhaps it also meant that they should have 
run while they still had a chance. The idea came and went in an 
instant. They hadn't had a chance. Not from the moment they got in 
the car that morning.

Had they been trailed from the motel? Surely not. A bug placed on the 
car then. How long had that been there? How long had this operation 
taken to set up?

The van doors opened and a man entered, though even that much wasn't 
obvious until the figure was safely inside and his features shifted 
from silhouette into human again.

Mulder kept up the pressure. "What's with the chains?"

The man with the Quantico trained voice shook his head as if 
considering the remark. "You going to escape?"

"Only if we get the chance," noted Mulder.

The man snorted, a brief chuckle of amusement. "I can't do that Agent 
Mulder," he nodded towards the other captive, "Agent Scully."

"Why not?" continued Mulder.

"Orders."

"Whose?"

"Department of Justice."

"Who signed them?"

"Bob Mueller and John Ashcroft. They friends of yours?"

The Director of the FBI and the Attorney General? They were obviously 
going up in the world. "Well, I don't know about the kind of friends 
you've got, but mine don't normally insist on bondage gear - not 
before the party anyway. What are the charges?"

"You're not under arrest. Think of it as protective custody."

"Right now, I'm thinking of it as unlawful imprisonment and possible 
kidnap."

"Could we have a drink of water?" Scully's intervention was timely as 
well as practical, blocking the blind alley of an argument before it 
could escalate. 

The authoritative man nodded and the guard who'd only just returned 
to his seat after his abortive attempt to get Mulder to sit down took 
it as an order. Two bottles of water appeared from the chiller.

"Thank you. Marshal - ?"

"Dave Baines. You're welcome Agent Scully."

Her words were polite but pointed. "Why are we being held like this?"

"Orders." Off the agents' disgusted looks, the man shrugged before 
continuing. "You're to be considered as armed and extremely 
dangerous. A high flight hazard. And we're not supposed to hurt you. 
If you've got a better way of handling this I'm open to suggestions."

Scully chose not to argue the point. "What are you proposing to do 
with us?"

"We're waiting for a chopper. Then we hand you over. They're on their 
way."

"ETA?" pushed Mulder, determined to maintain the momentum.

"About sixty minutes."

"How about some food, we'd just passed a sign."

The marshal seemed surprised by the change of tack from Mulder, as if 
not sure whether to welcome it or be suspicious. He opted to take it 
literally. "Sure, there's a Dairy Queen a couple of miles up ahead. 
I'll send someone. What can I get you?"

Another helicopter? Mulder decided to stick to an order for burger 
and fries and a little more conversation with the marshal. Everything 
about the man said honest, everything about the situation said that 
he was their best hope. Instinct told Mulder that Baines had spent 
his life being one of the good guys. What did Dave Baines think was 
going on?

"So we're not under arrest?" Mulder waved the cuffs to reinforce the 
point.

Baines shook his head, swallowed hard, but found nothing to say. The 
situation obviously disturbed him, which gave Mulder even more cause 
for hope.

"Why do you think we're being held?"

"I've got my orders."

So did thousands of guards in Nazi concentration camps, Mulder noted, 
but resisted the urge to say it out loud. "You know we're FBI 
agents?" He almost smiled as he said it. Baines seemed to be pretty 
clear on their job titles, which was more than Mulder could say. "Why 
would you be told that we're dangerous?

Baines snorted, a brief bark of a laugh. "You saying you're not!"

This time Mulder did smile. "What do you think we're supposed to have 
done?"

"I haven't really thought about it."

Mulder's smile widened briefly as he heard Scully's voice cut in. 
"But you've got a good idea." She paused to wait for the 
acknowledging blink from Baines. "Who do you think we are?"

Mulder watched as Baines struggled between the desire to quote their 
names as stated on that oh-so-important order he was carrying and his 
own sense of fairness and morality. It was a battle worth winning. 
Mulder studied him carefully, urging him on.

Baines shook his head. "I don't get paid to speculate."

"But you are getting paid to take us in unharmed," Mulder stated. Not 
a question, a reminder.

The briefest of nods.

"DoJ orders, right from DC," added Mulder. "Which means that you need 
to place us in safe hands for that journey back."

"What are you getting at?"

Baines question was not really a question - it was a demand for 
information. Information that Mulder couldn't give, certainly not if 
he wanted his words to be acted on. The truth was too out there to be 
sold to an honest cop in the short gap between capturing two 
dangerous runaways and passing them down the line. "That helicopter - 
who's on board?"

"An Assistant Director, someone who knows you personally."

"Which one?" 

Baines shrugged, admitting his surprise for an instant. Two rogue 
agents hear that an FBI AD is coming to their rescue and then ask, 
"Which one?" Mulder could understand the surprise. Baines recovered 
his cool, took out the note from his pocket. "Walter Skinner."

"Who else?" When Baines didn't reply immediately Mulder tried again. 
"Skinner's not flying himself - who else is on-board?" 

Baines hesitated and Mulder tried to imagine what the marshal's 
reaction was going to be when he got to the rest of it. What color's 
their blood? Do they have metallic implants in their spines? Could 
you keep them face down on the ground while Scully checks them over? 
Oh yeah and keep them there for a while, because maybe some dead 
people will show up and offer their opinions on the situation. And if 
I could just have my Sig Sauer back, the one with the hematite 
bullets already loaded.

Nodding, almost against his will, the marshal finally replied. "I'll 
radio them."

----------

Skinner's silence during the helicopter ride had been bearable only 
because they all knew it to be a necessity. Whatever their 
next conversation was going to cover, it needed privacy.

It was one thing to test for green blood and metal reinforced spines - 
it was quite another matter to test for human greed or foolishness. 
Certainly there was nothing that could be done about it in a 
cursory five-minute examination lay face down on a baking hot road.

Skinner's dusty knees bore witness to Baines' honesty and to a 
certain arrogance that had allowed the marshal to order an FBI 
Assistant Director to get on the ground and stay there. Of course 
Skinner's easy compliance and immediate instructions to the 
helicopter's other occupants that they should follow suit meant that 
the marshal's nerve had never really been put to the test.

Still, so far so good. Even if the only confirmation of this being 
anything that might even potentially be good had been Skinner's 
mumbled, "You're doing the right thing."

"Where are we going?" Mulder queried. An acceptable question giving 
nothing away. After all the pilot must already have known the answer 
to that one.

Skinner's voice came through loud and clear in the headsets. 
"Airport. Then home."

Scully flinched. Home. Just click your heels three times and you'll 
be home. But that only happened in fairy stories.

Mulder felt the sting of her reaction. There had been days as they 
ran when she'd seemed so desperately alone, despite his presence or 
maybe even because of it. Perhaps too many hours in a car and too 
many motels reminded her of the old days and that those days had 
gone. He took the responsibility out of her hands. "No. We talk 
first."

Scully turned away, looking vacantly out of the window, apparently 
accepting his words with her head even if her heart clamored for 
another verdict.

Skinner noted the exchange, nodded. "Then we'll find somewhere."

----------

The roadside bar on the edge of town was almost deserted which had 
helped to overcome most of the helicopter pilot's reservations about 
the venue.

Habit dictated that Mulder entered first while Scully watched his 
back, his hand drifted to his hip for an instant as he walked, 
checking on the position of the Sig that he'd insisted be returned 
before boarding.

Sliding into the booth with the best view of the room Mulder kept his 
eyes on the door as Scully walked in. He waited until she was sitting 
alongside him before speaking. "So?"

Skinner guessed the question. "Alvin Kersh. They couldn't control 
him."

"Or you."

"But I was already an outsider. Kersh wasn't. The Director thought he 
was off his head at first."

"But?"

"Somebody cut the brakes on Kersh's car."

"Shit." So Kersh had never been on Mulder's Christmas card list but 
the man had come through for them. Saved his life. And now he'd paid 
for it with his own. "I didn't read about it."

"It was ruled accidental death. Better that way - for his family, for 
the Bureau. But the brass went ballistic. In private, of course."

"And now?"

"There's a bomber."

"He hit an abortion clinic?" Mulder suggested, remembering an article 
he'd read in one of the Sunday papers.

"And a cancer specialist. And an agricultural research laboratory." 
Skinner slid some photos across the table, waved an order for coffee 
as Mulder and Scully thumbed quickly through them.

They reached the picture of the man in a white coat and Scully 
gasped. "Scanlon."

Skinner shook his head, checking the notes. "His name was Jonathon 
Reece, head of oncology at Hamilton Research just outside Boston."

Mulder picked up the thread when he realized that Scully wouldn't. 
"Scanlon was Scully's doctor when she was diagnosed with the tumor. 
He was treating Peggy Northern when she died. He was also on the 
staff of a supposed fertility clinic."

Skinner nodded, breathing in a little more heavily as he understood 
the implications.

Mulder leaned forward, a manic edge bubbling under the surface calm 
as he whispered his next question. "And are we wanted as suspects or 
as investigators?"

The muscles in Scully's face twitched for an instant, an odd quirk of 
her lips reassuring Mulder that she was just as manic as he was. 

Skinner ignored the question. "Anything else?" he queried, waving 
vaguely over the pile of photos.

"Yeah, sure," countered Mulder, slouching back in his chair. "The 
blast pattern in the first one. It's just not possible. You can't 
take out a car with a bomb, smash it and its occupants to matchsticks 
and leave the cars parked either side unscratched."

Scully intervened, stabbing an insistent finger at the photo in 
question as she did. "Shaped charges, Mulder. You can make them so 
accurate that they'll put a maker's name into a metal bar. There's no 
magic to it."

Mulder nodded, felt like smiling, thinking about old times. "What do 
the bomb team say?"

Skinner stated the obvious. "That outside of a lab or a computer, 
what we're seeing is just about impossible." 

Scully's eyes rolled skywards for an instant and Mulder's breath 
caught as he recalled just how much he'd missed that gesture.


END (of teaser)

1
=======


The radio had entered some kind of time-warp about fifty miles 
back and now insisted on feeding them a diet of 1970s disco 
music. Which was OK, provided you both agreed to sing along 
and to ignore the off-key notes that the other hit.

It wasn't even the kind of road where you could read in the 
car, too many twists and turns, too much fluttering in and out 
of strobelike stripes of shade and sunlight. It was the kind 
of road on which Mulder drove and Scully grouched, and every 
now and again they agreed to a truce and sang along with some 
awful piece of kitsch.

Passing from brightest glare into deepest shadow Mulder slowed 
to take the next corner. He'd had just enough time to spot the 
white van that came out of nowhere to appear in his rear 
mirror when he hit the first set of tire spikes.

The blowouts were inevitable. The heavy-duty barrier across 
the road suggested extreme preparedness, the second van that 
appeared behind them spoke to a large-scale action and no 
possibility of a reprieve. 

Mulder braced against the rapid deceleration but still found 
his neck hammered into the seatback as whiplash struck. The 
car shuddered and twisted and slumped to a halt. He gasped the 
only word he knew, suddenly breathless and exhausted. 
"Scully?"

Cool certainty in her voice. "Don't worry."

And Mulder choked at that but didn't allow bewildered 
amusement to become hysteria, he shook his head letting it 
crash into the steering wheel and felt his body complain at 
the new insult. Deep breath. He sat up straight and shifted 
his gun from its holster into his lap.

Not that it mattered much. Twelve rounds loaded and there were 
at least twenty muzzles pointing their way, and that was only 
the ones he could see.

Don't worry? How was that supposed to work? How long had these 
people been waiting for them? Who the hell were these people?

"Take it easy," announced the bullhorn zapping through the 
heat haze and penetrating the car even above the band pounding 
out Y-M-C-A. 

Would it be considered "easy" if he switched off the radio or 
would that constitute provocation? Mulder checked the scene 
again. No one had actually approached the car. There should be 
a man on every window with a machine gun by now.

So where were the advance team? Who the hell were they dealing 
with here?

"OK, ma'am - if you'll get out first. Keep your hands visible, 
keep it slow."

The voice sounded like law enforcement. Mulder tried to filter 
the tone over the clamor of music. It didn't sound military, 
though he couldn't say why. Something was mumbling Quantico in 
his ear. FBI? He tried to see who was holding the bullhorn but 
could only see the array of weaponry pointing at the car.

When was the last time he'd been on the wrong end of so many 
guns? A question that only struck him as too surreal to 
contemplate after he'd already dug up a close enough answer. A 
military brig just outside Quantico where they'd had the 
bright idea to drag his sleep-deprived body from the overlit 
cell and out into a dark, deserted exercise yard. 

Hands fastened behind his back, they'd pushed him down on his 
knees to wait for dawn. When the sky finally moved from 
moonless black to misty blue the silence had been replaced by 
the sound of marching feet. A series of barked commands and 
he'd lifted his head to look at the twenty rifles trained on 
his body, shifted his eyes slowly along the line to memorize 
the faces of highly trained men trying to obey orders and to 
forget the rest. 

Just a threat of course, another basic but brutal weapon in an 
arsenal of psychological torture designed to destroy the will 
without yet doing permanent harm to the body. They'd been 
disappointed by his reaction, or more accurately by his lack 
of one. How were they to know that last time he'd been marked 
out for execution, it had been the executioner's sidekick 
who'd taken the bullet?

Didn't the fuckers know that he didn't die? It was everyone he 
touched who ended up dead.

A sick thought ran through his brain only to be suppressed an 
instant later as too shameful to be acknowledged - at least he 
wasn't alone this time.

Not strictly accurate. Scully was already out of the car and 
standing very still, her hands raised in formal agreement, her 
chin held high in defiant contempt. From the first time they'd 
met, he'd loved that about her. Loved the mix of control and 
anger. He loved it again now, and was grateful not to be on 
the receiving end.

"Take a step away from the car. Get on the road. Face down, 
spread your legs, keep your arms away from your body. It'll 
make everybody's life more pleasant if you cooperate."

He listened to the orders that the well-trained voice was 
giving Scully, knew from their speed and rhythmic assurance 
that she was obeying the commands. She'd decided to go quietly 
and Mulder was having a hard time deciding if that spelled 
pragmatism or defeat. What about him then? Did he want to make 
everybody's life more pleasant? 

"OK, sir. Kill the radio."

Gladly - one bullet or two? Mulder reconsidered the plan and 
decided to push the button instead.

"And may we all be truly thankful for that. OK, sir. You next. 
Get out of the car."

Drowning had to be an awful lot like this. Who were these 
fuckers? He stepped cautiously from the car. "Who the hell are 
you?"

"US Marshals. Now, please, do as you're told. I don't like 
complications."

First the man wants pleasant, now he wants uncomplicated. 
Mulder didn't see why he should supply either. "Are we under 
arrest?"

"Let's get this over with. The sooner we get through searching 
you the quicker we can all get back into our nice air-
conditioned cars."

Mulder looked around at the battery of guns trained on his 
body and felt distinctly underdressed. A T-shirt up against a 
squadron of kevlar. He noted the simple but precise formation 
they were holding and the tense stillness of their positions. 
It was a show of strength, of quiet confidence. No one was 
twitching to act but everybody was ready. 

All good signs, probably. Wouldn't an execution be over by 
now? And these people didn't look like the type who might open 
fire accidentally, not just because they were too hyped or too 
inexperienced to stick to the rules. On the other hand, there 
was no escape route so why annoy a group of people who just 
had to be roasting under the helmets and the combat jackets?

He sagged to his knees and two figures moved forward. One kept 
the shotgun targeted on his head. The second was unarmed, 
which was flattering in its way, clearly the crew had enough 
respect not to want to offer another weapon to their new 
captive. 

"You can start by letting him take the other gun. Put your 
hands on your head."

Mulder glanced longingly towards the Sig he'd been forced to 
leave in the car and watched the quiet efficiency of the men 
working their way through the vehicle. Returning to the voice 
as the bullhorn barked a, "Now - please," he complied, placing 
his hands behind his head and allowing them access to the 
pockets of his jeans. The compact Beretta was dexterously 
collected by efficient, latex-gloved hands and swiftly passed 
to another man for removal to a safe distance.

"OK. Now lie on the ground, face down, legs apart, arms 
outstretched. You know the drill."

Which indeed he did. Though that didn't make compliance any 
easier. 

"It'll save everyone a lot of trouble if you just tell us 
where the weapons are."

"What - and spoil your fun?"

The fun, of course, would be in finding out just how efficient 
the team was. Very was Mulder's first impression. The man with 
the Quantico voice obviously ran a tight ship. So whose ship 
was it? The Marshals like he claimed?

The SWAT team looked like they were wearing FBI issue gear. 
Trivial details like pocket flaps and wrist stitching suddenly 
seemed like the most important things in the world, inter-
agency differentiation even in textile design. An FBI Hostage 
Rescue Team? Working with a US Marshal team leader? OK.

Hot stuff then and all planned in advance. So who did they 
think they were dealing with? 

He felt his wrists being dragged behind his back. "Is this 
necessary?" The last thing he wanted was to sit with his hands 
cuffed behind him for what might be hours.

"Nick - fix them at the front. You can get up now."

The man carrying the cuffs grunted and Mulder edged slowly 
back to a kneeling position, then pushed carefully back to his 
feet. The handcuffs were in place a couple of seconds later. 

"Get him in the van. Use the ankle shackles to keep him 
there."

"Hey. You still haven't told me what we're supposed to have 
done. Are we under arrest? What are the charges?"

"Just do it, Nick. Nail him in there if you have to."

The guard's hand bit a little tighter into Mulder's biceps and 
the man's movements became a little more forceful. Another 
kevlar jacket arrived to perform a similar task on the other 
side. This time Mulder got the warning and took it to heart. 
"OK, I'm going."

After the sunlight, stepping into the van was like falling 
into a dark well. The man inside the vehicle, already adjusted 
to the light level, pushed him to sit down and made sure that 
his feet were swiftly slotted into their chains.

"Am I missing something here? Or has the constitution been 
revoked?"

"Give it a rest, Agent Mulder," growled the guard as he locked 
the shackles in place.

Interesting. So the team knew their names and moreover were 
under orders to use their old job titles. 

The van doors closed and for an instant the darkness became 
almost complete again before Mulder's eyes adjusted. He looked 
across the vehicle at Scully and saw the quiet reassurance in 
her eyes.

Partners still, despite the sickening sensation that he'd 
driven them into a trap and that in any sane world she 
wouldn't have even been in the car. Certainly, she wouldn't be 
sitting in chains and waiting for God knows what was coming 
next.

He shrugged and did a quick analysis of relative positions and 
the experience and demeanor of their watchers. No problem. 

Dropping to his knees he crawled as close to her as the chains 
allowed. She already had her cuffed hands resting on his 
shoulder by the time the guard arrived. The man loomed over 
them, delivering his message with threatening body language 
and battle hardened authoritative tones. "Sit the fuck down."

"Or?" questioned Mulder. The only question worth asking.

"I'll make you."

"Why?"

The man towering above him only grunted. The second guard 
smirked briefly before correcting himself back to impassive. 
Mulder offered the faintest of smiles to Scully. 

OK, so they were under orders not to damage them, which was a 
good sign. On the other hand, perhaps it also meant that they 
should have run while they still had a chance. The idea came 
and went in an instant. They hadn't had a chance. Not from the 
moment they got in the car that morning.

Had they been trailed from the motel? Surely not. A bug placed 
on the car then. How long had that been there? How long had 
this operation taken to set up?

The van doors opened and a man entered, though even that much 
wasn't obvious until the figure was safely inside and his 
features shifted from silhouette into human again.

Mulder kept up the pressure. "What's with the chains?"

The man with the Quantico trained voice shook his head as if 
considering the remark. "You going to escape?"

"Only if we get the chance," noted Mulder.

The man snorted, a brief chuckle of amusement. "I can't do 
that Agent Mulder," he nodded towards the other captive, 
"Agent Scully."

"Why not?" continued Mulder.

"Orders."

"Whose?"

"Department of Justice."

"Who signed them?"

"Bob Mueller and John Ashcroft. They friends of yours?"

The Director of the FBI and the Attorney General? They were 
obviously going up in the world. "Well, I don't know about the 
kind of friends you've got, but mine don't normally insist on 
bondage gear - not before the party anyway. What are the 
charges?"

"You're not under arrest. Think of it as protective custody."

"Right now, I'm thinking of it as unlawful imprisonment and 
possible kidnap."

"Could we have a drink of water?" Scully's intervention was 
timely as well as practical, blocking the blind alley of an 
argument before it could escalate. 

The authoritative man nodded and the guard who'd only just 
returned to his seat after his abortive attempt to get Mulder 
to sit down took it as an order. Two bottles of water appeared 
from the cooler.

"Thank you. Marshal - ?"

"Dave Baines. You're welcome Agent Scully."

Her words were polite but pointed. "Why are we being held like 
this?"

"Orders." Off the agents' disgusted looks, the man shrugged 
before continuing. "You're to be considered as armed and 
extremely dangerous. A high flight hazard. And we're not 
supposed to hurt you. If you've got a better way of handling 
this I'm open to suggestions."

Scully chose not to argue the point. "What are you proposing 
to do with us?"

"We're waiting for a chopper. Then we hand you over. They're 
on their way."

"ETA?" pushed Mulder, determined to maintain the momentum.

"About sixty minutes."

"How about some food, we'd just passed a sign."

The marshal seemed surprised by the change of tack from 
Mulder, as if not sure whether to welcome it or be suspicious. 
He opted to take it literally. "Sure, there's a Dairy Queen a 
couple of miles up ahead. I'll send someone. What can I get 
you?"

Another helicopter? Mulder decided to stick to an order for 
burger and fries and a little more conversation with the 
marshal. Everything about the man said honest, everything 
about the situation said that he was their best hope. Instinct 
told Mulder that marshal had spent his life being one of the 
good guys. What did Dave Baines think was going on?

"So we're not under arrest?" Mulder waved the cuffs to 
reinforce the point.

Baines shook his head, swallowed hard, but found nothing to 
say. The situation obviously disturbed him, which gave Mulder 
even more cause for hope.

"Why do you think we're being held?"

"I've got my orders."

So did thousands of guards in Nazi concentration camps, Mulder 
noted, but he resisted the urge to say it out loud. "You know 
we're FBI agents?" He almost smiled as he said it. Baines 
seemed to be pretty clear on their job titles, which was more 
than Mulder could say. "Why would you be told that we're 
dangerous?"

Baines snorted, a brief bark of a laugh. "You saying you're 
not!"

This time Mulder did smile. "What do you think we're supposed 
to have done?"

"I haven't really thought about it."

Mulder's smile widened briefly as he heard Scully's voice cut 
in. "But you've got a good idea." She paused to wait for the 
acknowledging blink from Baines. "Who do you think we are?"

Mulder watched as Baines struggled between the desire to quote 
their names as stated on that oh-so-important order he was 
carrying and his own sense of fairness and morality. It was a 
battle worth winning. Mulder studied him carefully, urging him 
on.

Baines shook his head. "I don't get paid to speculate."

"But you are getting paid to take us in unharmed," Mulder 
stated. Not a question, a reminder.

The briefest of nods.

"DoJ orders, right from DC," added Mulder. "Which means that 
you need to place us in safe hands for that journey back."

"What are you getting at?"

Baines question was not really a question - it was a demand 
for information. Information that Mulder couldn't give, 
certainly not if he wanted his words to be acted on. The truth 
was too out there to be sold to an honest cop in the short gap 
between capturing two dangerous runaways and passing them down 
the line. "That helicopter - who's on board?"

"An Assistant Director, someone who knows you personally."

"Which one?" 

Baines shrugged, admitting his surprise for an instant. Two 
rogue agents hear that an FBI AD is coming to their rescue and 
then ask, "Which one?" Mulder could understand the surprise. 
Baines recovered his cool, took out the note from his pocket. 
"Walter Skinner."

"Who else?" When Baines didn't reply immediately, Mulder tried 
again. "Skinner's not flying himself - who else is on-board?" 

Baines hesitated and Mulder tried to imagine what the 
marshal's reaction was going to be when he got to the rest of 
it. What color's their blood? Do they have metallic implants 
in their spines? Could you keep them face down on the ground 
while Scully checks them over? Oh yeah and keep them there for 
a while, because maybe some dead people will show up and offer 
their opinions on the situation. And if I could just have my 
Sig Sauer back, the one with the magnetite tipped bullets 
already loaded.

Nodding, almost against his will, the marshal finally replied. 
"I'll radio them."

----------

Skinner's silence during the helicopter ride had been bearable 
only because they all knew it to be a necessity. Whatever 
their conversation was going to cover, it needed privacy.

It was one thing to test for green blood and metal reinforced 
spines; it was quite another matter to test for human greed or 
foolishness. Certainly there was nothing that could be done 
about that in a cursory five-minute examination lay face down 
on a baking hot road.

Skinner's dusty knees bore witness to Baines' honesty and to a 
certain arrogance that had allowed the marshal to order an FBI 
Assistant Director to get on the ground and stay there. Of 
course Skinner's easy compliance and immediate instructions to 
the helicopter's other occupants that they should follow suit 
meant that the marshal's nerve had never really been put to 
the test.

Still, so far so good. Even if the only confirmation of this 
being anything that might even potentially be good had been 
Skinner's mumbled, "You're doing the right thing."

"Where are we going?" Mulder queried. An acceptable question 
giving nothing away. After all, the pilot must already have 
known the answer to that one.

Skinner's voice came through loud and clear in the headsets. 
"Airport. Then home."

Scully flinched. Home. Just click your heels three times and 
you'll be home. But that only happened in fairy stories.

Mulder felt the sting of her reaction. There had been days as 
they ran when she'd seemed so desperately alone, despite his 
presence or maybe even because of it. Perhaps too many hours 
in a car and too many motels reminded her of the old days and 
that those days had gone. He took the responsibility out of 
her hands. "No. We talk first."

Scully turned away, looking vacantly out of the window, 
apparently accepting his words with her head even if her heart 
clamored for another verdict.

Skinner noted the exchange, nodded. "Then we'll find 
somewhere."

----------

The roadside bar on the edge of town was almost deserted. A 
fact that helped to overcome most of the helicopter pilot's 
reservations about the venue.

Habit dictated that Mulder entered first while Scully watched 
his back, his hand drifted to his hip for an instant as he 
walked, checking on the position of the Sig that he'd insisted 
be returned before boarding.

Sliding into the booth with the best view of the room Mulder 
kept his eyes on the door as Scully walked in. He waited until 
she was sitting alongside him before speaking. "So?"

Skinner guessed the question. "Alvin Kersh. They couldn't 
control him."

"Or you."

"But I was already an outsider. Kersh wasn't. The Director 
thought he was off his head at first."

"But?"

"The brakes failed on Kersh's car."

"Shit." So Kersh had never been on Mulder's Christmas card 
list but the man had come through for them. Saved his life. 
And now he'd paid for it with his own. "I didn't read about 
it."

"It was ruled accidental death. Better that way - for his 
family, for the Bureau. But the brass went ballistic. In 
private, of course."

"And now?"

"There's a bomber."

"The one who hit the abortion clinic?" Mulder suggested, 
remembering an article he'd read in one of the Sunday papers.

"And a cancer specialist. And an agricultural research 
laboratory." Skinner slid some photos across the table, waved 
an order for coffee as Mulder and Scully thumbed quickly 
through them.

They reached the picture of the man in a white coat and Scully 
gasped. "Scanlon."

Skinner shook his head, checking the notes. "His name was 
Jonathon Reece, head of oncology at Hamilton Research just 
outside Boston."

Mulder picked up the thread when he realized that Scully 
wouldn't. "Scanlon was Scully's doctor when she was diagnosed 
with the tumor. He was treating Penny Northern when she died. 
He was also on the staff of a supposed fertility clinic."

Skinner nodded, breathing in a little more heavily as he 
understood the implications.

Mulder leaned forward, a manic edge bubbling under the surface 
calm as he whispered his next question. "And are we wanted as 
suspects or as investigators?"

The muscles in Scully's face twitched for an instant, an odd 
quirk of her lips reassuring Mulder that she was just as manic 
as he was. 

Skinner ignored the question. "Anything else?" he queried, 
waving vaguely over the pile of photos.

"Yeah, sure," countered Mulder, slouching back in his chair. 
"The blast pattern in the first one. It's just not possible. 
You can't take out a car with a bomb, smash it and its 
occupants to a pulp, and leave the cars parked either side 
without a scratch."

Scully intervened, stabbing an insistent finger at the photo 
in question as she did. "Shaped charges, Mulder. You can make 
them so accurate that they'll put a maker's name into a metal 
bar. There's no magic to it."

Mulder nodded, felt like smiling, thinking about old times. 
"What do the bomb team say?"

Skinner stated the obvious. "That outside of a lab or a 
computer, what we're seeing is just about impossible." 

Scully's eyes rolled skywards for an instant and Mulder's 
breath caught as he recalled just how much he'd missed that 
gesture.

========
END 1

2
--------

That evening - FBI Hoover Building, DC


Skinner was running the briefing. Krycek was standing at his 
side. Mulder tried to concentrate on the Assistant Director. 
"The escalation across the three crime scenes is the most 
disturbing factor," observed Skinner.

"And the complete absence of any forensic evidence," added 
Krycek.

"In the first incident we saw the deaths of Dr Jonathon 
Reece," Skinner glanced towards Scully as he spoke, "also 
known as Scanlon, and his wife Valerie Reece. We're checking 
on other aliases they may have used. In the second we have 
eight people working on a trial supervised by the USDA looking 
at genetically modified corn."

Krycek's mouth tilted into a sneer. 

"And in the latest explosion - we have twelve dead, ten were 
clinic employers but the other two were patients."

Mulder frowned, the profile he'd started to sketch in his head 
suddenly swept away. Escalation in numbers was to be 
anticipated. Escalation from the apparent assassination of 
active participants in the conspiracy into the murder of 
innocent civilians was a frightening prospect.

"What's the matter, Mulder? You thought you were going to team 
up with the bomber?" 

Krycek's commentary was exactly what Mulder didn't need. With 
twenty agents already looking at him like he was the main 
attraction at the local freak show, an argument with an 
invisible man would do nobody any favors. More alarming though 
was the idea that Krycek might be right - he hadn't felt that 
perturbed by the idea that some avenging angel was going after 
the bad guys and declaring himself judge, jury and 
executioner. It was only the fact that the killer's aim was a 
little off that had reminded Mulder that it was a crime.

Scully's fingers bit into his wrist, breaking the trance. He 
nodded, glanced at the other agents who obliged by rapidly 
shifting their attention back to Skinner. There were times 
when his reputation came in handy.

Skinner paused. "Agent Mulder? Did you have something to add?" 

The words that Mulder had started to mumble were intended for 
Krycek. He was going to have to be careful about that. 

The trouble with these new ghosts was that they didn't seem to 
be phantoms, nor even the fantasies that Scully had assured 
him he was entitled to experience. "You needed reassurance, 
comfort from someone, Mulder - I'm glad you found it." They'd 
only been on the run for a few days when she said it. 

The implicit advice had been clear enough. Now I'm here - let 
the dead stay dead.

Mulder shook his head. "Not yet, sir."

The AD frowned and returned to the images of death and 
destruction flashing up on the screen behind him. "As you 
know, we have yet to determine the explosive used or the 
method of deployment."

"Any security video?" questioned a blond haired agent who 
Mulder recalled from a domestic terrorism detail and a bomb in 
an office building in Dallas.

"There were cameras at the research center in Boston but 
nothing showing anyone tampering with the car. Same goes for 
the video from the abortion clinic - nothing suspicious."

Mulder spoke next. "Do we know that these things are bombs?" 

Krycek smirked as the other agents bit back confused gasps. 
Mulder ignored both sets of reactions.

"Agent Cooke?" Skinner passed over the question to the head of 
the explosives team.

Cooke rocked back in his chair as if surprised to have been 
asked anything and wishing that he'd had more time to prepare 
an answer. He dodged. "What are you suggesting, Agent Mulder?"

Nothing, actually. Apart from what he'd read on the ninety-
minute flight back to DC and what he'd learned in Skinner's 
ten-minute introduction to the meeting he hadn't really had 
time to think; he certainly didn't have the confidence to 
suggest. 

The whole thing seemed like a dream. Hell - if Skinner hadn't 
given them time to change their clothes at the hotel he'd 
still be wearing a dust stained T-shirt and jeans. He glanced 
down at the fresh blue cotton shirt and chinos and realized 
just how rushed of a process it had been. He'd have to do 
better tomorrow.

Krycek stated the obvious. "Mulder - they're waiting!" 

"I was hoping to hear other people's thoughts." He resisted 
the temptation to sigh. Had the FBI always felt like such an 
alien environment? He sat up a little straighter, relaxing a 
little as revelation dawned - yes, it always had. "We're not 
finding explosive residues; could we be looking at something 
else? High energy lasers, sonic devices, something?"

Cooke shrugged. "We don't have any evidence to support that."

"We don't have any evidence, period."

"You're talking Star Wars technologies."

Mulder didn't bother to reply, waved a hand to say that he 
didn't think an answer was necessary.

When the meeting broke for coffee thirty minutes later, one 
look from Skinner told Mulder that he wasn't to leave the 
table. Scully sat back down to wait as the other agents filed 
out. 

Skinner closed the door. "I rushed you back. I was wrong. You 
need time - to regroup. I wasn't thinking."

Mulder nodded.

But Scully shook her head. "The first day back was always 
going to be awkward - it's best that we get it over with." 

"Agent Scully. I'm sure you need time with your family."

She stiffened a little, wanting everything and wanting it 
yesterday. "It's not a problem."

"It's going to take weeks to get you back in here officially. 
And this investigation could take months."

"And needs us now," insisted Mulder.

Nine hours ago they'd been on the run. Eight hours ago and 
they'd been shackled to the floor panel of a Federal Marshal's 
truck. Two hours ago they'd stopped off at a DC hotel for a 
shower and a change of clothes. They'd slid back into the FBI 
just as quickly as they'd slid out of a seedy motel room that 
morning. 

It had been a year since Scully had last been in here, a year 
spent with a death sentence round Mulder's neck. Working here 
had been something they did forever ago, or maybe just 
yesterday. Impossible to comprehend.

Skinner looked suddenly exhausted, rubbing his eyes before 
checking his watch. "I'm sending them home. They've pulled 
plenty of late nights." He strode purposefully to the door, 
peeking his head out into the corridor. "Agents. I'm calling 
it a day. Fresh start in the morning."

Mulder waited until he closed the door before responding. 
"That wasn't necessary."

Skinner shook his head. "My call, Agent Mulder."

There was a challenge in his voice and Mulder almost responded 
to it, but backed down an instant later as he realized that 
the argument was ridiculous as well as futile. They all needed 
time to regroup. Even Skinner who'd been sent to collect them 
that morning must have wondered if there would be anything 
left to collect once the marshals set their ambush.

Sensing that Mulder had opted out of the argument Skinner 
relaxed a little. "Whatever you want at the hotel charge it to 
the room. We'll get the paperwork straightened out as fast as 
we can. Meanwhile if there's anything else you need?"

A long talk and a few explanations and perhaps the names and 
addresses of some of these new found allies in the Bureau 
brass? Then maybe he could check up on them for himself or get 
the Gunmen to. Christ - the Gunmen. They wouldn't be checking 
up on anyone. He'd spoken to Frohike yesterday and he still 
couldn't believe they were gone.

"Mulder?" Scully sounded scared. 

Had he zoned out again? He looked up at her, trying to look as 
if he'd been paying attention. "Yeah. Let's go. Start fresh 
tomorrow."

Skinner looked almost as worried as Scully. "I think you could 
use a couple of days. There must be people you want to talk 
to."

No. Nobody. Absolutely nobody. Everyone he wanted to see in DC 
was either dead or in this room.

Skinner turned his attention to Scully. She shrugged. "My 
mother lives in San Diego now. She's flying in to DC tomorrow 
night."

How narrow their worlds had become. Mulder spelled it out. 
"Anything we need to do at security when we arrive tomorrow?"

Skinner gave up, no longer bothering to suggest they stay away 
from the office. "No, they know. Just sign in."

Good. No arguments over guns and badges. Honored guests 
pending their return as the FBI's most unwanted. Wanted? Well, 
if they were going to stay wanted it was best if they started 
earning their keep.

"Thanks."

The AD tensed, puzzling over the word. "I just wish I could 
have done something sooner."

"Thanks," Mulder said again.

This time Skinner nodded. "You're welcome."

The drive back to the hotel gave them the chance for more 
questions. Still circumspect of course, even metal walls might 
have ears. "How did you find us?"

"Bait. We gave you a magnetite trail to chase."

Which meant they'd started looking for them in earnest about 
three weeks ago. A few days after the abortion clinic was 
attacked. "We were that predictable." No surprise in Mulder's 
tone, just a gentle self-mockery in its undercurrent.

"It made sense. All we did was make a few pointless transfers 
- A to B to C to D to A. We had surveillance cameras on the 
roads around Minton Airbase, automated plate readers, fed all 
the numbers into the databases - came up with a list of 
rentals. Waited for you to trade the car back in."

"And came up with a list of cars rented on the same day to 
find out what we'd switched to."

Skinner nodded. "Routine after that. Took a week to find the 
motel you were staying in."

"Why not pick us up there?"

"If you'd spotted them and bolted, you'd have gone too deep - 
we'd have lost you."

"Baines knew what he was doing."

Skinner smiled faintly. "How did you talk him into playing 
along with you?"

"Trade secret." 

----------

Skinner had booked them into a suite that could have swallowed 
Mulder's old apartment and still left space for the jacuzzi. A 
necessity he said, "Security reasons."

Neither agent took the idea seriously, but neither mentioned 
it further. They were just grateful for the comfort and 
respectful of Skinner's apparent sensitivity about it.

"How come we never stayed in places like this when we were on 
the X-Files?" Scully toured the kitchen and tried not to look 
as if she cared.

They'd had scarcely a moment to think, let alone to talk, 
since the marshals stopped their car in a mess of chains and 
spikes that morning. It was a fragile kind of silence driven 
by a fear that the wrong word might make them wake up. Mulder 
had no desire to test the theory. "Guess I phone for food?" 
His fingers drifted towards the handset.

She nodded, though the gesture was so vague that it was 
difficult to take it as an answer.

Mulder lifted his hand away again. "Why don't you call your 
mom?" Scully had already spoken to her for a couple of minutes 
that afternoon, squeezed a twelve-month nightmare of news into 
a narrow gap between a shower and a drive to the FBI offices.

She nodded again and this time the gesture was backed up with 
some reality as she strode purposefully towards the bedroom.

The fine line between exhausted and hyper had been crossed 
hours ago and as Mulder paced the room looking for an escape 
there was panic in the air as well as pain. Neither emotion 
was welcome nor were they even useful. Scully had been ashamed 
of him today.

A harsh appraisal perhaps, but accurate for all that. Oh she'd 
never say, she'd never demand that he visit the Bureau shrinks 
nor haul him off to meet some sharp young Psych specialist on 
the pretence of stress management. He'd just catch it in her 
eyes - the dismay, the disappointment, the apology she was 
signaling towards the nice young lady in the coffee shop, the 
impatient oaf behind the motel reception desk, and now towards 
their colleagues in the FBI.

"Mulder - it's not that bad," insisted Frohike.

"Don't, Melvin. I can't talk to you. I've got to stop. You've 
got to stop."

"It's not as if we're the only ones you see."

But they were amongst the elite, the special ones who he 
couldn't ignore and who seemed to insist on replies. The ones 
who seemed so substantial that it was easy to forget that they 
weren't real. 

The other phantoms were different. They came and went, 
whispering their needs, reminding him of his failures. Some of 
them he only remembered because of the wound patterns they 
still wore, others like Lucy Householder he knew by name. But 
at least he knew they were just ghosts. Never in his line of 
sight, they fluttered on the edge of his peripheral vision. 
Waiting. Whispering.

Conscience, Scully had once told him, was just the voice of 
the dead trying to save us from our own damnation. And if that 
was true then he must need a hell of a lot of saving. Too 
heavy a load for one man. Listening too closely was inviting 
paralysis at best, and a desperate tightrope dance between 
psychosis and denial at worst.

He couldn't bring himself to look at Frohike. "Please. Please 
- let me go."

"Mulder."

He turned to face Scully, uncertain how long she'd been 
standing in the bedroom doorway studying him. He deflected her 
question with one of his own - shouldn't she be with her 
family, with the people she'd had to turn her back on to run 
with him? "Maybe you should go out there to see her, take a 
few days."

Carefully impassive, she spoke slowly as if he might not be 
able to understand normal speech. "Mom's flying in tomorrow."

"She lives out there now. And there's Bill's family, too. 
This," he waved vaguely across the room, "it's not even as if 
we can offer her a place to stay." Not that it mattered, 
except as a reminder of how empty DC was.

"I've only just got back." Her breathing was measured but her 
eyes warned of danger. "And if I did go - what would you do?"

What could he do? There was no family waiting for him to 
visit, his friends were either working for the Bureau or else 
their ghosts had followed him cross-country for months, 
stubbornly refusing exorcism in favor of their roles as 
guardians and whisperers. He shrugged. He'd go into work and 
try and look like he belonged there. What else could he do?

"You don't get it, do you?" Her voice was all gentle 
persuasion and steel reinforcement. "You don't know why 
Skinner suggested we take a break?" She paused, a shine of 
sadness in her eyes. "It wasn't for my sake."

He did know that, but knowing the source of Skinner's 
reservations made no difference to the facts. The best place 
for him was the Bureau. The question mark was whether that was 
equally true for Scully. She had people, living people who 
cared about her, who hadn't seen her in a year and who must 
surely have feared the worst.

Scully grew tired of the silence, shook her head as she spoke. 
"Mom knew I was coming back."

"How?"

"Gibson. He used to call her, just to tell her that I was 
still alive. He called her this morning to say that we were on 
our way home. She doesn't understand why you could talk to him 
but I couldn't contact her."

"I didn't." Not on the phone at least.

"I know. But how do I explain that to mom, to Bill, to anyone? 
I don't belong there, I don't belong with them."

Which begged the question - where did either of them belong? 
He hadn't belonged anywhere since his abduction. Not really. 
Even when he'd been returned, it was as someone dead. Even 
when he'd been exhumed, he'd been a shell.

What the hell was going on here? Why weren't they celebrating? 
They'd been brought back from the wilderness. Wasn't that 
worth something? The adrenaline buzz was fading fast. It 
wasn't yet ten and it had already been an awfully long day. 
What could he say? "Give it time."

Her eyes twinkled as she approached him. "Is that what I need 
to give you?" She yawned slightly, admitting her tiredness but 
not succumbing to it. "Who was it? Who did you see? At the 
office? Here?"

Denial was pointless. "Krycek and Frohike."

"And did they tell you anything you didn't already know?"

No. But then that wasn't really the question she was asking. 
What she really wanted to know was why he couldn't just 
declare them dead and useless and insist they fade away. If 
only it were that easy.

Sighing, she scanned the room before looking back into his 
eyes. "Are they here now?"

Sure. Always. Shadows in the dark. A flutter of movement not 
quite out of sight. Murmuring behind his back. Nothing to be 
concerned about. Same old thing. "No."

She nodded, letting him off the hook. "Let's get some dinner."

=======

As a concession, they took most of the morning off. 

The Lone Gunman's old office was the kind of place where even 
Scully moved like she was seeing ghosts.

"It's yours?" she asked for the third time.

"Twenty year lease with another seven years to run."

"Will you look for new tenants?"

Feeling a little shaky he avoided making eye contact with the 
three men who stood next to the dusty computer - a few years 
past state of the art now, but probably still serviceable. "I 
haven't thought about it." That sounded like planning for the 
future. All he'd planned on for the last three years was 
making it to the end of the week.

The place had the musty odor of a mausoleum, the principle 
reinforced by the way it looked as if the dead had been buried 
with all their possessions. Or at least with all their old 
ones. Apparently they'd been in financial trouble; they'd had 
to sell off the good stuff. If only he'd known. Sorry.

It had scarcely been touched since the day they'd died except 
for a fast sweep of all perishable food items and a bagging up 
of the laundry done within days of their deaths by Jimmy Bond 
and Monica Reyes.

"I keep expecting them to walk in through that door." Scully 
pointed straight through the trio in the direction of the 
kitchen that had launched a thousand chili dinners.

Frohike bit his lip and Mulder had to turn away. When he 
looked back they were nowhere to be seen. In one of his wilder 
fantasies about "going home" he'd wondered about spending a 
bit of money on the place to update the living quarters so 
they could move in here. Take advantage of the security 
systems and the telecom gear that the men had so lovingly 
installed. Better that than let strangers have it. Surely? Or 
perhaps not.

He headed towards the storeroom and studied the cardboard 
boxes and suitcases. Memories of a life he'd had. And of a 
life that he was about to start again?

Enough philosophizing - time to haul out some clothes. Life on 
the run seldom demanded Armani but if he was going back into 
the office then he was at least going to look the part. He 
just hoped that the suits would still fit. 

They took a couple of passable looking laptops with them when 
they left.

The FBI bullpen was buzzing with life, but fell silent as soon 
as they walked though the door. Scully scowled and Mulder 
tensed but neither said a word, not even to each other. The 
reaction was only to be expected. 

"You've been undercover, deep undercover," Skinner had said. 
Undercover, so they were now going to be reinstated at exactly 
the right places in the Bureau hierarchy and with a heavy sum 
of back salary to fatten up their bank accounts. "It's the 
simplest way of handling it," he'd added, lest they get the 
idea that it was another favor and feel grateful. Even though 
it obviously was a favor and they did feel grateful.

Of course that didn't completely satisfy their colleagues who 
remained just as in the dark as before the words were spoken. 
In the briefing room that afternoon Mulder decided to stick to 
the truth, some of the truth and nothing like all of the 
truth. "A parallel investigation to this one."

"Same UNSUB?"

"The victims were under investigation."

"For what?"

Mulder dodged, opting for obfuscation over candor. "Misuse of 
public funds. Illegal experimentation. Failure to register and 
properly monitor controlled and hazardous substances."

"Genetic engineering?" quizzed the blonde agent from Dallas 
who Mulder had only just discovered was called Gerry Highams. 

Scully looked shocked. "What makes you say that?"

Highams shrank back a little. "I've been working on the 
background checks, looking for links between the victims. The 
crop trial and the abortion clinic - I dunno', it just sounded 
wild enough. But I didn't get anywhere with the cancer guy - 
Reece."

"Scanlon," Scully corrected.

"Yeah. Maybe if I'd known he was called Scanlon."

Mulder nodded, uncertain whether Highams was just very good or 
another nightmare. With a reminder to himself to tread 
carefully he made the offer to the dozen or so agents sitting 
around the table. "It's time we swapped notes. The UNSUB - 
what are we looking at? And the first person to mention the 
word Unabomber gets to buy the coffee."

As 6 o'clock approached, Mulder drew Scully away from the 
discussion. "Your mom?"

"I'm meeting her at 7.30. We'll grab some dinner. Her hotel 
room's booked."

"Do you want me to come?"

She hesitated, obviously looking for the right way to say no 
as her mouth opened but the silence remained. "No," she said 
finally. "I need some time."

Mulder nodded. They'd scarcely been apart for more than an 
hour in the last year, grown used to sticking close in case 
they needed to move fast. "You've got your cell?" 

She waved the shiny new phone under his nose. 

--------

It was Eleven by the time Mulder returned to the hotel. A long 
evening spent chatting with Skinner and Highams and getting a 
crash course from one of the computer geeks on the updated 
software that was now used to talk to the Bureau's databases. 
The skill was going to be a necessity on this case and three 
years was an awfully long time to be out of the loop.

The pause from the investigation proper contained at least one 
benefit - any doubts that he'd had about his fitness for duty 
had vanished as his mind raced past the computer's ability to 
give him what he needed. What he needed was the back-story. 
Higham's speculative attempts to examine the links between the 
victims had come to nothing because he didn't have the right 
history.

Mulder on the other hand had rather too much history and a 
nose for trouble that could easily join the dots. What the 
dots were telling him right now was that some of the puzzle 
was missing. There had to have been other deaths. The 
precision of the first attack, the car bomb that had killed 
Scanlon and his wife, if she was his wife, was shocking, and 
not just in terms of the way it left the Bureau's explosives 
experts scratching their heads.

It was more than that. The whole thing seemed to have been 
arranged for spectacle, from the unnecessary accuracy of the 
weapon through to the timing of the attack coming as it did 
just moments after the couple exited the party that their 
colleagues had thrown in honor of Scanlon's promotion to 
scientific director.

And why Scanlon? Sure, he was high on Mulder's personal hit 
list but why would he be at the top of somebody else's? An 
angry husband who'd seen his wife die a slow death? Yet how 
would that anger then bring the same man to an obscure crop 
test ground hundreds of miles away? How many people would get 
the connection?

The crack about not mentioning the Unabomber had not only kept 
him and the rest of the crew supplied in coffee for the 
afternoon it had been a necessity. Whoever the killer was, he 
wasn't hiding up a mountain and loathing the onward march of 
technology, and glib shorthand wasn't going to cut it on this 
case.

In fact, as Krycek had so astutely reminded him, were it not 
for the fact that Mulder saw the faint line in the sand about 
acceptable force as a solid wall rather than mere political 
correctness then he'd have made himself the prime suspect on a 
rather brief shortlist.

The light in the hotel room was already on. He worked the lock 
left-handed, his finely honed paranoia insisting that he allow 
his right to rest on the already open holster at his hip. 
"Scully?"

"That would be me," said the soft baritone from deep inside 
the room. "But maybe not the one you were expecting." The man 
in the neatly starched navy dress uniform turned to face him, 
hand outstretched. "I'm Charles Scully. Fox Mulder, I 
presume."

Paranoia and instinct conducted a brief battle before instinct 
won out. Mulder walked forward to accept the handshake. "I 
always thought you were just a figment of Dana's imagination. 
Where is she by the way?"

"With her mom. I thought it'd be good to meet the man who 
knocked up my sister."

"She's nearly 40." Mulder winced at how ungallant as well as 
irrelevant the comment had been.

"And your point is? Don't worry - I'm not here to kick your 
ass. She doesn't need you to make an honest woman of her."

Mulder nodded, feeling less comfortable by the second. "Then 
why are you here?"

Charles looked him over, a slow head to toe sweep suggesting 
an officer's appraisal of a raw recruit. The frown suggested 
that Mulder had already been found lacking. The navy man's 
faint smile faded to nothing as the glimmer of distaste in his 
eyes turned into a glow. "I want to know why she chose you. 
Over her career, her health, her family, her child." As far as 
Mulder could tell the question was honestly stated and not 
rhetorical. Its tone lacked both the hard edges of anger and 
the jangling spikes of sarcasm.

"You'd need to ask her."

"I wish I could." Charles nodded, as if something had been 
settled. "I'd better be leaving, before I do something I'll 
regret."

Mulder started to move forward to stop him, offer gifts of 
coffee or beer or conversation but one look at the sadness in 
the man's eyes cut him off. Scully grief was a private thing 
and he had no right to ask the man to share. 

"I'll see her tomorrow," noted Charles as he walked away, 
closing the door firmly behind him.

Marvelous. Just marvelous.

Suddenly wide awake, Mulder wandered into the kitchen area to 
find a nice cold beer. The TV was a good companion, full of 
strangers with problems that weren't his to solve. He settled 
back into the couch to think about as little as possible and 
an awfully short, shortlist of suspects that included him, his 
partner and his AD.

The sound of someone at the door disturbed him from his 
musings. 

Scully was there. The right one this time. Accompanied by the 
wrong ones. Maggie Scully, looking at least ten years older 
than last time he'd seen her and Bill Scully, broad chested 
and red-faced and looking for all the world like an avenging 
angel as he loomed over the women's shoulders.

When Mulder's gaze returned to Scully she bowed her head but 
not before he'd seen her red-rimmed eyes. Oh hell. 

One thing at a time. He stepped aside to let the trio trail 
in. "You just missed him. He says he'll see you tomorrow."

Scully shook her head to ask who or what he was talking about.

"Charles." Who else would it be?

Dana Scully's voice fluttered in reply. "What?" 

Bill's was colder than ice. "What the hell are you talking 
about?"

Too confused to think, Mulder answered the question. "Your 
brother was here when I got back. He left not five minutes ago 
- I'm surprised you didn't bump into him." He paused for 
breath just in time to see Maggie Scully turn a frightening 
shade of gray.

Bill crossed the few feet between himself and Mulder in an 
instant, slamming his hand hard into the agent's chest as he 
reached him, making him stagger back, almost colliding with 
the wall.

"Bill!" Scully bit out, going from hesitant to angry in a 
flash.

Bill's arm went back, his hand tightening into a fist. 
Instinct and reflex came to the rescue as Mulder's body took 
action to defend itself before his brain had even begun to 
process the danger. His forearm took the full weight of the 
blow.

An instant later and Mulder was holding his elbow and wincing 
at the pain in his arm. Bill stood cradling his angrily 
throbbing fingers.

Mulder's brain finally caught up with his body and a rapid 
threat assessment told him that Bill, having realized that his 
would-be victim was not quite such an easy target and having 
dissipated the first hot surge of fury on a futile attack, was 
no longer an immediate problem. Which meant that he now had 
the chance to look at the two women and to ask the obvious 
question. "What the hell's going on?"

Choking back air and tears in a single breath it was Dana 
Scully who calmed first. "Charles died on a ship in the Gulf - 
six months ago."

=======
END 2

3
===


The FBI explosives lab had a vaguely geek-meets-madhatter air
to it. Despite the white tiles and electrostatic safety
warnings it had neither the clinical lines of the pathology
unit nor the austere simplicity of the main forensics labs.

Cooke was running the guided tour. "The live explosives are
out in the magazines and workshops." He waved vaguely towards
a collection of small buildings scattered at intervals around
the grounds. "But this is where most of the real work gets
done."

Computers bristled with life, running and rerunning simulation
software, making tiny changes in the parameters to identify
exactly where a bomb might be placed and how much it might
weigh to deliver a particular pattern of damage.

Desks were covered in sketches, circuit diagrams, tiny timers
and tinier switches. Pictures of typical configurations lined
the walls. Some of the bombs were so distinctive that even to
an outsider it was as if their maker had added his signature.
His signature, because in this game, it was almost always a
him.

Mulder looked at the images, remembering some cases, wondering
about others. "Who made the connection between the bombings?"

"We got first crack at the abortion clinic - in case there was
a link to the Atlanta bombings. Of course there wasn't." Cooke
pointed out the signature poster on the wall for that older
series of attacks and the nails that had been used to maximize
its destructive effects. "Familiar technology - easy to read."

"But there's nothing conventional about these new ones. We
can't identify the explosives and detonators they're using. We
haven't found any timing or trigger mechanism. We can't even
see where exactly the device was placed. We'd had notification
on the crop trial explosion, but it looked like a one-off so
it was being handled locally, until after the clinic.

"We went back to the unsolved cases and Boston PD came up with
the cancer doctors - and that, of course, is the weirdest of
the lot. That's why we've been focused on it  - it's so
specialized that it must mean something big about the UNSUB. I
know you don't like us making comparisons but the precision of
having no identifiable debris from the device itself is just
as distinctive as those handmade components in the Unabomber's
work.

"Sorry, I was forgetting. You've been here before, Mulder -
when you were profiling. And you, Agent Scully?"

"I spent a week here as part of my rotation through Quantico."

"Right, you're a pathologist? Yeah. A week? I guess you got
bored here." Cooke carried on talking, introducing them to
people and equipment and procedures apparently at random.

Byers would have fit in without even needing a change of suit.
Frohike, too - if he could have bluffed his way past the
medical. Even Langley, though he'd have needed to tame the
hair.

They finally arrived at station 7, which was now completing
its "hundred thousandth iteration since the last manual tweak
to the parameters," explained Cooke, apparently oblivious to
Mulder's half-smile and Scully's "don't you ever stop
talking?" glare.

"Even so - it's hard to get the effect that our guy got with
that car bomb."

"Shaped charges?" asked Mulder, not wanting to see Scully's
blood pressure go even higher.

"Well sure. Explosives can be very subtle. Gentler for some
tasks than cutting gear or scribes. But really - this." He
flicked up the picture on the computer screen to show the
aftermath of the bombing. The unmarked cars that stood a foot
or so away from the Volvo that had been smashed to smithereens
along with its occupants.

Cooke looked happy, on a roll and in his home territory, and
loving it. "The computer could build me drawings of the
charges I'd need and give me a roadmap of where to place them
but I'd have to rip the car apart to do it. Even then, the
tires, the engine block, the people - they just wouldn't play
nice - not like in the simulation."

"Charges? How many separate charges?"

Cooke pointed at the screen. "It's already using over a
hundred and we still don't have a good fit for the damage, not
even to the car itself."

"Any other way of getting that effect?"

Cooke shrugged. "I don't see..."

Scully frowned. "Maybe you could explain how you test for
residues?"

"Sure thing - let's start with the mass spec boys."

The drive back from the lab was conducted in silence except
for Scully's phone conversations with her mom. At least Mulder
assumed it was her mom, he was only party to half the
conversation.

"We won't get back in time for lunch."

"He can't; he's working tonight."

After she hung up, the he in question wisely kept his mouth
shut.

When the phone rang again a few minutes later, Scully looked
like she was contemplating throwing it out of the car. She
didn't, responded in a tightly clipped voice instead.

"Where?"

"Why did you do that? It's not as if we'll have the time to
enjoy it."

"Sorry. I know."

"Yes. I know."

"OK. But just for a little while."

"I'll see you later."

As she pressed the red button to end her call she ignored the
query in Mulder's expression and he didn't attempt a verbal
follow-up. Instead he tried to change the subject and recap
the evidence, Scully stopped him with a sharp, "I know."

Mulder's "I told you so," remained unspoken, as did anything
that really mattered.

By the time they reached DC, Mulder still hadn't coaxed
anything beyond a monosyllable from his partner. When she
finally spoke he wasn't even sure that the words were intended
for him, except in as much as he was the only other person in
the car.

"I've got something arranged," her eyes fluttered for an
instant as she spoke, her face carefully averted from his.
"For both of us. A late lunch, early dinner. Mom."

A brief nod and he stretched, sitting taller in his seat,
tapping his hands on the steering wheel and wondering if there
was a question that he was supposed to ask. Maybe something
uncontroversial like where they were going.

She preempted the query. "We should go back to the office and
take a cab. Parking will be hell otherwise."

Small talk seemed redundant despite the fact that the inside
of the taxi might be the closest thing to privacy that they'd
found since they listened to ancient disco hits on a rental
car radio. He chose to dismiss the realization that it might
not have really been private back then either.

The restaurant's linen was dazzling white, in brilliant
contrast to the perfect red of the rosebuds that formed the
centerpiece of the table decoration. The crystal glasses
sparkled under the well-placed lights. Impossible to get a
table here in the evening unless you knew someone or planned
way in advance. Even during the day it was still impressive.

Maggie Scully stepped forward to hug her daughter. "Dana. Fox.
I'm glad you were able to get away."

Mulder nodded. "Mrs Scully. Bill."

Bill had not stepped forward to hug anyone, though he was
holding the fingers of his right hand in what looked like a
comfortingly protective grip.

"Please," offered Maggie as she sat back down and motioned for
the new arrivals to join them.

Mulder noted the mix of drinks on the table and the fact that
they'd already finished the first course. They'd obviously
been waiting for a while. Why hadn't Scully told him that they
were supposed to meet for lunch so they could have planned the
trip out to the lab better? Of course she couldn't have told
him about that - it would have taken too many syllables.

"Fox - I wanted to talk."

Well at least that meant that one of the Scully women did.
Mulder nodded an invitation for Maggie Scully to go ahead.

"I'm sorry to be so abrupt. I don't have Dana's self-control."
Her attempted smile faltered. "I need to know."

Bill snorted, almost shaking with frustration at what was
happening.

All three Scullys were studying Mulder now. He accepted the
inevitability and was grateful both for the anonymity and the
aura of polite expectations afforded by the location. No one
would want to make a scene. But he refused to set the agenda.
"What do you want to know?"

"What did Charles say?"

"Mom," complained her son.

Maggie Scully sighed apologetically. She'd obviously deviated
from the script. She pulled out the photo that had been
waiting in the envelope on the table. "Who did you see?"

The picture showed six navy men, dressed up to the nines in
snowy white best dress uniforms and every one of them looking
like the kind of son who would make a mother proud.

Mulder pointed at the second man from the left and all three
Scullys breathed out in unison. Bill closed his eyes and
folded his arms, effectively claiming to have withdrawn from
the conversation.

Mulder stuck to the facts. "He was in the room when I got
back. We spoke for two minutes - tops."

"What did he say?"

"That he'd see Dana today."

"What else?" pushed Maggie, dead calm but with her cheeks
reddening a little more with each new frustration and every
new delay.

"He said he wanted to meet me."

Bill snorted at that, and Mulder could only sympathize. No way
was he going to tell them what Charles had actually said.
Scully deserved some privacy and for that matter so did he. He
was all set to stand up, suggest that lunch might not have
been such a good idea after all and get the hell out of Dodge
when the waiter arrived.

They waited until the intruder had left with a request for
iced water before resuming the one-sided conversation.

"Why you? Why would he come to you, not me?" Maggie sounded
like she was pleading now and Mulder really couldn't handle
that.

Cornered by her voice, Mulder found he couldn't bolt, could
scarcely even breathe. He turned to look at his Scully, saw
the bright curtain of tears being held in her eyes and defying
gravity by never falling. "I can't tell you that, Mrs Scully."
He sighed, desperate to be anywhere except here.

What the hell was he going to do? Hiss a I-see-dead-people? A
white lie then. "I didn't mean to upset you. I was tired when
I got back last night. I must have fallen asleep. Dreamed."

Bill Scully nodded his head enthusiastically as if his prayers
had just been answered.

Mulder kept looking for a way out but found the exit still
blocked by the blue pools in his partner's eyes. "I'm sorry.
Really. About your son. About last night. I'd better get back
to work."

"Sorry," growled Bill, opening his eyes in sudden animation.
"What about Melissa - you *sorry* about her too? And Dana -
you sorry about her? And your son - he was yours, right?"

Mulder rose slowly from his seat, not looking at Bill. "Excuse
me. I think it would be best if I left."

The taxi ride back to the Hoover Building took a lot longer
than the trip out.

Scully arrived in the office about two minutes behind him.

---------

Six men were sitting around the conference table and Walter
Skinner was outranked by everybody in the room except Mulder,
and Mulder's status in the Bureau pecking order scarcely
mattered. Not to the brass and certainly not to Mulder
himself.

Nonetheless it was not a relaxing place to be and the near
silence, tense expressions and stiff backs confirmed that
everyone was in the same boat.

Everyone except Deputy Director Welland who prowled the area
in front of the whiteboard like an angry dog just waiting for
someone dumb enough to cross into his territory.

The admin assistant dropped the unnecessary but standard paper
and pens on the table and backed nervously out of the room,
mumbling an  "Anything else, sir?" as she left.

Welland shook his head and slid into his chair, silencing the
group and stopping any extraneous fidgeting amongst the men
instantly. "Agent Mulder - as this meeting is for your
benefit, I'll cut to the chase. You are back at the Bureau
solely because of the actions of Deputy Director Alvin Kersh
who felt that an injustice had been done."

Mulder nodded, there would be an opportunity to argue and to
find out more, but this wasn't it.

"This should not be taken as an endorsement of your previous
work on the X-Files or of the validity of those
investigations."

Welland paused, so Mulder obliged by asking the required
question. "Then why bring me back?"

"The Bureau is under considerable pressure to prove itself an
organization capable of winning the war against terrorism.
Anything that threatens that success is taken very seriously."
Welland sighed, a longsuffering tone that Mulder presumed was
supposed to indicate that a child of five should be able to
understand this. "And of course the victims deserve justice
and anyone who may become a target has a right to expect our
best efforts."

Already a pariah, Mulder decided to give them what they
expected to hear. "Despite the laws they're breaking?"

"We protect worse every day, as you well know, Agent Mulder.
Get a conviction and you can put them in jail. Meanwhile, you
keep the lynch mob outside the door. Understood?"

Perfectly. Except for one thing. "Why bring me back?"

"To catch the person or persons behind the bombings."

"Even though that might expose the work of the projects that
the victims were involved with?"

"Might expose? Might? You've had ten years and you've exposed
nothing. But you were good at catching these people once. Stop
these assholes and you might find you've got yourself some new
friends." Welland was on a roll now and Mulder wondered how
often he'd practiced delivering the speech. "But if you forget
your sworn duty the next US marshal we send to collect you
won't be nearly as friendly as the last one."

The Deputy Director paused to wait for Mulder's objections.
When none came he asked his colleagues to leave.

Skinner hesitated as he walked past Mulder, a tight smile and
a nod in reply and he was on his way. The rest of the Bureau
brass were grimfaced, even as some of them silently wished him
luck. Mulder kept a watchful eye on Welland who was on his
feet and prowling again.

As soon as the door snapped shut the Deputy Director crossed
the room, halting directly in front of Mulder. He leaned back
against the table, half-standing, half-sitting, all looming.
"You already know the other reason you're here."

"Sir?"

"Some outsiders think that the Bureau is corrupt or
incompetent - perhaps both. I suspect you share that opinion."
Welland gave Mulder a don't-deny-it look; the agent didn't
even try to argue. "The fact is - you may be the best man for
this job, but you are certainly not the only man. Other people
spotted the connection between the victims. You want to guess
who they put at the top of their shortlists of suspects?"

"I don't know how to make explosions like these."

Welland waved a hand, dismissive. "According to our boys - no
one does. But you've worked for terrorist groups before."

It took him a few seconds to get the reference. "The New
Spartans? I was sent in there."

"You were invited in there because of your views. How many
other invitations did you get?"

"So why bring me back?"

"Ever hear the phrase keep you friends close, but your enemies
closer?" Welland stood up again, his face going from somber to
grim. "The Bureau needs this closed. Get me a conviction and
you'll be a hero. Fuck this up -"

"And the next jail will be a real one?"

"Just don't disappoint us, Agent Mulder."

----------

Skinner and Scully cornered him as soon as he came out of the
meeting, hustling him into a quiet corridor near the drinks
machine.

Skinner sounded worried. "What did Welland want?"

"Just welcoming me home."

"Mulder." Two syllables from Scully and that deserved an
answer.

"He said that if I can't get this bomber then I must have done
it myself."

Skinner eased back his glasses to scrub at his eyes. "He's
already making threats."

Mulder shrugged "You think? I thought it was a vote of
confidence."

Welland's secretary appeared from nowhere. "Assistant
Director."

Skinner switched to cool professional politeness in the blink
of an eye. "Yes."

"Deputy Director Welland would like to see you, sir."

---------

The Lone Gunman office was chosen as a venue not because of
its comfort or convenience but because of the room at its
heart that had every eavesdropping countermeasure than money
could buy and that enthusiasm could install. He wanted to
start checking it out. They might need it some time soon.

Scully didn't see it quite that way. "The place has been
empty. Anyone could have come in."

"No, they'd have..." His voice trailed off as he saw the
horror in her eyes. But it was true, the guys would have told
him. He stared at the blank wall behind her head. "I know most
of the gear in here, it checks out so far. Besides, why would
anyone bother when it was empty?"

"How do you *know*? It's two years since you were here."

"Why?" he asked, almost desperate. Things should be easier now
they'd got their lives back, so why weren't they? "Why are we
still having this conversation? I can see them. And you know
it. Just like I saw your brother - or did I rustle him up from
my subconscious to comfort myself, too?"

He'd said too much, the tears that bubbled so close to the
surface were already welling up into her eyes. "What did
Charles say?"

Whatever he said now, it would be the wrong thing. "He said he
wanted to meet me."

A skeptical eyebrow rose to the bait, challenging him to carry
on talking.

How could he answer without opening another wound? Nothing
that Charles had said was comforting or even benign. The man
who knocked up his sister? Why she'd given up everything for
him? "He said he wished that he could talk to you."

It had been the least emotionally charged of his words or at
least that was how Mulder had seen it, but now as the pain
blossomed in her eyes, and erupted in the breathless catch in
her throat, he knew that even that much was too much.

How could it not be too much? She hadn't lost a thirty-year-
old memory of a little sister, she'd lost a living breathing
brother, a man she'd grown up with. Gone in a flash without
even the chance to say goodbye. What the hell was she doing
coming into the office? What the hell was she doing here now?
"You should be with your family."

"I am," she insisted.

He nodded, grateful but disbelieving, and unrepentant for his
lack of faith. "With your mom then - she needs you."

"Six months ago - she needed me six months ago."

Jesus. "You can't change that."

"But I can change now?"

He wanted to take those words as something positive but all he
could hear was the undercurrent of anger that was rising
through the pain. "That's all we can ever do."

"Funny how no one else thinks that."

Swallowed down the lump in his throat just far enough to ask,
"What?"

"You know what Bill wanted to talk about last night?" She
paused, but didn't seem to expect an answer. "You. He wanted
to know when he could talk to you. And mom - calling me to
arrange lunch, because she needed to see you - I was an
afterthought."

No. Taken for granted perhaps, but not an afterthought. He
knew he was tiptoeing through the landmines but he didn't dare
stop moving. "She assumed you would go."

"The way Welland and the others assumed that if they spoke to
you then I'd go along for the ride?"

Wonderful. Abso-fucking-lutely marvelous. What the hell did
she want? To see dead people? They were supposed to be just
hallucinations rustled up by a feverish and lonely brain when
he saw them - why would she want those? And Welland? Christ.
"If Welland had accused you of placing those bombs what would
you have said?"

Her lips tightened as she reacted to his change of direction.
"That I understand the motive, but that I want to see them
brought down legally."

"You'd tell him the truth. He already knows the truth. He
wants someone who'll play scapegoat."

"You." It didn't sound like a question.

Sure. Why not?


========= 
END 3

4
===


Skinner arrived around twenty minutes after Scully left and 
looked just about as happy as she had done. "You think this is 
secure?" Skinner mused, surveying the ten by ten acoustically 
clad cell - everyone's favorite stop on the guided tour.

"Best I can do," confirmed Mulder, shrugging to indicate the 
lack of certainty even in that equation. He'd need to spend 
some time with the Gunmen to check it further. "What did 
Welland want?"

Skinner ignored the prompt. "Where's Scully?"

"With her mom." Mulder imagined it was a white lie, suspecting 
that Scully hadn't been entirely truthful about her dinner 
plans but not allowing the hesitation into his voice. "Why 
didn't you tell me that her brother had died? You knew, didn't 
you?"

"I knew. Her mother asked me not to say. She called when they 
first heard, to see if I could contact you. When I told her I 
couldn't, she made me promise not to tell Scully; she wanted 
to tell her herself. It was months ago. I thought maybe Scully 
had heard some other way. I didn't know how to ask."

"You could have asked me." Skinner didn't respond, other than 
to offer an acknowledging shrug. Mulder moved on to his next 
subject. "Welland?"

"He didn't tell you?"

"I told you what he said to me."

"I remain nominally in charge of the investigation, managing 
the team, liaising with other agencies but tactical control 
has been taken out of my hands."

"Welland's putting someone else in?" 

Skinner shook his head, almost amused and certainly taken 
aback. "Mulder - he's putting you in charge. I want to block 
one of your orders it goes to Welland or straight to the 
Director. You really didn't know, did you?" Skinner's jaw 
worked a little before he spoke. "You know what the bastard 
said? Mulder'll run the show anyway - best if it's official."

---------

Scully had been telling the truth about dinner with her 
family. She'd done her duty, eating supper in the hotel 
restaurant and advising them that as she was so busy it would 
be best if they headed back to the west coast and she'd visit 
just as soon as she could.

Mulder tried not to visualize the kind of reception committee 
Bill Scully would assemble to meet them at the airport if they 
ever did fly out there. Best if she went alone. Coward, he 
noted. OK, best if they went prepared.

"How are you feeling?" He tried not to make it sound like an 
accusation

Her mouth opened but no words came out. She hesitated, mulling 
over a theory, before finally the corners of her mouth curled 
upwards, relaxing into a slight smile. As if she'd been handed 
an unexpected gift but had only just noticed it. "Like it's a 
weight off my shoulders."

Paranoia came naturally to Mulder but then so did a kind of 
bizarre optimism, a belief that an individual could make a 
difference - for the better as well as for the worse. The 
optimism kicked in now, he just hoped that she'd still feel 
that way in the morning.

A raised eyebrow indicated her amusement at his silence. "Have 
you eaten?" she queried, "I brought back a doggy bag. Bill 
left after the appetizers. It seemed a shame to waste the 
duck."

Doggy bag was a misnomer. The carefully wrapped and 
immaculately presented plate stood on the kitchen counter. The 
microwave would do the rest. It seemed a shame though. He saw 
the kitchen for maybe the first time. All they'd actually 
prepared in here so far was coffee and cereal. Maybe tomorrow 
night he'd cook. After they shopped.

His lips twitched into a smile, amazed by his brain's 
determined rendition of domestic bliss in an apartment hotel.

As he loaded the plate into the microwave Scully started to 
speak. "Skinner says the Bureau are sticking to the story that 
we were undercover - you're owed over two years back pay, I'm 
owed a year. I don't know if we need to -" she waved a hand 
out of respect for bugged buildings and paranoia or maybe 
something else.

He shook his head. No, they didn't need to top up the escape 
funds. They ought to mess with the names on some accounts 
perhaps. Get some new identities. But the fact was, despite 
the year they'd just spent on the lam, they'd got through most 
of it on interest and dividends and not made much of a dent on 
the capital. 

Agent Mulder and Agent Scully's money could be spent on Agent 
Mulder and Agent Scully. Which made the next step obvious. "Do 
you want to use it as down-payment on a house?"

Scully studied him, skeptical but curious. "Do you?"

He shrugged, hadn't he already placed himself far enough out 
on the limb without being asked to bounce up and down to see 
if it would break? The microwave pinged a reprieve.

Turning on the TV by instinct rather than intent, he felt her 
eyes on him as he ate. No wonder Bill ran away after the 
starter course. Mulder wondered if he'd felt as if he was 
choking, too.

Scully was polite enough to wait until he pushed the half-
eaten meal to one side before she spoke. "Since we got back. 
We haven't - " she left him to fill in the blank. To fill it 
with what? Slept together, made love, fucked, talked?

"It's been a tough week."

She almost laughed. "It's been a tough decade."

Yeah and for most of that they hadn't made love, slept 
together, fucked, or talked. So? "So tonight?"

"You're alive, so am I."

Now there was something they could agree on.

------

The walk back into the Hoover Building, despite the 
requirement that they use the main entrance, was shockingly 
familiar. With his recent biography comprising abduction, 
burial, getting fired, going on the run and being handed a 
death sentence - the fact was he'd scarcely been in here for 
the last three years. Yet somehow his brain had discarded that 
history in favor of recalling only the years that came before.

It was as if he'd been away on an extended vacation and that 
was exactly how most of the agents he knew were treating it. 
There were even admiring remarks about his ability to stay 
undercover despite the storms that had raged in his absence.

It even haunted him as he stood in line in the cafeteria.

A tall dark-haired guy with glasses who Mulder vaguely 
recognized from a case out in Colorado turned to face him, 
mumbling the conventional pleasantries before heading to the 
meat of his inquiry. "I worked on the team when Agent Scully's 
baby went missing."

Went missing? Did the man mean when William was kidnapped at 
gunpoint by a cult contemplating murder? 

The agent didn't take Mulder's silence as a warning. "I kept 
expecting you to show up - I was sure you'd have to be dead 
not to."

Might as well have been, Mulder agreed. "If I could have got 
back, I would have done."

Identifying the hazard in Mulder's hostile tone the other 
voices around them lapsed into silence. This time the agent 
spotted the drop in temperature and added a rapid, "Good to 
see you," before switching to a different path through the 
cafeteria, apparently suddenly in need of salad.

Mulder stepped forward and took over the vacated position in 
the line.

Nobody cared that he'd been gone and now no one was surprised 
that he'd come back, and it shocked him a little as he 
considered the way people came and went from here all the 
time. Promotions, sideways shuffles, disciplinary action, both 
acknowledged and unacknowledged, relocation of teams. 
Reassignment was a fact of FBI life. 

Skinner and the brass had been right. No one had raised more 
than the briefest squeak of curiosity since they'd walked back 
through the door. They were only days away from formal 
reinstatement and a massive cash injection into their bank 
accounts. 

It was too much, too surreal. He tried to remember the brief 
interlude after his return from abduction and the grave and 
before he'd been fired. Nothing had changed then either, 
except the hole he'd left behind months earlier had been 
filled. There were scarcely even any jokes about dead men 
walking. Invisible whilst absent he'd been effectively 
invisible on his return.

Maybe it was true, maybe it really was the reactions of other 
people that told us who we were.

This time he'd come back and the sea had parted to clear a 
space for him. Well - for them actually. Maybe not the space 
they'd each been privately fantasizing about during the last 
year, but a space.

Welland had both given him an ultimatum and offered him an 
opportunity. The strangeness of the situation didn't matter, 
since when had "strange" bothered Fox Mulder? It didn't. 
Sudden awareness. This was reality and it was time to start 
taking advantage of it.

The realization sharpened his eyesight, set his hearing to 
acute, made it possible to feel the hairs on the back of his 
neck as they tickled against the crisp cotton of his shirt, 
allowed his lungs to absorb more oxygen. The other agents 
stared as he walked into the briefing room just in time for 
the team meeting.

He swapped a glance with Scully before heading towards where 
Skinner was standing, at the front of the room close by the 
whiteboard. 

"Agent Mulder?" 

For the benefit of the other agents, Mulder stuck to polite 
formality. "I'd like to add an item to the agenda, sir. It 
relates to the pattern of escalation, I think we may find that 
our UNSUB didn't start with Doctor Scanlon and his wife."

By the end of the meeting one of the team's computer 
specialists had been handed the unrewarding job of leading a 
group tasked with identifying recent sudden deaths among 
government employees. Civilian or military. More than ten 
years service. Highest paid first. Priority to be given to the 
employees of the DoD, FEMA, CDC, NSA, FBI and a scrabble 
puzzle's worth of other acronyms. Death by violence not an 
essential.

Mulder was still staring up at the whiteboard that was now 
full of his hastily scrawled notes when Scully arrived at his 
side. "Where did this come from?" She waved towards the mass 
of words.

"Scanlon. Not a beginner's crime and not a beginner's target."

"Looks like you've sidestepped the work this time," she noted, 
looking past him at the agents who'd been given the paper 
chase and who were busy planning the work.

"Until they report back." He slumped a little in the chair. 

"And meanwhile?"

"I've arranged a little excursion."

--------

Scully stared out of the window as they drove. "But why visit 
the ATF? There's no question - it's Bureau jurisdiction."

"But possibly their area of expertise."

"Mulder - whatever you think of Cooke, the lab know what 
they're doing. They do this kind of investigation all the 
time."

"Exactly. And they're using the same methodology they always 
use, and it's getting them nowhere."

"It's painstaking work, it takes time. What makes you think 
these people will have anything different to say?"

"Try my jacket pocket. Inside top left." 

She groaned slightly as she twisted and stretched between the 
seats to get his jacket. The photograph that she recovered 
showed the destruction of a single brownstone house in a row 
of them, apparently incised in a neat graceful collapse that 
left the adjoining houses upright and intact, if not exactly 
unscathed. "A gas explosion?" she suggested.

"A movie special effect. We're going to meet the man who 
monitors the industry."

Scully shook her head but said nothing.

The ATF lab smelled vaguely of smoke and molten plastic as 
well as the more conventional undertone of industrial floor 
cleaner. The white-coated figure hovering over the computer 
printout smiled up at them and Mulder realized that it wasn't 
the lab that was wearing eau-de-soot.

"I've seen the photos. Remarkable. Really." The horror of 
death fought a losing battle against the technical allure of 
the crime. "I wish I knew how he did it."

"You think it's a bomb?" queried Mulder.

The white-coat swayed a little. "What else might it be?"

"I was hoping you might tell us that."

The man shrugged and launched into his subject, responding 
with the easy fervor of the true enthusiast. "The trouble with 
car bombs is you've got metal, plastic, fabric, flesh to 
contend with. What would work for one - won't deal with the 
others. Microwaves could bake your fabrics so they become 
brittle and crumble. Shaped charges could eat at the metal, 
one bite at a time. But the people - they got pulped too - 
that signals massive overkill with high explosives and them 
right at the blast center. But then the neighboring vehicles 
would show real damage. Directing it straight up and down? 
Short of rigging the car the way they do in movies so it's got 
an easy to blow roof and floor I don't see how they could. 
Even then, it would be tough. You're looking at the subtlest 
of timing sequences. And even then..."

Scully was frowning. 

This was starting to sound more and more like deja vu. The 
white coat belonged to one of the government's top technical 
specialists on the commercial use of explosives and he was 
every bit as impressed as the Bureau's own team. Mulder 
offered a nudge. "Any names you can put to that? Special 
effects people? Demolition contractors?" 

"Sure. Sure. It's a small industry really. But as I said -"

Scully completed the phrase for him. "What we're seeing is 
practically impossible." 

"But you know what's really strange? Apart from it being 
impossible." 

The partners shifted slightly to beckon more information.

"I've seen it before. Something like it anyway." The man slid 
a photo across the desk. "No one was injured so it wouldn't 
come your way. It stuck in my mind though. I dug it out of the 
files when I got your call. Happened last autumn. Look at that 
safe deposit box."

Mulder rose willingly to the bait. "What safe deposit box?"

"Precisely," agreed the white coat.

"Fox Mulder!"

Mulder and Scully turned in unison as a tall dark-haired man 
moved towards them, his hand outstretched in greeting. 

Mulder was stunned. "Mike?" 

The man grinned. "I saw your name on the visitor's list for 
today. And you must be Dana Scully."

Despite the shock Mulder remembered his manners. "This is Mike 
Fowley. Diana Fowley's brother."

Mike added his own job title. "I'm head of civilian 
explosives."

"My boss," said the white coat. "Agents - I'll think of some 
names and email you then?" He held out a hand to wait for a 
business card, shrugging when Mulder suggested that an email 
to his AD and a note to forward it would work better right 
now. 

The man turned and swapped a conspiratorial smile with his 
manager as if sharing some private joke. "Did you have any 
other questions? Only I've got something on the boil."

Mulder absolved him from any further responsibility. "Thanks 
for your help."

"Anytime." He smiled. "Agent Scully." He glanced up at Mulder. 
"Agent hmmm. Agents."

Mike Fowley led them towards his office, teasing. "Not that 
much of a geek. At least Agent Scully made an impact."

"Always does, Mike. I didn't know you were here."

"Arrived a couple of months ago. Got bored with military 
work."

"Bored?"

"Who wants to work on stuff you never want to see used? Now 
here, I can indulge myself. I can sniff the Fourth of July any 
day I choose."

Mulder glanced over at Scully, mock whispered his reaction. 
"Mike's a pyro."

"Fox was a natural at it, but he never had the time." He 
paused, his eyes losing their smile. "Those were the days. The 
four of us."

"I was sorry to hear about Diana. How did your mom take it?"

Mike shook his head. "Died last year. Kept saying that it 
wasn't right for a mother to outlive her kids. There wasn't 
much I could do."

Mulder nodded, finding himself relaxing into the conversation 
despite the subject matter and his dismay at seeing Mike 
Fowley again.

Mike was relaxing too, his voice shifting to a tone that 
sounded almost as if he was talking to himself. "You know - I 
taught Diana everything she knew about this stuff. She'd never 
have bluffed her way onto that counter-terrorism detail 
without me. I wish I... Maybe you'd still have been together." 
He suddenly blinked hard, shook his head, breaking the chain 
of thought. "Nah, probably not. Maybe she'd still be alive 
though. Ahhh. What the hell do I know - I scarcely even spoke 
to her for years."

"What about when she came back from Europe?"

Fowley shrugged, uncomfortable and a little ashamed. "We were 
always saying that we should meet up; we just never had the 
time. Didn't make the time, I guess."

"How's Jane?"

"Infuriating as ever." He turned the photo on the desk to face 
them, grateful for the change of subject. "The rugrats are 
growing up."

It was everybody's poster book family photo. Husband, wife, 
son and daughter all managing to face the camera and smile 
while at the same time looking as if they'd sooner get back to 
the important business of consuming barbecue. Mulder winced. 
"God. They must be, what, fifteen?"

"Last week." 

A click from the coffeemaker broke the spell. They paused for 
a moment to pour out the drinks. 

Mike Fowley took a couple of sips and put his cup down. "So, 
how's the case going?"

"You've seen the photos." Mulder stated, as if that was enough 
of an answer.

"Yeah. Weird."

"Your colleague gave us another one." Mulder handed him the 
photo of the safe deposit box.

Mike nodded. "I'll have a word with him about that. I'd hate 
for people to think the ATF was going to make a habit of 
cooperating with the Bureau." 



====== 
END 4

5
----------

Scully had remained silent on the journey back back from the 
ATF and shown little enthusiasm for the grocery shopping that 
Mulder had insisted upon doing. Since they met Mike Fowley 
she'd been lost in her own world, which perhaps wasn't that 
surprising given who he was and what he'd said, but it was 
starting to unnerve Mulder. It struck him that Diana had 
always seemed like a more significant other to Scully than she 
ever had to him.

He offered another opening. "I didn't expect to see Mike 
today." 

Scully didn't take it, just nodding and adding some bananas to 
the shopping cart.

Later, when they got home, they'd have to talk. Home? OK, that 
suite in the hotel then. That couldn't go on forever either. 
It was time they started looking for a place to stay. A place 
of their own.

He wondered at that, amazed to see how easily he'd slid back 
into the idea of working for the FBI, living in Washington, 
checking out the free range versus the organic versus the 
Omega-3 enriched eggs and wondering when shopping had become 
this complicated. 

The only thing missing now was his partner and she was right 
by his side.

"She's not, you know." 

He turned through 180 degrees to meet the sound of Diana's 
voice.

"You're going to lose her if you make her choose between you 
and them."

He closed his eyes to keep both the panic and the righteous 
indignation in check. As if he'd ever make Scully choose. He 
couldn't talk to Diana here. He couldn't talk to her - period. 
The brain played tricks and with his sensitivity heightened by 
the surprise conversation with Mike Fowley, his had decided to 
pull a particularly cruel stunt. Go away, Diana.

Scully's fingers bit into his arm, finding the exact place 
where Bill had bruised him the night before. He blinked back 
to alertness. "Yeah."

"It's time for us to go."

He looked back along the aisle but Diana had already vanished.

-------

It had been a while since he'd cooked anything more complex 
than a frozen microwave lasagna. But as with so many other 
things he was finding that between instinct and improvisation 
he could still make it work.

Scully was watching him from a stool on the other side of the 
counter, simultaneously reading a forensics report and sipping 
a glass of orange juice. "I'm impressed."

"I'd be flattered except you haven't tasted it yet."

She returned her gaze to the lab results. 

"Got something?" he asked, turning down the heat on the 
asparagus. The late season stuff was the best anyway; the 
early season stems just got forced too hard.

"Maybe." 

With the five-minute countdown underway before anything needed 
checking again he sat opposite her and poured out a couple of 
glasses of wine.

Her eyebrow acknowledged and welcomed the bribe. "Don't assume 
that when I offer to cook dinner I mean anything other than 
open a can of soup."

"I like soup."

She took a first sip. "I was thinking about what the ATF guy 
said."

Mulder sat up a little straighter, preparing himself for 
whatever came next.

"He mentioned that baking the fabrics could make them go 
brittle." She paused to wait for Mulder's acknowledgment. "But 
that wouldn't really work for the tires and the bodies, but 
what if it wasn't baking - what if it was desiccation? And 
some things including rubber become far more brittle at 
extremely low temperatures. What if?" Her voice trailed off as 
if she was already regretting the admission.

"Those are some pretty extreme possibilities you've got going 
on there, Agent Scully."

"Which puts them one up on impossible."

"So, are you going back to the FBI lab tomorrow?"

"I'd like to get Cooke to do some new simulations. And you 
will be?"

"Annoying Assistant Director Skinner."

"A normal working day then."

The kitchen timer buzzed to order Mulder back to his tasks. 
The trout looked a little worse for wear as he unwrapped it 
from the foil parcel. "Speaking of desiccation."

--------

Skinner looked perplexed but Mulder remained stubborn. "I 
don't see what's wrong with us getting Dave Baines onto the 
team. I need someone I can trust in there."

"The marshal who arrested you?"

"You thought I meant somebody else?"

"I just don't see why. If you'd asked me for an explosives 
specialist or someone you'd worked with."

Mulder knew exactly what Skinner was getting at and attempted 
a reply. "If you mean John Doggett and Monica Reyes, they're 
better off out of this."

"Why?"

Mulder scribbled the word "Gibson" on the pad in front of him. 
Since their reassignment to New Mexico they'd taken their 
roles as unofficial guardians very seriously. They even seemed 
to be enjoying it. At least according to Gibson. He really 
ought to talk to them about it. Scully had called Gibson to 
thank him for maintaining contact with her mom and spoken 
briefly with Monica but really they deserved more.

"There's also the question of backup." Mulder swallowed. "If 
we don't get this bomber, then I'll need them to clear me. If 
they get involved now they'll get tainted by the 
investigation."

Skinner snorted at that. "They're already tainted."

"Then I'd better get it right first time. Can I have Baines?"

"It's your case, Mulder. I'm just the gopher."

Sure. Mulder ignored the jibe. "I'm concerned about those 
searches we're doing. The sudden deaths. We're getting too 
many names to do more than a cursory analysis. But we're also 
going to miss people who weren't on the government payroll. 
Scanlon wouldn't have shown up. Nor would the victims at the 
abortion clinic."

"So now what?"

"Change the parameters. Emphasis on the sudden aspect of the 
deaths. It'll mean broadening the enquiry, moving it off the 
computer and into direct appeals to the MEs, local law 
enforcement."

"Over the last year? You're talking about sifting down from 
millions of names."

"I don't think so. The targets that we know about were all 
very specific. I knew those people or those locations. The 
abortion clinic that got hit was one that Jeremiah Smith told 
me about. The crop research center was on a list that Marita 
had."

"So what are you saying?"

"That we need to get the names and locations out of the X-
Files and start cross-referencing."

"They've already tried. There are years worth of files."

"I can dig out the hot ones. But if people start throwing up 
roadblocks -"

" - you'll need a gopher to dig a tunnel."

"I'll go and dust off some history."

The elevator ride to the basement didn't take long enough. 
Really there should be more ceremony than just having Skinner 
hand him a key to storeroom 3 as the old office was now called 
and wish him luck. A guard of honor to escort him? A red 
carpet maybe?

The room was haunted by dust devils and the distinctive, 
slightly musty smell of a paper mountain that stretched back 
decades. The filing cabinets were the old familiar mismatched 
tribe, scuffmarks on the floor indicating that they'd only 
recently returned from deep storage somewhere. Where? He'd 
have to ask Skinner about that. 

Scully had carefully stored away copies of the most important 
files, and hidden the most personal ones. But everything that 
should be here seemed to be here and, as far as Mulder could 
tell, they seemed to be intact and unmodified. Presumably 
Kersh had arranged to store them somewhere safe. Maybe Skinner 
would know.

Apart from the cabinets, a desk and a chair, there was nothing 
much else except for a jumble of papers and other 
miscellaneous debris pushed into a heap in one corner. 
Tomorrow. He'd worry about tidying up tomorrow. After the 
computer arrived.

He tested the chair out for size, twiddling the knobs to get 
it into the perfect alignment for a long day of paperwork.

Start with the As and work through the stack in order he told 
himself. It was the only safe way - despite the impulse to 
dive in and pull out his personal favorites. It would be too 
easy to miss something that way. Then he'd need to go back 
through the files he'd selected and prioritize them again by 
gut instinct and datestamp.

Krycek was leaning against the A to Cs. "So am I in here or am 
I under K?"

"L - for low life."

"Never can resist it, can you? I'm here to help."

"I'm all ears."

"Where's Scully?"

"How come you don't know? I thought that would be one of the 
advantages of being a non-corporeal entity."

Krycek's eyelashes fluttered a little, flashed angry green in 
Mulder's direction.

Mulder shrugged a "whatever" before asking, "Do you know who 
the bomber is?"

"You wouldn't believe me even if I told you. You always have 
to do it the hard way. I give you information - you ignore it 
- treat it as a joke. That's how it goes isn't it? Or are you 
finally prepared to listen?"

Mulder turned his attention to the desk drawers and a sudden 
need to hunt for stationery. "Whatever." 

When he looked back up he wasn't surprised to find that he was 
alone in the office. Was Scully right then - were these 
apparitions just manifestations of a disturbed psyche? They 
seemed too real for that, but then wasn't it that aura of 
realism that separated mere fantasy from true delusion?

Apart from X's gift of Marita's address wasn't everything he'd 
seen and heard from the after-life absolutely predictable?

No way was he going to see a shrink.

---------

If the other agents on the team were surprised by the multiple 
changes of direction then they didn't show it. Mulder's 
ability to turn the investigation upside down on a daily basis 
carried some secret seal of approval and everyone knew it.

Skinner's willingness to go along with it had been enough to 
steamroller all questioning, but something about the silence 
jarred with Mulder. He was used to fighting the pack and then 
walking away to do his own thing. For some reason the fight 
was missing, or was it just that he wasn't walking away 
afterwards?

Either way it disturbed him.

It was almost a relief when Gerry Highams finally snapped. 
"How many victims are you hoping for?"

"As many as we can find."

"Great. Give it a few more days and we'll have some more 
corpses - fresh ones. Or is there something you aren't telling 
us?"

There were a lot of things he wasn't telling, but nothing that 
made Highams' statement wrong. Every day was taking them a day 
closer to another bomb and more bodies. "Government buildings 
are already on heightened alert. We've extended that warning 
to clinics, research labs. We can't be sure how effective the 
warnings have been or how well they've briefed their staff, 
but I'm not sure what we can do other than keep on reminding 
them. Our UNSUB's managed to do these jobs without appearing 
on security cameras and without drawing suspicion from the 
guards. He's good at it. If we don't get the bomber first, 
he'll find another hole in security somewhere."

"Call me old fashioned. I've just got this idea that we're 
supposed to be hunting for the bomber - whereas all we're 
actually doing is a census check on old X-Files inmates. If I 
was the suspicious type I might be wondering if you were still 
investigating the victims, not looking for the killer."

Mulder nodded, acknowledging the restless majority of agents 
who'd already accepted how the game was going to be played and 
who were willing, if not exactly eager, to get back to work. 
"We'll talk - after the meeting."

Skinner looked surprised, but recovered smoothly and handled 
the formalities of closing the discussion and confirming that 
everyone understood their tasks.

As soon as people started to stand up to leave, Mulder moved 
over to Highams. "Let's get out of here."

They changed venue to the cafeteria. Mulder bought the 
coffees. 

Highams shrugged. "I'm sorry, sir. I was out of line."

"It's Mulder and you weren't. I need help." Mulder paused to 
wait for Highams to take in the words. "The reason I'm looking 
for other victims is that I don't believe the Scanlons were 
his first action and the early kills usually give the most 
data to the profiler."

"Understood, sir - Mulder."

Mulder ignored Highams' attempt to start another apology. 
"It's very likely that I know the other victims. It's also 
probable that I know the killer.

"Right," Highams said slowly, a light dawning. "And that 
means?"

"I may not be able to see the forest for the trees."

"Agent Scully?"

Is none of your business, decided Mulder. "She's got her hands 
full with the forensics."

"What do you need?"

"Deputy Director Alvin Kersh died in a car accident. I want 
everything, not just what's in the file." It was only a hunch 
but even if it didn't pan out then the chase would still be a 
good test for Highams.

Meanwhile there was another hunch that he needed to do 
something about. He just hoped that Scully would be so willing 
to play along.

------

By the time Mulder arrived home, the hotel suite already 
smelled of roast chicken. "Hey, woman! Where's that can of 
soup you promised?"

"You're late."

"You've eaten it?"

"I wish. You've got ten minutes."

"Ten? What sort of a guy do you take me for? I need at least - 
twelve." 

"Don't we all," she suggested in a voice that was all innuendo 
and impossible to resist. 

He kept the countertop between them as he kissed her. Ten 
minutes wasn't even a long time for a shower and a change of 
clothes and he was hungry for food as well as for dessert. And 
they really did need to talk. 

He wolfed down more than his fair share of the meal while 
Scully tortured her salad into submission and explained about 
the computer simulation software and the vagaries of residue 
analysis. "It can be like testing cash for cocaine, look hard 
enough and you can find it almost anywhere. You can get false 
positives from cellulose compounds used in packaging, then 
there are drugs, cleaning products, garden chemicals, metallic 
paints. They're looking for a needle in a haystack, except 
it's a haystack full of other needles."

"Did you get them rolling again?"

"They think I'm insane for even suggesting it."

"And?"

"They're looking into the possibilities of brittleness induced 
by diverse non-invasive energy sources, and highly brisant 
charges."

"Marry me."

She shook her head, amused. "And how was your day, *dear*?"

He smiled back, suddenly nervous. "I went down to the basement 
- worked on the files. I think I may be on to something."

"Do I have to guess?"

"You asked me about the ghosts. About why they don't say 
anything useful. I think I know."

She stared at him, all semblance of humor gone.

"I think they know who they were, but they don't understand 
the changes that have happened since they died. They don't 
accumulate new knowledge. The mistake is imagining that they 
should be omniscient, when all they know about the world is 
what their senses gathered for them while they were alive and 
maybe what they pick up from things that they see when they're 
with me."

"Mulder -" she slid into silence.

He walked over to the CD player and turned up the volume, 
dragged his chair as close to Scully as he could possibly get 
as he whispered into her ear. "I need to see Gibson, I think 
he may be able to help me understand. And Doggett, I need to 
check in with him. I've already spoken with Skinner. It's the 
weekend - we can fly out tomorrow morning. If we take Monday 
off that'll give me enough time to meet them in Albuquerque on 
Sunday."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"They can't come here - I don't want to advertise them that 
way. I know it's a trek but I can't do this on the phone."

She couldn't even bring herself to look at him. The quiet, 
pleading tone in her voice buffeted him. "No. No. We've got a 
chance to do something here, to re-establish ourselves, get 
allies, and you want to throw it away on a ghost hunt."

"I'm not ghost hunting - ghosts come looking for me. It's just 
I've got a feeling about it."

"In the middle of a case? You'd just go off on some whim? I 
can't believe that Skinner's agreed to it. You told him?"

Mulder swallowed - actually all he'd told Skinner was that 
they needed a little timeout, and their boss had agreed 
without asking why. "I told him we needed the extra day."

"Without consulting me? You just assumed that I'd drop 
everything and follow you?"

Yes? 

She shook her head, a sudden light of recognition in her eyes. 
"You said we would fly out tomorrow but that YOU would meet 
them on Sunday. That wasn't just a slip of the tongue, was 
it." 

It was a statement not a question, he struggled to find an 
answer. "If we fly to San Diego, I can confuse our tracks, 
make it less obvious who I'm going to see."

"San Diego. You thought it was time I visited Sea World?"

"If you want to come to see Gibson with me - you can."

"Well, thank you. That's nice to know. Say it, Mulder. Why do 
you want me to go to San Diego - say it."

Bare and unadorned and absolutely stark as he ground it out in 
the middle of a too loud track by some easy listening wannabe 
whose name he'd already forgotten. "I want a cover story for 
my trip. I want you to get some time with your family."

"Because you know all about making time for your family, don't 
you?"

"Yeah. I do."



================= 
END 5

6
----------


The first half of the evening at Maggie Scully's mirrored the 
flight out - uncomfortable and silent. 

At her mother's request Scully quickly moved into the kitchen 
to help prepare dinner, leaving Mulder to sit on the couch and 
watch TV. Eavesdropping should have been possible due to the 
open plan layout but, despite keeping the volume on low, he 
didn't hear anything other than the occasional sound of plates 
on the move, salad being washed, and instructions and recipes 
being swapped.

It wasn't so much hell as purgatory.

The house ticked with danger and Mulder's only hope was that 
he might keep calm for long enough not to explode prematurely.

Bill and Tara arrived early, so Mulder had the opportunity to 
watch both the national and the local news in stony silence 
before Maggie called her daughter-in-law into the kitchen.

"We had to leave Matthew with a babysitter," announced Bill. 
"Tara hates doing that, even now he's in school. She still 
gets this look in her eye every time she has to leave him."

Over the years Mulder's instincts had sent him down wrong 
paths and in dangerous directions but seldom did he make both 
mistakes simultaneously. He stared at his hands, willing them 
not to take any decisions on his behalf, daring them to remain 
still. "Dana -" he started.

The arrival of the soup intervened and he moved gratefully to 
the dining area, sitting down between Scully and Maggie as 
Bill took the head of the table position facing his mother.

Taking his cue from the family Mulder sat back to wait, even 
though once they were all seated he'd blanked on what it was 
they were waiting for. 

As Maggie Scully started to speak he realized that the 
blankness was just wishful thinking on his part. He should 
have known, had known really. 

"O Heavenly Father, I commend my children to Thy care."

Have you ever danced with the devil spun unwelcome through his 
mind.

"Be Thou their God and Father; and mercifully supply whatever 
is lacking in me through frailty or negligence."

Was there enough air in here?

"Strengthen them to overcome the corruptions of the world, 
whether from within or without; and deliver them from the 
secret snares of the enemy."

"Agent Mulder."

Oh God, he knew that voice, too. Naturally enough Charles 
Scully stood at attention at his mother's right hand, his hat 
held respectfully against his heart.

"Do you hear? Do you see how wrong this is?" Charles' voice 
was demanding and painfully clear.

And however fervently he wished he couldn't - Mulder could 
hear and see but couldn't breathe.

Scully tapped sharp fingernails into his hand to get his 
attention. He swallowed, turning slightly in his seat to face 
her but she was studiously not looking his way.

"You, dear Jesus, to protect and bless all of us, absent and 
present, living and dead."

Amen. 

"Please - help yourselves," ordered Maggie, smiling vaguely at 
the flower arrangement in the middle of the table, only her 
chin betraying her as she kept her face bowed to hide her 
eyes.

Charles shook his head and walked away, Mulder's eyes tracked 
him to the doorway and he knew that he had to follow.

"Fox - is something wrong?" Maggie Scully was staring at him 
now, a little unfocused but definitely alert.

Dana Scully's fingers bit a little deeper into the back of his 
hand.

"No, nothing, Mrs Scully. I left something in the car. I'll 
only be a minute."

Gently pulling away from Scully's grip he headed out of the 
room, a fast tour of the house brought him nothing, the yard 
was deserted, the cars lifeless. Not so much as an apparition 
to distract him from the serious business of eating dinner 
with the family. 

OK. A deep breath and he returned to the table, sliding 
quietly into his chair, smiling a sad apology at Scully's mom.

The soup was waiting for him. So was Bill. Mulder decided to 
focus on the soup.

"So how long are you back for this time?"

Mulder knew Bill's words were intended for him. He also knew 
that they weren't a reference to this flying visit to San 
Diego. He chose to ignore the knowledge, feigning utter 
absorption in the task of swallowing the food.

"I'm just wondering if it's worth putting Dana's new cellphone 
number in my diary," Bill added.

Scully replied directly, even though the question had not been 
leveled at her. "I hope it'll be permanent."

Tara was first to the draw. "That's wonderful news." 

"Wonderful," agreed Bill.

Wonderful.

The table lapsed back into silence and Mulder realized that he 
was having to fight an urge to go and switch on the TV for a 
little companionship.

Nobody seemed to have the appetite for seconds though Mulder 
and Tara were both swift to assure Maggie that the soup was 
delicious; they were simply leaving room for the main course. 
Clearing the plates required all three women.

This time Mulder didn't avoid meeting Bill's eyes.

"Will you be getting him back?"

This little Scully side trip was proving to be one of Mulder's 
worst waking nightmares in years. Which was impressive in 
itself. Feeling his way, Mulder spoke softly and slowly. "Dana 
did what she thought was best for William's safety. Your mom 
knows what she went through."

"Mom didn't even get consulted. Did you?"

No. "It wasn't possible."

"You know how I found out? Mom called me in the middle of the 
night to tell me what Dana had done."

Mulder had found out by a different route involving an 
Assistant Director of the FBI, a military brig and an orange 
jumpsuit; even so, he got the parallel.

"Mom hasn't stopped crying since. One thing and another. Tara 
miscarried a couple of years ago; she can't have any more 
children. She said it made her understand how awful it must 
have been for Dana. Then - ." He took a deep breath. "We could 
have looked after him, you know. Until she was ready. If she 
was ever ready."

"It wasn't possible, Bill."

"Because of your little green men?"

Because of big men with modified spines? 

Mulder sat back in the chair, eye to eye with Bill in silent 
empathy and fury, unmoving and unmoved. A stance practiced and 
perfected in interview rooms in police stations and 
penitentiaries across the country. Bill was talking about 
Scully, and Mulder had no intention of taking prisoners.

Faced with backing off or transforming the silent threat into 
a physical response, Bill's breathing became a little heavier, 
his skin a little redder, his voice a strangled howl of pain. 
"You're something, Mulder."

Mulder offered the barest movement of the lips in reply.

A minute or so later the door opened. Tara arrived first, 
Scully followed close behind. By the time Maggie walked in, 
Tara was organizing the sauces and condiments and everyone had 
agreed to ignore the elephant in the dining room.

They got back to the hotel not long after ten, which meant 
that according to their bodies and brains it was already the 
middle of the night. The only bright side that Mulder could 
come up with was that they had booked a room. Therefore they 
had at least been able to leave what he was already starting 
to think of as the crime scene. 

Apart from a request to pass the pepper, Scully had been 
effectively silent all evening. Monosyllabic replies in the 
car had announced her decision to accompany Mulder on his trip 
to see Gibson tomorrow. She did not intend to attend mass with 
the rest of the family in the morning, nor did she plan to 
visit Charles' grave afterwards, though she might, if there 
was time, take some flowers there before the flight back on 
Monday. He made a mental note to get a later departure.

Fearing that she would be able to hide even in a queen size, 
Mulder held his breath as she padded around the room 
completing her nightly rituals. He wouldn't blame her for 
hiding, but he hoped that they could hide together. He got his 
answer when she finally slid under the bedclothes, switched 
off the lamp and wriggled to a halt, carefully pressed up 
against him.

He stroked her arm and nuzzled up against the back of her hair 
and couldn't think of a word to say that wouldn't just reopen 
a wound. 

She took the problem out of his hands by whispering. "Did I 
ever tell you about the Brady Bunch case? It wasn't long 
before they captured you."

Actually he'd read the file as part of his fast sort of the 
basement but he wasn't going to tell Scully that. He shook his 
head against the pillow, hoping that she would accept the 
vibration as an answer.

She did. "This man, he called himself Oliver Martin - Oliver 
was the Brady cousin, he was always the unlucky one, the jinx 
really. Anyway this man, he wanted the perfect family so badly 
he willed a complete Brady Bunch world into existence and it 
was wonderful, perfect."

Mulder considered it for a moment. "Whereas all Fox Oliver 
Martin Mulder could come up with were The Scullys?"

"But at least they were real."

Mulder's slowly growing smile reached full intensity. "The 
Brady Bunch aren't?"

She smiled now, twisting in his arms to rest her forehead 
against his, shifting to make extra points of contact until at 
last he was burning up in the heat and the proximity and he 
rested there until the physical warmth made his incipient 
laughter bubble over and triggered hers in reply. The laughter 
rocked through them, dancing on the thin line between hysteria 
and guilt, dying back to silence and then rising from nowhere 
again until finally an exhausted ease descended over them 
both, only the occasional flutter of hiccupped breaths acting 
as a ghostly reminder of its passing.

There had been no laughter since they got taken back to DC and 
precious little before it. How long since they'd laughed in 
bed? He stored it away for a rainy day. 

She paid for the laughter in tears as grief caught up with her 
again. He mumbled nothing words into her ear, and tried to 
tell her that she mustn't be ashamed of being alive.

------

The misdirection of flying into San Diego and then flying on 
to Albuquerque seemed a little redundant. If they were being 
tracked as they flew out here, then the chances were that they 
would be tracked again now, but that was no reason to make it 
easy. 

A taxi ride into town and Monica Reyes looked like the cat 
that swallowed the canary as she greeted them and directed 
them towards her SUV. Scully surprised Mulder by willingly 
stepping into the bear hug the woman was offering. He'd almost 
forgotten just how much time she'd spent at the Bureau after 
he'd left.

The house was thick-walled and softly curved, with arches that 
hugged the occupants and climbing plants carefully nurtured to 
add protective shade. Mulder guessed that Monica had chosen 
it. The yard was neatly formed, a promise of strength and 
protection in stone, and a couple of places to shelter that 
looked as if they'd been carved from the earth itself. Yet the 
magnetite veins that danced through the rock walls emphasized 
that there was nothing haphazard here.

Gibson looked different. Not just older though of course there 
was some of that. Mulder acknowledged it. "You look good."

"I've missed you."

"Right."

Polite greetings and inquiries about health and questions 
about who and what had placed them in their current 
assignments were handled as quickly and impersonally as 
possible.

Scully's brother had died a few months back. Kersh had 
transferred Doggett down here as ASAC. Reyes had taken her 
chances and joined him, a sideways reporting structure in 
place to protect them from charges of favoritism. According to 
John, Gibson was dating some new-age-pyramid-spinning daughter 
of one Monica's friends. According to Gibson, Gibson wasn't 
dating anyone, but he did enjoy Angela's company.

They waited expectantly for Mulder's news. He shrugged. 
"Deputy Director Welland has me penciled in as prime suspect 
on the bombings." 

It was par for the course and, washed down with a long glass 
of iced tea, it suited them all just fine. 

Gibson nodded to Mulder. "Yeah, I'm ready."

The sudden tingle that rolled inelegantly up Mulder's spine 
was as redundant as it was inevitable. He shook himself back 
to attention, embarrassed by his surprise that a mind-reading 
kid could read his mind. "I forgot."

"Thanks. Most people can't."

They walked away together, sought out a quiet shady corner 
where they could talk undisturbed. "How are you, Gibson?"

"I'm good. Really. John and Monica - they don't care I'm not a 
proper kid, they don't think they're proper parents. It's 
nice." 

"You stayed in touch with Scully's mom - that was dangerous."

"We protected ourselves - I've got techno geek friends now."

"Yeah, well, thanks. When we - talked. I was never sure if it 
was really you or if I was just hallucinating, hoping."

"I got that, that's why you kept hanging up on me."

"How the hell did you find me?"

"I missed you." Gibson actually smiled, a shocking thing to 
see on that too old, too young, too somber face. "You think in 
color."

Mulder snorted at that.

"Best way I can describe it. It's like them. Stop it, Mulder. 
I'm not saying you're like them. But you're not - "

" - Normal," completed Mulder, afraid that the next word from 
Gibson's lips would have been human if he hadn't decided to 
soften the blow.

"Like I would know what normal is." 

Gibson, who'd always seemed so careful to look away from 
people, was looking at Mulder directly now. Mulder recognized 
it then, not just older but more certain. A confidence borne 
from spending time with people who might not necessarily be 
able to protect him, but who would certainly die trying.

The boy who would soon be a man nodded, pleased by Mulder's 
unspoken verdict.

Mulder moved on to the other reasons for the visit. "I'm 
afraid I need to use you."

It was an unnecessary warning, Gibson already knew the first 
question. "What? Do I see dead people?" He hissed it out, all 
Haley Joel Osment and teenage boy trying to sound cynical even 
if he couldn't quite pull it off. "Sure, people I knew. 
Sometimes it's people who knew me - my parents."

"Do you ever get anything new from them?"

"Things from when they were alive - yeah. About what's 
happened since they died - no."

"They seem aware of the present but it's a weak connection, as 
if they've got no context for what they see?"
 
Gibson nodded. "You get a lot more of them than I do."

Mulder felt almost relieved about that. He'd hated the idea 
that Gibson might have quite so many people on his conscience, 
as if the kid didn't have enough problems.

"They've been with you for a long time," Gibson added, more 
thoughtful than surprised.

"Yeah." Though Mulder rather hoped that Gibson wouldn't make 
that observation in front of Scully. The ghosts in the wings 
studied him in silence for a moment as if wondering why he was 
ashamed of them. A lot of dead bodies to account for. But they 
weren't the problem. It was the ones who walked right up to 
him and started talking who caused the trouble.   

"It's OK," encouraged Gibson, polite enough not to pluck the 
other question that Mulder was hesitating over from his 
thoughts but giving him permission instead.

"I had an informant, we used to call him X. He gave me an 
address. Or did I know that address already?"

His memory was a little less trustworthy these days, 
particularly regarding the months around his abduction and 
there were definite gaps in his knowledge about whatever 
happened to him in that brig at Quantico. It was perhaps for 
the best. But sometimes he needed to dig deeper. Gibson had 
helped him after the abduction, maybe he could help him again 
now.

Gibson looked sympathetic and Mulder closed his eyes, willing 
himself to let go, guilty at using Gibson to do it.

Perhaps there was some other way, hypnosis or some deep 
relaxation technique maybe. But hypnotism was scary without 
trust and relaxed was about a million miles from the way he 
was feeling.

Gibson would help and Mulder tried to make himself feel 
grateful rather than guilty about asking for it. He felt the 
vibration as his thoughts spun into overload, and for once he 
knew exactly what thinking in color was all about. And 
suddenly it was there, scribbled on the back of a business 
card that Mulder had discreetly "borrowed" and returned to 
Alex Krycek's pocket during a meeting in Walter Skinner's 
office. Just a couple of days before his abduction. Nothing 
linking it directly to Marita except coincidence and a memory 
that didn't always deliver information in linear sequences.

A jolt, as his neck muscles spasmed, shook Mulder upright as 
if he'd been awakened just as he was about to fall sleep. He 
stared at the exhaustion in Gibson's eyes and knew he'd put it 
there, suddenly feeling faintly nauseous as well as ashamed.

Gibson stopped him with a shake of the head. "It's not because 
you've got a bad conscience that they come to you."

Sure.

They talked of consequential things like Angela and 
inconsequential things like money before heading back to join 
the others.

Scully looked relaxed, not smiling, not happy, just at rest, 
at home maybe. They were going to get their own place, just as 
soon as they got back to Washington. He no longer cared 
whether it was for ten days, ten years or a lifetime. What the 
hell did a lifetime mean anyway?

John was doing battle with charcoal and barbecue lighter fluid 
and Mulder couldn't help but think of Hank Hill and a sudden 
compulsion to discuss the joys of propane versus coal. 
"Looking good," he finally drawled.

"I hear Dave Baines took you in."

"You know him?"

"Worked with him once, back in my cop days."

"One of the good guys?"

"Yeah. Can't always tell so easily now."

The X-Files could do that to you. Mulder shrugged. Watching 
the flickers of red in the charcoal struggling to become a 
fire, he took a photo from his pocket. Maggie hadn't asked him 
why he wanted it, which was fortunate given that he wasn't 
sure that he knew.

The other ghosts had come to him when he'd needed them. They'd 
shown up to reassure or advise or to try to steer him back on 
track. Charles Scully had been the exception; he'd come to ask 
a question. Why had he waited for months to ask it? And why 
ask it now? Then last night - it was almost as if Charles had 
come to demand some action. But what?

Whatever the reason, it nagged at him. Enough to be worth an 
experiment. "Recognize anyone?" 

Six navy men in snowy white stared up at Doggett. "Maybe. 
Him." He pointed at the second man from the left.

"Do you remember when?"

Doggett carefully rearranged the coals to build up more of a 
furnace. "DC - not long after you and Scully took off. He 
wanted information on the Valor Victor."

The navy ship that got blown up in Baltimore? "What did you 
tell him?"

"Nothing. I had no idea who the hell he was. I looked up the 
name he gave. Great file. National hero. The more I dug, the 
more battles he'd fought, the more medals he'd won - two men 
couldn't have done what he was supposed to have done. But then 
ten men and one name was probably what I was looking at."

"Shit," complained Mulder. "A spook?"

"Military intelligence, special ops type I'd guess. Not CIA."

"And then?"

"Nothing. Vanished. Maybe he'd heard I was doing the 
background check. Who is he?"

"He was Scully's brother."

--------

San Diego was about as far from DC as they could get without 
falling into the ocean, a fact that shouldn't have bothered 
Mulder but today it did. It occurred to him that the feeling 
had to be something like homesickness though for what he 
couldn't quite say. 

It couldn't be a geographical thing, a white blob on the road 
to Santa Fe had qualified as a home yesterday. It wasn't even 
the human factor, Scully was with him now. Which just left the 
temporal - they had to get back to DC to start the rest of 
their lives.

"Shut up, Mulder"

A brief bark of laughter. "You could hear the wheels turning?"

"Grinding."

"You ready for this?"

"As I'll ever be."

The this in question was the research facility that now housed 
the remnants of Transgen Pharmaceuticals, the organization 
that had once held Scully's daughter in its bloody hands. 

Of course, the new company had no connection with Transgen, 
merely with the old Transgen patents, research licenses and a 
fair selection of the staff. Mulder ignored whatever point the 
corporate security chief was making and started briefing them 
on the threat posed by the bomber - who they must surely have 
heard about by now?

They assured him that they were taking all the necessary 
precautions while Scully politely probed them on sudden deaths 
among their staff members. There had been none, though the 
longer the discussion ran the more the confident tone faded, 
to be replaced by pure assertion. 

Not yet carrying their own business cards they were forced to 
leave them with the FBI's generic versions and Walter Skinner 
as a contact name.

"Do you believe them?"

Mulder shook his head, glancing up at the security camera on 
the way out. "Not as far as I can throw them. But it might 
make them think. One of them might be smart enough to realize 
it's time to cooperate. Pass the word on to other companies." 
Confident that they'd made the message crystal clear, they 
headed for the hospital in which Emily had died.

Had they not been visiting San Diego he'd have left the 
warnings to the FBI field office, but there was nothing to be 
lost by doing them in person.

As a day for ripping the scabs off old wounds it was a 
salutary experience even if the results were not easily 
quantifiable.

Never one to quit while he was ahead, Mulder drove Scully to 
the graveyard. 

"27 West 3L," she noted.

"Cypress Avenue, Bliss, third bay, port side," he responded, 
using the terminology on the plan that the cemetery attendant 
had supplied.

Though he probably should have anticipated it, he wasn't 
really prepared for her sudden collapse at the sight of the 
headstone. One second she was holding his hand, leaning 
against him and breathing in exhausted gusts, the next she was 
on her knees, her fingers playing in the gravel in front of 
her brother's name.

The tears were silent, her body as motionless as the polished 
marble slabs that stood all around them. 

He dropped to the ground at her side and she buried her face 
against his chest.

The flight back to DC was mercifully short, at least for 
Mulder. He could only hope that Scully had told him the truth 
when she said that she'd fallen asleep, too.



========  
END 6

7 
----------

Dave Baines glowered from behind the temporary desk they'd 
given him in the bullpen. Mulder stepped forward, hands raised 
in surrender. 

"I get hauled out here, high priority, told to play desk 
jockey and the first thing I hear is you've gone AWOL. It's a 
shame you came back - I would have loved hunting you down 
again, Agent Mulder."

"Nice to see you too, Marshal."

"This your idea of payback?" Baines suggested, surveying the 
office in an imperious sweep, even as a glimmer of a smile 
rose in his eyes.

"Did Skinner make you welcome?"

"Sure, even loaned me a brush to dust the sand off my pants 
afterwards."

Mulder acknowledged the comment with a smile. "Have you been 
to the bank?"

Baines offered him a handful of photos. The first was another 
copy of the image that he'd been shown at the ATF lab, a safe 
deposit box missing from a wall full of them, a puddle of 
debris on the floor in front of the hole. A perfect act of 
destruction. 

The other photos backed it up, showing details such as the 
largest fragment found - a dime sized scab of metal from the 
lock and the pristine surfaces of the boxes that had 
surrounded it in the wall.

"According to the records, it should have been in its secured 
position. But, every picture tells a story."

"You assume the box was already on the floor when it 
exploded?"

"You don't?" Baines paused, sounded curious. "I've seen the 
pictures of the other bomb sites."

"Security cameras at the bank?"

"Useless, the recordings are foggy. They aren't even confident 
of when it happened except it was between two tours by the 
guard, timed at 21:50 and 23:12. No alarms or sensors tripped 
and all security systems were checked out as working the next 
day."

"The recordings - are they using tape or do they have 
digital?"

"Tape. But the machines were working fine and the tapes either 
side of the time period had clear images."

"You're thinking it's an inside job?"

"I'm thinking I'm a marshal not a detective."

"Sure - and you don't know how to check out a security system 
either!"

Baines snorted out a brief half laugh. "Why the hell have you 
dragged me up here, Mulder?"

"Payback?" he suggested. "What do we know about the contents 
of the box?"

"The owners are a firm of accountants. They're accepting the 
standard compensation from the bank. Duplicate paperwork, 
computer backups, that kind of thing. Nothing that can't be 
replaced."

"So, pretty obvious why they were targeted then."

"Absolutely - I always hated accountants too."

---------

Agent Highams looked like he wanted to start an argument as 
soon as Mulder walked into the room but instead he was content 
with an accusation. "How did you know about Kersh?"

"What about Kersh?"

"Don't play with me. How did you know it wasn't an accident?"

"Circumstantial. The timing was too convenient for the people 
he was threatening to expose."

"So how come there wasn't a murder investigation?"

What the fuck did the man think they were doing now? Mulder 
resisted the temptation to snap. "What have you found?"

"The brake line was cut. No one knows how. Access to that part 
of the car is just about impossible without taking out the 
engine."

"But not just a random failure?"

"Brakes fail, pipes fail - you take your foot off the gas and 
the car starts to slow - chances are you'll still get out all 
right."

"But?"

"Not if you're going downhill, with a corner to navigate, and 
you get a simultaneous failure in the electronic ignition 
system that puts the gas on full."

"OK."

"OK? A Deputy Director gets murdered and no one gives a fuck?"

"Welcome to my world," mumbled Mulder not actually loud enough 
to be heard. Highams was good, but discretion didn't seem to 
be part of his vocabulary. "Who have you discussed this with?"

"AD Skinner - he asked me not to talk about it with the 
others."

"Good. Keep it that way." For now. Highams was going to talk 
first, think second. Not an ideal combination, but the man had 
spirit and brains, too. Mulder attached a Handle With Care 
notice and headed out to join the other agents.

The team looking for sudden deaths had already hit the tens of 
thousands mark. Hardly surprising given the volume of 
employees covered by a blanket term like the DoD or the DoJ. 

He chatted with the resident computer gurus about how to 
rustle up a variety of lists weighting the rankings by salary, 
education, specialty, job title, location and a dozen other 
keywords that seemed to offer some promise of order among the 
chaos. 

To make matters worse he was still expanding the search 
parameters rather than tightening them in. The owners of the 
safe deposit box and their clients, anyone who'd served on the 
Valor Victor in the last five years. Employees of the old 
Transgen and of the new company that had sprung up in its 
wake. 

If he just sat with the list for long enough then he hoped 
that maybe some names would just pop out. The trouble with 
that idea was that others would be missed by even the least 
well developed alias and most of the victims' faces to date, 
with the exception of Kersh and Scanlon, were anonymous even 
to Mulder's usually reliable memory.

Sure, he needed the information - but it was as background. It 
would improve the profile. It wouldn't give him the name and 
address of the perp and it sure as hell wouldn't explain the 
MO. All he had to show for the work of twenty odd agents were 
two more examples of the bomber's work - Kersh and a safe 
deposit box. The MO remained as mysterious now as it had when 
they'd started. His ideas on the next target were still too 
vague to be of use.

Going though the motions he'd asked Highams to check out the 
garages that had serviced Kersh's car, and the parking lots 
where it might have stood for long enough to have the 
necessary work done to dismantle the engine, fit sub-miniature 
charges with radio controls and then put it all back together 
again without anyone noticing. But given that the incident had 
happened back in January, making it more than four months old, 
the chances of finding something on video or jogging some 
latent memory had to be close to zero. 

Deputy Director Welland chose that moment to demand Mulder's 
presence. 

Skinner was leaving the office just as Mulder arrived. Welland 
gave them no time to swap notes, ordering Mulder to go 
straight in with a determined wave of the hand and slamming 
the door shut as soon as the agent crossed its threshold.

Mulder surveyed the empty room and waited for Welland to 
return, only mildly concerned about the possibilities of 
poison gas seeping through the air-conditioning vents and the 
dangers of walls that moved inexorably forward trapping the 
hapless occupant inside.

"Got some good stories to tell him?"

Krycek looked so sure of himself - like he held the keys to 
Pandora's box, the blueprints to the Ark of the Covenant and a 
season ticket to a luxury suite at Yankee Stadium. It made 
Mulder's head hurt.

"What do you want, Alex?"

"You've already got everything you need - what are you waiting 
for?"

"A signed edition of the next Harry Potter?"

Before Krycek got chance to reply the door opened and Welland 
entered, an alpha flutter of authority in expensive gray wool, 
mutton imitating wolf and dressed in lamb. Mulder tried not to 
feel too bad about wayward thought processes and temporarily 
mistaking form for substance. He also refused to stand up, 
even though Welland would probably have known it was merely an 
unthinking politeness rather than a genuine mark of respect.

"You wanted to see me."

Welland was dry ice as he melted into his chair. "No. I'd 
rather hoped that I wouldn't need to. However as what I want 
doesn't come into this - here we are. You think this bomber 
killed Deputy Director Kersh?"

"Yes."

"That puts a rather different complexion on things, don't you 
think?"

"How so?"

"Kersh was one of the good guys." Welland tilted his head, 
waiting for confirmation.

"I believe so. Which may mean that our UNSUB is relying on 
unreliable intelligence."

The smile was wry and utterly lacking in good humor. "Ahh. You 
think that clears you?"

"I don't need clearing." The 'fuck you, sir' was unspoken.

"Have you made any progress?"

"I should have an updated profile in the next day or two. 
Agent Scully is working on the MO, which should give us an 
idea of the capability and technical background of the UNSUB 
and some insight on the technology that he's got access to."

"Threat analysis?" 

"Difficult because of the broad range of possible targets. 
We're talking days or weeks, rather than months. It'll be in 
the DC area, higher profile than the previous attacks."

Welland steepled his hands, resting his elbows on the desk 
ahead of him, patiently tapping his lips with his index 
fingers. "Why?" he finally asked.

"The early killings were personal, or at least more personal. 
He's now using targets that are simply examples of what he 
dislikes - the agricultural test site, the abortion clinic - 
both of them with links to illicit experimentation. There's 
overkill - he's not attacking an individual manager, he's 
going for an organization. He's making a point, looking for 
attention. I think he'll see DC as the best place for that."

"Because of what it represents?"

Mulder nodded. "And because I'm here."

"Maybe I should ship you out to Florida."

"Got something against alligators, sir?"

--------

The trouble was, despite already knowing why, and the 
uncomfortable feeling that he was very close to knowing who, 
he still had absolutely no idea how to stop it from happening 
again.

Moreover, Mike Fowley's message of "let's do dinner" was less 
of a surprise than it should have been. Maybe Krycek was right 
about him already having all the information he needed to 
crack this case. 

A quick phone call to Scully, offering her a get-out clause 
should she want to avoid meeting the Fowley clan, confirmed 
that dinner tonight would be at least as entertaining and 
possibly even more stressful than Saturday night in San Diego. 
Not that he could do anything about it. Though he did idly 
wonder how he'd rate on one of those standard stress 
scorecards right now. Not half the rating that Scully would 
get.

Skinner was a friendly face in a sea of confusion. "Got a 
minute?"

"My office?" questioned Skinner.

They walked together, Mulder silently marshalling his 
thoughts, Skinner looking like the sky had turned lime green 
overnight and he was expecting to be asked for an explanation.

They slumped together into the room, choosing seats at the 
table that placed them across the diagonal rather than putting 
a desk between them. 

"What's the problem?" 

Mulder shrugged, opening his hands in a 'dunno' gesture. "I've 
been through what we've got. I've asked them to get me more. 
But - "

Skinner nodded, considering. "You want to do it all yourself?"

"Yeah. Something like that."

"Don't. Don't walk away from them. You're proving something 
here. Agents who thought the X-Files were a joke are reading 
them. It's not a bad thing."

"I'm fucked, Walter. If I'm right - I've got no idea what to 
do about it."

"You've got a theory about who's doing it?"

"Maybe. I can see the type clearly enough - he's military, a 
pro, an insider or he was. But that MO - there's more to it 
than just being clever. I just have this feeling. If I'm wrong 
- "

"Then they'll still be doing important work?"

Mulder threw back his head, exhaling, stretching, trying to 
make it all add up. 

Skinner's hand pressed into his shoulder. 

Mulder shook his head. "They've got no idea what they're 
doing."

"What do you mean?"

Mulder shrugged, wondered why Skinner couldn't see what was 
happening. Twenty-odd men obeying orders and none of them with 
any clue why. 

Skinner smiled in sudden recognition and the shock of it was 
almost enough to make Mulder turn and run. "You want them to 
fight you? Is that it? You want them to refuse to carry out 
orders, then make some crack about ET and give you an excuse 
to run away?"

A brief pause before Skinner resumed his theme. "They're not 
going to. You told them what you wanted. They'll bring it 
home. You took Highams out before he became a threat - and 
they saw you do it. If you wanted them to mutiny, then I'm 
sorry - you really have fucked up."

----------

If someone had asked him two weeks ago about a dinner date 
with the Fowleys, Mulder would have taken it as a joke. 
Actually if someone had asked him the same question two days 
ago he might not have felt very differently. Yet, here they 
were, standing on Mike Fowley's doorstep bearing gifts of 
Merlot and Chardonnay and trying to look like guests.

Jane, blonde and tall and glowing with some kind of secret 
elixir of life, opened the door. "It's been a long time," she 
told Mulder, kissing him on the cheek before giving him a 
quick head to toe survey and then shifting her attention to 
his partner. "You must be Dana." 

"Hi," said the politely subdued teenagers who'd obviously been 
given a deal to insure compliance with the norms of adult 
society.

"Hi," acknowledged the agents in an effortlessly synchronized 
reply.

The boy grinned, obviously impressed by their performance. The 
girl, better attuned to the rules of indifference, remained 
impassive as she supplied a "nice meeting you" before 
vanishing from the room with her twin brother only feet behind 
her.

"Nice kids," noted Mulder. No irony, just the truth as far as 
he could see.

"Great kids," confirmed Mike, "but don't tell them that."

Mulder wasn't sure whether to be amazed or horrified when 
Scully automatically followed Jane into the kitchen.

"International conspiracy of women - Jane's the high 
priestess."

Mulder had no trouble believing it. "What's she up to these 
days?"

"Child psychologist." Mike raised his heads skywards in the 
general direction of the rest of the family, a look of mock 
despair in his gesture.

"You wanted to talk?"

"Off the record," sobering up fast, even as he handed Mulder a 
glass of nicely chilled white wine. "I was thinking about 
those bombs."

Mulder offered him an encouraging nod and took a first sip 
from his drink. 

Fowley opened the bottle of red wine to give it time to 
breathe before dinner. Mulder tried not to look impatient, but 
was grateful when Mike finally spoke. "It's not a complete 
explanation, but if you could make the targets brittle enough 
and use a charge with an unusually high shattering potential."

"Brisant," noted Mulder, giving him permission to switch to 
jargon if he needed to.

"Right. If you could, then you could get those blast 
patterns."

"Scully had the same idea."

"I knew our techie had good taste. What's she looking at - 
dehydration and extreme low temperatures? Here's another one - 
a disruptor beam."

"Cool - like on Star Trek?"

"Bastard. But yeah. Or not that far different. You get the 
resonant frequency of the object and hit it with just the 
right blend of electromagnetic waves and sound and the rest - 
"

"- is science fiction?"

Fowley paced as he spoke, his fingers playing lightly against 
the stem of his glass. "Would be, if it wasn't for a hell of a 
spin-off project from Star Wars research. It's not ready for 
battlefield service. By the time you've set the fucker up, the 
target will have blasted you six ways from Sunday."

"But combined with the right explosives, I could get those 
blast patterns?"

He paused, studying Mulder for an instant. "I think that's the 
only way you'll get those blast patterns."

Mulder nodded and dug an increasingly mangled looking picture 
of some naval officers from his pocket. "Recognize anyone?"

Fowley puzzled over the images for a minute. He pointed at the 
man top right in the line-up. "Carl Weiss."

Mulder feigned nonchalance at the surprise result. "Anyone 
else?"

"No - I only remember Carl because I did a certification 
course with him - years ago. He should have been running it 
himself. I'll tell you what is odd about that photo though. 
He's the only enlisted man there. Three lieutenant commanders, 
a full commander, a captain and a petty officer. I'm all for 
egalitarian but that's not a typical group of partygoers. And 
I'd have guessed he was an officer for sure. But what do I 
know. Last time I saluted it was in the boy scouts."

Mulder looked at it again, a civilian looking at military men 
replaced by a profiler looking at a pattern. Different ages, 
different insignias. Fuck. How had he missed that? Because he 
hadn't been looking for it. Shit.

Dinner was simple, fresh, plentiful and tasty, and the wine 
flowed freely.

After the meal Jane got an evil look in her eyes. "So, Dana - 
interested in those photos I told you about?"

Mulder shook his head but Scully nodded, delighted, egging the 
other woman on.

Mike took over as soon as a commentary was called for. "Fourth 
of July, 1990. Mulder's first rocket. Isn't it cute?"

Mulder was on the verge of laughter, hand over his mouth and 
cringing, but smiling anyway.

"And here's mine," added Mike, pointing out the mighty tower 
next to the insignificant squib.

The women laughed.

Mulder shrugged, "Size isn't everything." 

The journey home was strange, even by their standards. It had 
been a shockingly, amazingly, nauseatingly normal evening, 
which was to say that for Mulder and Scully in retrospect it 
had been alien and baffling and almost incomprehensible.

"Admit it. You prefer them to my family."

Mulder switched his attention to a point somewhere outside the 
taxi's rear window. "Is there an answer to that question that 
won't get my head bitten off?"

"That's the praying mantis you're thinking of. What is it with 
men and sex?"

He stared at her for a moment, trying to make sure he'd heard 
her correctly, caught the playful look in her eyes, raising 
his eyebrows as he smiled back. 

The looks that passed between them became more solemn as they 
approached the hotel. As if the dream of playing normal was 
fading as they ate up the miles and now they were stuck with 
waking up to reality. "What did Jane say?" Mulder finally 
asked, signaling that they were back on duty.

"They hardly heard from Diana after she went to Europe."

Mulder nodded, knowing that while trusting Mike was out of the 
question, automatic distrust might be just as foolish.

"Mike's been trying to get a move out of the Pentagon for over 
a year. He'd started looking at a couple of offers from 
private companies, but they'd have meant relocation - no fun 
for the kids. When the ATF reorganization came up he told 
people they had a choice - let him go there or lose him 
altogether. Strings were pulled."

"And everyone was happy." Mulder licked his lips, picked up a 
taste of wine still lingering there. "He had an idea about the 
bombs. There's an experiment he's seen, a project using sound 
and electromagnetic waves at resonant frequencies."

"So things shake themselves apart?"

"Got it in one." That was the easy part over with. "There's 
something else. He recognized one of the other men in that 
group photo with your brother - says he was an explosives 
expert. Do you know what kind of work Charles did?"

Her face, already solemn, went ghostly white, shocking even in 
the darkness of the car. "Why did you even show him that? You 
can't be suggesting - "

"I'm not suggesting anything. But we need to know more about 
the men in that picture and we need to know how Charles died."

"No," she murmured, over and over, softer and softer, but it 
was a mantra not a reply.


======  
END 7

8
----------

FBI Basement - next morning

"It's like reading the obituary column only more morbid," 
Mulder admitted, grateful for the chance to move his eyes off 
the screen with its lists of thousands of sudden and not so 
sudden deaths. 

Scully nodded. "You read the obits?"

"Right after the baseball scores and before the funny pages."

She didn't bother to comment, clearly unsurprised. "Carl 
Weiss."

Mulder moved his feet off the table so he could sit up 
straight. "You found him?"

"In Arlington Cemetery. Carl Adrian Weiss, died November 2002 
aged 28. Graduated MIT in 1991, received his doctorate in 
solid state physics in 1994. Joined the Navy the same year and 
went straight into officer training."

"Why doesn't that add up?"

"Because he was twenty when he got that doctorate."

"Wow."

"That's what I thought."

"What have you got planned for the rest of today?"

"Your disruptor beam."

"Not my disruptor beam. The DoD's."

"Allegedly."

"Allegedly. In that case we need to get Dave Baines rolling on 
this." He waved at the picture of Carl Weiss on the file that 
Scully had printed out.

Ten minutes later and Baines was looking more bemused than 
enthusiastic.

Mulder knew the feeling. "You wanted a manhunt, I'm giving you 
one."

The marshal stared back at Mulder, "You want me to find two 
dead men and four guys who had their photos taken with them?"

"Too easy?"

Mulder launched into the details. The discovery that Carl 
Weiss was dead had come as a bit of a blow but the fact that 
the man had received his doctorate in solid state physics from 
MIT at the tender age of twenty put him directly under the 
microscope. "Why the navy, and why isn't he dressed as an 
officer?"

"Maybe it was a disciplinary thing," suggested Scully.

True. Except Weiss looked awfully at home in that group photo 
with four commanders and a captain. However, one snapshot did 
not a psychological work-up make, despite Mike Fowley's 
comment. "If Weiss is dead, I want to know how he actually 
died, and who was with him. Who identified the body? Was the 
funeral open casket? Were DNA tests done?"

"IF Weiss is dead?" questioned Baines.

"And if he isn't I want to talk to him. In either case I want 
to know all his postings for the last two years and I want to 
know if he was really where his records say he was and what he 
was doing."

"You don't want much."

The chances were that the further Baines dug, the bigger the 
brick wall he would run into, but even that would be useful 
knowledge, confirming the direction if nothing else. "Pull in 
as much help as you need from the main team."

Mulder had to wait for someone to phone Scully, and distract 
her from the discussion, before he could complete Baines' 
briefing. "Everything I said for Weiss goes for Charles Scully 
too. But - "

The marshal already had it covered. "It's OK."

---------

The day was long and boring. The lists of causes of death 
versus job description went on for page after page, and after 
three hours in front of a computer screen hitting the "next" 
button, Mulder was starting to feel punch-drunk. He focused on 
the men, purely for the pragmatic reason that probabilities 
said he'd get more hits that way. If he was going to get any 
hits at all.

After another hour he switched to men in uniform just to give 
his eyes a rest from white shirts, dark ties and gray suits.

"You're going about this all wrong," noted Frohike.

"That's good to hear."

"Why are you hiding down here? Why aren't you upstairs with 
the rest of your team?"

"They get on better without me." He hesitated before asking 
the question that had been poised on the tip of his tongue for 
days. "Do you ever see the others? People like Diana?"

"Why aren't you with Scully?"

"Do you see them?"

"Why can't you talk about Dana?"

"Do you see Krycek?"

"Why the evasion?"

"You're not my fucking shrink, answer the damned question!"

Frohike turned his head away as if he'd been slapped. Shit, he 
really was losing it - what was the point in getting angry 
with a ghost? And Frohike's ghost of all people. Hell - he 
would never have spoken like that to one of them when they 
were alive, and now they'd died, given their lives for 
something important, suddenly he was going to start ripping 
into them? "I'm sorry."

But the Gunmen trio had already gone.

"Sorry," he said again slamming his hand against the edge of 
the desk and wondering if a couple of hours on the firing 
range or in the gym would take the edge off the discomfort 
that had started to build low in his gut and was now 
threatening to poison the whole of his body. 

A run perhaps? Even while they'd been in hiding he'd made the 
effort to run or swim or at least to do fifteen minutes of 
stretching in the hotel room every day. Since they got back to 
DC he hadn't stepped off the treadmill for long enough to 
exercise. Ironic really given the amount of time they'd spent 
on things like dining out with other people, a social ritual 
that they'd seldom had time for in the previous ten years. 

First day of the rest of your life, he noted, promising 
himself that it was true.

He made a quick trip to the vending machines, satisfying his 
urge to get something positive started by running up three 
flights of stairs before regretting the decision. Ten minutes 
later he was back at his desk. His left hand alternated 
between the coffee and the sandwiches while his right hand 
drove the mouse.

Fucking hell shit.

General Mark A. Suveg glared out at him. Pristinely pressed, 
two stars on his collar, a paragon of USMC authority. 
Myocardial infarction - no prior history. Dead within minutes 
of entering his office in a maximum security brig somewhere 
over on the dark side of Quantico.

Scully picked up her phone on the second ring. 

"Are you still out at the lab?" he demanded.

"Yes, need something?"

"Autopsy report on Mark Suveg, died November 2002."

"Suveg who ran that - place?"

"Can you get it?"

"I'll try."

-------

Takoma Park - Former office of the Lone Gunmen

Scully looked perplexed or possibly something worse. It was a 
familiar expression but in Mulder's opinion this time it was 
undeserved.

"It was a run-down area, now it's on the edge of prosperity," 
he insisted.

"Is that the name of a night club?"

"Ask any realtor."

The raised eyebrows were predictable. "Go ahead - show me what 
you've got."

"You don't want to look around the place first?"

"Move."

"The top floor has access to the roof garden."

"It's a roof."

"With an airy master bedroom."

"Corrugated iron plant room - probably with asbestos clad 
walls."

"With the penthouse apartment below it would be around 1600 
feet of usable living space, plus high level patio."

"The penthouse," she was trying not to sound amused.

He knew he had her now so he moved in for the kill. "Of course 
if your imagination isn't up to it."

"But why?"

Laziness? Familiarity? Inevitability? Irony? "Why not?"

She shook her head, admitting her amusement now. "Do you have 
any idea how much the re-modeling would cost?"

"Less than the Bureau will deposit in our accounts next week."

"On a leasehold? What about zoning? What about the owners?"

"It's already mixed use and I've got an option to buy."

She studied him, reading his mind. "Which you've already 
exercised?"

Swallowing hard, he confirmed her suspicions. "A couple of 
years ago. When I got fired. I wanted to get things in order." 
Not that it had worked. He'd placed the building in the hands 
of a fake holding company intending to keep it safe for the 
Gunmen by making sure they could never lose it in some legal 
or business fiasco. Instead, it had had the opposite effect. 
The conspiracy freaks had shown themselves to be model 
citizens by always paying the rent to the unknown landlord, 
without even attempting to track the real owner down to 
bargain with him, not so much as a letter pleading for more 
time. Selling equipment and furniture rather than becoming 
debtors. 

"And it won't bother you - that it was their place?"

"Will it bother you?"

"No, but - "

She stood above him on the staircase and he took the 
opportunity to enjoy the novelty of looking up at her. "I can 
see them anywhere. They come to me. I don't need to move in 
with them."

For an instant he thought she was going to run. She didn't. 
She just quietly lifted a hand to touch his cheek. "Know any 
good interior designers?"

Would now be a good moment to suggest that they order some 
furniture and move in downstairs while the builders worked on 
the upper floors? The kitchen was functional if a little 
small. The bathroom was Spartan. The bedrooms, if they just 
moved in new beds and extra drawers and found a bit more 
closet space. OK. Well. Perhaps not then.

"What would you do with the rest of the space?" she queried.

"What would you do?"

"I asked first."

"Right now - nothing. Most of the remaining gear's still 
useful. What isn't, we could discard or upgrade."

Her expression was softly bemused and reminded him of a green 
young agent told to report to a basement office.

Mulder scanned the room again. "Not exactly white picket 
fences?" 

"Oh, I don't know - you could build a very small one in the 
roof garden."

They ordered a pizza to celebrate and Mulder brought the only 
computer fit for duty back to life as a way to start testing 
out the connections.

He talked as he played. "How did Suveg die?"

"Heart failure. No prior history of treatment but the arteries 
were restricted, there was some valve damage, indications of 
high blood pressure, poor diet. He smoked, he drank, there was 
a family history - he had all the risk factors."

"Nothing to suggest that he was any different from most men of 
his age then?"

"Nothing to suggest anything other than natural causes."

"But then if someone blew out the pipes on Kersh's car without 
leaving any clues, who's to say they couldn't damage a valve 
in someone's chest?"

A brief, dismayed huff of amusement. "Mulder - why do you even 
bother to ask?"

--------

The boards at the end of the meeting room were telling a 
story, and the twenty or so agents trapped in the discussion 
were studiously trying to make sense of it.

"Our first incident." Mulder let the laser pointer dot fall on 
the image of the safe deposit box and hoped that none of the 
ex-SWAT team members in the audience took it as a signal to 
open fire.

"The first death. Mark Suveg. General in the Marine Corps, 
based at a special projects facility near Quantico." Fucker, 
he added to himself, just to placate the need for a modicum of 
honesty.

"Deputy Director Kersh." Unlucky to have his photo on the 
board.

"Dr Scanlon and his wife, also known as Reece, cancer 
researchers." Butchers.

"Eight people managing the trial of a modified crop at an USDA 
site in North Carolina." Who, what and where exactly?

"Ten staff and two patients at an abortion clinic." He was 
going to need a lot more data on those patients as well as the 
staff. Highams next job, maybe?

"The pattern is fairly clear. Eastern seaboard. Escalating - 
more deaths and more blatant. In the earlier deaths he's 
disguising the crime, now he's proud of it."

Baines raised the first question. "Suveg and Kersh - what 
makes you think they were murders?" 

Mulder waved Highams forward to describe the background to 
Kersh's car "accident."

As Highams spoke a soft buzz of surprise and discomfort 
rumbled around the table. The agents had always known the 
chase was being taken seriously by their bosses but probably 
hadn't realized that the danger was quite so close to home.

"This is strictly confidential. It goes no further than this 
room," added Mulder. The comment was pro-forma but a necessity 
- no blabbing in front of a camera. It would go further than 
the room of course. It would slide around the Bureau on gossip 
breaks and in sudden silences, but he didn't see that as such 
a bad thing.

"And General Suveg?" reminded Baines.

"A hunch. He matches the victim profile." Mulder paused, 
suddenly feeling awkward about what that said about Kersh. 
"Which Deputy Director Kersh did not - a fact that may suggest 
a weakness in our UNSUB's intelligence."

Baines nodded. "Good to hear he's got a weakness."

"Except that it leaves his choice of target wide open." 

---------

The pencil slammed into the ceiling and lodged there but freed 
two others in the process, a third and a fourth tumbled down 
as he ducked his head to avoid falling timber. Too much energy 
and too little concentration, always a dangerous mix and at 
this stage in the investigation, with everyone waiting for the 
magic words, a particularly toxic one.

A run, he decided, knowing that he needed to work out a few 
kinks before the psych screening they'd scheduled for this 
afternoon. Routine. Like the physical tomorrow and the 
weapons' recertification. Routine, just like the routine of 
keeping a set of jogging gear in the car and taking off for an 
hour to unblock his thought processes. Another good reason not 
to be based in the main offices - the more confusion about his 
whereabouts the less likely it was that he would get any 
stupid questions about his work habits, his theories about the 
case, or his mood. 

Pay too much attention to what other people had to say about 
what they needed, about what he should do, about how easy it 
was to get it wrong, and he'd never get out of the door. And 
that rule applied equally to dead critics as to live ones.

His feet slammed down a little too heavily as he tried to get 
his rhythm and headed out across the park. Best to take this 
carefully, or else he'd be paying for it tomorrow. And who 
could possibly say what else he'd need to do tomorrow? That 
was why habit was so important. If you had to think about 
exercise or cleaning your gun you might slip up, but habit 
could cover the gaps.

Habits? Reality had been restored with a whimper not a bang 
and could vanish just as quickly and as quietly.

Was that the message of this bomber? Taking out a man could be 
silent and invisible but taking out a project or an icon 
needed an audience and Mulder was here to provide it?

He slowed a little as the ground became rockier and the 
gradient started to shift, mindful that this was supposed to 
improve his resilience, not damage his ankle joints.

Revenge as a motive was traditional, and almost painfully 
trite. Terrorism gave it a political ring, made it sound more 
active; even dictionaries defined it in terms of its coercion 
characteristics. Coercion implied that a response could be 
made; coercion could be given into, or rejected. It could even 
be discussed around a negotiating table. Revenge couldn't. 
Revenge just kept going until it ran out of targets, by which 
time the parameters for what constituted a target would 
probably have changed, too.

Mulder understood both motivations and had no difficulty in 
seeing how they could coalesce to deliver both the criminal 
and the crime. Yet there was a line in the sand that was not 
to be crossed and the people who crossed it usually had a 
psychological profile that would place them firmly in the 
pages of the DSM IV.

He couldn't cross it - could he? More accurately perhaps, he 
wouldn't cross it - would he? What would it take? Not losing a 
job - been there, done that, didn't take an Uzi to the office 
the next day. Death of a loved one? Mom and Sam had gone 
within a week - different ways, but gone. Not even losing a 
child - been there twice. Though the first time it wasn't his 
kid and the second time... Aw fuck. Anyway - no one took a 
bullet through the head because of it. Shit.

He sped up a little, let his knees take the strain of memories 
too bitter to examine.

Yet what if evil was a disease and tragedy or loss made 
someone vulnerable to it? If the momentary urge to kill or to 
hurt was no longer stifled by who we are but only by the power 
of law and punishment? A dangerous adversary indeed, 
especially if he saw right as being on his side.

Believers were trouble. Full of dangerous rationales and drunk 
on faith.

Yet to have no faith at all though - not in man, not in God? 
Wouldn't that be a frightening and lonely world? No cosmic 
vengeance. No societal rules to moderate between man and man. 
Just punishment for deviation. And if you didn't fear the 
punishment? Murder would be just another act because nothing 
mattered. Yet if nothing mattered what force could drive 
revenge and what hope could be gained from coercion? Dust to 
dust. Nothing to nothingness.

Which gave him the most dangerous man of all. Faith betrayed, 
paradise lost. There was a reason why the worst things in the 
world were called soul destroying.

Mulder kept running, but there was no way to run away from 
this.


====  END 8

9
----------

Scully's presence in the basement office on his return was a 
pleasant surprise; the look in her eyes as she shifted her 
head from behind the computer screen was anything but.

"What?" he demanded. A combination of what-the-fuck, what's-
wrong and what-have-I-missed.

"Welland asked to see me."

So? 

"About you," she added.

He shrugged, even though he knew it would only get her 
angrier.

She frowned, as if he was supposed to have guessed the 
problem, then snapped, "Maybe you'd like to see the tape."

OK. Enough. What fucking "Tape?"

Her anger having peaked in an instant was already fading into 
something closer to distress and that made it a lot harder to 
look at her. She pulled her voice under control. "There's 
surveillance footage. In here and in Welland's office."

Was that why she was upset? It wasn't exactly a surprise. Were 
there other cameras? "What about at the hotel?"

She looked at him as if she had no idea what he was talking 
about, sadly shaking her head. "Let's go."

He didn't bother to ask where, just followed her obediently 
from the room, saying nothing until they arrived in Skinner's 
office. Skinner looked every bit as exasperated as she did. 
What the hell?

Scully hit the play button on the VCR. Welland's office. 
Mulder's arrival. Mulder staring vacantly around the room 
until finally locking onto something behind the desk.

"What do you want, Alex?"

A pause as the Mulder on the screen swallowed, a slightly 
dazed expression in his eyes followed by a sudden curiously 
irrelevant irritation in his voice. "A signed edition of the 
next Harry Potter?"

The door opened and Welland entered. Scully hit the stop 
button. 

Mulder had to fight the temptation to smile, knowing that it 
wasn't funny even if it was laughable. What did they want him 
to say - Mea culpa?

Scully had already moved the tape to the next prompt. The 
basement. He thought he could guess what was coming next. This 
was going to be good.

Screen Mulder was staring at the filing cabinets, focused 
intently on the letter A. 

"L - for low life."

"I'm all ears."

"How come you don't know? I thought that would be one of the 
advantages of being a non-corporeal entity."

"Whatever." 

Well that could have been worse. He'd certainly done worse 
when he was profiling. At least he hadn't become angry with 
the invisible man, started an argument, and lost.

Another few clicks of the remote and the basement office was 
looking simultaneously tidier and more cluttered than in the 
last shot. Which made some kind of sense. Whereas what was 
about to happen would not.

"That's good to hear."

"They get on better without me. Do you ever see the others? 
People like Diana?"

"Do you see them?"

"Do you see Krycek?"

"You're not my fucking shrink, answer the damned question!"

"I'm sorry."

"Sorry," he said again and this time his hand slammed into the 
desk and a look that was pure testosterone flashed through his 
eyes.

Mulder smiled for an instant, simultaneously embarrassed and 
amused to see this facet of his personality dragged out of its 
Neanderthal hiding place and into the daylight. What did they 
want him to say? "What did you tell Welland?"

Scully was not smiling. "That sometimes you need to say things 
out loud."

"Was he impressed?"

Skinner finally broke his vow of silence. "This is not a joke, 
Mulder."

"Like hell it isn't."

"So I can assume that you're happy to tell them all about it 
at your psych screening." Skinner checked his watch. "In half 
an hour?"

Fuck no. Why would he want to? "Have they been given a copy of 
the tape?"

Skinner was growling now. "Welland wants to know if you're 
going to do a Bill Patterson on him."

More like the Frank Black situation surely?

Skinner tried again. "Well?" 

"Have you already dialed 911?"

"Damn it, Mulder. This isn't a game."

And last time was? Mulder glanced over at Scully and the sight 
stopped the angry sniping words from tumbling out. Tears 
hovered in her eyes, danced on her lashes, the last remnants 
of her control were busy defying gravity. It had been their 
guilty secret and now it was out.

What the hell were they expecting from him? Whatever it was, 
it would have to wait. "I need to talk to a couple of people 
before I go to the psych screening." Mulder was out of the 
room before they thought of a reply.

The psych screening was a breeze. A pas de deux he'd danced a 
thousand times before without ever stepping out of line. They 
lacked the ammunition for a full frontal assault and the 
secret formula for an ambush. Krycek sniggered behind their 
backs. The voices in the wings whispered, but didn't 
interrupt, just bickered among themselves.

--------

He could have cut the silence with a knife if only he could 
have found one with a big enough blade. The hotel suite was 
insultingly clean, breathtakingly bland. No one lived here. An 
illusion of life.

He'd gone looking for Scully after his meeting with the 
shrinks, but hadn't been able to find her. Hadn't been able to 
find Skinner either - "Been called away." Sure.

Lacking both the instinct for jealousy and the energy for 
self-pity he fell back on the third option - curiosity. Where 
would they go? He knew what they would talk about when they 
got there - which might have been arrogance but just sounded 
like realism to Mulder. A bar? A meal? An evening of sad 
reflection in front of a piece of soulless modern art in 
Skinner's air-conditioned apartment?

If it wasn't for the gender thing, Mulder would have bet money 
on the last option. But fake propriety might easily have 
cheated common sense and comfort out of a victory. Luckily he 
didn't profile his friends.

Friends? Would they remember that and allow friendship to 
triumph over the urge to play keeper? He wondered about it, 
concluded it was out of his hands, and ordered Chinese 
takeout. Enough for two. After all, Scully had things on her 
mind, and some of this had been a long time coming. Whereas 
some of it was brand new. He didn't know which was going to be 
worse.

The only illumination in the room came from the TV and, when 
she let herself in, it was telling that she didn't switch on 
the lights. Whether that was out of a desire to hide or to 
allow him to hide, he wasn't sure. Still, it was indicative.

He offered her a safe opening. "Have you eaten?"

"Yes. You?"

"Yeah." OK, that was enough of the safety first crap. "We need 
to talk."

She nodded her head, her breathing heavy as she tried to make 
herself bigger and sit up straighter even as she huddled back 
into the cushions of the couch.

"What do you know about Charles's work?"

Her reply was more a gasp than a word.

"Locations, duties, who he was working with?"

Was he talking a foreign language? The mix of confusion and 
disbelief in her eyes grew. The silence stretched.

Oh. 

Was he supposed to ask her where she'd been? Or was she 
waiting to pick up where they left off at the office so she 
could explain again why delusional and FBI agent weren't 
supposed to appear in the same sentence?

"You've been talking to Skinner - is he still worried?"

"Jesus - Mulder! I'm the one who's worried. Don't you care?"

He cared that she was worried, of course he did. What was she 
worried about? Fuck it. It wasn't like he didn't know. "Are 
you worried because I can see ghosts or because other people 
think I can't?" An unfair question. Dana Scully had seen more 
than her fair share of ghosts. It was a question designed to 
provoke a response.

"You - talk - to - them."

An old joke spun into mind: When we talk to God it's called 
prayer, but when God talks back it's called psychosis. 
Apparently the reverse law held true when it came to 
communicating with the dead. Probably best if he didn't bounce 
that idea off Scully though. 

"You want me to stop talking to them at work?" Provocation 
again. She wanted him to stop seeing them, but even Scully's 
powers of denial wouldn't make her say that out loud. Or would 
they?

"You've got to let them go."

He liked the angle, allowed it to roll around in his brain 
looking for the sharp edges and the spaces where it would fit. 
The Gunmen - he could see that. Maybe even Krycek. But X? And, 
"What about your brother?"

Her chin was shaky with tension. Like mother, like daughter, 
he noted as she hid her eyes behind a veil of hair. "How can 
you even ask?"

The fact was, he was asking and that wasn't an answer. The 
cliff edge beckoned. Just one look. "He wanted to know why you 
chose to stay with the X-Files," just one more step, "with 
me."

"What did you tell him?"

"To ask you. He said he wished that he could."

Something broke then, snapped inside her. He could hear it in 
the whoosh of air that escaped from her throat and the gasps 
that followed.

Cliff edges were dangerous places, even for people who had no 
desire or need to look down. He moved slowly towards her, 
almost crawling along the couch. Her arms went up in an 
instant, fending him off, crossed in front of her like she was 
holding up a crucifix to warn off a vampire. Good little 
bloodsucker that he was, he backed away, allowing her her 
space, even as he resented every inch of it.

It seemed like hours but might only have been seconds. Her 
breathing steadied and she rose, headed directly to the 
bedroom and closed the door, throwing the latch as she did.

"My work here is done," he mumbled inaudibly to the ghost of 
himself. He shook his head, despising the lie.

Maybe another run?

---------------

Dave Baines couldn't quite believe what he'd found, nor could 
he really come to terms with Mulder's lack of surprise. Carl 
Weiss had been recruited by the Navy the instant he'd 
completed his doctorate in 1994. Officer training. Fast track 
through Lieutenant to Lieutenant Commander. No mention of any 
disciplinary action. No explanation for that uniform.

"He was in the SWCC." Baines responded to the question in 
Mulder's eyes. "They're the weapons and technical crew that 
back up the Navy SEALS."

Mulder nodded, experimenting with how the jigsaw puzzle piece 
might fit and then abandoning it in favor of storing the 
information away for later analysis. 

Baines looked frustrated. "He's been nowhere. No bases, no 
ships, no commendations - just a steady rise up the pay 
grades. Died in a single vehicle accident in November."

"And a photo of him in a Petty Officer's uniform which must 
have been taken somewhere."

"Norfolk - August 2002."

"Huh?"

"That one's wearing a watch. It's 7.30, it's evening. That 
crane was there for six months last year. So this shadow 
falling here means it's August."

Mulder lifted his head from the magnified image on the light 
table, looked out over the top of his glasses. "The other 
men?"

Baines pointed at the man wearing the conveniently oriented 
watch. "The real Alan Vernon. Who Agent Doggett did a search 
on about a year ago and who turned out to be two or three 
different people, or nobody at all, depending on the day you 
picked to look at. But on the day Doggett thought he met 'Alan 
Vernon' he was actually meeting Charles Scully. As far as I 
can tell, that was the only time Charles used that cover name. 
The rest of Lieutenant Commander Scully's record checks out. 
Seems like he was always the one and only Charles Scully - so 
I'm guessing he was using Captain Vernon's name unofficially. 
Whereas Lieutenant Commander Weiss was known to the man who 
used to run the on base transport as Petty Officer Gibbs, who 
turns out -"

"- to be two or three different people. Every one of them with 
enough medals to make an armored car. Now isn't that 
interesting?"

"I hate this shit." Baines stared at Mulder for a moment. "But 
you don't, do you? You're loving it. That's why they wanted 
you back."

Mulder shrugged. Sure, it made his head spin, but what was the 
point of a brain if you didn't take it out for a spin 
occasionally? "How did Charles Scully die?"

"Accident during training exercises, an explosive went off at 
the wrong time. Identified by two partial fingerprints and 
DNA. The coffin was sealed on-site and returned to his family 
in San Diego. Arrived back just in time for Christmas."

"Oh - hell."

"Yeah," confirmed Baines.

--------

Highams was talking with Scully and as Mulder approached the 
daggers came out, silence enveloping them both and infuriating 
him. "Do we have anything?" Mulder asked, as un-accusingly as 
he could.

"The abortion clinic was - " Highams stopped as if he'd 
already run out of words.

"The patients who died in the explosion had used the clinic on 
several occasions," stated Scully, flat as earth.

Mulder felt strangely reassured. "Were they being paid?" 

Highams looked momentarily angry or maybe just stunned. "I 
don't - I could get their bank records - it hadn't... "

Well no, it wouldn't occur to Highams. Why should it? Mulder 
wasn't even happy about it occurring to him.

"They were working girls, Mulder," complained Scully, as if it 
was somehow his fault or perhaps merely as if it was theirs.

Another link in the chain. "Can we find out how many of the 
clinic's other clients were repeat business?"

"That would be confidential. It's only because the women were 
dead that we were given the access to their records - the 
judge made it clear -"

"Then we'll need to ask the friends and colleagues of the 
women who died."

Scully nodded. Highams looked like he was going to throw up.

Mulder restated the order just in case Highams hadn't 
understood. "Gerry. Grab a couple of people you'll feel 
comfortable working with from the team. Get the local cops on 
your side - let them introduce you to the girls. Take a female 
agent with you - with some of the women it'll help, other 
times it just turns it into a catfight - you'll have to play 
it by ear."

If Scully had looked upset before, now she just looked 
thoroughly pissed off. Whatever. They'd worked together for 
ten years, flitted around one another so naturally they didn't 
even see the mechanism any more. But Highams needed a crash 
course now. Catfight had perhaps been less than tactful but no 
one had ever accused Fox Mulder of tact. Polite disinterest 
maybe. 

"Scully - got a minute?" 

It broke the spell, she looked up at him, disenchanted and 
disapproving. 

The choice of the basement office as a venue was an 
inevitability despite its clearance sale aura and its empty 
spaces. Mulder gave Scully the chair and opted to lean against 
the filing cabinets.

"You're not worried about the cameras," she said.

"Are you?"

Of course she was. She didn't trust him. Oh - she trusted him 
to watch her back, but she didn't trust him to be seen in 
public or on a security camera. Which was fair enough, because 
she didn't trust herself either. After all, one of them might 
get caught telling the truth and then where would they be?

Mulder gave up the idea that he was going to get a reply and 
moved on to the next question. "The women, the patients at the 
clinic - what do you think of them?"

If looks could kill, he had about fifteen seconds left. Which 
answered the question really. He nodded, letting her off the 
hook. It wasn't necessary for her to actually say it. After 
all, once they got home tonight she was going to have to talk.

He gave her due warning. "I think this case is getting too 
personal. I think you need to step away."

Her face was a mask of professional calm. "Why?"

"Your brother."

"I've lost family before."

"Not like this. He's part of the investigation."

"That's not a first, either."

"This is different. I can't prove it yet, but -"

"You can't protect me from the truth."

"But you can give yourself time to prepare for it."

"You're telling *me* that?"

"It's not about me."

---------

The icy atmosphere had nothing to do with air-conditioning. 
The hotel room had shifted from temporary home to neutral 
battlefield in a matter of a few days.

Today he'd offered her the chance to walk away and it crossed 
his mind that had she accepted his suggestion then he'd have 
had absolutely no idea what to do - he wanted her on this. Had 
he only found the courage to make the offer because of the 
absolute certainty that she would ignore it? What if she had 
called him on it?

He let the idea go. It just wasn't a possibility. Whatever 
else he might be, he was a good profiler. No, actually he was 
a fucking good profiler, too good at times. Which was why he 
steered clear of using it on friends. The trouble was that 
right now his best friend was also his best witness.

The previous night's attempted conversation had effectively 
served notice on Scully that her brother was not out of bounds 
either personally or professionally. She had responded 
impeccably.

Fury, sadness, then flight. She'd escaped into the bedroom 
knowing that he wouldn't attempt to follow. 

At some point during the night the tears had stopped and she'd 
written up a report on the ill-tempered portable PC that 
they'd grabbed from the Lone Gunmen's office. Fairly obvious 
why that one had been left behind when they'd been selling up 
valuables to pay their bills. If only he'd known how much 
trouble they were in. He sighed, pushing past the frustration 
that they hadn't been honest with him and that he hadn't been 
straightforward with them.

Past. It was past. This was now and while he'd already read 
Scully's strictly-the-facts report on what she knew of Charles 
Scully's working life, there was still the question of the 
follow-up interview. 

"There are some things I need to ask," he said, waving his 
hand across the pages she'd written to make it clear where 
they were starting from. "I know this is difficult. We can 
handle it however you like." He winced, hearing the consoling-
the-family tone he'd adopted and hoping that she wasn't going 
to draw a weapon.

Difficult? This was a fucking nightmare. He tried again. 
"Would you rather discuss this with Baines?"

She looked shocked. At being given the option? Or just at the 
fact that the option was Baines? Did she think that Skinner 
would have been a better choice? Well - she was wrong. If she 
wanted professional distance then that meant Baines. If she 
didn't - he waited for her to reply.

"Let's see how it goes."

He nodded, taking a deep breath and burying himself in the 
need to get it over with. "When did you last see him?"

"Christmas 2001 at mom's."

William in his crib. Mulder absent without explanation. "Did 
he talk about his work?"

She waved at the notes. "He was in military intelligence. He 
always said that just meant he was a glorified radio 
operator."

"Did you ever ask him about it?"

"Dad taught us better than that."

Mulder nodded, glad that he hadn't given the job to Baines, or 
Skinner for that matter. It wasn't often Scully permitted such 
revelations. "Did he talk about the places he'd been, the 
people he was working with?"

"The way anyone does with a family they only see once a year. 
The incidents, names, places were vague enough to be 
unrecognizable."

Unrecognizable - even if she could remember the details of 
their chat, and that was questionable given the time that had 
passed and the number of things that must have been on her 
mind when they met. Still, they should try to get everything, 
or at least as much as they could. Baines could go through the 
details with her tomorrow. "Can you remember what you told 
him?"

She shook her head and Mulder could feel the lie brewing, or 
at least the desire to hold back from the truth. Come and play 
on the tightrope, Scully. It had to be done. Mulder pounced. 
"Did you talk about the baby?"

The silence was all embracing and Mulder was glad of it. It 
wasn't the first time he'd asked a question and hadn't wanted 
to hear the answer, but it was one of those nadir moments when 
any answer he heard was bound to be wrong.

"He asked," she said finally. All fierce control and 
ferociously taut muscles. "I told him that you'd had to leave, 
that all of our lives would have been in danger if you 
hadn't."

Like they hadn't been anyway! It was a nice answer but it was 
not an answer to the question. "What did you tell him about 
William?" There, he'd said it. Said the W word out loud and 
without a safety net.

"That he was a miracle."

Hearing the softness of her voice he thought maybe she was 
going to faint, or perhaps that was wrong, maybe he was the 
one who'd suddenly run out of air. Professional. Do you want 
to rip the Band-Aid off now, or just tug at it for hours? "Did 
he ask what had happened that had placed you both in danger?"

"Dad taught us better than that."

Yeah.

He probably had.



========  END 9

10
----------

Baines and Skinner sat on one side of the table, Mulder and 
Scully sat on the other. A meeting of the high command. 

Mulder tried to look as if he belonged there, even though 
every fiber of his being was screaming at him that it was time 
to go it alone. It wasn't and he couldn't. He knew that. But 
old habits die hard and as frustration closed its icy fingers 
around his throat, he wanted nothing more than silence. His 
own and other people's.

A flash of memory brought him visions of "peace on earth" 
courtesy of a genie called Jenn and a badly chosen wish. He'd 
thought about it since, wondered if he would choose more 
wisely now. Probably not. Different day, different mistake.

Krycek was shaking his head. Sad, as if disappointed in 
Mulder's performance. No change there then. "They're waiting 
for you, Mulder"

Gee - you think? He'd felt the vibes, how could he avoid them? 
Actually he'd felt them every day since he was twelve so that 
wasn't exactly surprising. The ghosts shuffled in the wings, 
waiting for a miracle that had already been too long coming.

Even as they politely carried on the discussion without him he 
could feel the laser dots drilling into his head. The 
behavioral guys had at least been polite about it - Spooky was 
"out to lunch." Local law and the rest of the Bureau used to 
be less forgiving, demanding that he snap out of the trance 
and earn his fucking keep. He'd learned to keep the 
daydreaming private then, and now he was going to have to 
learn the trick again.

They danced around the issue of Carl Weiss and Charles Scully. 
How did they know one another? Were their deaths in some way 
linked? What about the other men in the photo? Then there was 
the other man who Baines had discovered dead - known to 
colleagues as Captain Alan Vernon, known to his family as Alan 
Clifford. Died in a helicopter crash flying out from the 
Quantico naval base, a month or so before Weiss's death, 
suspected pilot error and Vernon, of course, was the pilot and 
only passenger. 

And what about all those aliases anyway? And the other three 
men, who were they, were they alive, how many names did they 
have? Were they in line for officially sanctioned accidents 
too? Or were they potential targets of the bombers? Either way 
it looked like a safe bet that they were in danger.

The occasional stolen glances in his direction became more 
frequent, more demanding. In the end he gave way, even though 
the thoughts were as yet half-formed and utterly unproven. The 
kind of things that on a good day he would have shared with 
Scully and on a bad one he'd have kept strictly to himself.

"I think," he almost stopped thinking when he saw the 
expectation on the faces of the trio as they turned to face 
him. "Based on the service records Dave's put together for us 
- Charles Scully was exactly what he seemed - military 
intelligence sending strategic information back to policy 
makers and feeding tactical and target data to specialized 
forces. Covert ops teams like the one that Weiss and 
Vernon/Clifford belonged to. 

"I think he met the other men at Norfolk where they were 
working on weapon trials. I suspect that when Agent Scully and 
I left DC, Charles Scully went looking for her and tried to 
use the Alan Vernon cover name to unlock some doors. But 
somebody didn't want those doors opened."

Skinner tried to make sense of it. "What are you saying here? 
You think our UNSUB killed him?" 

Hardly!

Even having decided on candor he'd also decided on limits and 
this was one of them. Not a lie exactly. "No. I think our 
UNSUB may be acting partly from a desire to avenge their 
deaths."

Baines scratched his head, thoughtful but unconvinced. "We've 
got nothing linking them to the bombings except coincidence. 
Even Kersh and Suveg - purely circumstantial."

Mulder shrugged - coincidence was as good as anything. 
"There's also the matter of target selection, location, and 
expertise."

"Expertise?" questioned Baines sounding just slightly more 
optimistic.

Mulder glanced across at Scully who took over the reply. 
"Weiss's background in physics makes him the ideal candidate 
for transferring the technology of a resonance frequency based 
weapon from the lab into the field. And that seems to be the 
only way that the earlier attacks could have worked."

She produced the latest simulations from the FBI labs 
explaining the mix of technologies that, when brought together 
in perfect harmony, would give them the results they'd 
observed. Damage to a valve in a man's heart and no external 
bruising. The carefully timed dual catastrophe of brake 
failure and a locked on throttle in Kersh's car. The precision 
destruction of a safe deposit box or of a car complete with 
its passengers.

Mulder stopped her, needing to emphasize and refine a point 
before the shorthand took over. "The safe deposit box 
explosion happened after Vernon died but before any of the 
other deaths."

They looked at him, waiting for him to expand on the comment, 
but he didn't - Spooky was out to lunch again.

----------

Thinking time was in short supply and so was Mulder's 
patience.

When, where, who?

The unholy trinity spinning in front of his eyes and eating 
away at his nerves.

When was soon. Where was Eastern seaboard, probably close to 
DC, and it was going to be a statement. The who was not going 
to satisfy anyone and the chances were that even Baines wasn't 
going to get his man this time.

Baines was chasing the men in the photograph and now had a 
team to back him up. He was going to need it. For all the 
entreaties and pious words about inter-agency cooperation, the 
Bureau was not going to be welcomed by military intelligence, 
nor by the commanders of covert operations. They were covert 
for a reason.

Highams was busying himself by finding out more about the 
women who used the abortion clinic.

A couple of other agents were following up on the contents of 
the safe deposit box, the accountants who owned it, the staff 
who handled it and the clients who might have reason to worry 
about the loss of its contents.

Scully was working with Cooke and steadily refining a computer 
simulation that showed how the perfect act of destruction 
might be achieved - placing it within the limits of extreme 
possibility if not perhaps of plausibility or practicality.

Which left Mulder either redundant or with no alternative 
except to slide into the mountain of information they already 
had and come up with a solution before the next attack. 
Resigned to it and with enough coffee and sandwiches to see 
him through the next couple of hours, Welland's phone call 
demanding that Mulder report immediately to his office was 
perhaps inevitable.

Welland looked like he'd gone through angry and emerged on the 
other side, in some sense reconciled. He sat back in his 
chair, tapping his index finger lightly against the desk top. 

Mulder accepted the instruction to sit down and waited for the 
Deputy Director's next command. Calmer than he had any right 
to feel, there was no element of disguise required, he sat 
back and decided to enjoy the break.

"Are you up to the job?" Welland said at last.

"Do you have a better candidate?"

"I hate psychologists." Conversational and without malice.

"Do you think that's because you trained as one?" Mulder 
responded, maintaining the game and resisting the urge to 
smile.

"Do you talk to yourself a lot, Agent Mulder?"

Actually, he'd often had the impression that he was talking to 
himself even when he was in a room full of other people, 
though he doubted that was what Welland was getting at. "Do 
you think it's impacting my ability to work on the case, sir?"

Welland closed his eyes and Mulder wondered if it was the word 
"sir" that had caught him unawares. "Alvin Kersh was a friend 
of mine. I didn't believe him and he ended up dead. I need 
this bastard. I need the bombings to stop. I need a result. 
The Bureau needs it. The newspapers are waiting for another 
bomb. There are wolves at the gate, Agent - and they don't 
give a damn why it's happening. They just want to nail our 
asses for letting it, and the more names you add to this guy's 
resume, the worse it looks. Understood?"

Perfectly. 

Welland accepted the slight movement of Mulder's head as 
agreement and launched back into his speech. "I need to be 
able to get up in front of a press conference and tell them 
that we've nailed the bastard."

Mulder thought that was an unlikely scenario, made a 
counteroffer instead. "What if we can tell them the bastard's 
dead?"

"Then you make sure it's true."

----------

The pieces were falling into place but Mulder felt no pleasure 
in it. This was not a jigsaw puzzle gradually revealing its 
image. Rather it was a series of interlocking chains that were 
in danger of manacling him to the floor.

Things to do. So little time. He was glad of the help but some 
things couldn't be delegated 

It was going to be a hell of a story to sell Welland and 
Baines and the rest of them. Actually it was going to be a 
hell of a story to sell to Scully and Skinner, but at least he 
was used to seeing them going through the motions of disbelief 
even as they went along with his plans. Even so, the fewer 
holes there were in this spider's web of a theory the better.

A couple of phone calls to MIT that morning had helped settle 
his nerves. He was desperate to go up there and check things 
out personally, but having made the calls at least he could 
send up a couple of other agents with a clear conscience. He 
already knew for certain what they would find - and that Weiss 
had always been prime serial-killer raw material.

He asked Baines to dig up the equivalent information on Alan 
Vernon. Though having read the man's service history Mulder's 
gut feeling was that Vernon was simply a good naval officer 
who'd somehow been caught up in the mess.

A run then, a mind-emptying, body-punishing run. That was what 
he needed and that was what he was going to have. The running 
track beckoned and, by the time he got there, the weak links 
were already becoming less intimidating and easier to 
overcome.

A genius IQ hadn't protected Weiss from a father who hated 
weakness in any form, whose own fast rise through the Navy had 
given him status and a son who always stood at attention and 
called him "sir." Carl Weiss had learned early how to show 
conformity to the world, even if his next-door neighbor 
thought he was a little strange. Mom died when he was 
thirteen. His neighbor's cat died a week later.

MIT welcomed him as a prodigy. Dad died in a house fire when 
Weiss was nineteen. The boy who could never be enough could 
now be anything he wanted and chose to follow in his father's 
footsteps and join the military. To the relief of some of his 
lecturers. 

It had also been a relief to his old girlfriend, who recalled 
a doghouse that had been destroyed by an explosion. When she 
found him cowering in the debris, the dog had whimpered in her 
arms, yet she'd found his skin unbroken, his hair unscorched. 
When the vet examined him, he'd found him blind and deaf and 
with massive internal injuries from the pressure wave. The vet 
had insisted they do the only kind thing.

The run was working, flushing out some kind of poisonous 
indecision from his body and replacing it with something 
honest and real.

He knew what Highams was going to find at the abortion clinic, 
knew it with a certainty that he felt should sicken him but 
actually just made him feel in control. Working girls who 
could make a little extra cash by selling their unborns. The 
big issue was whether the genetic manipulation took place 
before or after fertilization. Before was Mulder's bet, 
otherwise why would they need to pay? 

There was also the problem of paternity. These were women who 
made a living from the Norfolk naval base. Had they even made 
money from one of the men in that photograph?

They had to find the link to that safe deposit box, too. It 
was too much of a coincidence both in methodology and in 
timing. In fact it was almost as if its destruction had 
triggered the majority of deaths. Did one of the dead men have 
some kind of evidence stored there, a de facto insurance 
policy which had been protecting him?

Anything they could pick up on the men in the photo would be 
useful, but for now it would be enough to know more about the 
other man who'd died. Was Vernon a doer like Weiss? A feeder 
of intelligence like Charles Scully? Had he been a target - 
the first victim of the bombers? Or had he been a victim of 
some older conspiracy and cover-up. Baines was the man for 
that job.

And what about Suveg - how exactly had he become a victim? 
What was his relationship to Weiss and the others? Someone was 
going to have to visit the brig. He shivered, his stride 
faltering for a moment before he brought his body back under 
control. God, he wanted the job, wanted it so badly he could 
taste it. Wanted to walk up to the front door in his best 
suit, wave his badge around and start demanding interviews.

The image was so dumb he almost laughed, but he refused to. 
Laughing would slow him down and this run was ironing out 
kinks, and he didn't fucking care if he paid for it tomorrow. 
He'd love for them to pay for it tomorrow. Which made him 
exactly the wrong man for the job. At least for the opening 
round.

Who then could he trust with the interviews if he couldn't 
trust himself? Scully? Skinner? Baines? Doggett?

Another piece of the puzzle slid into place. Hemming him in 
but simultaneously freeing him from a burden that he hadn't 
been ready to face. It was good, it was cleansing, it was like 
this run.

Squaring his shoulders as he straightened his thoughts, he 
took aim at the last dark shadow. Tomorrow he would be on the 
first flight to San Diego and Scully could come along with him 
or not.



====== END 10

11
----------


San Diego Airport

Scully had opted not to come, choosing instead to look 
irritated that he was going without her. 

John Doggett had agreed to meet him at San Diego airport and 
to fly back to DC from there. It really would give them extra 
time to talk, but Mulder admitted to himself that Doggett's 
awkward detour represented moral support rather than anything 
practical. 

"Agent Scully's brother?" Doggett had said on the phone the 
night before, not quite believing what he was hearing.

"You'll be able to recognize him by the steam coming out of 
his ears."

"You want me to sit in?"

"No - I've asked him to meet me at the airport off the flight. 
It should be all over by the time you land."

"Do I pick you up at the hospital?"

Mulder smiled at the recollection as he sipped his coffee in 
the airport's main lounge. The first sight of the man in 
question caused him to sober up fast. 

Bill Scully was in full uniform and was accompanied by two 
equally overdressed companions. All three just as tall and 
straight-backed and with expressions every bit as impersonal 
and hostile as the ones worn by Suveg's prison guards. The 
sudden flash to a deserted yard and a firing squad was 
unwelcome as well as inappropriate. The danger here was not 
physical. He swallowed - the threat hadn't actually been 
physical then either.

"Thank you for seeing me at such short notice. I appreciate 
you coming out to the airport." Mulder shifted his attention 
to Bill's companions. "I'm with the FBI, Special Agent Fox 
Mulder." The statement was a triumph of form over content but 
then Mrs Mulder had always claimed that good manners were 
never out of place. 

The formality seemed to have worked its magic. Bill looked a 
little uncertain about how to proceed, presumably whatever 
he'd prepared as an opening shot on the way over didn't seem 
quite so fitting now. Mulder moved in for the kill. "I suggest 
we take that table." He pointed towards the darkest, least 
inviting looking corner of the cafeteria that he could find. 
"Privacy," he added, to clarify that their conversation was to 
be for Bill's ears only. 

Why the hell had the man brought back-up? Mulder was starting 
to wish he had taken Doggett's offer of support more 
seriously. He bought himself a little more time to settle his 
nerves by offering to get the coffee. 

He hated this, hated having to do a threat assessment every 
time he walked into a room, hated having to profile every new 
face that looked his way. 

Fuck.

OK. Slow down. Stop. Think. Why do animals attack? The 
normally placid, the well-nourished, the carefully 
disciplined? Easy. Pain, anger, territoriality, but above all 
- fear. Hypersensitive as the adrenaline surged through his 
body forcing him onto high alert, empathy triumphed over 
uncertainty and Mulder suddenly knew it all. 

Bill had never killed anyone. Oh, he might have been a link in 
a chain of command but he'd never looked another man in the 
eye and still squeezed the trigger. If he'd ever had to defend 
himself hand-to-hand, even in a barroom brawl, it had probably 
been years ago. He'd never fought dirty, never felt the piano 
wire tighten round his throat, never had to rely on a woman to 
shoot him to stop him from getting it wrong. 

Bill probably didn't know why he'd needed his friends at his 
side but Mulder did. Bill was scared. Not in the places in his 
brain that Bill understood and could control, but in the dark 
places where the visceral ran the show. Bill was relying on 
them to stop him from losing his temper and pushing Mulder to 
the point where he might lose his.

Mulder smiled politely as he handed the coffees to Bill's 
colleagues and acknowledged their thanks. A single blink and a 
wave of the hand and Bill accepted the instruction and headed 
towards the table that Mulder had pointed out.

"I don't know where you get the nerve."

Easy, Bill - I've stared down psychos. "I meant what I said, 
I'm grateful to you for agreeing to see me. I think you can 
appreciate how important this is."

"Where is she?"

"Working. This interview isn't being recorded, it doesn't 
require two agents." Fuck you.

"Didn't take you long to run away again."

Game over. Good manners might cost nothing but enough was 
enough. "She's not here. So there's nothing you can do to me. 
Let's take the rest as read and get down to business." He 
paused for long enough to get Bill's attention but not for 
long enough that Bill could reply. "When did you last see your 
brother?" 

Bill was not pleased and Mulder didn't expect him to be. The 
agent's expression told him the rest of the story - suck it up 
and answer the fucking question. 

Bill, well-nourished and carefully disciplined, hesitated but 
took a deep breath and Mulder knew the battle was already 
over. He didn't push or prompt or look impatient as Bill 
fidgeted with the cup of coffee. He was finally rewarded with 
a reply. "Last summer. When Dana took off with you."

"Do you know the date?"

"August, I could maybe -" 

"Where?"

"First time was at the base, at Norfolk. Second time was in 
DC. We helped mom -"

Pack away Scully's things and then move house. OK. "What did 
you tell him about Dana?"

"That you'd left her pregnant, shown up again for a couple of 
months then hightailed it the moment the kid was born."

Well that wasn't actually about Scully, but it would do for a 
start. "What about the pregnancy? You said Tara knew that Dana 
couldn't conceive."

"Mom said she'd had treatment. Dana said it was a miracle." 
Bill swallowed, his lips tightening on the pain.

"This is important, Bill. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't. What 
exactly did you tell Charles? Did you mention Emily, did you 
talk about Dana thinking that she couldn't have a child? What 
did you say to him?"

Bill's eyes flitted around the room, looking for an escape 
route. Finding none, he turned his attention back to the cup 
of coffee. "She said someone did something to her when she was 
abducted - some secret project running out of control. Nothing 
was right after that. First with the girl. Then the boy."

Mulder frowned at the coffee in front of him, trying to 
visualize the scene as two men used to being in control, or at 
least acting that way, discussed how their sister had been 
tortured. A couple of whiskies under their belts and neither 
naval secrecy nor daddy's law would have stopped them.

Bill took advantage of Mulder's silence. "The baby - giving 
him away. She didn't tell you she was going to do it, did 
she?"

"I wasn't there."

"If you had of been?"

"I wouldn't," he paused, corrected himself, "couldn't have 
done it. And he'd probably be dead now and so would she." 
Mulder took a sip of coffee to clear the tightness in his 
throat and changed the subject. "Does the name Alvin Kersh 
mean anything to you?"

"Your boss?"

"Did you discuss him with your brother?"

"You know Dana. She doesn't say much. I got used to filling in 
the blanks. I asked her about you - why you ran out on her. 
Why the FBI didn't give a flying fuck when her baby got 
kidnapped by some goddamned UFO chasing cult. She blamed her 
bosses."

"You assumed that she meant Kersh?"

"She doesn't hate many people. But there was a look in her eye 
that last time I saw her, before -." Bill shook his head, 
recalling the bitter taste. "Not long before she disappeared. 
I went to see her, wanted to know why she hadn't talked to me 
and Tara." He raised his chin in challenge, as if he was ready 
for Mulder to take a shot.

Mulder slipped the meeting into the calendar he was building. 
He was probably in Suveg's jail at the time and appearing in 
what was supposed to be Kersh's court. OK. Kersh probably had 
borne the brunt of the hurt, the public face of something 
bigger and uglier. "The photograph - the one of your brother 
with some colleagues. When did you get that?"

"Christmas," Bill said instantly, frowning in surprise at the 
change of subject.

Just after they'd buried him then. "Do you know any of the 
other men?"

"No. He - it was taken at Norfolk. He shipped out in October. 
It was with the Christmas presents and cards that he left for 
us. I never got the chance to ask him."

That lack of recognition was strange in itself. The navy 
wasn't that big an organization, and there weren't that many 
senior officers. Still, Bill had been on the west coast for a 
while and Weiss was proving slippery even for Dave Baines. 
"Did he often send pictures of himself with other officers?"

"Never."

Good. Coincidences disturbed him. Knowing that this was a 
conscious act by Charles Scully was reassuring. One last 
question then. "Do you know General Suveg, Mark Suveg, Marine 
Corp?"

Bill shrugged. "I don't recognize the name."

Mulder started to close down the discussion. "Thanks for 
seeing me. I appreciate it. I wouldn't have done this if it 
hadn't been absolutely necessary."

Bill wasn't quite ready for the conversation to end. "What's 
this about? What are you up against?"

If this case had proved anything, it was that a little 
knowledge was a dangerous thing. He took a deep breath feeling 
the words go sour as they reached the tip of his tongue. Bill 
was better off not knowing. Fox Mulder - exposer of truth, 
revealer of lies - found himself dancing on the cliff edge of 
hypocrisy and took a step back. "I can't tell you that. Not 
yet."

Doggett was already talking with Bill's Navy friends when 
Mulder returned, Bill Scully trudging slowly behind him. 
"Agent Doggett."

Doggett was beaming, like this was the most comfortable seat 
in the house. "Mulder. You met these guys?" 

Mulder ignored the question that wasn't a question, decided 
that it was time to let Bill Scully off the hook. "This is 
Commander Scully. This is Agent Doggett, he worked with Dana." 

Bill stuck out his hand and Doggett cheerfully accepted it. 
"She told me about you. It's good to meet you." 

"She's a wonderful lady," responded Doggett.

Bill nodded, floundering for an instant before his eyes 
focused on the other men at the table. "We'd better be getting 
back. Agent Doggett. Agent Mulder."

"Thanks," Mulder added.

Bill Scully looked just a little unsteady as he walked away.

----------

The wait for the flight passed quickly, organizational trivia, 
logistics and miscellaneous status reports filling in the 
time.

If Doggett was at all upset by having at first been passed 
over for this case, and then suddenly getting dragged into it 
at a moment's notice then he wasn't going to admit it, 
especially not to Mulder. 

The flight home was half empty and Mulder smiled his way past 
the woman on the desk to get her blushing agreement to a 
couple of seats with no near neighbors. "Just the cabin staff 
during take-off and landing," she offered.

"Sounds perfect."

The arrangement was perfect and gave them the luxury not 
merely to stretch out but to use the seat between them as a 
table to keep photos, files and the laptop. But above all it 
gave them enough room to talk.

"You want me to interview the guards at the brig?"

"Whoever it takes. I need the relationship between Suveg and 
the men in that photo. Baines is down in Norfolk trying to get 
more from that direction, but I need someone on the Suveg 
angle."

"Why me?"

Because-you're-a-good-agent really wasn't going to cut it. And 
because-I-can't-face-them sounded feeble. "When I got back 
from talking to Bill you'd made yourself at home with his 
friends."

"Sure."

"They accepted you. That's what I need, someone who I can 
trust and who they'll accept as an equal."

Scully couldn't do it - for one thing there were times when 
gender really did matter. 

Reading his mind, Doggett prompted him. "What about Skinner?"

"He's still too angry with them, about how they treated me."

"Whereas I don't give a damn?" 

"Whereas you don't look at the uniforms and just see a 
uniform."

It seemed to placate Doggett a little, but it didn't seem to 
be enough. Mulder felt the words come tumbling out before he 
could stop them. This was stuff he hadn't said out loud, not 
to Scully, not to anyone. Confession was only good for other 
people's souls. But still, it needed to be said. He didn't 
need sympathy. But he did need Doggett to understand about the 
uniforms.

"When they captured me, that was the first thing they did. Got 
rid of my clothes. Up until then I was a man in a suit - a 
civilian, non-combatant. To do what they did, I had to be a 
job." And preferably not human either, but Mulder chose not to 
say that out loud.

"They put me in one of those orange jumpsuits, but it didn't 
work. I've been there before." A wry smile on his face as he 
wondered briefly how bad that sounded coming from a Fed. It 
was hard to put into words. They'd sensed that even the orange 
uniform wasn't enough. That he hadn't been scared enough, that 
he still had some kind of expectations about how he should be 
treated. 

"So then they took that away. Left me naked. There was nothing 
in the cell, no furniture, not even a towel or a blanket. Just 
me - naked on the floor. And then I knew I was just a job and 
so did they."

There was a moment's silence before Doggett breathed out in a 
heavy, disgusted wave. "Fuck. No wonder you don't want to go 
back there."

Mulder shook his head. This was important. The rules might 
change in an instant and he didn't want to catch Doggett 
unprepared. "No. It's not that. THEY won't accept ME. They'll 
either see a victim who somehow got his clothes back or if I 
turn on my usual charm school personality they'll see - "

"An arrogant Federal asshole with an attitude?"

"Thank you, John. I knew you'd understand." Soft, sardonic, a 
quiet smile playing on his lips.

"Yeah, Bill's friends understood as well."

Mulder tilted his head to demand clarification.

"They said Bill asked them to go there to stop him from 
hurting you."

"But?"

"Let's just say, they didn't think *you* were in much danger."

--------

Scully was waiting up for him when he got home. The worst 
thing about living together from Mulder's perspective was 
there was nowhere to hide. Not that Scully ever seemed to have 
that problem.

He caught the malice in his thoughts, winced at the idea of 
her getting caught in the backwash. 

"You shouldn't have waited up. Have you eaten?"

She nodded, leaving the business of conversation to him.

But it wasn't going to happen. Not tonight. He considered his 
options. He might not be able to escape from his conscience 
but he could get away from her. "I'm going for a run."

Her stare was open-mouthed and uncomprehending but he couldn't 
bring himself to care. She could come and sit out on the 
wobbly branch if she wanted to. He was just about ready to 
jump off.

Long distance commuting Federal Agent to jogger in sixty 
seconds and he was out the door and on his way.

It took him twenty minutes before he allowed himself to wonder 
where he was going. Hell, certainly - but what route was he 
planning on taking?

The Gunmen were waiting for him around the next corner. He 
shuddered to a halt, risking torn tendons and pulled muscles 
to avoid the collision that probably wouldn't have done nearly 
as much damage. 

"She deserves better," warned Frohike.

And this was a surprise? So what did he deserve? 

Frohike shook his head in despair and Byers stepped forward. 
"Bill's her brother. And Charles. This is hard for her."

And it wasn't hard for him? "It's not going to get any 
easier."

"So she's going to have to face it alone?"

"No. But she's going to have to face it."

A police car came around the corner and Mulder checked his 
watch. Two in the morning in a street deserted except for the 
occasional drunk sleeping it off in a doorway before returning 
to a cardboard home down one of the alleys somewhere. He 
willed the cops to ignore the idiot in running gear mouthing 
off to the invisible man.

Of course the car stopped. "Everything OK here?"

"Yeah. I'm just on my way home."

The Gunmen had vanished. It was a long journey back to the 
hotel. The Crown Victoria trailed him for the first mile of 
the trip. 

He showered quickly and crawled quietly into bed. Sensibly, 
Scully feigned sleep and Mulder was grateful.



===== END 11

12
----------


Breakfast was a sensible meal backed up by a logical and 
utterly impersonal discussion of Mulder's meeting with Bill 
Scully. Scarcely a raised eyebrow in reply and a look that 
said "don't ask stupid questions" when he asked her if she 
wanted to stay on the case.

Fine. If that was how she wanted to play it. He understood it. 
Of course he did. He would do exactly the same thing himself. 
Still, the fact remained - Scully wasn't him and she should 
know better than to play it his way. 

Act now - pay later, was a given. Mulder, already set on the 
road to damnation, decided that another sin wouldn't matter 
much.

Scully was ready to head out to the labs to carry on the work 
with Cooke and his team. "He's got enough to go on hasn't he?" 
questioned Mulder, sensing that this now constituted a 
diversionary tactic from Scully rather than a necessity. "Then 
let's say we trust him to do his job?" He almost laughed as he 
said it, remembering how often people had demanded that from 
him and how seldom he'd paid any attention.

She gave him a tight-lipped nod of agreement, and joined him 
for the trip back to FBI Headquarters instead.

The facts that his colleagues had gathered while he was away 
in California were predictable, but the shocked reactions of 
the agents involved reminded him that to anyone outside their 
little circle, this was weird shit indeed.

Highams brought back the expected news of experimental 
treatments and money changing hands and women with health 
problems who wanted to talk about it. Skinner had already 
arranged for warrants and medical assistance.

The USDA site had been wiped clean by a cloud of weed killer 
within 48 hours of the attack on its lab. The station was 
closing down, all remaining staff had been relocated, but 
oddly none of them could be reached by phone. Skinner had 
enlisted the help of the local Bureau offices to try to make 
personal contact.

Weiss had been the weird kid in class since he was old enough 
to freak out the teachers rather than just the other students. 
There was surprise when he chose to join the Navy, but none 
that he'd chosen to blow things up as a career.

The accounting firm still couldn't imagine why they'd been 
chosen as a target. As far as they were concerned the box was 
merely an offsite archive for computer backups and other 
things that the risk assessors said should be available in 
case fire or flood hit their offices. Nothing that couldn't be 
replaced. Indeed, they happily showed the agents the contents 
of the new safe deposit box. 

The agents were now talking to the individual employees who 
did the weekly archive trip to the bank vault to see if one of 
them knew anything more.

Baines had yet to report in detail on his manhunt but had left 
a message saying that he wanted to see Mulder.

That was OK. Mulder wanted to see Baines.

He remembered to wish Doggett luck with the interviews at the 
"high security" brig out at Quantico.

Baines had suggested that they meet in Richmond, Mulder didn't 
bother to ask for too many details about the naval officer who 
they were going to meet. It was enough that Baines had asked. 
Moreover the drive would take a couple of hours and that would 
give Mulder more than enough time to talk to Scully about the 
implications of that trip to San Diego, and of her brother's 
willingness to help. 

Her voice was calm, professional, distant. "You think somebody 
killed Charles and it's somehow linked to this case?"

Yes and yes. That was the easy bit of the equation. "He was in 
military intelligence. I think his job was to identify targets 
for people like Weiss to destroy. I think he's still doing his 
job."

"You think he's alive?"

Hell no. Where did she get that idea? "Of course not. I've 
seen him. He's dead."

Wow - that was nicely delivered! Maybe he could try it again 
with a little less compassion. Shit.

To his relief she looked out of the side window rather than at 
him. "Revenge from the grave, Mulder. That's a bit rich, even 
for your tastes."

"How many separate precision charges do the lab guys want to 
put on the Scanlon car?"

"Three hundred, maybe more."

"Plus a resonance weapon. Plus the rest of it."

"So the discussions with the FBI lab, the ATF, with Fowley's 
brother, the computer simulations - that was all a waste of 
time then? Casper the pissed off ghost steps in and blows 
things up however he chooses?"

"Of course not. Weiss, the angry kid who grew up to be a very 
angry man, got off his leash and started putting his genius IQ 
to work. Except now he doesn't have to bother with all the 
messy stuff like taking the car apart to do it - he just 
reaches in and places the charges wherever he wants them."

Her huff might have been mistaken for amusement except for the 
angry tightness of her jaw and the severity with which she 
forced her body to sit up straight. 

What did she want? Lies, platitudes, a pat on the head to 
welcome a job well done? Wrong guy, Agent Scully.

His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. It got like this 
when he was hunting. The closer he got to the prey, the 
stronger the scent of danger, the tighter his focus became. 
There were reasons why he'd doubted not only his ability but 
even his desire to have a real relationship with anyone, and 
this was one of them. But then Scully wasn't just anyone. He 
looked across at her, one predator measuring up another. 

Once the case was over, then they'd talk. Or not.

They were just about to pull into the parking lot where they'd 
agreed to meet Baines when she ended the silence. "And when do 
you propose to break this news to the rest of the team?"

Yeah. Good question. But not as good as the one that asked 
what the hell he proposed to do about it. A question that 
would give him no peace until it was answered.

Baines was ready and waiting, and looking like a man relieved 
that the manhunt had finally delivered a live one. 
"Unfortunately, he's unconscious."

Figured. 

They strolled as a group towards the hospital, and Baines 
started to give the essential list of ifs and buts. In 
particular, access to the medical records was not allowed 
under the terms of hospital policy. If they were very lucky 
maybe a family member would be willing to say something more. 
"Do you feel lucky, Dave?" because Mulder sure as hell didn't.

The coma had resulted from a fractured skull, caused by 
falling out of his hospital bed on trying to stand up. He'd 
fallen because the bones of his ankle couldn't carry his 
weight, as he recovered from the damage to his hip that had 
put him in the hospital in the first place. 

Osteoporosis? Brittle bones?

"Isn't he the wrong sex for that?" asked the marshal.

Scully shook her head. "It's more common in women but it still 
affects millions of men."

Mulder frowned. "But not this acutely or this suddenly, and 
not usually men aged 35 with no history of chronic illness or 
medication."

"There's a hereditary element to be considered, lifestyle 
factors, possible steroid use - a lot of things."

"But this acute? And in a job where exercise, diet and drug 
use are being routinely monitored?"

"I'll need to check the statistics with the specialists."

"But it's rare - right?"

"Very."

"And a hell of a coincidence?"

"Mulder."

--------

The TV hummed quietly in the corner of the hotel room. Mulder 
let his eyes drift over the images again. He knew who was 
playing, which was a good sign. But he had no idea what the 
score was, which seemed oddly appropriate given the problem he 
was facing.

The key to cracking the case would be to identify the next 
target and then to get there ahead of the bombers. Once he 
achieved that he could start trying to get them to stand down. 
It wasn't their war; it was the war of the people still alive. 
If he could just prove that to them. Make them see that the 
fight was in safe hands, safer because the intelligence 
reports would be right up to date.

Easy.

Except that identifying the next target had been the most 
intransigent problem right from the start. Furthermore the 
track record of the FBI and even of the X-Files agents 
themselves, on gathering indictable evidence against the bad 
guys and keeping up with the pace, was unimpressive. Charles 
Scully and Carl Weiss might not be easy men to convince.

Identifying the targets should be simpler now that he knew who 
was choosing them. But Mulder's image of Charles Scully 
remained hazy. He sighed as "man in uniform" replaced the man 
again. Still, the uniform was important. His fingers wandered 
across the photograph, as if this time the clues might be 
scribbled on there in Braille.

Krycek was trying not to look amused but just succeeded in 
looking patronizing instead.

Krycek knew all about crossing the line. In fact, Mulder 
wasn't sure if Krycek could even see the line. Yet Krycek, 
Mulder suspected, had always imagined himself to be acting for 
the greater good. A good that justified doing bad things to 
good people and in which bad people could be executed without 
a second thought. "You'd kill for me, wouldn't you, Alex?"

"Sure. I already have."

"You killed for them."

"I'd have killed for you. If you'd really understood what you 
were up against, you'd have appreciated me more."

Mulder almost admired it. It was a talent of sorts, this 
ability to kill to order without fear and even without hope. 
To kill by deliberate intent as a means to an end. Not just 
from the desperate necessity of a last resort. So close yet so 
far apart. 

Was it that way for Carl Weiss and Charles Scully, too? Did 
Charles still see the line, even though he'd stumbled across 
it? Had Charles been drawn by desperation to a darker place - 
Carl Weiss beckoning him on. 

And once the line was crossed, how to find a way back?

Scully's voice interrupted the chain of thoughts. "Mulder - 
come to bed."

He saw her silhouetted in the doorway, saw her slim body, 
imagined how easy it would be to snap the bones in those 
slender arms, realized how fragile a life could be, imagined 
her carrying a life inside, felt the pain of lost opportunity 
and stolen lives. His hand flew to his mouth to seal the 
thoughts inside. 

There were times when being a profiler sucked.

-------

Mulder had skipped out for most of the morning to get a guided 
tour of the Gunmen's old home complete with an introduction to 
the ductwork he'd never really noticed and the wiring cabinets 
he'd ignored. He even allowed them to offer comments on the 
computers he was planning to buy and the architect's plans for 
the upper floors. 

The mood was a little tense, the discussion a little clipped. 
He still felt guilty that he hadn't explained about the lease 
before he left. They felt embarrassed that they hadn't noticed 
that their landlord was not merely absent but non-existent. 
Not that it had mattered much in the long run.

He didn't feel bad about taking a timeout from the office and 
from other people. The other agents were doing what was 
needed. 

All he had to do on the case was think, and right now the 
tighter he focused, the harder it was to see the forest for 
the trees. A little freewheeling could only be a good thing. 
He stopped off at a coffee shop on the way back and started on 
what was going to be the key work of the day - reading the 
calendar and what's on sections of the newspapers, skimming 
through guidebooks and studying FBI security briefings. A 
single objective - a place or an event that might have just 
the right blend of the personal and the political to become a 
target.

The familiar buzz of exhilaration was getting steadily louder 
as he walked back into the FBI offices. It was a feeling that 
could easily be mistaken for confidence but was actually more 
to do with a certainty that the end was in sight and that it 
would soon be time to start sprinting. The mild euphoria 
wasn't going to last for long. He knew it would soon become 
too hot a mix, too over-spiced with danger and panic. 

Then there was today's other problem - he needed to talk to 
Scully, and she wasn't going to like what he had to say. 

The weirdest thing was, in the middle of a lot of weird 
things, that they'd effectively managed to avoid talking to 
one another since that showdown over video conversations with 
ghosts in Skinner's office. Even the trip to Richmond had been 
carefully impersonal, despite them having talked about both 
Bill and Charles on the journey down, and about the navy in 
general on the way back.

Professional distance was a wonderful thing and Mulder was 
horrified to realize that he'd distanced himself so 
effectively this time that he hadn't even really noticed that 
his partner's brother was the prime suspect in a series of 
multiple homicides. Which meant that, even if she was happy to 
carry on working, then Mulder shouldn't be happy to let her, 
and nor should Skinner. 

In fact, shouldn't Skinner be doing the "just protecting my 
agent and the Bureau's good name" speech right around now and 
telling her that she needed to sit this one out? Though of 
course there was the fact that Skinner probably didn't see 
Scully's dead brother as a realistic prime suspect - so maybe 
that kind of intervention was a little much to expect.

Skinner's phone call ordering Mulder to attend an urgent 
meeting was an unwelcome distraction. He wasn't ready for that 
conversation either.

He took a detour of sorts, walking up the stairs rather than 
taking the elevator just to give himself time to prepare. He 
thought back over the investigation, remembered yesterday's 
sarcastic instruction to her to let Cooke do his job. The 
reality was that Scully had, if not exactly chosen to sit this 
one out, at least chosen to stick to the minutiae and the 
strictly factual. 

Oh fuck. Had Skinner already had that conversation with her 
and given her exactly that advice? They'd spent enough time 
together while Mulder had been preoccupied with other things. 
Was that her deal with Skinner?

But then yesterday Mulder had called her back to his side and 
she'd come without a word of complaint. He flashed back to her 
discomfort as they met another face from Charles' photograph. 
It had been more than sympathy; more than just unhappiness at 
being called on to speculate. There had been horror there - 
the horror of seeing first hand the next link in the chain 
that was going to prove Mulder right and make Charles a 
killer.

Not one of his more impressive performances. Maybe he ought to 
just keep his mouth shut and let her handle it in her own way?

And perhaps they would do the same for him? Somehow it seemed 
unlikely.

Scully was waiting in Skinner's office, sitting next to the AD 
at the conference table, the contents of a couple of folders 
laid out in orderly lines on the desk. 

Pleasantries were quickly dispensed with. Mulder's 
disappearing act from the morning's team meeting, and indeed 
from the building, was glossed over with a reminder to switch 
on his cell phone.

When he finally got to the point, Skinner sounded almost 
casual. "You saw Alex Krycek last night?"

"Yes."

"He's helping you to prepare a case against the ghosts of 
Charles Scully and Carl Weiss?"

The brief flash of betrayal that he experienced was there and 
gone in an instant. Skinner must have asked Scully what she 
knew about Mulder's thinking and she'd replied honestly. No 
betrayal there. Poor timing though. And he really didn't like 
the way his boss had framed the question. "Actually we were 
discussing whether he'd mind going on a killing spree for me."

"If word of this gets out we could be right back to first 
base."

"What words are you thinking of?"

"Mulder - I know that there are a lot of things you've seen 
that other people..."

What? Like a giant bug that sucked the blood out of his 
employees? "You're ordering me to stop seeing them, sir? I 
don't think it works like that." 

"You can't go into a meeting with Welland and tell him the 
bomber's dead."

Why the hell not? What made Welland so fragile he had to be 
protected from the truth? Anybody would think he was asking 
Skinner to tell them that he'd seen an agent get abducted by a 
UFO. "What would you like me to tell him?"

"Mulder." Skinner's voice trailed off. "We know you; Welland 
and the rest of them don't."

Great. They knew him so they could make allowances for his odd 
ideas - fat lot of good that had ever done him. "Are we done?" 

Skinner snapped back, "Of course we're not!" But it was 
bluster, when it came right down to it Skinner had nothing 
more to say.

Mulder took it out of their hands. "The evidence on motive and 
MO is almost complete. I believe that the case against the 
suspects is already powerful; I think it will soon be 
overwhelming. The problem is how to stop them from doing it 
again. But it won't be the first time an X-Files perp didn't 
make it into court."

Silence from Skinner left an opening for Scully. She sounded 
exhausted. "Do you think we can stop them?" 

Yes? It occurred to him then that "we" might be the crucial 
word. Far from asking her to sit it out, he might soon be 
dragging her deeper into the mire. But he wasn't quite ready 
to go there yet, certainly not with Skinner around. "They're 
soldiers. It's just a matter of getting them to accept new 
orders."



========= END 12

13
----------


Scully willingly agreed to start picking up the loose ends of 
the investigations. On the sidelines perhaps, but never out of 
sight of the ball.

In terms of sheer numbers of offences and weight of evidence, 
the abortion clinic had the greatest potential but it also had 
the fewest surviving staff members. To make action worthwhile, 
it had to be against the witting, not the unwitting 
participants. That meant following the fetal tissue out of the 
clinic, finding out where it was going, and checking out any 
evidence still in the bodies of the other women who'd been 
patients there.

Even the concept reduced more than one battle-hardened FBI 
agent to angry disbelief. Scully would need to choose her team 
with care. Not everyone could fight dragons with a cool head.

The hours spent cross-referencing locations against the names 
of the people who headed up departments, managed research 
funding, and handed out contracts had produced masses of data. 
The lists were still growing, but so far they'd stubbornly 
refused to reveal the magic formula. Then there was the other 
stack of data, which catalogued the special and not so special 
events that each site had planned for the weeks ahead.

The bombers had been playing away, deliberately attracting 
attention to the projects they despised and to themselves. 
They now knew that they had an audience, so their own more 
personal pain could come back into play. Their next target 
would be close to home - he was sure about it. Home in this 
instance meaning military or close as. Not that that narrowed 
the field by much. 

He threw in another filter, mentally prioritizing what he was 
seeing to put extra weight on the Navy. He immediately backed 
off from that to wonder about the Marines and Air Force 
Special Ops and the support staff that serviced them. Then 
tried again, this time looking at all those other names 
residing in some office, somewhere, under the amorphous 
umbrella known as the DoD who might have control over special 
projects. Any way he looked at it, it was a lot of targets. 

It was Doggett's phone call that dragged Mulder away from his 
slow meander through the files.

The brig at Quantico and John Doggett beckoned, which meant 
another long car journey. Funny really, when they'd been on 
the run they'd routinely clocked up thousands of miles in a 
week. In his fantasy about coming back, he'd actually imagined 
getting out of the car.

The drive was fine. He needed the thinking time and right now 
that meant he needed to be alone, though he was grateful for 
the hands-free hook up for the cell phone that meant that his 
ear wasn't going to go numb while he gathered in the day's 
reports from Baines, Highams, and the others. 

The most tangible new information came from the agent who'd 
interviewed a secretary at the accounting firm. At the request 
of a friend, by the name of Charles Scully, she'd put an extra 
envelope in the safe deposit box for safekeeping. Just papers, 
a CD, and some photos, but nothing she'd really paid much 
attention to. When he'd died she'd wished she'd looked through 
the contents more closely, then maybe she could have kept one 
more photo of him for herself.

It was only to be expected. It was only what Mulder had 
assumed.

Less solid as a piece of courtroom fact, but just as 
convincing in its own circumstantial way - Baines had managed 
to home in on Captain Alan Clifford, also known as Vernon, the 
first man to die in the string of deaths. An exemplary life, a 
gentle child who'd grown to be a gentle man, with a solid 
intellect, a good marriage and a naval career that emphasized 
courage, compassion and leadership. 

It had taken Skinner calling in a few favors from his old 
military contacts to get Mulder the rest of the story. The AD 
had been cautious, mindful of prying ears and mobile phones. 
"Vernon wasn't happy about those trials down in Norfolk." 

Which to Mulder's mind could mean only one thing. "He was 
looking for answers?"

Skinner confirmed it. The rest could wait for a face-to-face 
discussion. Mulder knew enough to know that Charles Scully's 
brave but naive attempt to intervene and to find out more of 
his sister's story by visiting Doggett, and his choice of 
Vernon's name as a cover story and door-opener, had sealed the 
captain's fate. Someone had killed Vernon to stop him from 
looking further. The same someone or someones who had then 
gone on to kill Carl Weiss and Charles Scully to stop them 
from becoming whistle blowers.

It was only to be expected. It was only what Mulder had 
assumed. 

The only real decision for Mulder would have to be taken when 
he got to Quantico, and he'd have to take it on the fly. What 
was it to be? Arrogant Federal asshole with an attitude? 
Victim? He knew what role he wanted to play, but showing up on 
their doorstep with a Sig Sauer in each hand would leave him 
flat on his back in a pool of blood and, despite what some 
people claimed, he really didn't have a death wish.

The marine stood to attention as Mulder entered the meeting 
room, an act which seemed neither desirable nor appropriate. 
As it happened Mulder's body knew what to do - the commanding 
officer waved the soldier to stand easy. The man in uniform 
accepted Mulder's unspoken order in an instant.

Doggett watched the exchange without comment and then made the 
introductions. "Marine Sergeant Phil Wilde, Special Agent Fox 
Mulder."

"We've already met," noted Mulder, gratified by the twitch of 
the big marine's Adam's Apple.

Doggett nodded. "Phil knew Carl Weiss."

"I only lasted three months as a guard there," the man stated 
flatly. 

It was an apology and Mulder acknowledged it with a brief nod. 
Of course, three months had been long enough for the man to go 
through the motions as a member of a firing squad that only 
fired blanks. It suddenly occurred to Mulder that it might be 
nice to find out if they knew that they weren't using live 
ammo that day. Well, maybe nice wasn't quite the right word.

"After - " Phil paused, unwilling to meet Mulder's eyes. 
"After we left you in the yard, they said it was a training 
exercise. I wasn't sure if they meant for us or for you."

OK - so at least one member of the line-up didn't know they 
were using blanks. Nice. "Tell me about Carl Weiss."

The marine seemed pleased by the permission to change the 
subject. "I met him on a combined forces exercise a couple of 
years back. He was wild. We all were, but him? He'd been 
everywhere, done everything and the thing was, he was probably 
telling the truth. Except he kept saying how we were all 
getting replaced by new technology. A soldier you couldn't 
kill - reckoned he'd even met one."

"Did he say where?"

"On a ship. He'd been ordered to scuttle her. Vanilla job he 
said. Then he starts ranting." The marine shrugged.

"What did you think?"

"He'd been sniffing the smoke for too long." He paused, 
surveyed the room with nervous eyes before shivering the 
reaction down. "Then I met him again at the special brig."

"What made the brig special?"

The marine snorted, a single beat of dismay. "What? You 
thought that was standard military issue. Jesus. They had 
shrinks. Drugs. Machines. Weird shit. They had guards who 
should have been behind bars themselves."

"Was Carl a guard?"

"Hell no. They were working on him. Not for the first time 
according to the old-timers. Seems like every few months he'd 
flip out - they'd haul him in, patch him up and send him back 
out again."

"Can you remember exactly when he was there?"

"He arrived about the same time I did - about a month before 
you escaped. After you got out - all hell let loose. I think 
somebody went too far with Carl, lost his temper. Anyway they 
had to send him to the base hospital. He didn't come back 
while I was there."

"Where do you work now?"

The big marine laughed, embarrassed. "Quantico brig. The real 
one! I'm a desk jockey."

"Why are you talking to us?"

It took him a few seconds to reply. "There's a line you know? 
I think sometimes..." He shook his head.

"Will seeing us get you into trouble?"

"I'm already in trouble." He leaned back in his chair, lifting 
his leg so that Mulder could see that his foot was in a cast. 
"Osteoporosis. Sudden onset. Acute. And before you ask, all I 
was kicking when I did this was a football."

Shit. "Were you ever based at Norfolk?"

He shook his head. "Did some training there though. Last 
summer after they decided I was 'unsuited' to the special 
unit."

They talked details for another half an hour until Phil ran 
out of recollections. 

The only other man he recognized in Mulder's photograph was 
Captain Vernon, but he recognized him solely as the officer in 
charge of last summer's training exercises. If he remembered 
anything else he would get in touch. They thanked him for his 
help. It was more than Mulder could have hoped for and yet, 
exactly what he'd expected.

"None of that surprised you." Doggett's words weren't quite an 
accusation but nor were they a question.

"I was surprised he wanted to see me."

"Penance?"

"I think he wanted to tell me something about men in uniform."

"Are you OK?"

Mulder's voice was a grim echo of another time. "I'm squared 
away." 

"What next?"

"I try to talk a couple of dead Seals into retiring."

"I won't even ask you to repeat that. Do I ship out now?"

"Can you stay a few more days?"

Doggett nodded. The other interviews out at Quantico had 
offered him mostly scraps of data and hearsay testimony. There 
were rumors about screams overheard by a friend, or bloody 
towels seen by someone in the laundry. But what things he had 
heard seemed to corroborate Phil Wilde's comments. Suveg was a 
target for anyone who'd been imprisoned in his jail, and maybe 
for some who hadn't.

Mulder filled in the background for Doggett, suggesting that 
Scully get him up to speed on osteoporosis, and that maybe it 
would be good to know if any of the other men who'd been 
involved in the exercises with Phil had suffered in a similar 
way. A little more background on Suveg wouldn't go amiss 
either, particularly anything that might explain where he got 
his orders from, and who, apart from the guards, had been 
taking orders from him.

None of which was going to give Mulder the miracle he needed. 
The real problem was to get to Weiss's next target before 
Weiss set the next bomb. Still, it would keep Doggett around, 
and having allies could only be a good thing.

------------

The miracle, such as it was, came from an unexpected source. 
It was dark when Mulder got back to the hotel and the food he 
took back with him was almost too late to constitute anything 
more than emergency calories. 

He'd finished his meal and started on Scully's leftovers when 
the phone rang. Waving him back to his seat she went into the 
bedroom to pick it up. Mulder continued eating, a fork in one 
hand, and the TV remote in the other.

She reappeared after a couple of minutes, "It's for you." 

So who had it been for, for the first two minutes? That 
probably meant it was Skinner. Or maybe Doggett. He sighed, 
shoveling in a last forkful of rice and hitting the mute 
button on the TV before heading for the phone.

"Mulder."

"It's Bill. Bill Scully."

"Is something wrong?" he asked automatically, before realizing 
that given Scully had been the first to the phone it was a 
pretty dumb question. 

"It's about that photo. My brother and the other men. I showed 
it to a few people."

"OK." Mulder tried desperately not to hassle Bill. The man was 
getting there. It was just hard to be patient, even for a few 
seconds. And just please let it be one of the men they hadn't 
yet been able to get a real name on. Mulder finally gave in to 
temptation and tried making the question explicit, "They 
recognized someone?"

"A couple of people thought they recognized the Captain - Alan 
Vernon. But someone thought that was wrong."

Well they would. There was after all more than one Alan 
Vernon, and the man in that photograph had more than one name. 
"That's OK. Anyone else?"

"Colonel Blake Dunne - US Air Force."

Dressed as a naval commander? "You're sure?"

"I wasn't the one who spotted him. I don't know why he's 
wearing the uniform."

Of course, it made perfect sense in an ugly distorted kind of 
way. No wonder Baines hadn't been able to identify all the 
faces.

"Right. Thanks, Bill. That's going to save us a hell of a lot 
of time." And maybe even some lives, though Mulder refused to 
say anything that optimistic out loud. "Do you want to talk to 
Dana?"

"No, I've got to go."

He hung up before Mulder got the chance to beg.

When he looked up, Scully was frowning, tapping the toes of 
her left foot impatiently against the floor. "Colonel Blake 
Dunne," announced Mulder.

"Why didn't he tell me that?"

Aw fuck. This was a moment for a victory dance not another 
spat over nothing. Well nothing except Bill's apparent 
unwillingness to talk to her. Or maybe nothing except the way 
every new discovery simply tied Charles more closely to the 
crimes. "I guess because I was the one who asked about the 
photo?" It didn't even sound convincing to Mulder.

She turned on her heel and walked into the bedroom, slamming 
the door behind her. He couldn't help but mutter the 
supplementary answer - and because there are times when you're 
not that easy to talk to. Well, not tonight. Silent grief and 
discreet mourning were fine in the office, but they weren't at 
work now and she had nowhere to hide, and nobody to hide from 
except him. 

To Bill, Charles had been dead for six months. The sharp 
spikes of pain were gradually fading to allow pleasant 
memories to surface as well as bad, and clarity as well as 
perfection. To Bill, his sister's return had been unalloyed 
joy until suddenly it was nothing of the kind as wounds 
reopened in the agonized lines of his mother's face, allowing 
unresolved and undiscussed anger to rise from his gut.

To Scully, Charles had been dead for a couple of weeks and 
every photograph analyzed was another stab to the heart. No 
wonder Bill couldn't talk to her.

Mulder took a deep breath and wondered if he could.

He pushed the door open, stripped quickly down to boxers and 
slipped into the bed. Folding his hands behind his head he lay 
back to wait for her as she brushed her hair, moisturized her 
skin, and reorganized her clothes. "You can't keep running," 
he said at last.

"I beg your pardon? You're saying that to me?"

"I've gone along with it, let you do it your way."  

"You've *let* me." She refolded the already neatly folded 
pajamas and placed them back in the drawer, pulling out a 
different pair instead and unfolding them with a flick of 
movement so violent that the scent bottle and hairbrush 
resting on the countertop flew backwards and slammed against 
the mirror on the wall.

"Let you pretend that if we don't talk about it, it isn't 
real."

"What would you like to talk about?"

"Let's start with why you're angry with Bill."

"I'm not."

"Then tell me why you were upset that he chose to talk to me."

"He's my brother."

"And my witness."

"It's not that easy."

"Yes it is."

"It's my job. He won't accept it. And now, apparently, nor do 
you."

"This is not your job. This isn't just any case. Not for you. 
Not for him. You haven't had time to say goodbye to Charles, 
and now you don't know how. Bill hears it in your voice. He 
can't just start talking business."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"So tell me."

"How can you defend him? He's never respected me, my work, 
you."

"He hears you're hurting. He can't ignore it."

The words escaped her before she could stop them. "You do."  

"You don't want me to?" He rose from the bed and stood too 
close, towering over her, surrounding her, resting his hands 
lightly on her shoulders, inviting her in, daring her to run. 
"I can do that."

She'd been telling him for months to say goodbye to his 
ghosts. This time it was different. This time she was the one 
who had to say goodbye.

She froze in place and he stood quietly at her side, waiting 
for the iceberg to melt. The water pooled in her eyes and 
whatever was holding her rigid started to soften and fail. She 
slumped against him, her head under his chin, her arms wrapped 
around his back. He pulled her in close.

It was enough. There weren't any words for the way she was 
feeling, and he didn't even try.

When she was too tired to protest, he led her to the bed, 
sliding in beside her, staying in contact without pushing. He 
lay awake, waiting until fitful sleep, or at least her 
pretence of it, became convincing enough to satisfy his 
conscience, before deciding that it was time for him to go 
back to work. The idea that maybe she'd sleep better alone, 
without any danger of him asking another question, made it 
easier to slip away.

She was mumbling something into the pillow. He leaned in to 
listen but caught only the occasional groan and something that 
might have been "Charles". He pulled back to look at her 
again, and saw no pain in her expression. A dream, not a 
nightmare. That was as good as he could hope for. He closed 
the bedroom door carefully, determined not to wake her up.

The new portable PC was going to have to start earning its 
keep. And the sooner they moved into the Gunmen's old place 
and got some high-speed access back into their lives, the 
happier he would be. Hotel phones, library systems and 
Internet cafes just didn't cut it and he couldn't spend his 
whole life in the basement office.

Colonel Blake Dunne of the US Air Force was rather easier to 
keep track of than Carl Weiss and his alter egos. Dunne was 
alive and well and living in Maryland, and working for the 
USAF Medical Service. Mulder now knew from the photograph that 
Dunne had been involved in those weapons trials at Norfolk. A 
couple of hours searching, and Mulder found a paper from a 
conference on trauma rehabilitation in which Dunne cited work 
he'd performed under the auspices of a USMC Special Projects 
team led by General Mark Suveg.

The pieces were falling into place, and Mulder's only problem 
was how not to get trapped inside when the roof caved in.

That Dunne was *a* target seemed clear enough - assuming that 
he was not himself a victim, an issue that could be resolved 
very quickly tomorrow. That Dunne was *the* target was more 
questionable, though in the absence of an alternative, he 
would have to do for now.

Carl Weiss might have been a common or garden nut if it hadn't 
been for that huge IQ. That Weiss had managed to obey orders 
for so long suggested a level of control that far surpassed 
the run of the mill psycho. As a serial killer, that kind of 
discipline and intelligence would have made him almost 
impossible to track. 

For all Mulder knew, there might even be a few unsolved cases 
on the VICAP books that belonged to him. For all Mulder knew, 
Weiss might have been killing for years without anyone even 
declaring the deaths to be homicides. Yet, Mulder thought that 
was improbable. His instincts told him that Weiss's energy had 
been successfully diverted into his work. And though the 
casualty numbers at the crop trial and the abortion clinic 
demonstrated escalation and overkill - still, they had started 
out as business, not pleasure.

The targets chosen were all about business, about Weiss's 
professional persona, not his private one. Had someone trained 
him to obey orders? Had the programming finally failed?

The unacknowledged damage to fellow soldiers during the 
weapons trial must have disturbed him. The death of Alan 
Vernon, who'd supervised the weapons trial and who'd then 
tried to use the right channels, the correct naval chain of 
command and the proper authorities to blow the whistle, must 
have horrified him. The discovery that the papers in the safe 
deposit box, that he'd been ordered to destroy, had been 
placed there by Charles Scully, and therefore he himself had 
destroyed the best evidence of the wrong that had been done, 
must have angered him. 

Weiss was bright enough to put two and two together and to 
become a threat to his masters. They'd have killed Weiss as a 
liability without a second's thought.

Revenge from the grave was only a joke if it wasn't happening. 

After Weiss died he found that he could kill at will. But with 
a need for discipline and order, Charles Scully's arrival in 
the afterlife must have been a godsend. Advice on how to turn 
blind anger into a just cause war. Targets laid down by an 
expert and therefore clearly deserving their fate. 

He didn't even need to cover his tracks any more, though he'd 
done just that in the case of Suveg and Kersh - suggesting 
that caution was a habit back then. Perhaps at first he still 
recalled the idea of a criminal justice system and could still 
imagine capture and punishment? Whereas now - all bets were 
off.

Weiss was clearly getting harder to control. There were too 
many deaths and too wide a spread of victims at both the crop 
trial and the abortion clinic. Mulder wondered if one of those 
other regular patients at the clinic, who Highams had found, 
would recognize a photo of Weiss. Perhaps he'd been a client 
of one of the ladies. And of course he'd be ideal material for 
a breeding program.

So who would Charles Scully choose next? And what would 
satisfy the rising blood lust in Weiss?

Mulder read the tourist guides and the FBI security briefings 
and kept looking for the missing jigsaw puzzle piece that 
would reveal it all. It was a needle in a haystack, but he'd 
know it when he saw it. All he needed was just a little more 
light and a little more luck.

He finally fell asleep on the couch. His body giving up for 
the day even as his freewheeling brain raced off and got 
itself trapped in dreams of locked rooms, unseen dangers, and 
darkened buildings primed to explode.


=========  
END 13   

14
----------


It was the place where the best of the best met the worst of 
the worst, and something had to give.

Dunne was fit and well, and if that wasn't grounds for an 
immediate arrest warrant then Mulder wasn't sure what would 
be. 

Mulder paced Skinner's office, muttering dark and angry words 
about inter-agency cooperation and similar jokes.

Skinner put the phone down, tracking Mulder's movements for a 
moment before shaking his head and turning away. "They say the 
Air Force thanks us for the intelligence report but that they 
are perfectly capable of protecting one of their own men."

"Do I get to interview him?"

The question was rhetorical and when Mulder came to a halt it 
was with a heavy breath and a crushing pressure in his chest. 
"All we've done is make him hide."

"Apparently not - he's attending a major international 
conference in Maryland on battlefield medicine and will lead 
off the session on percussion injuries later today."

Shit. "When?"

"His session's at two."

Mulder glanced at his watch, unforgivably it told him that it 
was already almost nine. "They've got to shut down. Postpone. 
Whatever. It's too good an opportunity - there's no way the 
bombers can miss this."

"They're not going to like it."

"They'll like it less if they go ahead."

"We'll have a hell of a fight on our hands."

"Where's Welland? Are you coming?"

---------

Welland's Office

Deputy Director Welland looked ill. "You expect me to tell the 
Director, that we need to advise the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to 
close down an international conference, because one of my 
agents thinks a dead sailor's got a grudge?"

"If it'll mean you get off your ass and do something - you can 
skip the dead angle." Mulder ignored the pro-forma looks of 
indignation from his bosses; there was a time and place for 
politeness. "I've got to get to that conference. If nothing 
else, at least make sure I don't get nailed to the floor 
trying to get in."

Not bothering to wait for a response, not even a pro-forma 
one, Mulder was out of the door and on his way.

Scully would be almost out at the Quantico labs by now, so 
there was no point in looking for her. A fast detour via the 
bullpen led him to John Doggett's temporary desk. "Let's go." 

A quick glance up, a brief nod of the head, and an instant 
later Doggett was on his feet and ready to move, his suit 
jacket in his hand.

They headed directly to the parking area. "We'll take mine," 
Mulder said, jangling keys as he did. "It's parked by the 
elevator."  Mulder handed Doggett the keys, "Dark gray Taurus." 

Looking surprised but unperturbed, Doggett pushed the button 
to open the doors and saw the car's lights flash in welcome. 
Only once they were both inside the car and on the move did 
Doggett speak. "You OK?"

Mulder nodded, his foot pushing restlessly against the carpet 
in front of his chair hunting for a gas pedal that wasn't 
there. 

"Where to?" Doggett added, pointed and a little too loud, but 
not yet completely intolerant of the other man's failure to 
share any information.

"Head towards Annapolis." Sounding like a public service 
announcement, Mulder reeled off the address of the conference 
venue together with the name of the event, in case someone had 
been kind enough to post signs to the parking areas. "Just get 
me as close as you can," he added, using his own, FBI, 
strictly-the-facts-ma'am voice.

But even Doggett's tolerance had a threshold. He finally 
snapped, grinding out, "What the hell's this about?" 

Damned if I know, mused Mulder. And damned if he didn't. "The 
bombers' next target is US Air Force Colonel Blake Dunne."

"And you know this, how?

Because I'm fucking Spooky? Mulder shook his head, dismissing 
doubts and hesitation. "He's in that photo I showed you, with 
Charles Scully and Carl Weiss. Weiss will kill everyone in the 
hall just to get to Dunne."

"Weiss, who's dead?"

"Weiss, who's already a serial killer, and who may be about to 
escalate spectacularly."

"And Dunne is?"

"The so-called doctor who let those men get hurt at Norfolk - 
he may have even planned it."

Doggett tried to say more, but really there was no more to be 
said. "You're sure about this, Mulder?"

No?

Sure that Blake Dunne was a target - yes. Sure that today 
would be a good day for an attack - yes. Sure that anything 
they did could make a difference - Mulder shrugged.

Though the new threat hadn't yet been added to the list of 
risk factors, the security cordon around the conference was 
always going to be heavy. Mulder didn't care about the 
prospect of the Bureau's car being towed away, but he had no 
desire to get arrested before he even reached the foyer. 
Therefore he insisted that Doggett drop him off and then go 
and find a legitimate place to park. At least, that was the 
reason he gave Doggett for splitting up before they'd even 
reached the building.

As it happened, despite being on foot, Mulder was still more 
than thirty yards away from the doors when he got arrested.

"I need to talk to your head of security."

"Your invitation and identification, sir?"

"I'm a Federal agent. I've got reason to believe that a bomb 
has been placed in the building."

Mulder's comments, though spoken with a carefully precise 
formality, were a little too loud for the nerves of the 
guards and, as his hand rose to show them his FBI credentials, 
not only was it captured in an iron grip, so was his other 
arm. 

A uniformed arm pulled the badge from his fingers and quickly 
noted the salient points. "You realize this runs out at 
midnight tonight?"

Great. Just great. When was he actually going to be officially 
back on the payroll? "Talk to the Bureau. Assistant Director 
Skinner. Deputy Director Welland."

"You got a weapon?"

"I need to talk to your boss."

The uniform waved a down signal to the guards holding Mulder's 
arms. "Search him."

On his knees, hands behind his head. Ever get the feeling, 
you've been somewhere before? He didn't even move as they 
removed the gun from his hip holster. What was the point in 
flinching? He'd known what was coming. "I need to talk to 
whoever's running security."

An authoritative voice broke in and the group around Mulder 
parted to allow the new arrival through.  "You got him. Agent 
Mulder - please, you can stand now, come with me." The man 
with two bars on his jacket addressed the nervous looking 
spectators awaiting admission to the hall as well as his own 
men. "Just a security test. Nothing to be concerned about. 
Agent Mulder." He beckoned him forward.

Had Welland cleared a route into the building for one, or were 
reinforcements on their way? Either way he'd feel safer if he 
had his Sig with the magnetite tipped bullets in his hand. The 
Captain read his mind or at least the movement of his eyes. 
"No weapons in the conference hall."

Sure. That was probably why everybody except him was armed. 
Bowing to the inevitability, he followed the uniform into the 
building and hoped that Doggett would be arriving with the 
cavalry soon.

"We need to get the building cleared."

"I can't do that."

"There could be a bomb in here."

"There could be a bomb in anywhere. This building's been 
searched and secured - by men, by dogs, by machines. It's been 
locked down tight for over a week. I appreciate your concern 
but if we reacted to every maybe, we'd never leave the house."

"This isn't a maybe. Is Colonel Dunne here? If I could get him 
out of the building..." If he could get him out of the 
building, he could what? Take him to a deserted quarry 
somewhere and wait for Charles Scully to show up with Carl 
Weiss?

"Now that's where I can help. He's here and he wants to meet 
you," said Mr. Security, who still hadn't introduced himself. 
Not that it mattered.

He led Mulder into a comfortable, well-equipped meeting room 
at the back of the main hall, saluted smartly and made the 
introduction. "This is Colonel Dunne."

Mulder was not pleased to hear the door close as Mr. Security 
went back to his duties, leaving Mulder, Dunne, and two big 
guys dressed in blue to enjoy some private time. 

"Thank you for seeing me, Colonel. I'm with the FBI - Special 
Agent Fox Mulder." He stretched out his hand as if it should 
be deemed a perfectly normal courtesy rather than either a 
joke or a threat. He ignored the impatient twitch of the 
guards' trigger fingers as he did it. He accepted the 
Colonel's waved instruction to sit down.

Dunne's lips tightened. "You say someone's coming to kill me."

"Yes, sir. Which is why we need to evacuate this hall 
immediately."

"This would all be very interesting if I didn't know who you 
are."

What is that thing about dogs being able to smell it if you're 
scared? "I'm a Federal Agent sir, and I've got reason to 
believe that you and anyone near you is a target for a serial 
bomber."

"A serial bomber, hey? Funny thing is - a lot of people think 
that's you."

"But you don't - otherwise you wouldn't have invited me in for 
a chat."

"I'm perfectly safe here and you've been searched. Unless 
you're saying the search wasn't thorough enough?"

Oh - fuck. Scully? Skinner? Doggett? Baines? Welland? Anybody? 
A locked room with a bomb was bad enough. A locked room with a 
bomb, a psychopath and two goons was jumping straight past 
nightmare and into panic. "We're not safe here. And nor is 
anyone else in this building."

"Give it a rest. I know who you are and why you're here. What 
I don't understand is how the hell did *you* get out past 
Suveg's men at the brig?" He shook his head sadly. "They 
missed their chance. Too damned slow. I'd have volunteered to 
deliver the lethal injection myself, but I've never been good 
at standing in line. Do you have any idea how much damage 
you've done, snooping - then and now?"

"I'm a Federal Agent, sir. Investigating a series of bombings. 
I'm just doing my job."

"We're all just doing our jobs! But you people - you don't 
like to see what it really takes to keep this country safe."

Right now, just so long as it wasn't Colonel Dunne, he didn't 
much care. "We need to evacuate the building."

"Even if I wanted to, I couldn't. Ever heard of the chain of 
command?"

"Then tell whoever's in charge that you know this is not a 
hoax and get the place emptied."

The problem was taken out of Mulder's hands as the intercoms 
suddenly blasted to life, ordering everyone to vacate the 
building by the nearest exit. The air filled with the howl of 
alarms.

Mulder sat back in his chair, knowing that Welland had come 
through. With one less thing to worry about, he allowed 
himself to breathe for an instant. But only for an instant 
before Dunne screamed an order above the barrage of noise. 
"Bring him." The goons got the point instantly and Mulder 
tried not to blame it on the uniforms when his attempt to 
struggle, as they pulled him to his feet, was crushed in an 
instant with sharp blows to the kidneys that made him slump 
into their grips.

Deja vu was a bitch. Especially when it was happening for 
real.

--------

Apart from the interior finish, the van could have belonged to 
a US marshal. But whereas Dave Baines' vehicle had benches and 
a drinks cooler, this one had an easy to hose down flat metal 
floor and an extra ammo box.

Mulder tried to lift his head when he heard the now familiar 
voice of Charles Scully. Unfortunately, the boot resting on 
his neck made that impossible. The shackles already pinned him 
down in all the right places. The boot was intended to 
intimidate rather than restrain. Even so, the extra pressure 
guaranteed that face down on the floor of a van, as it rattled 
its way across the miles, was not a comfortable position for a 
chat. 

Was it kitted out like this to make it easier to clean out the 
blood? He'd dealt with the workplaces of psychos before. The 
irony was Dunne probably imagined he'd found a soulmate in 
Weiss, right until the day he discovered why serial killers 
seldom worked in pairs.

Mulder finally supplied a "Hi," to Charles Scully, only to 
have it met by more pressure on his neck and a "Shut the fuck 
up," from the guard.

"Don't worry," said the coolly certain voice of Charles Scully 
and Mulder almost laughed. "Do you know where he's taking 
you?" Charles added.

"Do you?" Mulder mumbled, far softer than the noise of the 
engine, provoking some suspicion but no reaction from his 
minder.

"We're heading east."

That settled it then. "He's going home - Quantico special 
projects brig."

Charles seemed to agree with that assessment. "We'll meet you 
there."

Great. A pair of bombers who had already killed a couple of 
dozen, and who had planned on killing hundreds more at that 
conference hall today, were going to provide a reception 
committee for Mulder and his psychopathic captors at an 
illicit military prison. 

He risked the disapproval of the boot resting on his neck by 
sighing, even though it really was just about par for the 
course.



========  
END 14 of 16

15
----------------

Mulder was less bothered than he felt any sane man ought to be 
about being told to,  "Get on your knees and shut the fuck 
up," while two men in uniforms played with their assault 
rifles a few yards away.

Medical reception was an interesting term for the room with 
its solid plastic beds and easy to clean white tile floors and 
walls. More morgue than hospital. Mulder got the feeling that 
the patients seldom objected. 

Of course what distinguished it from a morgue were the 
heavy-duty and varied mix of restraints in every possible 
configuration and the fact that the "nurses" station seemed to 
be located at communications central for Quantico's special 
brig. Cameras watched over every bed, the monitors flipping 
between the "hospital" and the cells, sweeping their way 
through the building a couple of times a minute. Though right 
now the most interesting view of all was of the main entrance.

Now would be a good time for the cavalry.

The plan, insofar as one had existed, had given Mulder the 
right result. Colonel Blake Dunne was no longer in a built-up 
area surrounded by hundreds of innocent bystanders. The 
question was whether catastrophe had been averted or merely 
postponed. 

Moreover the plan didn't really cover what to do next. Dunne 
had not been a mere timeserver and apologist as Mulder had 
hoped. Dunne was a believer, a man truly committed to his job 
and a man who should, according to Mulder, be committed to the 
nearest secure mental institution. What kind of nut job would 
kidnap a federal agent? A very confident one, with two armed 
thugs under his command and a prison hospital at his disposal, 
came the reply.

Charles Scully walked in, amusing Mulder by opening the locked
door rather than sailing straight through it. It didn't amuse 
the guards who hurried towards its swing with weapons at the 
ready and who, on finding nothing, turned to glare angrily at 
Mulder as if it had been his fault.

Charles sounded almost casual. "I spoke with Dana."

Mulder queried the remark with a tilt of the head.

"While she was asleep. She once said she'd dreamed about dad, 
just after he died. I thought maybe it was worth a try."

Mulder nodded, remembering her mumbled words and restless 
dreams. He tried to keep quiet, desperate to encourage the 
other man to keep talking, but preferably this time without 
provoking the guards.

"She said we've got to trust you." Charles shook his head. 
"It's easy to say."

"This isn't your fight; your fighting's done."

The broader of the two guards turned. "Can it! And keep your 
hands behind your head."

But he couldn't, Charles was drifting away from him and Mulder 
couldn't afford that. "Now the Bureau knows what's been going 
on, you've got to let them finish it."

The guard's hand swept up, catching Mulder just below the eye 
and almost knocking him sideways.

Charles stood and watched, horrified, a frozen witness to the 
scene. His reaction sounded somewhere between angry and sad. 
Betrayed perhaps? "You really think they can finish it? 
Against this?"

How the fuck should I know, was Mulder's first reaction, 
swiftly tamped down as he reminded himself that confidence was 
almost as effective in winning psychological battles as 
weaponry. "They know about it now. They won't let it continue. 
Whatever Colonel Mengele back there thinks." He glanced across 
at the door to the lab that Blake Dunne had vanished into.

"I told you to shut the fuck up," boomed out the guard.

The impact of the rifle butt on Mulder's stomach was enough to 
knock him onto his back. He moved his hands fast enough to 
break the fall. 

Charles Scully came to stand next to him. "You see how it is? 
They're not afraid of the FBI or anything else. I tried to 
stop them."

Mulder kept talking but tried to keep his voice low. "They're 
afraid of the evidence - you found something you could use 
against them, didn't you?"

"I got a list of the men who they'd used in their experiments. 
Photos of their so-called doctors. An accident report on that 
helicopter crash that Captain Vernon died in. Alan had been 
making waves. I had an extra incentive to start rooting around 
- Dana."

"You put them in the safe deposit box?"

"Yeah - I thought that was going to be my insurance policy." 
Charles laughed, bitter and tired.

"Did Weiss destroy them?"

Charles nodded. "Ironic isn't it? Of course he didn't know 
that was what he was doing. They always told him dick about 
what he was doing. When I explained about it, he got angry."

"And they killed him?"

"And then he got really angry!"

"But he needed you to do recon?"

It was all becoming too much for the guard; the boot that 
swung out hammered into Mulder's chest. "Do I have to gag 
you?" he added, just to emphasize the point.

Charles got down on his haunches, moving in close to Mulder. 
"We can't let this go on."

Mulder reached out, grabbing the blue-eyed man by his wrist, 
pulling him close enough that he could whisper, hoping that 
the guard would at least tolerate the groans of quiet dementia 
if not the noisier kind. "You're right - we can't let it go 
on. Weiss has lost it - you know that, right?"

To Mulder's relief Lieutenant Commander Scully's response was 
a battle weary shrug. Mulder pressed on. "What he did at the 
crop test ground -"

"That was an accident. We were just going for the director 
there. The others showed up and Carl couldn't stop it in 
time."

"It wasn't an accident. He could have stopped it; he didn't 
want to. He's enjoying it. What about the clinic - they 
weren't all bosses; they weren't all even employed there."

Charles hesitated for an instant before pulling out the answer 
from the pain in his head. "Good as - they were getting paid!"

"Where does it stop? How many would you have killed today? And 
how many of them would have known why?"

"But other people would know."

"Other people do know. You killed a sixteen-year-old kid at 
the crop test site. His first day on the job - how could he be 
guilty? And the people at the clinic. You're killing civilians 
and I'm having to chase you, instead of the fuckers who are 
causing the trouble."

"Dana says I've got to trust you."

"You do. It's our job. Where's Carl Weiss?"

"Waiting for final confirmation on the target and location."

"Then you'd better tell him to get down here." 

Charles Scully didn't bother to open the door on his way out.

An experimental toecap nudged at Mulder's aching ribs. "Get 
back in position."

He rolled up onto his knees, gasping he did. The guards 
decided to tie his hands behind his back and Mulder took his 
mind off it all by letting his eyes drift to the bank of 
monitors. This could take a while. He mentally catalogued the 
list of aches and pains as he waited. When Scully came for 
him, she would want to know. 

The plastic cuffs were already biting into his wrists. His 
hands were going to hurt like hell when the circulation came 
back. His eye was still watering from that backhand he'd 
received a few minutes ago, which probably meant that it would 
swell and close. 

The ache in his side might be just from the discomfort of 
being held in this awkward a position, or it might have been 
from those swiftly immobilizing kidney punches back at the 
conference centre. And it was better not to even think about 
the pain in his chest that was making it hard to breathe.

Anyway, the point was, if the cavalry came right now, then 
he'd be out of the hospital before nightfall. So now would be 
a good moment for them to arrive. 

Dunne came back into the room and regarded Mulder with a look 
that could have been a smile except for the raw contempt that 
shone from his eyes. Whether the sneer was purely for Mulder's 
benefit or aimed at the world in general, the agent couldn't 
be quite sure.

"Kidnapping a federal officer is a serious offence, Colonel 
Dunne."

Dunne laughed. "Kidnap? I'll get a medal for it. I wouldn't be 
surprised if you got one, too. Posthumously, of course. We're 
going to bag ourselves a bomber, Mr Mulder. You, 
unfortunately, will get caught in the crossfire."

Well, at least one of them had a plan. "Why have you brought 
me here?"

The smile left Dunne's face, leaving only the contempt behind. 
"We're waiting for your accomplices."

"I'm an FBI agent, Donne. We prefer the term *colleagues*."

The Colonel shook his head in disbelief and walked out of the 
room again.

Mulder kept his eyes on the monitors, only occasionally 
surveying the guards and the rest of the room just in case the 
situation changed and gave him something more positive to do. 
Despite his restraint, it only took a few minutes for the two 
guards to become twitchy and intolerant of having any kind of 
surveillance. Irritated, they ordered him to kneel in the 
corner and face the wall.

It was inevitable really. They couldn't bear to be looked at, 
and they couldn't stand to look at him anymore. Fine. He 
understood that, too.

At least in the exercise yard he'd been able to watch the 
faces of the firing squad as they lifted their rifles to their 
shoulders. 

His thoughts drifted back to an abandoned farm building and a 
man who'd led him away from a group of terrorists - a prelude 
to an assassination. He'd looked into his executioner's eyes 
just before being ordered to turn around and get down on his 
knees.

This time? They could get a Bureau sketch artist in here right 
now and the only thing Mulder would have been able to tell 
them about his captors was what color uniforms the men had 
worn. An unreliable witness at his own funeral. 

Not dead yet, he reminded himself.

When Charles Scully returned, it was with another officer at 
his side. Lieutenant Commander Carl Weiss was in the building 
and Mulder didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the thought 
that he'd asked for the cavalry and got the navy instead.

The men towered over him. Even if they'd chosen to politely 
squat down to his kneeling height they couldn't have done it. 
There just wasn't enough space in the corner. Well, not 
without leaving half their bodies inside the cell wall, an act 
that would have freaked him out even further.

As it was, they were standing awfully close and the height 
disparity was unnerving. Mulder resolved that he was going to 
either crane his neck back and look at their faces or keep his 
gaze down on the floor. Krycek, who was somewhere out of 
Mulder's line of sight, laughed, and Mulder could see the joke 
but couldn't summon up the energy to react.

"Agent Mulder."

Mulder was faced with a choice. Address the man or address the 
uniform? He'd have expected the man to win almost every time 
in that equation. But not right now. The man in front of him 
was a psychopath who was probably tightrope dancing on the 
borders of psychosis. Whereas the uniform belonged to a man 
who knew how to obey an order. 

A swirl of hysteria that could easily be mistaken for 
amusement sprung up inside him and pointed out that whilst 
forensic psychology might be relevant to people who were 
alive, applying the same rules to the dead might not be that 
rational or rewarding a process. Still - at least it was a 
place to start.

"Lieutenant Commander Weiss. Nice of you to come. I'm afraid I 
can't shake hands."

Weiss laughed. "Charlie boy here says I've got to let you do 
your job. But you're not exactly inspiring me with confidence 
so far."

Gee - why ever not! OK, he could see Carl's point, but it 
scarcely seemed fair. The only reason he was in this 
embarrassing position was because he'd had to get Colonel 
Dunne away from a few hundred innocent bystanders, preferably 
without putting any new innocents in danger. "I couldn't let 
you blow up the conference center. This was the quickest way 
to stop that happening."

"Yeah," agreed Weiss. Apparently approving the basic tactic, 
if not the lack of an escape route, communications, munitions, 
logistics support or any other kind of backup.

Think, Mulder reminded himself. Panic and indignation were not 
useful here. Something important was happening. Charles Scully 
was on Mulder's side and had been trying to win Weiss over. 
That mattered. Charles' silence now was not indifference; it 
was a warning that the rest of the argument would have to come 
from Mulder.

Weiss was listening, and that had to mean that the odds were 
already shifting in Mulder's favor. He looked up at Weiss, 
studied him carefully and saw a fresh glimmer of hope. Weiss 
was fading in and out, becoming almost transparent at times 
before clicking into place again and looking, for an instant, 
just as solid and real as Charles. 

The connection was obviously difficult for Weiss to maintain, 
but why was he maintaining it at all? The Gunmen, and even 
people like Krycek, obviously belonged to Mulder, as he 
belonged to them. Charles had connected across a bridge made 
by Scully. What was Weiss doing here?

Mulder saw the exhaustion in the man's features, the slump in 
his shoulders. Weiss wanted it to be over. He wanted to be 
remembered. He wanted to go out with a bang. 

He wanted to be on Mulder's conscience?

Sure. Mulder could give him that. "I wanted Suveg dead." He 
paused, waited for a blink of recognition from Carl before 
adding, "And I didn't much care about that so-called cancer 
doctor."

"And Colonel Dunne?"

A lie might be convenient, but the truth was a necessity. "I 
don't know enough about him. I need more evidence."

An almost solid Weiss replied. "Is that why you didn't kill 
him at the conference center?"

Ah, yes - that could easily have been Plan B. With Dunne dead, 
the navy men would have had no reason to attack the meeting. 
But then wouldn't the attack just have moved on to the next 
target? In any case, "Even if I'd shot him - it wouldn't have 
been over."

His words were met by silence. 

When Mulder turned his face upwards again, Weiss was looking 
straight ahead, focused intently on something immediately 
behind the agent's kneeling body. Mulder could guess who the 
"something" was. He leaned back as far as he could without 
toppling over. Sure enough, Alex Krycek was standing right 
there. Oh good.

"You've got to bear in mind, he's a Fed," Krycek noted. No 
sarcastic undertone or spiteful snap, a simple statement of 
fact. "He actually believes in the criminal justice system."

Thanks for the help, Alex. 

"On the side of the angels!" suggested Weiss, a low note of 
manic laughter in his voice. 

And Mulder prayed to anything that was out there and listening 
that the world-weary tiredness and the fierce control could 
keep Weiss's mania in check for a little while longer.

Weiss crouched suddenly to Mulder's height, an awkward move 
simplified as Weiss's legs vanished into the tiled floor. 
Mulder winced at an almost memory that he couldn't quite 
place. Carl smiled at Mulder, all teeth and eyes and dangerous 
intent. "You're not though - are you? I've seen your service 
record. You've got a lot of men's blood on your hands. How did 
you do that? You looked them in the eye and squeezed the 
trigger. I don't think I ever could. How did you live with 
yourself?"

"Conscience," murmured Mulder, not quite in reply.

Alex took over. "Righteous kills - every time. Now me, I used 
to think he was stupid - and just look where I am now!"

Weiss laughed, genuine and unguarded, sounding tired but not 
manic, and Mulder allowed himself to hope.

How many sociopaths does it take to fix a conscience? Mulder 
licked his lips and waited for the punchline.

It never arrived. Suddenly he was being dragged backwards by 
strong hands that didn't care that his skull was made of 
softer material than the floor that they bounced it on.



============
END 15 of 16

16
----------

"Your friends are here," announced the guard, holding the 
rifle about a foot away from Mulder's forehead. "One word and 
it's over," he added.

Mulder wondered if the magic word was "please" but decided not 
to push his already overstretched luck. 

A piece of surgical tape supplied an effective gag.

Colonel Dunne reappeared from a side room to give him a shot 
of something that made him feel a little hazy, and made his 
muscles dance and twitch. Obviously Dunne really did have a 
Plan B - just in case it was the FBI that came knocking on his 
door. Presumably they were going to move him again.

It was only when Mulder tried to shift onto his side to get a 
better view of the room, and found that he couldn't, that he 
realized that what had started out as something a little fuzzy 
had turned into near paralysis. He almost wished they had 
knocked him out. Especially when the alarm bells started 
ringing, paused for a few seconds to allow the phrase, "Bomb 
Alert - Evacuate," to blast through the speakers and then 
started up again.

Adding insult to the growing list of injuries was the fact 
that Mulder didn't know where Colonel Dunne had vanished to, 
except that he'd promised to get something special ready, and 
then they'd be on their way. But once the first set of drugs 
kicked in a little harder, Mulder no longer even cared what 
that might mean.

Vaguely, somewhere above the howl of the alarm and the low 
buzz of the drugs, he could hear Charles Scully's voice and 
took that as reassurance. Something about one last mission and 
not getting taken alive. Which sounded laughable coming from a 
dead man though Mulder was in no position to argue. 

In any case, he hoped the words were meant for somebody else, 
because the gag and the muscle relaxants were threatening to 
be a lethal combination as those bits of his body still 
capable of panic started to do just that.

At the moment of certain death Mulder had always promised 
himself the bright hope of perfect clarity. But actually the 
cacophony of noise and the lack of air meant that there was 
nothing clear about this. Which had to mean that he wasn't 
going to die. 

He managed to focus his eyes for long enough to see that the 
guards were still standing directly over him with their guns 
targeted on his chest.

From Mulder's angle, what happened next was confusing. The 
guards' fingers started to move against their rifle triggers 
but as the world slowed to give him a clearer view of the 
action he felt himself being volleyed out of the line of fire 
by a sudden rush of air.

A catapult launch and he was rising on a sudden tidal wave, 
tossed like a rag doll, spun out of control and then, just as 
suddenly, he was being pushed down, crushed under the waves of 
a hot deep sea, cart-wheeling and somersaulting along the 
seabed until he couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't 
even imagine moving, even if he could have made his muscles 
remember how. 

His mind accepted it then, knowing that his body had no 
choice, knowing that he had to just go along for the ride and 
hope to emerge somewhere on the other side, safe and sane.

The world shifted and spun around him, technicolor vision and 
surround sound and far too real to try to understand what it 
meant. He willed himself to close his eyes and to wait for it 
to stop, though in this bewildering slow motion yet far too 
fast world, stop seemed far too ambitious a dream. Subside 
perhaps?

Emerging finally and gasping for breath, blood and gore and 
bits of body rained down on him, and then the room went 
mercifully quiet except for something like the afterglow of 
that tidal wave that rumbled around his ears and made him feel 
seasick. A feeling close to relief before a screeching whistle 
cut in, blasting a gaping hole of sound through his brain. He 
almost passed out as it struck and was disappointed to find 
only seconds later that he couldn't even do that much to help 
himself.

More conscious than he wanted to be, and saner than he could 
have been, he knew too much. Carl Weiss and Charles Scully had 
chosen the ending. Mulder just didn't know what the ending was 
going to be.

A hot blast of air sent him into another roll, combining it 
this time with the sensation of flight. He kept his eyes shut 
and couldn't trust his ears to tell him anything, though his 
stomach squirmed under the fresh assault. 

Forced back into haunting slow motion it was not the scenes of 
his life that played out in front of his eyes. Sent on 
somebody else's haunted house ride, he found himself propelled 
forward to view their dark visions in dusty corners, to sigh 
over their images of love and death. 

A magic carpet trip now, gently buffeted by another delicate 
blast of perfectly measured pressure wave, he was flying 
through visions. Charles gave him a tiny redheaded Scully girl 
skipping along the street, arm-in-arm with big sister Melissa. 
Carl gave him a little boy who lit matches when he was afraid 
of the dark.

The grass, that he suddenly found his face buried in, was lush 
and green. Certainly it was altogether more attractive than 
the grimy Maryland sidewalk that morning, the easy clean metal 
of the Colonel's van, and the white tiles of the brig's 
hospital unit. Of all the places he'd been spread-eagled and 
unable to move today - this was the best.

The gale that had thrown him out here had subsided and that 
probably meant something big was going to happen, something 
that he was supposed to witness. Finding some little tension 
returning to his muscles he was able to roll enough to see 
that Scully was only a few dozen yards away and running 
towards him. 

The brig was stubbornly intact. Though apparently now with all 
its doors and windows firmly closed and all of its lights on.

Then it started.

He saw it first as a brief flash, then felt it as a rumble 
through the ground followed by a sudden rush of air as part of 
the cellblock disappeared. He experienced it as a cloud of 
debris rising into the sky and then falling down like hail. 

The dust settled unreasonably fast. Collapsing instantly to 
clear the view. Seconds later - another blast. The ground 
grumbled as roofs fell, walls tore and another section of 
building was transformed from a thing into a nothing.

Another flash and a shudder and a roll of thunder shook 
through the ground. Glass and concrete and metal flew high 
into the clouds only to tumble back to the earth just inches 
from where they'd begun their journey. 

Then another round and another and another until the only 
thing left standing was the room where he'd spent the last 
hour chatting with three ghosts, and trying to avoid the 
fists, boots, rifles and hypodermics of three men. 

Despite his injuries, the theater of the occasion wasn't lost 
on Mulder. 

The finale was delivered as a soliloquy. A fantasy of gold 
glitter igniting the sky followed by a cloud of red, white and 
blue and a sudden blizzard of flashing silver that seemed to 
go on forever before blinking out in a final sizzle and a 
burst of pure white light. 

When the sky switched back to daylight the only thing left was 
a neatly leveled plateau of golf ball sized rubble matching 
the floor plan of the old special brig.

Scully was asking him something, which struck him as taking 
denial to insane levels. He couldn't hear. He couldn't move. 
He was covered in minced body parts and he had a gag in his 
mouth. Sensing at least one of the issues she carefully 
removed the tape from his lips and he enjoyed the sudden rush 
of air. 

Scully kept on talking to him but he had no idea what she was 
saying. The tidal wave roar and mind-numbing whistle had been 
replaced by the buzzing of millions of bees. He'd been awfully 
close when those rifles exploded or whatever it was they'd 
done. At least his muscles were coming back into action. 

From the way she maintained the pressure of her hands, pushing 
down on his already near motionless body she seemed to be 
telling him to lie still and wait for the EMTs. 

Fuck that. Was it over? Was Dunne in the rubble? Had anyone 
else been trapped inside?

When were they going to get these cuffs off him? He was having 
enough trouble breathing without having his hands pinned 
behind his back.

Skinner tapped Scully on the shoulder and she bristled with 
anger for an instant before calming again just as quickly. 
They were both staring down at him now and she was asking him 
something. 

Mulder tilted his head, hoping that she'd realize that he 
couldn't hear her. She suddenly seemed to understand what he 
was trying to say. She abandoned her effort at questioning and 
explanation and launched into a very tentative medical exam. 
Which could have been unnerving but just seemed wonderfully 
Scullyish. 

Yet she looked so scared, so un-Scully. Was something missing? 
A limb maybe? He didn't think so - that wouldn't have fit his 
new profile on Carl Weiss at all. Though, given the fact that 
he could hardly move, it wasn't an easy theory to test.

Oh yeah, that was right, he couldn't move. Scully probably 
would find that a little worrying. No wonder she'd wanted to 
wait for the EMTs. "Drugged," he attempted, though it was 
probably inaudible. He managed to blink in the direction of 
his arm, repeating the gesture until she read his mind and 
made a stabbing motion to ask him if there had been an 
injection. He blinked again, hoping that meant he was off the 
hook and could now go to sleep in peace.

--------

It was only after a night's rest that the painful haze, the 
screeching whistles and the buzzing bees had faded enough for 
Mulder to want to keep his eyes open for more than a few 
seconds. Even lying down and not moving his head he felt 
breathtakingly dizzy. 

He'd seen Scully on one of his split second test looks so that 
was OK. He'd seen his hands a little later. He was fairly sure 
his feet were there, too - he'd kicked out at the bed sheet 
during the night and it had bounced satisfactorily.

But now, willpower rather than reason told him it was time to 
find out what had actually happened.

Scully was smiling even as she rolled her eyes. According to 
the first note she handed him, he was going to be fine. Dunne 
and the two guards who'd helped him capture Mulder were dead. 
Everybody else, including the FBI agents and the brig's 
prisoners, got out.

There was little point in asking her about the status of 
Charles Scully and Carl Weiss, so instead he pointed at his 
ears, relieved to find his arms at least back in working order 
albeit aching and not quite right. 

Two weeks she mouthed, adding a "more or less" gesture.

He stared down at his hand realizing that what he'd ignored as 
a trick of the light, really was a rather messy looking 
tableau of red, yellow, brown, black and blue mottling.

She grimaced in cheerful sympathy and said something he 
couldn't understand. The next note said - Bruised all over. 
Two cracked ribs. Some bleeding from the kidneys.

He wiggled his toes, just to confirm that she wasn't omitting 
anything important.

He tested out his voice but, unable to hear it, he wasn't 
surprised to see that she was having to concentrate awfully 
hard to follow his words. He simplified. "Drugged?" And made 
an injection gesture.

"Muscle relaxants," she scribbled, "like for surgery. You're 
OK, everyone is" - she added just to cover all the bases.

The bruising was presumably from the percussion of the 
explosions that had killed the guards, and so was the damage 
to his ears. A reminder from Weiss about his ability to be 
precise when he chose to be, and hopefully therefore, 
deliberately temporary in effect. 

The kidney damage and broken ribs on the other hand were 
probably just a symptom of the rough handling by Dunne's 
well-muscled goons.

Priorities covered, he switched to the main meal. "What 
happened?"

She smirked at someone on the other side of the half open door 
to the room and said something that might have been, "I told 
you so."

Mulder glared at her, but she was unabashed, made a "counting 
her winnings" gesture with her hands as Doggett walked into 
the room.

They swapped some words but Mulder couldn't tell what. "John's 
going home," said the note. Doggett wiggled his fingers in a 
goodbye gesture. Mulder offered a kind of wave in reply and a, 
"I'll phone you." 

Doggett seemed to get the message but responded with an 
invitation to "Call Gibson tonight." Mulder smiled, enjoying 
the ghost of an implication that the man now believed that 
such a thing was possible.

Which took him to the other question, the one for Scully. "You 
spoke with Charles?"

"Mulder," she replied. He could recognize that word without 
any cue cards.

She turned away and for one sickening moment he expected her 
to say that she thought she had, or something similarly 
unpalatable.

But when she turned back to him there were tears in her eyes 
and a sad smile on her lips. She nodded her head and Mulder 
decided to quit while he was ahead and to go back to sleep.

---------

Two Weeks Later

Mulder had already read the transcript of Deputy Director 
Welland's first press statement on the bomber and his final 
act of destruction. It had been issued 24 hours after the 
incident that had hospitalized the agent and reduced one of 
the most mysterious buildings on the Quantico complex to so 
much rubble.

Even Mulder found its cautious wording commendable. The men 
who'd died in the explosion were under investigation on 
numerous counts and were wanted for various crimes, including 
kidnap and assault on a Federal Agent. The FBI were not 
looking for any other people in connection with the bombings. 

The Bureau were however continuing with their investigations 
into illegal experimentation, improper use of government funds 
and other possible violations and felonies. The FBI wanted to 
thank the US Marshals Service and the Joint Chiefs of Staff 
for their cooperation.

A version of the truth certainly. Mulder had congratulated 
Scully on its wording. "I've had a lot of practice," she'd 
written in reply.

As they stood at the back of the follow-up press briefing two 
weeks after the event, Mulder was grateful for the ready-made 
alibi afforded him by temporary deafness, even though that was 
no longer the whole truth either. 

The screaming whitenoise buzz was less insistent now and 
though his hearing was not back to normal, it was actually 
possible. The bruising had faded enough that it no longer 
startled him when he looked in the mirror. 

No one from the Bureau would ask him to speak and the injury 
would mean that any over-aggressive reporter who decided to 
push Mulder too hard could be met with a shrug of the 
shoulders and a look of "not receiving you" incomprehension.

The only casualty, aside from the guilty three who'd died in 
the brig, was the FBI agent who'd shown up early at the 
conference hall screaming about bombs. The rumor, amongst the 
professional speculators who liked  to make two and two add up 
to a story, was that he'd deliberately allowed himself to be 
captured in order to draw the men away from the building. 
Welland was circumspect in his commentary. "I hope I'll never 
have to order an agent into that situation."

"You're saying he volunteered?" Which sounded almost as bad in 
terms of how it reflected on operating policy, suggesting that 
one man's luck or bravado, rather than sound management, might 
have won the day for the FBI.

"When a man with that kind of experience decides he has to act 
fast to save lives, then I respect his judgment."

Mulder smiled and decided to get out of the room before 
someone asked Welland exactly what kind of experience that 
might be.

------

Back at Takoma Park, in what had once been the Lone Gunmen's 
office, the smell of chili rising from the kitchen could have 
been painful, but was actually strangely reassuring. Frohike 
had promised Mulder that they wouldn't hover or spy. Mulder 
assured them that they remained high on his list of 
friendships and regrets.

The place still needed work, but in many ways it was already 
unnecessarily well equipped. Time-consuming, specialized and 
awkward tasks had been completed years ago by people who'd 
loved the challenge as much as needing the technology. Things 
like wiring and security, locks, alarms, sensors, hidden 
mounting brackets for cameras, radiation cladding, filtered 
and battery fed electrical outlets, additional phone lines, 
shielding for cables, and fiber-optic backbones were all in 
place and ready to use - should they need them. 

By comparison, there was something charmingly mundane about 
the business of building closets, laying carpets and fixing 
tiles.

Scully had teased him about his conversion to domesticity as 
he argued the case for wood versus ceramic on kitchen floors. 
But still, she'd been arguing as well. The workers they'd 
called in were people who'd been chosen at random based on 
having run ads in the local newspaper for more than five 
years. It proved nothing, but Langley had promised to keep an 
eye on them, particularly when they approached anything that 
involved cabling or locks.

They'd moved in here the day after he left the hospital. Much 
to Scully's dismay and Mulder's delight they quickly realized 
that the cable TV piracy kit and the satellite systems were 
still in place, even if not much else was.

"A bedroom, a kitchen and a bathroom," he'd said, and they 
already had all three.

Scully had accepted his words as she would a steamroller, but 
only once it was a fait accompli and he'd started to pack his 
own suitcase so that she knew for sure that the phrase 
"against medical advice" had fallen on intentionally deaf 
ears.

Baines and Doggett had returned to their real lives. Baines 
would soon be back though, no longer borrowed but bringing his 
own team with him to start up some manhunts courtesy of the 
FBI, USDA, DoD, FDA and the EPA.

The team who'd worked on the case even sent him a nicely 
framed picture to hang on the wall of his new home - the 
warrant that US Marshal David Baines had used at Quantico when 
he walked up to the front door of the special brig. A capture 
order for Fox William Mulder signed by the Attorney General, 
the Director of the FBI and now, by a representative of the 
Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

Of course, by the time they'd convinced the guards on the 
brig's front desk that a Fox Mulder might be in the building, 
despite him not being registered as staff, visitor or 
prisoner, and the guards had found an officer of sufficient 
rank to give the order to begin a search, the bombs had 
started to go off. Small ones at first, blasting fire doors 
and emergency access points open, to create plenty of escape 
routes from the cells. 

The guards had taken the decision to set the alarms ringing 
and evacuate. No choice. Scully had been dragged out of the 
building by Skinner. Doggett had stopped her when she started 
to run back inside. Mulder felt no shame in admitting that he 
was pleased by the conduct of all three.

Skinner's arrival for dinner was bang on time, which was only 
to be expected, but still made Mulder smile.

Mulder looked from Skinner to Scully, enjoying the moment. 
Skinner dug into the chili pot on the temporary dining table, 
spooning out generously sized portions onto the waiting 
plates. Scully was handling the rest of the meal. Mulder had 
been excused from such hazardous duty on the grounds of some 
residual clumsiness that had followed the damage to his ears. 

When the food was safely on the table in front of them, he 
raised the glass of beer as a toast and ignored Scully's 
worried doctor look, which he was confident was just for show. 
"Absent friends?"

The other two nodded and Mulder wished he could give them just 
some fraction of the comfort he felt from being with them.

But Skinner couldn't quite kick the AD demeanor or his sense 
of obligation. He'd kept it on ice for weeks. Holding his 
tongue while Mulder was hospitalized. Remaining silent when 
meeting Mulder at the Hoover Building - perhaps out of respect 
for Mulder's recovering injuries or maybe just too aware of 
the close proximity of other agents and the need to talk 
loudly to get past the hearing difficulties. The strain was 
obvious; it was tugging at his lips even as he tried to make 
polite conversation about the food and the decorating plans 
with an equally tense looking Dana Scully.

Mulder gave him approval to let rip with whatever he was 
keeping bottled up inside by offering a, "What's up?"

Skinner and Scully's snaps to attention were almost 
synchronized, though the AD being bigger took a little longer 
to freeze into a fiercely upright position. "You're seriously 
asking that? You've got no idea how much flak's coming your 
way, do you? How much crap hit the fan over your latest 
escapade. Welland and the rest of them are pissed as hell."

Mulder shook his head. "No they're not. They couldn't care 
less. You care." The tone demanded a denial but Mulder was 
pretty confident that it wouldn't get one.

"You could have been killed. Could you wait for permission and 
an order to evacuate the place? Of course not - you cut and 
run and leave it up to me to fix it. Could you wait for 
backup? No. Even though John Doggett was only a couple of 
minutes behind you - tops. You were in the same car for 
Christ's sake!"

It was actually a relief to hear the anger. It rose above the 
low buzz and reminded him that he was alive. "I left you with 
Welland because I knew you could fix it."

"And you left Doggett because?"

"Somebody was needed to evacuate the building."

"Thank you. You've told me everything I needed to hear. You 
knew what was going to happen and you did it anyway."

"I knew as much as you did. So I knew where I had to be, just 
as you knew where you had to be."

Walter Skinner turned his head away, temporarily too angry to 
continue this in civilized, impersonal words, and too 
controlled to allow it to spill over into anything else.

"And was I where I had to be?" pushed Scully, taking over the 
attack.

"Of course you were. You were out at the labs. Which meant 
that you were the first person to get to the brig."

"I was already on my way back to Maryland, to the conference 
center. I had to turn round again." She exchanged a fast look 
with Skinner. "He called me."

"And he told you that the conference building had been emptied 
but that I was missing?" He waited for her to confirm the 
detail with a slight nod. "But HE didn't know where Dunne was 
taking me. You - told - him!" It had taken him hours of 
tangential chat to discover that little nugget. "How did you 
know that? Was it Charles - did he tell you?"

She shook her head, though not in rejection of the idea. "I 
don't... I just knew. I thought maybe it was you who told me."

Mulder sat back, considering it. It was possible; they had 
just known things before, with or without any admission of 
telepathic connection. Either way, it was pretty damn good. 
Either way, it proved his point. "Then everyone was where they 
had to be. Just like now." The Gunmen nodded and drifted back 
into the kitchen. The watchers who waited on the fringes of 
his vision stilled for a moment as if in acknowledgment.

It amused him to think of it in such fatalistic terms. Yet 
fate and luck seemed to have played such a big part in their 
lives. It had had to, to keep them alive. He listened to the 
ghosts of his conscience, chattering again in the wings, and 
asked them to give him time. They'd already achieved so much, 
just to be here together. Yet there was so much more to do. It 
might never be over. There might be no Holy Grail, only a 
journey.

When he looked up, Skinner had his glass raised. "To the 
people who are here, and the ones who aren't."

Scully's voice was little above a whisper, yet Mulder heard 
her perfectly. "May they all be where they have to be."




THE END

I Made This!