Author: Agent L
lhoward388@aol.com

Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2001 23:11:47 EDT
Classification: Dark Angel/X-Files crossover, 2nd generation MT
Rating: PG-13, for some language
Spoilers: For Dark Angel, no specific episode. Just a general
knowledge of the show's mytharc, its characters, and settings.
For X-Files: Erlenmeyer Flask, Tunguska/Terma,
Patient X, The Red and the Black, The End, Fight the Future,
The Beginning, Biogenesis, 6th Extinction, Amor Fati, Requiem,
Per Manum, Essence, Existence; numerous minor references and in-jokes
Distribution: Anywhere, as long as my name is attached.
Disclaimer: To all those involved in the writing, acting, and production
of Dark Angel and X-Files: No infringement is intended and no money
has been exchanged. This is purely for my own amusement.
Summary: William Mulder goes to Seattle looking for some answers
and finds more than he bargained for.
Author's Notes: Please note: This story is about Will, not his parents.
They do not appear except for a brief phone call and a flashback,
but they're mentioned frequently!
Thanks to Marlen for her own DA fics, which inspired me to write
this, and for helping me to keep it real with Max and her world.
Any technical errors and/or typos are solely my own.
Feedback: Better than chocolate! (well, almost) LHoward388@aol.com

"O brave new world, that has such people in 't!"
--The Tempest
 

William Mulder had wandered into the wrong sector of post-pulse
Seattle -- not that he'd seen many "right" sectors since he'd left the bus
station two hours ago after waiting for his Uncle Melvin to come pick him
up. Exhausted and hungry, he had decided to use the last of his cash to
find a room for the night, and a friendly newspaper vendor had assured
him there was a cheap, decent motel just down the street.

A Roach Motel, maybe. Will was considering whether to backtrack or
forge ahead when he heard the slight scratching noise of something much
larger than a roach and far more dangerous.

He had learned to travel light over the course of his eighteen years, and
in a city where more people lived in cars than apartments, a kid with
worn jeans and a faded backpack was literally one in a million. But
anyone standing in a deserted alley after midnight in this particular
neighborhood would be an easy target.

He watched as the shadows behind him shifted subtly and detached
themselves from the gloom, accompanied by a furtive movement in
the darkness a few yards ahead.

Two behind, one ahead.

Will felt the sweat break out on his forehead and dampness on his palms.
He wasn't afraid to fight, but he knew he was no match for three men --
if not more -- even if he was in top condition, which he wasn't. He hadn't
eaten since yesterday and hadn't slept for the past two days. The bus
had been overcrowded and the driver apparently missed his old stock
car days, speeding through traffic, clipping cars and nearly running off
the road. Many of the passengers had gotten carsick and a baby had
wailed relentlessly, setting Will's hyperactive senses on overdrive. His
"Spidey-sense" as his friends had jokingly referred to it, was a blessing
and a curse. All five of his senses were extraordinarily heightened,
which was great for seeing in the dark and enjoying his favorite foods,
but made Fourth of July excruciating and a trip on a crowded, noisy,
smelly bus a nightmare.

A fourth figure moved toward him from his right side. He should have
been flattered, he supposed, that they thought it would take four of them
to subdue him, when a hard shove would probably put him flat on his
back right now. And what would they do when they discovered he
only had $100 cash?

"Hey."

The voice came from behind him. He tried not to shiver as the hairs
rose on the back of his neck. Adrenalin pumped through his weary
limbs and his senses tingled. He could smell the sweat from his own
body, the mingled smell of old food and urine from the garbage bin
nearby, the faint musky cologne of one of the strangers now closing in
on him. He could see a scar on one of the faces, a jagged red slash,
perhaps from a broken bottle, could see the barbed wire above a nearby
fence that would prevent his escape, the quick flash of a knife or gun in
a gloved hand. He could hear the slight crunch of cinders and gravel from
their footsteps, hear his own quickened breathing. He caught bits and
pieces of conversation from the people on the street -- so close and yet
so far -- none of whom would probably respond to a call for help from
a darkened alley, even if they heard it.

"Whatcha doin?" The seemingly innocuous question was accompanied
by the soft flick of a knife, still hidden somewhere in the folds of the
leader's clothing.

"I'm just looking for a place to stay," Will slowly turned his body so
that his back would be against the wall and at least he would only have
to worry about an attack from the front, although that was small comfort
at odds of four to one. "I don't want any trouble."

"Neither do we." The low brim of a hat completely and no doubt
intentionally obscured the wearer's face.

"Look, I've got 50 bucks. Take it." That would at least leave him with
some pocket change, even if he'd have to spend the night outside somewhere.
The group shifted closer and he reached for his wallet.

A hand grabbed his arm. "We don't want your money. We need your
fingerprints."

"My what?"

It happened in an instant. One moment he was standing and the next
he was flat on his stomach, agony spearing through his ribs, his cheek
pressed into the rough gravel of the alley. The men had pinned his shoulders
and legs firmly to the ground, and the leader twisted Will's right arm behind
his back, locking his wrist in an iron grip. Will winced as a slight movement
sent a stab of pain up his arm to his elbow, and then shivered as he felt a
cold blade of steel trace the veins that ran just beneath the skin.

"Hey boys, need a hand?"

A female voice halted the action, and while Will was grateful for the
diversion, he wondered why this woman would make her presence
known instead of seeing what was going on and running like hell.
Unfortunately, none of his captors moved from where they were sitting
on his arms and legs. He couldn't even turn his head to see who this
incredibly brave -- or incredibly foolhardy -- young woman was.

"You better move along, honey. Nothin' t' see here," one of his attackers
growled.

"I see four against one. That's hardly fair, is it? Why don't you let him go?"

"Why don't you mind your own business, bitch?"

Furious at having his work interrupted by this interfering female, the man
with the knife charged the intruder, leaving Will to the mercies of the other
three, who continued to hold him down, but with less enthusiasm now.
They were much more interested in the fight than in their captive. His
freed right wrist throbbed, but he didn't think it was broken, and he took
advantage of the men's distraction to reach for his own knife. If this woman
was brave enough to try to save him, the least he could do was give her
some assistance.

"Help --" came a strangled plea, but it was the man's voice, not the woman's.
What the hell was going on here?

Another of Will's captors cursed and got up to go help his boss, leaving
one still holding Will's shoulders and one sitting across his legs. With
their
attention focused on the bizarre battle, he simply thrust himself upward,
ramming his head into one captor's chin, then twisted and kicked free
from the other. He scrabbled away from them and got to his feet,
brandishing the knife.

"I don't want to hurt you..." he gasped.

"Why not? They wanted to hurt you." A slim figure appeared behind
the two men and before they could turn around, she banged their
heads together with a resounding "crack." Will winced as they slid
to the ground.

Then he saw his rescuer for the first time.

She was dressed in a form-fitting black leather outfit that made her
seem to be part of the night. Even as he looked at her now she appeared
to slip in and out of the shadows like the moon on a cloudy night, as if
she might vanish at any moment. Her dark hair fell in thick curls around
her pale, heartshaped face. Black, ageless eyes regarded him with
faint curiosity as she tilted her head slightly, her full, ripe lips
unsmiling.

"Are you okay?" She sounded as if she wasn't concerned either way,
after risking her life to save him.

"I -- I think so." He was gradually becoming aware of his fatigue and
various aches and pains from his struggle, but didn't think any of his
injuries was serious. "I should be asking you that," he said. "You
probably saved my life."

"Nah. Just your hand." She glanced back at the four prone figures
lying in the alley. "They harvest fingers to use for getting past electronic
identification systems at high tech facilities that read the prints. Big draw
on the black market."

One of the men groaned and moved slightly.

She abruptly turned and headed toward the street. Will retrieved his
backpack and quickly followed.

"What's your name?"

"Max."

"I'm Will. Will Mulder." He stuck out his hand.

She ignored the gesture. "Well, Will Mulder, you'd better haul ass
back home while you're still in one piece." She strode toward a
perfectly conditioned, gleaming motorcycle and slipped on a pair of
yellow aviator glasses, then straddled the machine with the ease of a
longtime rider.

"Home's a little out of the question at the moment. Can you recommend
a decent hotel in the area?"

She stared at him, her mouth quirked in a near smile. "You're not from
around here, are you?"

He shook his head. "I'm from back east. I came out here looking for
some information, to answer some questions about my family. My past."

"Well, good luck. Gotta bounce."

"Do you happen to know anything about an organization called
Zeus Genetics?"

"Nope, sorry." She started the motorcycle, which purred like an
overgrown cat.

"How about a project called Manticore?" he shouted as she
revved the engine.

She froze for a moment, then looked at him, her face expressionless.
"Get on."

He climbed on the back of the bike and wrapped his arms around her
lean waist as they roared off into the night.

End part 1

Part 2
Disclaimers, etc. in Part 1

"William Scully Mulder, unlock this door right now."

His father rarely used William's middle name. The last occurrence had
been a year ago when then 9-year-old Will had sneaked out of the house
to meet some friends at the local cemetery. They told ghost stories and
scared themselves silly, as kids are prone to do, and he'd almost made
it back to his bedroom without being discovered when a shadow on the
wall had suddenly became a ghoulish arm reaching out for his shoulder.
He'd screamed. A stupid, girly scream that had awakened his parents and
gotten him grounded for two weeks with limited television privileges.

But this was a more serious matter and he had inherited a strong
stubborn streak from both his parents. He was set for a long siege,
with a stash of peanut butter, a box of crackers, and most importantly
for the success of any political protest -- his own bathroom.

"I'm not moving," he shouted. "I don't want to start all over again."

Will had lived in five different cities that he could remember, and felt
as if he'd spent half his life either packing or unpacking. But that wasn't
the worst part. The worst part was being scrutinized and judged by
yet another group of children, worried about whether he'd be
accepted in the classroom and the playground, afraid to get too close
to anyone because he'd only be yanked away into some
new city in a few months. Fortunately he was an outstanding student,
his test scores at or near the top of the charts, so moving from school
to school didn't affect his grades. He just didn't understand why his
family couldn't stay put. His parents *seemed* normal. He didn't think
they were criminals on the run or international spies -- although at least
that would have made life more interesting....

"Will... Come on, open the door. Let's talk about this."

His father's anger never lasted very long. He was a proponent of talking
things out, which usually consisted of sitting and listening to what Will
had to say and then telling Will what he had to do. Both of his parents
loved to discuss things -- with him and with each other. But he was
tired of talking. He just wanted to stay somewhere for a while. To have
a place to call home.

"No. I'm not going."

"You'd *best* be going, whitebread, or Original Cindy's gonna kick
your skinny white ass."

Will opened his eyes to see a pretty, very angry dark-skinned
woman leaning over him. She was wearing a snug orange t-shirt
that said "Bitch" across the front in bold black letters and black
leather pants that clung to her slim hips and legs like a second skin.
She smelled like cinnamon.

"What you lookin' at?" she demanded.

"I -- Nothing. I -- Uh....Where's Max?"

"Oh." Original Cindy nodded as if that confirmed something in
her mind. "You one of Max's strays." She looked him up and
down as if he were a piece of furniture she was considering. "Hmm.
Not her usual, but Original Cindy doesn't judge. Just get out of the
doorway, boy, I gotta primp."

As Cindy nudged him none-too-gently aside and slammed the bathroom
door, Will sat up and stretched his aching muscles, recalling bits and pieces
of the night before. After arriving here on Max's motorcycle, he had
followed her up a seemingly endless flight of stairs, and remembered the
smell of cooking and bug spray as he stumbled behind her down a dim
hallway. She unlocked a door and they entered a room, the
details of which had blurred in front of his weary eyes as the last of
his energy faded. The last thing he remembered was her half-hearted
offer of "food or coffee or something" before he'd basically passed
out on the floor from exhaustion.

Way to impress the girl, Mulder.

As Cindy began singing in the bathroom and he realized she was
going to be a while, he stood up and looked around the apartment
in the light of day. There wasn't much to look at. In fact, it reminded
him of his own bedrooms over the past few years, as if the occupants
had either just moved in or were about to move out. Furniture was
minimal and mismatched, chosen more for function than looks. A small galley
kitchen provided the basics for simple meals. A few interesting
prints on the walls added a surprising touch of domesticity.
He had a feeling they probably belonged to Cindy. Max probably
didn't own anything she couldn't carry on her bike.

Cindy came out of the bathroom, picked up a bag, and headed for
the door.

"Uh -- Where's Max?"

She turned to face him, hands on her hips. "Original Cindy is not
your personal 4-1-1. Now come on. I gotta haul, which means you
gotta haul, whitebread."

He opened his mouth to protest, then thought better of it. He'd
find a phone somewhere and try to contact Uncle Melvin, and if
he couldn't reach his uncle, he would just start investigating
on his own. But he made a mental note of the building and its
location as he followed Cindy out -- just so he could come
back and thank Max for her help, maybe even return her offer for
"food or coffee or something."

She was the first woman who had intrigued him in a long time.
He'd given up on trying to develop relationships with the
girls he met in school, since he knew he would
just have to leave them behind anyway, and had filled
the emptiness with his studies and a healthy fantasy life.

But Max was a living, breathing, beautiful woman, and he was
no longer forced to pack up and move at his parents' whims.

So he hit the streets of Seattle. One of the places hit hardest by
the pulse, the area still looked more like a third-world country
than a modern American city. The streets were crowded with the
homeless and hustlers. People lived out of cars and vans and sold
everything from watches to socks to their own bodies to earn a
little cash to get them through the day. The stench of garbage and
sewer drifted through the streets like a noxious perfume, since
outdoor living meant outdoor plumbing as well. There seemed to be a
heavy military or police presence -- he wasn't exactly sure what the
generic uniforms signified, only that people seemed to be terrified of
the uniformed men. He received a suspicious glance from more than
one passing officer, but no one stopped him.

Fortunately, he soon found himself in a less poverty-stricken area
that had phone booths with phones still attached. Of course the
phone books had long vanished as kindling for a fire or toilet
paper, but he had his uncle's number memorized.

The last known number, anyway. Uncle Melvin tended to change
numbers as frequently as the Mulders had changed addresses.
But he had known Will was coming. He wouldn't have
changed numbers without telling him...unless something was
wrong.

Will hesitated in the phone booth, not sure what to do next.
Then his stomach rumbled, and he knew he'd better eat
something pretty soon or he'd be face down on someone's
floor again.

He made his way to a nearby diner that looked relatively
clean and wouldn't deplete his funds too badly. Taking a
seat on a dangerously wobbling stool at the counter, he
flipped through the grease-stained menu and ordered the
Hungry Man's Heaven -- "home-made" meatloaf,
mashed potatoes, and the vegetable of the day, which
looked like the leftover vegetables from several days.
Still, the portions were hearty and the food surprisingly
good. He wolfed it down with a glass of iced tea, half-watching
the TV attached to the wall.

A smiling blonde newswoman was informing him about a
terrifying earthquake in India when the screen went snowy.
After a second or two, the picture flickered back to life,
but in the newswoman's place was the disturbing image of
a pair of eyes, and a male voice declared, "This is a
streaming freedom video..."

"Shit. I hate that guy." The waitress clicked the TV off.
"He interrupted my soap last week just as Brock was
about to propose to Jenna."

"Who is he?"

She popped her gum and refilled his tea.

"Calls himself 'Eyes Only', thinks he's gonna save the
world, expose the crooks and the creeps. He's figured
out some way to hack into the local TV signal and comes
on and rambles about some conspiracy or something,
like there's anything anybody can do about it."

"Nobody knows who he is?"

She shrugged. "Dunno. Don't care. Want dessert? The pie
should be thawed by now."

He turned down the pie and left the diner when the waitress
turned the TV back on to catch the adventures of Brock and Jenna.

Uncle Melvin and two of his friends had once run a newsletter
called "The Lone Gunman." Like this crusading journalist, they
uncovered covert government activities and exposed criminals,
risking their lives for the truth.

He had a feeling that if he could find "Eyes Only" he would find
his uncle.

End part 2
 

Disclaimers, etc. in Part 1
3

Will finally found a branch of the Seattle library, but his joy faded
quickly when he walked through the doors. A lifelong booklover,
the sparsely filled shelves and dog-eared texts saddened him. Apparently
people were too busy surviving to spend much time reading nowadays.
He found a phonebook, however, and searched for "Frohike, Melvin" and
as many anagrams of the name as he could think of, with no success.
Of course, someone intent on exposing government secrets and corrupt
businesses wasn't going to advertise his presence.

He also tried to find some information on Zeus Genetics, but came up
empty. Not that he had much to work with. The laboratory had been
involved in DNA research and in vitro fertilization experiments in the
late 90s in an attempt to "build a better baby." His mother's
OB/GYN had worked at the clinic located in Maryland, which had
later been destroyed in a suspicious fire.
 
His parents had suspected, but never been able to prove, that the
operation was actually a front for a shadowy conspiracy of men
developing an alien/human hybrid, just before the invasion scare
of 2002. During that year, rumors had begun to spread that
alien replicants -- extraterrestrial entities resembling humans --
had been discovered among the population, but no hard evidence
was ever found.

Will wasn't sure if he believed in intelligent life on other planets,
(despite his father's arguments to the contrary) but he had become
obsessed by the need to find out if Zeus was responsible for his
special abilities, or if he had come by them naturally. Were there
others out there like him? Were there other, less savory side
effects of his condition that he should be aware of?

Were his parents really his parents?

He stared at his reflection in the library window. His height and
athletic build were similar to his father's. The thick auburn hair,
blue eyes, and pale complexion could easily have come from
his mother. His above average grades could simply be a happy
result of being the progeny of two highly intelligent people. So
why did he feel like an outsider so often? Was it just the
hormonal imbalances so common in one's teen years, or was
he some kind of genetic anomaly?

Yes, his body healed with astounding quickness from illness
and injury, and his senses seemed to be pitched higher than
most people's. Then again, some kids were double jointed; some
had unusual gifts of speed or strength, or could curl their
tongues and wiggle their ears. He'd never considered
his situation extraordinary until shortly after his 12th birthday.

Two men in dark suits had come to the house, driving a dark car,
just like in that old movie with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.
His mother sent him to his room but Will had sneaked back out,
hovering in the hallway to listen to the hushed argument. The men
wanted to take him, administer some tests. They told his parents it
was in the interest of national security.

That night they moved again, for the first time since the pulse --
this time taking with them only what they could carry.

The men had never found them, to his knowledge. But sometimes
even now he sometimes felt as if he were being watched and
followed. Or was that, too, simply an inheritance of his father's
paranoid tendencies. Then again, as Uncle Langly had often said,
"You're not paranoid if they're really out to get you, dude."

Will shook off his sudden melancholy and wondered what his
next move should be. He didn't know anyone in Seattle except the
elusive Max. Would she have any clue as to where "Eyes Only"
might be? He wondered what kind of work she might do, considering
her own special talents, and then remembered the mug he had seen in
the kitchen that morning. Sure enough, "Jam Pony X-press" was listed
in the library's phonebook. After a few moments to memorize the city
map, he was on his way.

Jam Pony bustled with activity. Messengers rode in and out in a steady
stream and more waited for their names to be called as they checked
their equipment or cleaned their bikes. A nerdy looking man behind
the counter seemed to barely control the pandemonium, glaring out
at his employees from behind thick black rimmed glasses, his hair
in a buzz-cut more appropriate for the 50's than the year 2020.

"Isn't Marlen back yet?" he called out to no one in particular.

"She's on lunch, Normal," someone yelled back.

"For three *hours*?"

"Excuse me..." Will stepped up to the counter. "I'm looking for
Max."

"This isn't a dating service, kid. Delivery for Sector 3! Come on,
people, work with me."

A young man about Will's age, with spiky hair tinged with
green, two silver rings in his nose and a diamond stud in
his left eyebrow, elbowed Will aside and grabbed the
plastic-wrapped package. Will turned away, deciding to
look around on his own, when he heard a shout from
behind him.

"Hey. Can you ride a bike?"

"Since I was five."

"Don't need a biography. Look, I'm short handed today and
things are backing up. Want to help out for a few bucks?"
The man named "Normal" thrust a wrinkled, standardized
work contract at him.

"Sure." Will read the paper in a matter of seconds and signed
it. "But I don't have a bike."

"We've got some loaners in the back... William." Normal tossed
him a large padded envelope scrawled with a handwritten address.
"Just get it there and get back. Think you can handle it?"

As easy as riding a bike.

But Will's last biking excursion had been through the suburban streets that
led to and from high school. There had been traffic, but none of the gridlock
so common in big cities, and certainly no one sleeping in the street that
he had to manuever around. The roads had been well tended, with an
occasional pothole here and there -- no crumbling fissures, broken water
mains or roadblock signs put up for no apparent reason. He also realized
the map in the phonebook was more than a few years old, and some streets
no longer had names or seemed to have vanished completely.

To Will's surprise, Normal didn't demand to know why he had taken
so long with that first delivery. Instead, another package
was shoved into his hands as soon as he stepped up to the counter.

By the end of the day, bruised and aching, Will knew the mean
streets of the city of Seattle better than he'd ever wanted to. As people
began wandering in for the evening shift, he put the bike back with
the rest of the loaners and signed out. He was disappointed that
he hadn't seen Max in his comings and goings that afternoon, although he
had asked a few of the messengers about her and they had assured him
she worked there. At least he'd been able to familiarize himself with the
area and could supplement his meager funds with a little extra cash.

"Heard there was some hot shot rookie out there on a loaner today."

He turned at the sound of Max's voice. Dressed in a cut-off black t-shirt
under a leather jacket, wearing a threadbare pair of blue jeans, she flashed
a rare smile, looking nothing like the avenging angel that had saved his life
last night -- although she'd never be mistaken for the girl next door, either.

"Hi. You left this morning before I could thank you for all your help
last night."

She shrugged. "No big."

"Come on, Max," someone yelled from the door.

"Gotta cruise." She started to walk away, then stopped and turned
back to him. "Want to come have a beer?"

"Sure."

He followed her and a few other messengers, including Original Cindy, to
a nearby bar called Crash, where he watched Cindy hustle nearly every
guy in the place with her pool playing skills. If Max hadn't given him
a warning nudge, he would have become her first victim. He had a feeling
Max was no slouch at the game herself, although she seemed content to
sit on the sideline and cheer for her "sistah-girl" while cheerfully taking
each new sucker's money. By following her lead, Will had amassed a tidy
little sum of his own after a couple of hours.

"So what about you, whitebread?" Cindy strolled up to him as her latest
victim slunk away from the table. "You ready to take me on now?"

Will shook his head. "No thanks. I can calculate the precise geometrical
angle I need to sink a shot, but I can never seem to get the cue to
cooperate."

"Math geek." Cindy shook her head and walked away.

"I'm sure she meant that as a compliment," Will said drily.

"So did you find a place to stay tonight?" Max asked, sipping her beer.

"Uh -- I sort of got drafted by Normal before I had a chance to do any
looking. Would you mind if I crashed at your place just one more night?"

He took her shrug to mean she wouldn't kick him out if he showed up
on her doorstep. "Actually, I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you
about something. The other night when I mentioned Manticore --"

"Hey, want another beer?" She was gone before he could finish the
sentence.

Okay, that topic was off limits.

When she came back with the pitcher, he tried a different subject.
"So...what do you know about 'Eyes Only'?"

"What do *you* know about Eyes Only?" she countered, then
distracted him by licking a bit of beer foam off her lip.

Will felt his body respond to the blatantly sexual gesture --
hell, at his age a woman cleaning a toilet could probably
turn him on. Particularly if the woman had waves of midnight
colored hair and full, pouting lips...thick, dark eyelashes...

He took a quick swig of beer. "He's my uncle."

"Your what?"

"Well, not my real uncle. He's a friend of the family. I've been
looking for him for the past few months and found out he was
here in Seattle. Do you know where I might find him?"

"Sorry. Fresh outta help." She stood up from the table.
"By the way...the new guy always buys."

She tried to make her escape while he was settling up with
the bartender, but he caught up to her when one of her friends
stopped her at the door, and took her arm as if he were politely
walking her home. Not that Max would ever need an escort.

As soon as they were outside she jerked away from him.
"Maybe you'd better find somewhere else to stay tonight."

"Look, if you know where he is, please tell me. I need his help
to learn some things about my past." He threw pride and caution
to the winds in his desperation.  "I - I'm different than other
guys, Max, and I need some answers about what makes me
the way I am. But I can't do this alone. I need my uncle's money
and connections."

She folded her arms across her chest. "What does this have to
do with Manticore?"

"I know a little about the project -- to design the perfect soldier, right?
I think that Zeus Genetics was a precursor to Vivadyne, the lab that
sanctioned the Manticore project. They were performing the same
type of work, but with...alien DNA."

He waited for her to laugh. His father's theories often got that
reaction from people, and as a boy, he'd been embarrassed by
Fox Mulder's insistence on the existence of extraterrestrial life. But
after learning what had happened to his father and mother over the
course of their work at the FBI, he'd begun to believe in extreme
possibilities.

Apparently, so did Max. She did not laugh, but regarded him
unblinkingly, inscrutably, for a few moments.

"I'll take you to him," she said finally. "But if this is some kind of
trick -- if you're out to expose him or steal money -- I'll track
you down and kill you."

He started to smile until he saw that her eyes had gone cold and
blank.

But Will Mulder was no coward. He forced himself to
meet and hold her gaze.

"Let's do it."

She insisted on blindfolding him, to keep the location a secret.
He found it disconcerting at first, fighting for balance as
she whizzed around unexpected corners and sped down straightaways.
Eventually he began to relax, taking advantage of his helplessness to
lean against her back and tighten his arms around her waist. When he
didn't get an elbow in the ribs, he began to enjoy the ride.

When they finally came to a stop, she helped him off the bike and led
him inside a building. Only then did she allow him to remove the blindfold.
He blinked in the dim light, wondering if anyone in Seattle could afford more
than one bulb per hallway as he followed her into one of the few working
elevators in the city.

Hmm, the penthouse. Uncle Melvin had done well for himself.

The elevator doors opened onto a lush apartment, tastefully decorated. The
kitchen alone was about the size of Max's living room, and she strode through
as if she were as familiar with this place as she was her own, totally
ignoring
the huge window that overlooked the city below. Perhaps the lights didn't
glitter as brightly as they had before the pulse, but it was a still a sight
to stop
and admire, which Will did.

"Hey, Max, I didn't expect you tonight."

Will turned at the sound of a male voice to see a man in his 30's, with
blondish
hair cut short, his face with the unshaven look that many women found sexy.
He wore a pair of wire rimmed glasses and rolled into the room in a wheelchair
to stare up at Will, who stared back. Not because of the wheelchair, but
because there was absolutely no possibility that this was Uncle Melvin,
who also sported that unshaven look and wore glasses, but was close
to 70 and still got around quite nimbly on his own two feet.

"And who is this?" the man asked Max, who appeared from the
kitchen, munching on some grapes.

"He says you're his uncle," Max replied.

"I've never seen him before."

Within seconds, Will found himself in a humiliatingly familiar
position -- flat on his stomach, one arm wrenched behind his back,
and a knee grinding into his kidney.

He was beginning to hate Seattle.

End part 3
 

4

"What's your name?"

He stared at wheels and feet -- all he could see of his inquisitor, and
wondered why the hell he couldn't have gotten super-strength instead
of super-senses.
 
"William Mulder."

"Mulder...That name sounds familiar. Where are you from, William?"

"Lots of places." He grunted as Max twisted his arm. "Virginia,
originally. Lived up and down the east coast."

"And what brings you to Seattle?"

"I'm looking for my uncle, Melvin Frohike. Seattle was his last
known address."

"Let him go, Max. He's harmless."

Ouch. That hurt, coming from a guy in a wheelchair. The pressure
on Will's spine vanished, and he pushed himself up slowly to a sitting
position to look up at the man in the chair.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Logan Cale."

"*You're* 'Eyes Only.'" Although Will was disappointed that his
uncle wasn't behind the project, he was nonetheless impressed.

"I have something you might be interested in." Logan manuevered
the chair out of the room as easily and as deftly as he had avoided
acknowledging Will's statement. Max glared at Will as he stood
slowly and carefully, hands up in a gesture of surrender.

"This was an honest mistake. I didn't try to trick
you, Max. But trust me, I won't tell anyone." He knew from
Uncle Melvin and his father that people who dared to expose
the shadows of deception to the light of the truth made a lot
of enemies, and those enemies would stop at nothing to keep
their secrets hidden in the darkness. Admittedly,
he was acting more out of self-preservation than any loyalty to
Logan. If the wrong people found out that Will knew
Eyes Only's identity, even Max might not be able to
save him.

Not that she seemed much interested in his life one way or
the other, as she stalked over to the window and stared
out.

At that moment Logan rolled back into the room and gestured
for Will to join him at a massive antique desk with ornate carvings -- as
much a piece of art as a functioning unit of furniture.  Will had also
recognized a sculpture and a couple of paintings in the room as originals.
In addition, only the wealthy could afford computers in the post-pulse era;
Logan had not only a state-of-the-art desktop model, but a laptop as well.
 
Whatever reasons the man had for doing what he did, it certainly wasn't
that he needed money.

Will joined Logan at the table, where he had spread out some
newsletters that had been carefully preserved in plastic. Issues of
"The Lone Gunman," the crusading newspaper that his uncles Langly,
Byers and Frohike had operated. Will smiled at the headlines that
screamed about conspiracies, secrets, paramilitary operations,
aliens. The guys' hearts were pure and their intentions noble, and they
had done some good work -- but many of their articles read like cheap
science fiction or detective novels. Will knew many of them by heart,
since his father had read those to him instead of bedtime stories, much
to his mother's dismay.

A lump rose in his throat and he turned away. Logan gave him
a moment in the time-honored tradition of males hiding
their feelings, before he spoke. "When I started doing research on
government watchdog groups and radical journalism, I
discovered there are a lot of straight-up wackos out there,
but these guys seem to be for real. There's a lot of shit to wade through
in these papers, but there's also a lot of truth, and their sources
are usually solid. You say Melvin Frohike's your uncle?"

"Well, not a blood relation, but he and his friends, Langly and Byers,
were like brothers to my dad."

"Ah, here's why your name seemed familiar. There are a lot of
articles by an 'M. F. Luder.' Do you know this person too?"

Will smiled. "That's my father's pen name. M. F. Luder is an anagram for
F. Mulder... Fox Mulder."

"Look, Will...I hate to give you bad news, but Melvin Frohike is dead.
He was killed a few weeks ago in a reenactment of the JFK shooting
when something went wrong. He was shot in the head."

Will shook his head. "That's impossible. I talked to him on the phone
before I left home, and that was November 29th. The reenactment
would have been the 22nd, the date of JFK's death. They've been
doing it for years and they use toy guns. He must have had
to go underground for some reason."

"That happens a lot around here," Max said, leaving her spot at the
window to join the two men. "You won't be doing him any favors if
word gets out you're looking for him."

"She's right," Logan agreed. "But let me check around, see what
I can find out."

"By the way, do you know anything about a company called
Zeus Genetics?"

Max groaned. "I'm gonna get some food."

As she walked into the kitchen, Will explained his interest in
the laboratory and its possible connection to Project Manticore.

"I've heard that the kids from the Manticore project are special.
Physically and mentally enhanced, trained to seek and destroy.
I have some of those same enhancements, Logan. And there's
some question surrounding the procedure that enabled my
mother to get pregnant. Of course, her records were destroyed
in a convenient fire shortly before I was born, but I'm sure there
were other facilities doing the same type of research."

"With...aliens."

"Alien DNA." Will sighed. Now he knew how his father must
have felt in the months and weeks before the invasion scare,
trying to tell people what was about to happen only to receive the
same disbelieving stare that Logan was giving him now. This
was why he needed Uncle Melvin, who already knew the
history, had been a part of it. "Extraterrestrial biological entities
have been here on Earth for centuries. Some even believe they are
the original inhabitants of this planet. In the late 90's Earth
became a prize in a battle between two alien races.
In hopes of saving some part of our humanity in the event
of colonization or having some chance of surviving a mass
extinction, scientists worked to create an alien-human hybrid."

"So why aren't we all bowing down to little green men right now?"
Max asked sarcastically, coming into the room with a triple-decker
sandwich and a pile of chips.

"Gray," Will automatically corrected. "We're not sure what
happened, but my father and uncles believe that the aliens got
into a conflict over who would claim the planet, and that
conflict turned into a full-fledged war. And after the pulse, we
probably lost any value we may have had as a colony or slaves,
assuming the aliens were still interested at that point."

"Well, yippee for the pulse," Max said drily, propping her feet up on
a no-doubt priceless ottoman. "Logan, you're not swallowing any
of this crap, are you?"

Logan looked thoughtful. "I'm not ready to say that aliens are among
us, no. But I don't doubt that genetic experiments have been
performed for a long time, with only the most generic, benign
results made public. It's entirely possible that Zeus Genetics
was doing the same type of work that Manticore was involved in,
maybe competing for government contracts, or even sanctioned by
the government." He glanced at Max. "It's no less believable than
your story."

Max scowled at both of them. "What's my story got to do with anything?"

"You're one of the X-5s," Will said.

It hadn't been hard to figure out, once he got his mind off the
exotic features and tight leather pants. Her extraordinary physical
strength, ability to see in the dark, absolute fearlessness and
spartan lifestyle screamed that she was a product of Manticore.

She sat up and looked at him with mingled annoyance and respect.
He fought the urge to smirk. Maybe he wasn't engineered to be
a super-soldier, but he was still smarter than the average teenager.
Hell, smarter than most adults.

"You've done your research," Logan commented.

"As much as I can, but my resources are limited. That's the
reason I came here -- to investigate Manticore firsthand
and to get access to some high tech research tools through
my uncle and his friends. If records exist for Zeus Genetics,
these three will be able to find them... pulse or no pulse."

"You may not like what you find," Logan said quietly.

Will nodded. His greatest fear was that he would
learn that his life up until now had been a lie, and worse,
that his parents might have taken part in the deception.
But he couldn't live in ignorance any longer.

"I need to know."

"Well, this is sweet," Max interrupted. "But I need to do
my laundry. I'll be downstairs. If you're not there in five
minutes you can walk home."

She left the room without a backward glance and Will got
the impression that this wasn't one of those parental type
warnings that would be followed by a grace period or
an extension. She would drive off without a second thought
if he wasn't downstairs in the allotted five minutes.

He should have been insulted, but instead he was aroused,
and headed obediently toward the door like a puppy following
its mother.

He was a healthy eighteen-year-old male, after all...alien DNA or not.

"Hey, Will." Something in the tone of Logan's voice stopped
him and when he turned, the warmth had vanished from the
other man's eyes. His sympathetic smile was now forced. "Don't
push Max on the Manticore issue. She doesn't like to talk about
it. I hope you'll respect that."

Will knew a threat, even a polite one, when he heard it.
He'd seen the looks that passed between Logan and Max
when they thought he wasn't watching -- and he'd noticed the
silent exchanges that they probably weren't even aware of.
Their protectiveness of each other and the unspoken
communication between them reminded him of his own
parents, who were inseparable, even when they were miles apart.

He gave Logan a nod of understanding and made it downstairs
with a full minute to spare, only to find out they were just down
the street from Max's apartment. Her roundabout way of getting
to Logan's had been meant to keep the location a secret. As he
climbed on the back of the bike, he supposed making him
look like an idiot was just an added bonus for her.

End part 4

5

Will rarely slept more than 4 or 5 hours a night. He would get
caught up in a book or a project and be awake until after midnight,
or go to bed at a reasonable hour only to awaken at 1 or 2 and be
unable to go back to sleep, his brain buzzing with activity.

For a long time, he had considered this behavior normal, and
thought that there was something wrong with his mother, who
seemed to need eight hours or more of rest on a regular basis.
After all, when he woke up in the middle of the night, his
father was almost always awake as well. Some of Will's fondest
memories were of playing chess or watching old horror movies
with his dad at 2 a.m.

After crashing the night before for an unprecedented
nine hours, Will found sleep eluded him this evening. The
couch was comfortable, the blanket was warm, the apartment
was relatively quiet. Original Cindy was staying
with a friend, and Max had turned in around midnight. He
had listened to the sounds of her getting ready for bed and tried
to dispel the images his hormone-charged brain supplied
of Max in satin sheets by calculating square roots.

Besides, knowing Max, she probably slept on a military cot
in fatigues, ready to do battle at a moment's notice.

Will wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, opened the
window, and climbed out onto the fire escape as quietly as
he could. Although early December in Seattle wasn't the most
temperate time of year, cold weather didn't bother him much,
and at least it wasn't raining.

The apartment was high enough off the street that the traffic
and pedestrian noise would drift up to most people as a
jumble of sound, with a shout or siren or horn blasting through
the mix occasionally. But Will could pick out conversations,
identify vehicles by the sounds of their engines, even hear
the click of high heels and the low appreciative whistle
that followed. He could smell the ever-present scent of rain
in the air, mingled with perfumes from the street below,
body odor, exhaust, garbage, and the daily special -- something
Italian, heavy on the oregano -- at a nearby diner. He leaned
back and stared up at the sky, letting the sensations wash over
him as he silently greeted his old friends the stars. They had been
one of the constants in his life as he had moved from place to
place, always there, even if they sometimes hid from him on
cloudy nights.

"Can't sleep?"

He turned to see Max climbing out the window in an old sweatshirt
and sweatpants. She sat down beside him and gazed up at the sky.

"You don't have to keep me company," he said.

"I'm not."

For a few moments they sat in silence together, watching the stars.
He could feel the warmth of her body, the faint movement
of each breath, each slight shift in position with an intensity that
had nothing to do with any genetic enhancements and everything
to do with being close to this beautiful, mysterious woman.
He took a deep breath of the scent that was uniquely Max --
clean and uncomplicated.

The same scent that was everywhere in Logan's apartment.

With a sigh, he returned his attention to the stars.

"So what's your deal?" she asked after a few minutes. "What
tricks do you do?"

"Heightened vision, hearing, smell, taste," he responded. "I can
read that billboard over there..." He pointed to a sign a few
miles away. "And some guy in the karaoke bar down the block
is doing a really bad rendition of 'Feelings.'"

She shrugged, unimpressed.

"I can calculate mathematical and scientific equations in my head
in a matter of seconds -- made a killing in Vegas a year ago with a
friend of mine until they barred us from the casinos. I have a
photographic memory and my IQ scores are off the charts.
Accelerated healing from illness and injury, little need for
sleep...and a rifle pitching arm."

The last one drew a quick grin that she quickly hid.

"Sound familiar?" he asked.

She nodded. "Do you...do you ever have to take any
medications?"

He shook his head. "Do you?"

"I have seizures, sometimes. My body doesn't naturally
manufacture Tryptophan. I get messed up if I can't get the
synths or at least some milk right away."

She seemed embarrassed at this weakness in her armor,
and sat up as if she were getting ready to make her escape.

"So how strong *are* you?" he asked, willing to bruise his
male ego to keep her by his side a few more minutes.
"Wanna arm wrestle?"

She gave him an incredulous look.

He'd seen a small table in the corner that the girls probably
used for snacks or drinks when they came out here in warm
weather, and he dragged it over to Max. Kneeling on one
side of it, he put his right arm on the cold surface,
then raised his right hand, fingers curled, ready for an opponent.

"You've got to be kidding," she sighed. But as he had guessed,
she couldn't resist a challenge and even as she spoke she was
kneeling opposite him. "I could break your arm."

"I heal fast, remember?"

She proceeded to soundly defeat him in all three of their matches,
and although she broke no bones, his wrist felt as if it had been
twisted in a vise for the past few hours when he finally gave up.

"Don't feel too bad," she said. "I've kicked my brothers' asses
on a few occasions too."

"Your brothers? How many do you have?"

She clamped her mouth shut and clenched her fists, belatedly
realizing she'd opened up to him again. Max guarded
her privacy as zealously as she guarded Eyes Only's identity.
Thus Will was surprised when she decided to answer him instead
of just ignoring the question.

"A few," she mumbled. "We've lost touch over the years. Contact
risks exposure. Capture."

He couldn't imagine being cut off from his parents, to know that
a visit or a letter could put their lives in danger. After making
a mental note to call his mother the next day, he said, "Still...you
have family out there, even if it's not in the traditional sense.
People who care about you."

"Yeah. I've got family."

She smiled sadly, staring out at the clouds that had gathered
in the night sky, bringing with them the scent of rain and a
gust of arctic wind that rattled the open window
behind them. Max rubbed her hands over her arms, but Will
knew that the cold came from inside, not from outside. At
that moment, she looked more like a lost little girl than a superwoman.

He was falling in love with her.

The realization hit him with the force of one of her punches
as he gazed at her in the moonlight, fascinated by the shadow
and light that played across her face, drawn to the unique
combination of strength and vulnerability, the intoxicating
mixture of danger and sensuality...and the loneliness that he
knew all too well. And for that brief breath of time, he was just
a guy and she was just a girl, alone in the city with no thought
beyond the next minute.

He leaned across the small space that separated them
and damned the consequences as he pressed his lips
gently against her forehead.

Before his mouth could even begin to warm her cool
skin, she slipped back into the apartment, leaving him
outside, foolishly kissing a shadow.

At least she hadn't tossed him off the fire escape.

End part 5

6

Life in 21st century Seattle wasn't all that far removed
from how life must have been in the early days of the city's
settlement, particularly if one occupied an apartment
illegally. Cold water for bathing, erratic electricity, no
phone, no TV, nothing that might require the user to
provide an address. The one difference was that the
original settlers probably hadn't had to make regular
payments to corrupt cops so they and the other residents
could keep a roof over their heads.

So Will had to return to the little diner and the soap addict
waitress to call his mother the next morning. Phone service
was uncertain at best, so she would not have been
expecting a call, although he knew she was worried about
him traveling so far away from home. His parents had
tried to have other children, but without success, and while
she wasn't smothering or overprotective, Dana Scully
cherished her only child. She hadn't wanted him to come
out here, but he had begged and bargained and assured
her that Uncle Melvin would be providing food and shelter.
In the end she had loved him enough to let him go.

"Mom?"

"William? Is that you?" She refused to call him Will, even
though she and her father still called each other "Scully" and
"Mulder," just as they had when they had worked together
at the FBI. How weird was that?

"Yeah, Mom." They had a clear connection, at
least for the moment. "What's up? How's Dad?"

"I'm giving my last final this afternoon, then I'm going
to finish up my Christmas shopping. Your father's not
back yet from his annual pilgrimage to Graceland.
Apparently there have been spottings of something
called an Ozark Howler around the Arkansas/Missouri
border." She gave a long-suffering sigh. "But how are
you, honey? How's Uncle Melvin?"

"Oh, he's fine. Sends his love. I -- We haven't located
Zeus Genetics yet, but Dad was right about Project
Manticore. I've met one of the X-5s, and Max's abilities
are very similar to mine -- more advanced, in fact. I'd be
willing to bet there are other facilities working with this
technology in the area, either in competition or cooperation
with Vivadyne Labs. Maybe Zeus is one of them, running
under a different name."

"Just be careful, Will. I did some research and those kids
at Manticore escaped before they completed testing. There
could be psychological or physical repercussions from the
experimental processes that no one knows about. One of
the earliest groups displayed psychotic behavior."

"I'm always careful, Mom. Besides, Max is one of the
most together people I've ever met. She's been showing
me around town, introducing me to the right contacts..."

"*She*?"

Will grabbed a fork and raked the tines across the
mouthpiece. "What? Sorry, Mom... Breaking up.
See you soon."

He ate a quick breakfast and was one of the first
messengers to arrive at Jam Pony, receiving an approving
nod from Normal and claiming the bike he'd used the
day before. Business was slow early in the morning, so
he played a lazy basketball game in the back with a couple
of the other guys until Max and Original Cindy strolled in.
When Normal called Max over to his desk, Will started to
go back to the basketball court, but Original Cindy
grabbed his arm and led him over to the soda machine
in the corner. She reached into his jeans pocket and
pulled out a dollar bill, then stuck it in the machine and
pushed a button. After opening the soda and pocketing
the change, she gave him a smile.

"Now listen...Original Cindy's gonna drop some free advice
on you, 'cause you just bought her a soda. While there's nothin'
I enjoy more than watching you heteros do your little mating
dances, sistah-girl over there is already taken."

"And your point would be...?"

She shook her head sadly. "Whitebread, you want to survive
this bitch, best start wearing your heart on the *inside* of
your sleeve."

Before Will could reply, Normal called him over for a delivery
run and he was able to escape. Pumping hard on the bike,
he dodged traffic and pedestrians, skidded around corners,
and leaped over potholes until he nearly collided with a truck
and forced himself to slow down. It was useless to try to outrace
the anger and frustration, anyway -- not at Cindy, but at himself.
He'd let Max -- or rather, his attraction to her -- distract him from
the reason he was here. He'd lost his focus. And though it pained
him to admit it, even with Logan out of the picture, he had no
chance with a woman like her to begin with.

He had to just survive this bitch and then go home.

Jam Pony was busy that day, messengers going back out almost
as soon as they arrived, so Will didn't have much time for self-pity
or introspection. He was coming back from a delivery in Sector 5 on
cruise control, taking a little extra time to catch his breath between
runs, when the sign on a nearby building caught his eye and he
slammed the bike to a stop.

Jupiter, Inc.

Jupiter. The Roman name for the god Zeus.

How stupid of him not to consider that Zeus might have
changed names. But would they have chosen a new name that
maintained such a close association to the previous one? Either
they were extremely confident that no one would question it --
after all, how many people in modern day Seattle could recite the
names of the Roman *and* Greek gods? -- or this was purely a
coincidence.

He needed to get back to work.

But what would be the harm in stopping to rest for a few minutes?
Get off the bike, stretch out those cramped muscles, just stroll around
the outside of the building. No "No Trespassing" signs, no growling dogs,
no warnings about private property.

No reason not to open the front door and walk in.

He could have been standing in the lobby of any of a dozen small
corporations -- even a waiting room at a doctor's office -- although
the off-white walls, pale blue carpet, and plain furnishings certainly weren't
meant to impress. Three chairs sat on either side of the room, those
wooden chairs with upholstered seats that were comfortable for
about five minutes. A low, round table in the middle of the room
held the usual assortment of popular magazines, surprisingly up-
to-date, but nothing to indicate what kind of work might be done here.

The reception area opposite the front door was enclosed, with
a sliding glass window for communication with the outer office.
Will walked up to the window, and although it looked as though
someone had been working there and he tapped lightly on the
glass, no one came to greet him or chase him out.

A door on his left apparently led past the receptionist's desk to
the inner offices. After knocking and getting no response,
he tried the knob, expecting it to be locked. Instead it
turned easily, and he entered.

If this was some kind of genetic research lab, they needed to
strengthen their security.

The receptionist's work area was on his right; he found himself
standing near a counter that held a phone, notepad and pen,
apparently for visitors' convenience. The desk was cluttered with
the usual office paraphenalia -- pens, paper, stapler -- plus a
computer and a multi-line phone. The only sign of personalization
was a small framed photo of a baby in one corner.

A copier, fax machine and shredder occupied the back wall,
next to two large filing cabinets -- locked. There were
restrooms to his immediate left, and then a short corridor
lined with doors, all closed. If he hadn't heard the muffled
voices and faint sounds of telephones ringing and keyboards
clicking, he would have thought the place was deserted.

Since there were no windows facing the hallway and no one
hanging around the water cooler, he felt relatively certain
he could look around a bit without being noticed. Throat dry and
heart pounding, he moved forward, expecting at any moment
to hear alarms go off and security dogs barking.

The nameplates gave him no clue as to what activities might be
going on here. D. Smith, Facilities Supervisor; T. Anderson,
V.P. of Human Resources; B. Sheridan, Project
Manager...He could have been at any company anywhere
in the United States.

Will flinched at a noise behind him and pressed himself up
against the wall as a middle-aged, heavy set woman came
out of the restroom and entered the reception area. By some
stroke of luck, she didn't glance down the hallway, but Will's
relief was short-lived as he realized that getting out was now
going to be a lot tougher than getting in. At least the Jam Pony
ID would provide a decent cover story. Maybe he should
just get out of here before one of these doors opened and
somebody started asking questions...

"May I help you?"

The thick carpet had muffled the woman's approach from
around the corner. She was probably close to 60 --
but one of those women with a timeless beauty that would always
attract a man's attention. A hint of Scandanavian ancestry showed
in her high cheekbones and silver-blonde hair. Her navy blue business
suit was expertly tailored, the jacket hugging her narrow waist. The
fashionably short skirt should have looked silly on a woman her age.

"May I help you?" she repeated in her low, throaty voice.

"I - uh - I was making a delivery and I got thirsty. I was
looking for a drinking fountain."

She arched a delicate brow. "And Arlene sent you back here?"

"Well...to be honest, she wasn't at her desk, and the door was
unlocked..."

She covered her surprise quickly and smiled.
"If you're thirsty, I've got some bottled water in my
office. It's much better than what comes out of the faucets
around here. Come on in, Mr....?"

"Just call me Will."

Her perfectly manicured nails gleamed as she extended her
hand. "Pleased to meet you, Will. My name is Marita."

End part 6

7

He felt like an idiot.

Jupiter, Inc. was, indeed, a research facility. Marita gave him
a pamphlet that described the company's achievements in reducing
the risk of birth defects in problem pregnancies, which included
glowing testimonials and pictures of proud parents with their perfect
newborns. She even offered to take him on a tour of the premises.

"No thanks." Will finished the last of his water and set the glass
down. "I really should get back to work."

"I understand." Marita smiled and stood up to walk him out.
"If you don't mind my saying so, you don't seem like the bike
messenger type. Are you working your way through college?"

"I haven't started college yet. I - I have some things to do first."

She nodded. "Well, we're always looking for bright young minds
here at Jupiter. Just something to think about while you take care
of those...other things."

She opened the door and he went out into the lobby, but stopped
to thank her for the water and apologize for trespassing.

"That's all right." She smiled, then turned to the receptionist,
who had been watching them curiously. "Arlene. I'd like to see you
in my office."

Will got a glimpse of Arlene's face as the door swung shut.

She was terrified.

Her expression haunted him the rest of the afternoon. He
didn't want his impulsive action to be the cause of someone getting
fired. Jobs were hard to come by nowadays. After stumbling
through an explanation to Normal of why a 40 minute run had
taken him nearly an hour, he made the rest of his deliveries that day
in record time -- not that Normal would acknowledge *that* -- and at
the end of his shift he hopped back on his bike to go back to sector 4.

He wasn't sure what good it would do to go back -- but at least he
could apologize to Arlene for getting her in trouble. Surely she
hadn't gotten fired on his account, considering how nice Marita had
been to him, when most people probably would have called the cops.

Will arrived at 1013 Cameron Street a few minutes before 5:00 and
walked into the lobby.

A young man a few years older than Will with neatly trimmed dark hair,
glasses and a blue lab coat sat at the desk, typing something into the
computer.
He looked up as Will approached.

"We're not expecting anything," he said, glancing at the Jam Pony ID.

"I don't have a delivery," Will replied, noticing that the small photo
on the corner of the desk was gone. "I was looking for Arlene."

The man's pleasant expression vanished. "She no longer works here."

The front door opened and a large man entered the room, his jacket
stretched across his broad shoulders, buttons straining against his
chest. His iron-gray hair was cut in a military style, and Will would have
bet that every strand was exactly the same length as the other. He
gave Will a narrow gaze from pale gray-blue eyes and put a hand in
his jacket pocket.

"We're closed," he said in a gravelly voice. "You need to leave."

"But I --"

"Now."

A dark van followed him at a discreet distance all the way back to
Jam Pony.
___________

"License number CRMV 1121," he told Max after finding her at Crash.
She had listened -- occasionally -- as he told her about his experience that
afternoon, but seemed more interested in watching a couple of young male
tourists try to put the moves on Original Cindy.

"I think it would be worth it to have Logan check that out," Will added,
once again talking to the back of Max's head. "And see what we can find
out about Jupiter Inc. and a Marita Covais."

Max finally gave him her attention. "So she made you drink imported
water out of a real glass and offered you a job. Sounds like a bad-ass
criminal mastermind to me."

"You didn't see that receptionist's face. She was scared to death."

Max shrugged. "She should've been. I would have fired her ass too."

"Look, I can't explain it, but I think something's going on there. Can't you
and Logan just humor me?"

Max raised her glass toward Cindy as the two tourists slunk away, then
turned back to Will. "You're going to have to wait a couple of days. There's
a shipment of illegal weapons on its way here and Logan has this thing about
saving the world."

"Five minutes. That's all I need."

"Hmm, that's funny. I thought you had super-hearing. I said just chill for a
while.
She stood up. "Come on, let's play pool."

Will shook his head. "No thanks. I'm going to take a walk."

He left the bar and headed back to the apartment. Max was right. He really
had no reason to be suspicious of Marita or Jupiter, Inc., other than this
vague feeling that something wasn't quite as it appeared to be -- and he
hadn't
inherited the uncanny intuition that his father had about these things. The
last time he'd followed a hunch he'd lost $100 on a horse named Spooky.

He'd waited 18 years for this. He could wait a few more days.

Then he heard the footsteps.

Despite curfew still being hours away, the street was nearly deserted in the
early winter twilight. Will quickly assessed his surroundings and chances of
escape -- even as he wondered if he'd heard too many of the Lone Gunmen's
conspiracy theories. But he soon realized that despite his heightened
awareness, the person behind him was making no effort to hide his
or her presence or be particularly stealthy.

"Hey!"

He stopped at the sharp command and turned to see a military
cop approaching. Police presence in all sectors of Seattle was strong --
they monitored residences, stores, banks, and cruised the streets on
cycles and on foot. Unlike many kids his age, Will had a healthy respect for
authority, probably because his mother's brothers had all served in the
military

"I.D. please." The man was face to face with him now, with the suspicious
glare that most law enforcement officers seemed to have for
18-year-old males in old jeans and sweatshirts out after dark.

Will reached in his pocket for his identification card, knowing that being
from out of state would probably prompt more questions. The officer
scrutinized it with the aid of a small flashlight.

"Against the wall," he barked, and pushed Will toward a nearby
building. "Hands up, feet apart."

"What is this? I haven't done anything."

"Eyes front." The officer frisked him quickly. "Put your hands behind you."

Respect for authority only went so far. Will put his hands down and turned
around. "Not until you tell me what the hell's going on. Or at least read me
my rights."

"You don't have any rights," the man sneered.

Just then a van pulled up a block down the street, its lights off, motor
idling.
The same van that had followed Will earlier that day.

He started to run. His first thought was to head back to the bar, but
the van had blocked that route, two men already getting out to
help their associate. He had to get to a more populated
area, find a store or theater where even if no one would help him, at
least there would be witnesses to whatever might happen.

Will swung right and dashed across the street, dodging cars and
motorcycles, crashing into unwary pedestrians. He hoped he could
lose his pursuers in the crowd, but every time he glanced behind him,
the cop was still only a few yards behind. His lungs burned, his legs
felt like rubber, but the adrenalin pushed him on. He stopped just in time
to avoid a car speeding through the next intersection, flinching as the
vehicle flew through the light only to crash into small truck. But the
accident blocked the path of the man chasing him, and his uniform
attracted the attention of the irate accident victim, who had grabbed
him and demanded that he arrest the speeder.

Will ducked into a doorway and watched the scene for a few moments,
but saw no sign of the two other men. With his hunters otherwise
occupied, he decided to backtrack using an alternate route and meet
up with Max at the bar. After all, there was safety in numbers, particularly
when one of those numbers could beat up a handful of guys without breaking
a sweat.

He was a block away from the bar when he heard the van and was able to
squeeze into the narrow space between two buildings just before it appeared
around the corner. The vehicle cruised slowly down the street, stopped in
front of the bar, then began to back up.

They couldn't have seen him. Will slipped a little farther into the darkness,
realizing as he did so that he was in a blind alley. The only way out was the
way he had come in. He pressed himself up against the wall, hoping that
his pursuers would think the space was so small that he would have
passed it by.

Moments later the van's lights went on, shining directly into the narrow
space, leaving nowhere for him to hide. A shadow cut across the
the blinding glare.

"I'd suggest you come out of there and cooperate, boy, or I *will*
use force."

The sentence was punctuated by the distinctive click of a gun's safety
being switched off.

"Okay." Will took off his Jam Pony ID and dropped it on the ground, hoping
that if Max or someone came looking for him they'd know he hadn't left
voluntarily. Then he raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and moved
toward the opening of the alley, still hoping to make a break for it
once he got out of the confining space.

He never had a chance. Men waited on each side of the
opening and they immediately grabbed his arms, twisting them
behind him, while the third man, the faux cop, fastened a pair of
handcuffs securely on his wrists. Even then, the men kept their iron
grip on his arms, dragging him toward the van. His cry for help
was cut off by  a strip of duct tape pressed across his mouth.
He tried to kick out at them as they threw him into the back of the
vehicle, but one of the men just grabbed his legs and bound them
together with rope as the vehicle squealed away from the curb and
sped off into the night.

End part 7

8

When Will was 7, he had accidentally locked himself in the storage
closet in a new house. His parents had been busy moving boxes and
hadn't heard his cries for help, so it wasn't until his mother called him
for lunch that they realized he was missing. He had been stuck in the
small, musty, dark space for about a half an hour, but it had seemed
like days to the frightened child. Occasionally he still had nightmares
about being trapped in a confined space, in the dark, unable to
cry out for help.

Except that this was no dream. Will fought down his terror and tried
to think clearly. The tape on his mouth was already loose -- not that
it would do him any good to yell for help at this point, but they had
to stop sometime -- and the rope around his ankles was snug, but he
might be able to work free. The handcuffs would be on until someone
took them off.

He tried to gauge how long they had been on the road and how far
they had traveled, but his anxiety had distorted his perception of time,
and he wasn't sure if it had been a few minutes or an hour. Judging by
the frequency of stops and starts, he assumed they were still in the city,
but there were no windows in the back of the van and he couldn't
see anything out front except an occasional streetlight.

He would just have to wait and hope for an opportunity to escape.
He started working at the ropes around his ankles, trying to loosen
them without attracting his captors' attention.

About an hour later, the van slowed and took a right turn. Gravel
crunched under the wheels as they crept uphill for about a half-mile,
then the van stopped. The driver turned the engine off and got out
as Will's guards moved into position, one at his head, one at his feet.

He thought he had managed to get the rope slack enough that one
quick movement would set him free, and tried to go limp as they picked
him up, to make them think he'd decided to accept his fate and cooperate.
The man holding his legs had to back out of the van, which put him in an
vulnerable position momentarily, one foot on the ground, the other
balanced on the bumper.

Will thrust his legs up and out, catching the man square in the chest.
As he had hoped, the rope fell away with his sudden movement and
his captor tumbled to the ground. Distracted by the unexpected turn of
events, the man holding his shoulders momentarily relaxed his grip. Using
his legs for leverage, Will heaved himself backward, shoving the man against
the back of the front seat. Then he struggled out of the van and implemented
part two of his plan.

He ran like hell.

The van was parked near a long, low building that seemed to be a warehouse
of some kind, surrounded on all sides by a wooded area. They had left the
city and its lights far behind -- the only illumination besides the moon out
here was a bulb directly over the door. While the deeper darkness would
hinder Will's pursuers, it also made his escape more difficult as he stumbled
over the uneven ground. The handcuffs made running treacherous -- if he fell
on the rough terrain or dew-slick grass, he wouldn't be able to cushion the
blow with his hands. At least the tape had slipped off his mouth at
some point so he could breathe easily.

One of the men tackled him about halfway down the drive. He was still
seeing stars as they dragged him back to the building.

They took him to a room that resembled a doctor's examining area. Two
folding chairs and a small table sat in one corner. A sink with a few medical
instruments and some latex gloves next to the basin occupied one side of
the room, flanked by what appeared to be supply cabinets. On the opposite
side of the room was the sight that chilled Will to the core -- a gurney with
leather restraints.

When he saw the gurney he began to struggle again. At that moment
the door across from him opened and Marita Covais walked in. She
took in his grass-stained, torn clothes and the lump on his head, her
sharp gaze raking across his captors.

"I said not to hurt him."

One of them mumbled an excuse, which she waved aside. "Take those
handcuffs off." As they did so, she brought the two chairs forward and
sat down in one, gesturing for Will to sit in the other. His captors released
him reluctantly, and he sat down opposite Marita, flinching when she reached
toward him to examine his abused wrists. She smiled warmly at him, as if
they were sitting down for afternoon tea.

"I apologize for their behavior, Mr. Mulder. Subtlety has become a lost art."

Will jerked his hands out of her grasp. "How did you know my name?"

"You were kind enough to leave your fingerprints all over my water glass
this afternoon. But I could see the family resemblance immediately. I was
a friend of your father's."

"He's never mentioned you."

Her smile faded. "No...I don't suppose he has. How *are* your
parents, William?"

"Fine."

"I'm glad."

"Well, now that you're up to date, I'll just be going -- " Will started to
get
up only to be shoved back into the chair by his guards.

"Oh, that's not why you're here." Marita stood up and walked over
to the counter by the sink. "I've heard you're a very special young
man, William. A genetic anomaly."

"I'm just a bike messenger, Ms. Covais."

She picked up something and put it to her lips. Immediately a shrieking sound
pierced through Will's brain. He doubled over in pain and clamped his hands
over his ears. The noise stopped and Marita walked back over to him.

"That was a dog whistle, William. Something no human should be able to hear."

"So you're saying there's a German Shepherd in my background somewhere?"
Will retorted.

She looked startled at his flip comment, then laughed. "Just like your
father...
in more ways than one. I suppose you've heard the theory that we're all
descended
not from apes, but from aliens? That all of us have an area in the brain
referred to
as the God module, inactive and unaccessed in most but active in a few rare
individuals -- as it was once in your father. These individuals are more
alive,
more aware than the rest of us."

"My parents have told me about Gibson Praise and the discovery of those
artifacts in Africa while my father was -- hospitalized. None of it could
ever be
scientifically verified."

"Because no one knew how to control the gift, how to cultivate it and use
it.... They were afraid of its potential power. Our work here is to harness
that power, to activate the dormant DNA that exists in all of us, to create a
stronger, smarter human."

"Like the Manticore project?"

She smiled. "We compete with Vivadyne and a few other facilities for
government funding, yes. But we have a number of private investors here and
abroad. It's the supply of alien DNA that has become a concern. The
original Roswell source has long been depleted, and the extraterrestrial wars
have virtually halted visits to Earth by potential colonists, who we could
sometimes persuade to assist us. There are a few hybrids scattered about,
but the toxicity of their blood reduces their viability and endangers our
researchers."

"That's too bad," Will muttered. "But what does this have to do with me?"

"You are aware that the circumstances surrounding your birth were...unusual."

Will shook his head. "My mother underwent some unsuccessful in vitro
attempts, and the pregnancy was difficult. But Dana Scully and Fox Mulder
are my biological parents."

"That's exactly why we need you. They were both exposed to the alien
virus in the course of their investigations, as well as the vaccine used to
fight
that virus. You know that a vaccine is actually a weakened form of the
disease...or in this case, alien DNA. Thus any product of their combined
genes would be an excellent source of alien DNA -- a missing link, so to
speak,
closer to that of those first colonists than anything since Roswell."

"So you need blood or saliva or something?" He didn't want to think about
any other possibilities.

"We just want to run some tests, William. I won't lie to you. It won't be
pleasant. But the ultimate outcomes -- the advancement of the species,
the expanded possibilities in the fields of medicine and science, enhanced
creativity ... the potential for a nearly utopian society... far outweigh any
temporary physical discomfort, don't you agree?"

"If your work is so beneficial to mankind, why all the secrecy? Why
kidnap your test subjects if this is such a noble endeavor?"

"As I mentioned, we *are* in competition with a few other groups. People
like Donald Lydecker at Project Manticore would have no qualms about stealing
our research to use for their own agenda of violence and subjugation. As far
as our acquisition of test subjects, I have found in my research that people
tend to be self-absorbed creatures, valuing their own safety and health over
that of the general population. It is my hope that in the course of our work
here, you'll come to think differently."

"So your dedication has nothing to do with lucrative government or
corporate contracts or some kind of twisted God complex?"

She shrugged. "I didn't say that."

She gave a brief nod to the men behind Will, who grabbed him and
dragged him toward the gurney. He fought with all his strength, and
had managed to throw one of them off and give another one a bloody
nose before the door burst open and three more men came in. Within
seconds he was immobilized by the restraints as Marita stood over him.

"My friends know I was being followed," he gasped. "People will be
looking for me."

She brushed his hair off his forehead and gave him an indulgent smile.
"You said it yourself, William -- you're just a bike messenger. People
disappear in Seattle every day. You're miles away from the city in the
middle of a well-guarded, soundproofed, and nearly invisible facility." As
he fought against the restraints, she went over to the counter, put on a pair
of latex gloves, and picked up a hypodermic needle.

"This is our first test. I'm going to inject you with a weakened form of the
vaccine, which will activate that dormant part of your brain. You're about
to enter a new dimension, William, to experience the world as few other
humans ever have."

"Please...don't do this. I swear, I won't tell anyone what's going on
here..."

Someone grabbed his head, holding it still.

He screamed as the needle pierced his temple.

End part 8

9

Will faded in and out of consciousness in those first few minutes, partly from
the agonizing, blinding pain and partly as his conscious mind recoiled from
the horrifying reality of what was happening to him. He was vaguely aware
of activity in the room around him as someone took his pulse, hooked up
an IV, drew a blood sample.

As the pain and shock faded, he lay as still as possible with his eyes
closed, and tried to assess what was happening in his body and mind.

Strangely, he didn't feel any different. Maybe the worst was over,
at least for now. If only everyone would be quiet. It sounded like
a dozen people were in the room, probably staring at him, taking
notes, recording his reactions...

Will opened his eyes to find himself alone except for a scowling
guard sitting near the door.

But he could still hear the voices, as if there were a party of
invisible people in the room. He could make out individual words
occasionally, and thought he heard Marita talking to one of her
associates. Was this part of the test? Had the injection further
enhanced his hearing, or had it simply brought on some kind
of auditory hallucination? He raised his head to look at the guard
and his head began to pound at the movement.

"Excuse me..." he murmured. "I'd like to see Ms. Covais, please."

"Shut up, you stupid kid. How'd I get stuck with babysitting detail,
anyway?"

The man never opened his mouth, yet Will heard the words as clearly
as if he had spoken out loud. A chill went through him as he remembered
his father talking about the voices -- the incessant voices buzzing in his
head,
how he could read people's thoughts. How it had nearly driven him insane.

The muted murmur of conversation grew louder, seemed to swell inside his
head as the door opened and Marita came in with two strangers in white lab
coats and one of the men who had brought him here. He could hear them all,
even though no one spoke as they gathered around the bed, and found that if
he focused on a specific person, he could understand what that individual was
thinking. Marita met and held his gaze.

*You know what I'm thinking, don't you?*

He nodded.

"Good," she spoke aloud. "Can you tell me what Dr. Simpson is thinking?"
She gestured toward one of the white-coats, an emaciated looking man
with his gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, who leaned forward eagerly.

*There could be a Nobel prize in this for us. I wonder if she'll let
me dissect the brain.*

Will shuddered. "Don't leave me alone with him."

"And this is Dr. Pauley."

Dr. Pauley was a young woman, probably not long out of med school,
with poorly trimmed hair and thick glasses. She pushed her glasses up
on her nose and stared at Will.

*He looks sad. I wish we didn't have to hurt him.*

"I wish you didn't either."

As Dr. Pauley stepped back in shock, Marita smiled. "Wonderful."
Then she opened a manila envelope. "I have a set of cards here. Some
have pictures and some have words. I'd like you to tell me what --"

"Cat. Drive. Snake. Mother." God, he wanted his mother right now.
"Pipe. Barn. Elephant."

They applauded as if he were an infant who had just spoken his first
words. As they checked his vital signs he let their thoughts and words
wash over him. It was too exhausting to try to focus on just one person,
and he didn't particularly want to know the details of what they were
planning to do. Especially Dr. Simpson, who was nearly salivating as he
hooked up an EEG machine.

He knew he should be trying to think of a way to escape but the voices
made concentration on his own thoughts nearly impossible. His best hope
was probably Dr. Pauley, who seemed sympathetic, but did she really see
him as a human being, or was it the same feeling she might have for a lab rat
right before she injected him with a deadly virus?

Hell, even if he could get free he was in no shape to try to escape. The
headache he'd had since awakening was getting worse. The lights in the
room hurt his eyes, and the noise level ebbed and flowed, making
him feel nauseated. Suddenly he had an idea that might at least buy him some
time before the next round of tests.

"Gonna be sick --" he moaned.

"Let him up, he'll choke," Dr. Simpson said, and hands fumbled to undo the
straps across Will's chest and arms. Marita grabbed a small basin
as Drs. Pauley and Simpson raised Will to a sitting position. A jackhammer
began pounding behind his eyes at the abrupt movement and as his
stomach heaved in sympathy, he didn't have to worry about convincing
them he was really sick.

The next few minutes passed in a blur. Their thoughts swirled around him --
Dr. Pauley was worried, Dr. Simpson irritated, and Marita was trying to
determine if this was some kind of trick, even as she patted his back and
murmured kind words. The other two men were fighting their own nausea,
as far away from him as they could get without actually leaving the room.

Finally, shaky and sweating, Will fell back against the pillow and lay
quietly while Dr. Simpson reattached the EEG and IV that had come loose.
But when the doctor reached for one of the straps, Will grasped his hand.

"Please...I - I won't try to escape."

Dr. Simpson glanced at Marita, who was standing on the opposite side
of the gurney.

Will took advantage of her hesitation. "What if I get sick again and you're
not here? Do you think either of those guys is going to help me?"

The two guards were still lurking in the corner.

One sneered at him. *You can choke to death for all I care.*

Marita couldn't hear their thoughts, but their attitude was obvious.
She gave Will a suspicious glance, and he tried to appear weak and
pathetic. Not much of a stretch at that particular moment.

"Oh, all right," she sighed. "You're in no condition to go anywhere,
I suppose. Let's remove the restraints."

Will was glad she couldn't read *his* mind.

"This was my fault," she said. "I should have let you become accustomed
to your new abilities before we started testing you." She glanced at her
watch. "Why don't you try to get some rest and we'll come back later."

"C- could someone stay with me for a while, in case I feel sick again?" he
asked, his gaze going to Dr. Pauley.

"I'll stay." She gave him a reassuring smile.

"Fine," Marita said. "Harry, you stay too," she ordered the man who'd been
in the room when Will had awakened. Then she, Dr. Simpson, and the other
guard left.

Harry settled back in his chair and pulled a book out of his jacket. Dr.
Pauley
pulled one of the folding chairs over to the gurney and sat down, scribbling
on her chart.

"What are you writing?" Will asked.

"Oh. Ms. Covais wants us to keep track of your physiological and emotional
reactions to the testing. I'm just making some preliminary notes while the
impressions are still fresh."

Will glanced over at Harry, who appeared to be engrossed in his book.
"You're not going to write that I threw up, are you?"

She smiled at his obvious embarrassment. "Sorry. It's got to go in the
report."

"May I see?"

She hesitated, then handed him the chart -- and her pen, just as he had hoped.
"You're very thorough," he said for Harry's benefit as he wrote "Call Jam Pony
Messenger Service. Ask for Max."

He handed her back the chart.

She stared down at what he had written, then at him, and shook her head.
"I can't do that," she whispered.

"Please," he whispered back. "Help me."

"I have to go," she said, and almost knocked over the chair in her
haste to get out of the room.

All he could do now was wait.
_______________
He and Harry were both dozing by the time Marita and the doctors came back.
Will had intended to spend that time thinking of a brilliant escape plan, but
the
stress of the past few hours and Harry's droning thoughts had lulled him to
sleep.
Their voices woke him, but he also discovered he was better able to push them
into the background and learning how to separate one from another.

Dr. Simpson checked the EEG readouts, making some marks here and there
as Marita once again checked Will's vital signs to be sure everything still
functioned normally. Dr. Pauley hung back, looking nervous. Will wanted to
reassure her that he understood her reluctance to help, but couldn't say
anything without giving away their earlier conversation.

They performed similar tests to the ones that had been done earlier
and asked him a lot of questions about his physical and emotional
state. Marita did most of the talking, while Dr. Simpson eyed him as
if he were the turkey at a Thanksgiving dinner and Dr. Pauley rarely
looked at him at all. He was allowed to go to the restroom -- with Harry
waiting outside the door, of course -- and was splashing water on his
face when he heard the conversation down the hall.

"It's too soon."

"No, we have to do the procedure immediately. His reactions have to be
monitored from the first day, to determine the adjustment period."

"You know patients with this kind of brain activity don't react to
sedatives or anesthetics. He'll be awake through the whole thing and
terrified."

"The neuro inhibitor will produce a temporary paralysis. Besides, I don't know
why he should be afraid. The procedure itself is painless. I've done hundreds
of them."

"Hey, did you fall in?" Harry's voice broke through the more distant
conversation, startling Will from his horrified trance.

"I -- Uh -- I think I'm going to --" He began making gagging noises, although
he felt as if he really might throw up again. He had to get out of here. Now.

*Stupid kid,* Harry's thoughts drifted in to him. *I ain't cleanin' that up.*

"I need some help."

*Shit. I don't get paid enough for... Where is he?*

As Harry opened the stall door, Will, who had been standing on the toilet
seat,
kicked him in the jaw. Harry staggered backward and hit his head on the wall,
then slipped to the floor, unconscious. Will took off the man's jacket and
pants,
hoping that the minimal disguise might buy him a little time before someone
looked too closely. After a moment of hesitation, he grabbed the gun from
Harry's
shoulder holster and left the bathroom. He'd use the weapon on himself, if
he had to, before he'd let that butcher Simpson slice and dice his brain.

He crept down the hallway, all his senses on high alert, listening to the
sounds and conversations around him, narrowly avoiding capture more
than once by hearing someone thinking about their grocery list as they
watched a doorway.

Marita hadn't been bluffing about the facility being secure. No entrance or
exit was unguarded. The windows were not only out of his reach, but
criss-crossed with thick wire. There was probably an electronic security
system as well, and no doubt the grounds were heavily patrolled.

He stared down at the gun in his hand and wondered if he was going to have
to try to shoot his way out. How far would he get before he was killed or
recaptured? He'd never even fired a weapon except at a firing range under
carefully controlled conditions.

An alarm went off above his head.

Panicked, Will ducked into a nearby storage closet. The bleat of the
alarm was like a knife stabbing at his hyper-sensitive ears, and the
voices in his head grew louder, more jumbled as dozens of people began
responding to the emergency. In his exhaustion, for a few moments
all he could do was huddle in the darkness, drowning in the noise.

*Sounds like someone saved me the trouble of breaking into this bitch.*

Max was here.

But would she find him before *they* did?

End part 9

10

Will quickly realized that a storage closet probably wasn't the most
imaginative place to hide. While that might make it easier for Max to
find him, it would make it easier for anybody else in the immediate
vicinity as well. He'd have to take his chances on the outside.
Glancing down at Harry's ill-fitting clothes, he wondered how many
people searching for him actually knew what he looked like. In the
controlled chaos, would anyone pay much attention to one more suit
with a gun? At a moment of silence in the hallway, Will opened the
closet door and slipped out, hoping he was heading in Max's direction.
Or at least away from Marita and Dr. Demento.

He forced himself not to turn and run the other way as a group of three men
jogged toward him, but instead concentrated on hearing their thoughts, which
turned out to be totally occupied on finding the escaped prisoner -- a kid
in old jeans and a ragged sweatshirt. Will breathed a sigh of relief as they
passed by. But Harry would be found soon, and they would remember
the young man in the baggy suit they had seen in the hallway.

He tried to sort through the cacophony of voices swirling in his head to
locate Max, and found some small comfort in discovering that the orders
were to capture him alive. He could feel the fear and anger swirling around
him, the darkness of men who hunted and killed, like a palpable presence
stalking the halls.

*The east entrance, Will. They haven't got the east entrance covered.*

Dr. Pauley's urgent tone broke through the general murmur, and he was
startled to hear his name -- as if she was attempting to communicate with
him, to send him a message. But was it a trap or was she trying to help?
And which way was east?

*Damn, Will, where is your skinny ass?*

Max. She sounded close.

A hand reached out and snatched the gun away from him, and he found himself
staring into the cold, dark eyes of a killer. A beautiful, lethal weapon.

"Come on." Max grabbed his arm and they began to run.

*Will. The east entrance. Please....hurry.*

"Head for the east entrance," Will whispered, hoping Max had a better
idea of where she was than he did. She held his hand in a bone-crushing
grip, moving swiftly and silently while he lumbered along behind her, gasping
for breath. The voices in his head rose and fell, depending on how close their
pursuers were. Unfortunately, he couldn't always tell if they were heading
away
from or toward danger, and as they rounded a corner, they came face to
face with two of the guards.

Max shoved Will aside and charged at the first man, who hesitated, startled
by her aggressive move. As she gave him a vicious head butt, the other man
grabbed her from behind. She threw him off as if he were an old winter coat,
and he crashed into the wall. The first man, sprawled on the floor, blood
all over his face, managed to grab at Max's ankle and drag her to the floor.
With a roar he lunged at her throat, but in a lightning fast move she planted
her feet against his chest and shoved him backward -- into the second man,
who was staggering forward to help his buddy. They both tumbled to the floor
in a
tangle of arms and legs as Max grabbed Will's hand and they began to run
again.

It wasn't the only time they would be stopped -- but Max seemed
to view each encounter as a minor annoyance rather than a potentially
fatal battle. Even if she had allowed Will to help, he would have only
been in the way as she subdued the men with an athletic, graceful and
deadly series of kicks and punches -- so quietly and quickly that they
never had a chance to raise an alarm. Their own blows seemed to glance
off her, when they could actually made contact. Most of the time they found
themselves flailing at thin air.

She defied physics and gravity, combining the agility of a cat with the
fierceness and unholy joy in battle of an ancient warrior, fearlessly taking
on three men at a time, all of them twice her size. Then she moved
stealthily and confidently through the hallways, never hesitating at
which direction to go next.

Finally they arrived at the east entrance -- unguarded. Max pushed down
the bar handle and shoved against the thick metal door. It didn't budge.

"Shit. I knew this was too good to be true." She glanced behind her at the
still empty hallway, then knelt down beside the door and pulled a small
leather
case out of her jumpsuit.

*Lock down the east door.*

"They're coming," Will murmured.

"I don't hear anything."  She opened the case to reveal several tiny picks and
tools that looked like surgical instruments, then went to work on the lock.

Will watched her as the voices kept getting louder.

"Max, I don't want to rush you, but --"

"Don't be paranoid, Will. Just a few more seconds..."

"We don't have a few more seconds."

She glared up at him, then her sensitive ears picked up the sound
of footsteps. Moments later they found themselves trapped in
the narrow hallway by four men.

"We've got 'em," one murmured into his headset as they
approached. "Yeah. There's some chick with him." He paused and
gave Max a lingering glance. "Nah... no back up."

"Now that's a *big* mistake," Max remarked.

She was on him even as he reached for his gun, kicking the weapon out
of reach and then whirling to elbow him sharply in the ribs. As he doubled
over, she clasped her hands together and delivered a heavy blow to the
back of his neck. He sank to the floor with a groan.

"Max, look out!" Will called as a big man in an ugly checkered
jacket grabbed her from behind. Immediately afterward Will was
tackled from the side by the smallest of the four, who still outweighed
him by a good 30 pounds. They slammed into the wall.

"I don't care what the orders are, I'm gonna kill you," the man growled
as he closed his hands around Will's throat.

*And then I'm gonna have some fun with her.*

The man's thought sent a surge of anger through Will, who lunged
forward, catching him off guard, and they crashed into the opposite
wall. The impact loosened the man's grip on Will's throat and Will
jerked free, then threw all his weight into a left hook, connecting
with a satisfying "crack" on the man's jaw. The thug slumped to the
floor as pain radiated up Will's hand into his shoulder.

This looked so easy when Max did it.

She had finished off two of the men and was battling the last one,
who had just gotten in a lucky punch that put her on her back. Even
as Will stepped forward to help, however, she had flipped back up
and kicked out in one blurred motion.

The man crashed to the floor like a felled redwood.

Max leaped over him and knelt beside the door to finish her work.
She was about to push the door open when Will grabbed her arm.

"The alarm system."

"Logan's on it."

They left the building, then scrambled through the woods for about
half a mile before they got to the van where Logan waited with the
engine running.

No one relaxed until they had gone a few miles and no other
cars appeared behind them.

"How did you find me?" Will leaned back against the soft
leather seat with a weary sigh. Every muscle in his body ached,
and his hand was still tingling unpleasantly. He had scratches all
over his face and arms from their little trip through the woods.
Max, on the other hand, looked as if she had just returned from
a leisurely stroll.

"One of the bouncers at the bar saw the van and then found your
ID," Logan replied. "We traced the license plate back to Jupiter, Inc.
Max paid them a little visit and -- er -- persuaded one of the employees
to give her the location of the lab. 'Eyes Only' has already put the word
out. It won't be long before the authorities move in and shut them
down." Logan eased the vehicle off the bumpy side road and onto the
highway that led back to Seattle.

"Will, how'd you know about the east entrance?" Max asked. "It didn't
show up on the diagram I had."

"You wouldn't believe it if I told you," he groaned. "And by the way, my
ass isn't skinny."

He took great pleasure in seeing the unflappable Max look startled.

He felt safe for the first time in what seemed like days, and the voices
in his head seemed to be gradually fading. Either he was getting accustomed
to his new ability or the effects of the vaccine were temporary. As Logan and
Max talked in the front seat, he dozed in the back.

But as they got closer to the city, the buzzing in his head began to increase.
The volume and intensity kept rising, and the headache that had become a
simple nuisance returned full-force. He realized that they had simply been
away from other people, and that as they approached civilization, he was
hearing not just a handful of thoughts, not even hundreds...but thousands.

Max grasped his hand. He thought she must be asking him what was wrong.
He could see her mouth moving, but he couldn't hear her over the roar in his
head. He tried to explain, but he wasn't sure he was getting the words out.
His own thoughts were carried along in the tumult of screams, cries,
laughter,
whispers...like drops of water tossed into the raging rapids, he couldn't
distinguish them. It hurt too much to try to focus. The pain became blinding,
as if the voices were filling his brain to capacity, like a balloon blown up
and
up and up...

Someone put something in his mouth, made him swallow and then drink,
but he knew the medication wouldn't touch the pain, wouldn't muffle the
noise, wouldn't help him...

Nothing would help him ...

The only thing he could do was cling to Max's hand as he sank under the
weight of the voices, drowning in sound.
____________
Silence.

Beautiful silence.

Will lay as still as he could, afraid that even the slightest movement
would wake the demons in his head again, that the dull ache in his
temples would flare into agony if he so much as turned his head.
But as he became more aware of his surroundings, of the soft
clicking of a keyboard, the hum of a refrigerator, faint traffic noise,
he realized he couldn't hear anyone's thoughts except his own.

He opened his eyes, wincing at the bright light streaming in a nearby
window. Now the pain would start. Now the roar would begin to
build gradually, steadily...But nothing happened. A shadow fell across
him and he slowly opened his eyes again to see Max and Logan
at his bedside.

"Where am I?"

Max pulled up a chair and sat down. "At Logan's. You've been out
for about twelve hours."

Will sat up cautiously. "What have I missed?"

"The facility where you were held is being currently being swarmed over by
a dozen different agencies," Logan informed him. "Seems like everyone
from the AMA to the IRS had an interest in Jupiter, Inc. The local cops
made a few arrests and brought in a couple of doctors for questioning.
Ms. Covais' current whereabouts, however, remain unknown."

"I stopped by the office this afternoon," Max said. "Locked up tight.
Looks like everybody left in a big hurry." She handed him a file.
"I did find this, though. Thought you might want to see it."

His name was on the folder.

"Thanks." He set it aside. "Maybe later."

"I also managed to locate Melvin Frohike." Logan looked very pleased with
himself. "He's currently hiding out in Vancouver with Byers and Langly, under
the alias of John Gillnitz. But he told me how we can contact him, when
you're
up to it."

"Thank you." Will swallowed a sudden lump in his throat. "Thank you both
for...everything."

"We should let you get some rest." Logan backed his chair away from
the bed and wheeled out of the room. Max followed, then stopped at the
door, turning back to Will.

"Hey...when you're feeling better, I've got something to show you."

It was a long time before he went back to sleep.

End part 10

Epilogue

"Wow. This is amazing."

Will sat next to Max on top of the Space Needle, looking out at the lights
of the city below -- or at least what he could see through the ever-present
clouds.

"Told you."

"I just wish there was an easier way to get up here than all those
stairs."

"There is." She pointed toward a stout cord attached to the structure.
The end of the rope drifted somewhere far below, out of sight.

Will stared at Max.  "If you were anybody else, I'd think you
were kidding."

For a few moments they sat in companionable silence, each lost
in their own thoughts, enjoying a rare moment of peace and quiet.
They were so far above the city that Will's sensitive ears couldn't
even pick up traffic noises. He savored the rare experience of
feeling like a normal person.

Sure. Lots of normal people hung out on the Space Needle after
midnight.

"What are you smiling about?" Max asked.

"Sometimes I'm just glad I'm not normal."

She gave him the same amused, slightly exasperated look he'd seen
his mother give his father from time to time -- usually when he was
explaining one of his wilder theories. "Did you ever read
that file?"

He shook his head. "I gave it to Logan. Whatever's in there...
Fox Mulder and Dana Scully will always be my mother and
father. No lab report, no amount of testing will change that."

She sighed, and he knew she was thinking of her own past, with
no real home, no loving parents. "So now what?"

"I'll spend some time with my uncles in Vancouver. Maybe see if we
can track Marita, or find out if there are more 'test subjects' being
held against their will."

"I'll sleep better tonight knowing you and Logan are out there saving the
world." She stood up and hooked one end of the cord to her waist.
"But for now, gotta buzz. You coming?"

"I'll take the conventional route." He gestured toward the door behind
him.
 
She shrugged. "Suit yourself." Then she launched herself off the top of
the Space Needle in a graceful swan dive. Will leaped to his feet and moved
cautiously over to the edge, his heart in his throat, barely able to see the
dark outline dancing through the clouds.

He stared at the rope, the impossibly thin piece of material that was the
only thing keeping her from crashing into the cement far below, and
wondered what it would be like, to dangle high above the city, to glide
through the air, laughing in the face of death. To be fearless. To fly.

Maybe he'd stick around for a few more days before he headed
to Vancouver.

The End

*Thanks for sticking with me!  I'd love to know what you thought
of Will and Max. Please send me a note at LHoward388@aol.com