by Justin Glasser
------------------------------------------------------------------------
She lay pressed against her partner's warm body, arms curled around him, feeling the rise and fall of his breath beneath her cheek, the soothing pulse of his heart. She was so close she could smell the faint tang of his sweat. She was too close, but she didn't dare move.
She had dozed off almost immediately after pulling herself against Mulder's reluctant form, but it had been too long since she had slept with someone else: she woke up every time he moved. Every time he shifted his legs, or adjusted the pillow, every time he sighed in a dream, she came awake, her thoughts drifting aimlessly in the pitch darkness.
If she were home, she might have called him. She did that, sometimes, when she couldn't sleep well. Mulder was almost always up until two or three in the morning, and if she felt like talking she would reach for the cordless by the bed and call him up, to listen to the calm throatiness of his voice until she felt willing to try sleeping again. They didn't talk of anything important when she called. Once she had told him about how she'd learned to swim (her older brother Bill had rowed her to the middle of the lake and thrown her in, unbeknownest to Ahab), and one memorable time Mulder had revealed how he and Phoebe Greene had met (a pub, of course) and how many drinks it had taken for her to get him home (a number she couldn't remember although she kept thinking "seven," knowing it was wrong).
It was ironic, she thought, that Mulder was asleep right beside her when she would normally be calling him to set her own mind at rest.
She turned, suddenly and without thinking, realizing only after she did so that Mulder must have felt her: he sighed and mumbled something, then turned with her, curling his legs up behind hers and wrapping one arm around her waist.
"What do you dream about?" she'd asked him once, during one of her late night calls.
His voice had purred in her ear. "Why do you ask?"
"Mulder, I'm serious."
He had been silent for so long that she had actually started to listen to the television show he'd had on in the background, some news segment about dairy farming.
"I dream about a lot of things," he'd said. "You know that."
Sure she knew. She knew that more than once she had bolted through the connecting door between their hotel rooms and found him, sweaty and panting, sitting straight up in bed or still writhing in his sheets, crying or gasping for air.
She knew *that* he dreamed, not *what* he dreamed.
Mulder's finger twitched on her hip, and she heard him make a tiny sound in the back of his throat. "Chasing rabbits," Ahab had told her when she was five and had asked why their dashaund's feet moved when he slept. "He's chasing rabbits, Dana," her father'd said, hugging her close. "All dogs do when they have good dreams."
Lying in the cool darkness, Mulder curled up tight against her back, she hoped that herr partner was having the Mulder equivalent of the rabbit chasing dream.
*****
I am walking into the Hoover Building through the front door, although I never do that, but itís a dream, so itís okay. I pass through the metal detector, and collect my keys from Carl, the security guard who holds the plastic tray. I have never actually spoken to him before but I know his name in the way that you know everybodyís name in dreams, and he says hello to me.
ìLooking sharp, Agent Mulder,î Carl says, smiling.
ìThanks,î I say, and head toward the elevator.
The elevator is visible from the lobby--the burnished stainless steel confronting the bovine crowd of federal employees with their reflections--so I think I can get there without a problem, but something happens, the light wavers and I get lost, ending up in a hallway lit only by the flickering of a single fluorescent bulb. There are old pieces of office furniture at the end of the hall--a desk cants to one side, missing a leg. Cheap, adjustable metal shelve like the ones I have in my apartment line the wall, covered (as mine are) with files and papers in sloppy stacks. I lean over and try to read the label, but it's blurry, so I give up.
I turn to leave the hallway, and Carl stands behind me.
ìHey--î I say.
ìYou had to look, didnít you, Agent Mulder,î he says, no longer friendly security guard, but menacing, smiling.
ìNo, this is all--î
ìYouíll have to suffer for this one,î he says.
ìThis is a mistake!î I protest, stepping past Carl, heading back to the main lobby.
ìYou bet it is,î he says. I feel the cool snip of handcuffs on my wrist.
ìHey!î I try to spin, but Carl has my other wrist locked in now and he shoves them into the center of my back, pushing me forward and propelling me toward the far side of the lobby.
ìScully!î I cry, catching sight of her coming through the metal detector. I have never been so happy to see her in my life. Scully hasnít heard me, though. She walks through the detector and heads straight to the elevators which I can see from here. How did I take a wrong turn?
ìScully!î She does not turn. The elevator door closes, and when I turn my head to look for other help I see her again, and again. A whole series of Scullys wearing a hundred different suits, come streaming in the door.
ìScully!î Some of them turn to look, but their glances are the curious glances of people watching a scene. None of them seems to recognize me. ìWhereís my partner?î
I am wriggling in Carlís grip, trying to twist my hands free. ìWhereís my partner? Scully will tell you Iím innocent. Whereís Scully?î
Carlís laugh booms from near my ear. ìYour partner.î The laugh echoes again.
He is shoving me toward a door gaping in the far wall. There is no light behind the door. Just black, just darkness, and this strikes me as odd.
ìJust *get* my partner, Carl. Sheíll fix everything, I swear!î
ìYou donít have any partner, Agent Mulder.î
"What? What about Scully? Whereís Scully?î
We are three yards away from the door now, and the darkness is impenetrable. I am certain that there is something behind that door. I know it.
ìAinít no Scully, Agent Mulder,î Carl says, and this time his laugh is soft, subtle. ìScullyís gone.î
As he shoves me through the door, I begin to scream.
*****
Dana Scully was jerked out of sleep by the sudden and piercing scream of her partner.
*****
Chewing on a dried-out ham sandwich from the cafeteria, he remembered the first time he'd seen one of Mulder's nightmares happen, in Alexandria, in apartment fifty-two, looking down into the life of a man. That was why he'd been brought to this godforsaken place, because he knew the file, he knew Mulder.
He knew that approximately four out of seven nights spent in his own apartment, Fox Mulder woke up with nightmares. That frequency dimished on the road, averaging out to about two out of seven if you added the days together. He knew that Mulder never slept in the other room, that he didn't even have a bed in the apartment, and that Mulder got up once and only once each night to go to the bathroom no matter how much the mobile surrveillance team said he drank or didn't drink.
He knew that Mulder hadn't had sex between December 1994 and November 1996 because those were the dates when he had been up there, watching Mulder jerk off on practically a daily basis. That had been his time in the Box before getting promoted to unit commander. Before he was so fucking good at his job that his name had been mentioned specifically when they knew Mulder had his nose to the ground, sniffing around the higher-ups, looking for Agent Scully yet again.
Poor bastard probably thought he wasn't supposed to save her.
That first dream hadn't been the worst he'd seen-- there were some nights when the screams made him leap out of his chair--but it was the one he remembered when he was driving to his shoddy apartment in the thin grey dawns. He'd been watching Mulder for almost a week, creating an initial subject profile--typical activities, standard sleep and waking patterns, areas of vulnerability, the usual--when he noticed that his subject was no longer unconscious on his couch but curled up in a ball in the small space between the couch and the coffee table. Turning up the volume revealed that his subject was keening to himself in a small high voice. No words, just sound. After awhile (seven minutes and four seconds) the noise stopped. In another forty-nine seconds, Mulder was back on the couch asleep.
He'd made a note of it in the log, thinking that Mulder had issues his bosses had only hinted at in the briefing, but that morning, creeping naked between his sheets to sleep the day away, he had remembered Mulder's noises and had shuddered. This had been a mild one, comparitively.
Now, watching them on the FLIR screen, he remembered that thin lonely noise. And wondered what Mulder dreamed.
*****
ìMulder! Mulder!î she shouted, fighting to be heard over the screams. She reached out in the total blackness, enocuntering his solid and slightly sweaty torso. She smacked it, her hand open.
ìMulder!î
The screaming stopped, replaced by harsh breathing and muffled sobs.
ìMulder, it's okay. You're okay.î
She felt him lie back down, trembling with adrenaline and fear. She leaned over him, bracing herself with and arm on either side of him, wishing she could see his face.
ìMulder,î she murmured.
ìIím okay, Scully.î He was talking into a pillow. She ran her fingers up his arm to his cheek, smoothed his hair back off his forehead. He was sweating up a storm, afraid. It had happened before, of course, the dreaming and the shouting, but never so close. So loudly.
ìWhat was the dream about?î She kept petting him. In a thousand hotel rooms she had sat on the side of the bed, listening to his breathing slow until he drifted off again. Sheíd never touched him before, not like this, but somehow not seeing him made it easier. She could concentrate on what it felt like to have him calm under her fingers.
Gentling. That was the word. That was what it was called when you approached a skittish horse and calmed it down by stroking it. Scully, who had been a victim of an intense case of horse love as a young girl, remembered it from countless bad girl-meets- horse novels--how the young girl would approach slowly with her hand palm up and the horse would settle under her ministrations until it would eat sugar from her hand. Thatís what she was doing-- gentling Mulder.
ìIt was nothing,î he said.
ìMm hmm,î she answered. She leaned down over his arm and rested her chin on his shoulder. Mulder smelled of sweat and sleep, the particular warm scent of male skin. She had missed this in the last couple of years. Missed the sex, but even more than that, missed this smell.
This was Mulder.
ìYou donít want to talk about it?î she asked. She was using what her mother called the Honey voice, so-called not because it was sweet, but because the word ìhoneyî hung around it like a blanket. ìYou donít want to talk, honey?î was the real question, but Scully didnít use the word ìhoneyî in general, and certainly not with Mulder.
ìNo, I donít.î
ìOkay.î Scully patted his shoulder and lay back down facing him. For a long time there was silence, that deep and impenetrable silence that seems to come only with absolute darkness.
Mulderís voice slipped through that silence, hardly making a dent. ìScully,î he said.
ìYes,î she answered, and the honey still hung on her words.
ìCan I--î he sighed. ìCan, um, can I--î
She reached out and hooked her arm around his neck, drawing him up against her. His arms snaked around her waist and his nose nuzzled into her neck. She felt very small suddenly, aware of their size difference and how easily he encircled her. After awhile, she heard him speak, although his words were muffled by the fabric of her t-shirt.
ìWhat?î
ìI donít suppose weíll be doing this either,î he said lifting his head so she could hear him.
She chuckled, knowing that he was keeping his hips as far away from her as possible, and struck by his thoughtfulness. Only Mulder would cling so tightly to her and still try to protect her from his erection.
ìDonít push your luck,î she said.
*****End 6/10*****
Certitude 07/10: Confused Alarms
by Justin Glasser
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Somewhere in the Antarctic
Day Five
0800 hours
They came in with only the noise of their boots and their panting breath, guns held at their chests, modern incarnations of death. They said nothing.
They grabbed Mulder off her bed, one of them for each of his arms and legs, and then someone was holding her back and another one was pulling out a needle and bending his head to the right, injecting him while he and Scully shouted out in protest.
The effect was instantaneous.
As she leapt toward him, abruptly free, Mulder collapsed, his spine bowing until Scully thought his head and feet would touch behind him. His hands were claws of pain. Every tendon bulged in his neck. There was no sound as she dropped to her knees next to him, tried to pull him straight. Even the storm troopers seemed shocked, and stood for a moment like trees, their camouflage uniforms forming a forest circle around her and her partner.
"Mulder!" she screamed. "Can you hear me? Mulder?"
He writhed in hissing agony.
"What did you give him?" she demanded, searching their masked faces. "WHAT DID YOU GIVE HIM?"
Her words seemed to break their paralysis. They filed out, one by one, subdued.
Mulder began to scream.
*****
He looked down at them through the cameras, stunned into silence.
He hadn't thought it would be this bad.
He'd heard the stories, of course. They all had. The subject who tore his own wrists open with his bare hands, the one who beat his head against the wall until he actually cracked his skull, the one who'd lapsed into a catatonia so deep that he couldn't even feed himself and had to be changed like a baby. He'd heard of trial subjects who begged for death, who struggled with the MPs for their weapons, who impaled themselves on chair legs. They were the urban legends of the complex, and he'd always suspected that the guys made at least some of that shit up just to have something new to brag about at chow. He hadn't blamed them: in a shithole like this one, you took all the status you could get.
But he'd never actually seen a trial before.
Mulder squirmed on the screen, his voice hoarse already. He rolled and twisted, tendons stretched into ridges while Scully tried to hold him still. She wanted him on the bed, but he thrashed away from her hands and her words, voice roaring over the mics. What must that sound like in the room, he thought.
*****
I'M BURNING *****
He'd watched for five minutes and Mulder was still screaming, although his scream were broken by sobbing and gasping, an indication not that the pain was lessening, but that the subject was succumbing to exhaustion. Some of the luckier ones had passed out according to the guys at breakfast.
Mulder had never been lucky, he thought, lips stretching over his teeth in a thin smile. Almost never.
He watched for another minute, twisting idly in his office chair, turning away from the screen and back. Away. Back. Away . . .
No, Mulder was never lucky. He'd seen that in his two years above the agent's head, if nothing else. No one who cried in his sleep and spent so much time bouncing a basketball against the was could be considered lucky, Scully or not. Mulder was a sad and lonely man.
Of course, if Mulder was sad and lonely, what did that make the man whose only job was to watch sadness and record lonely?
Fuck.
It was no good thinking like that. His job was too observe. To provide information so that dangerous elements like Fox Mulder and his partner could be controlled, removed from the game if necessary. No point in questioning that, no point in doubting it, because questions and doubts only got you one place around here.
Back. Away. Back. Away. Back . . .
Mulder still thrashed on the scream, and his screams had taken on that irritating rasp that meant the subject has strained his vocal cords. Why didn't the idiot just pass out? Why didn't he just give up?
So, two things: Mulder never had any luck and he never quit. Quite a combination. Never got what he wanted and never stopped trying to get it. Sorry bastard.
But then, he thought turning back and forth in his chair, when was the last time anyone got what he wanted?
Away. Back. Away.
It was hanging where he left it, on the rack near the metal door, like an empty bag of skin. His parka. They had to walk from the barracks to the ops building above ground and he didn't like leaving his stuff in the common room, even if it was just a standard issue parka that everyone and their brother had. That had unnerved him a little on the first day, walking across the snow with some of the men from his barracks, all of them looking like misshapen bears, all of them looking exactly the same.
Exactly the same.
He turned back to the screen. Mulder still writhed on the floor, still struggled against Scully's hands. There was a puddle under the subject now, he noticed.
He turned his chair away from the screen.
*****
She didn't realize someone else was in the room until the gun came down hard and fast on Mulder's skull.
"HEY!" she screamed, swinging and making contact with a powerful thigh. "What the hell--"
He crouched, clutching his thigh, and his voice was low and fast. "It's the only way. Help me."
The man, dressed entirely in winter gear, bent and lifted Mulder's torso. Bewildered, Scully grabbed her partner's ankles.
"To the bathroom," the man said when she tried to pull Mulder into the bed.
"Take off his clothes," the man ordered, dropping Mulder into the tub. "Fill it with cool water. Cool, not cold. And keep changing it."
Scully grabbed his arm as he turned. "Wait! What is it? What did they give him?"
The man pulled away from her, stalking toward the external door.
"Dammit! Wait!" She ran after him, grasping at his jacket. "I'm a doctor. Tell me what they gave him so I can help him!"
She couldn't see his face from behind the ski mask, but his eyes when he turned to look at her were blue. Cerulean blue, she thought, disjointedly. Eyes that knew.
"You can't help him," he said.
She darted around him in front of the door. "Tell me. You came here to help me, so *help* me."
The man stepped forward, pressing against her. He was thick with the padding of his coat and she could feel her knees shaking from the anxiety, from the fear of not knowing. No heat came from him, no impression of size or bulk. He was no one, anyone.
"Tell me," she hissed.
"You can only keep him alive. The effects may last twelve hours, maybe sixteen. If they inject him again, he will probably die."
"What was it?" she demanded, clutching at the front of his jacket, burying her fingers in soft padding. "Was it poisonous? Was it a toxin?"
Then, abruptly his breath was hot on her ear and she thought *this is it* and that was fine, whatever it took, if it would save him, but he didn't push her back against the wall and shove his knee between her legs, he just whispered.
"It was your blood."
Later, it would seem as if the man had simply vanished. She would recall nothing about the next few moments except the floor slamming against the already-bruised flesh of her knees.
*****
When she started thinking again, she was in the bathroom, tugging Mulder's t-shirt over his head. The water rushed from the tap. In another time and place this might have been amusing, even titillating, she thought, struggling to yank the urine- stained sweatpants down over his legs without dragging his head underwater. For a moment she considered his army-issue briefs, then yanked them down too, throwing them into the sink with the rest of his clothes. She pulled a thin cotton towel from the rack above the toilet and tucked it around his hips.
She put her hand in the water. Cool, but not cold.
She folded another towel and tucked it behind his head. Then she reached out and took his hand and held it until her own fingers grew pruny and water- logged.
She might have cried a little.
*****
Report 23 of --
Operative 7477108N
1131 hours
M subject still unconscious from--
He heard the pneumatic door slide open as he typed, but he did not look up. There was no point. The fucker would come in whether he looked up or not, so he might as well pretend he was working on the goddamned report.
He heard the bastard approach and stand behind him, heard the click and swish of the lighter, the smooth gasp of the inhale.
ìHow are you this morning, Captain Neill,î the man said, his voice light and smooth, almost unmasculine.
ìFine, sir,î he said, almost without thinking. The man was a civilian, but Neill always called him ìsirî anyway. The old bastard seemed to get a kick out of it.
ìAre you sure, Captain? There seems to be a bit of a . . . discrepancy in your reports.î The soft whoosh of cigarette smoke filtering back into the room.
Neill turned to face him. ìWhat do you mean, sir?î
ìI spoke to the men assigned to the room, Captain. They report finding Agent Mulder in the bed this morning.î
Neill waited. There was no point in giving this bastard the ammunition to shoot him with. That had been a mistake, not including the sleeping arrangements somehow, but he hadnít known the trials were going to start this morning. He hadnít known anyone would see but him, and . . . Neill felt his breakfast solidify in his stomach.
Fuck.
Had they reviewed the tapes? Had this fucker Smith (and if that wasnít a bullshit name then Neill had never heard one) and his team reviewed this morningís tapes? Had they *seen* him?
ìWith Agent Scully, Captain Neill. Why wasnít that in your report?î
Neill started speaking before his mind had a chance to work.
ìIím sorry, sir, I was going over the surveillance for the last couple of months. I wasnít sure if this was something unique to the relationship at this time, sir, or if it had occurred during my hiatus. I was going to do a complete work-up of the situation.î
ìFor what purpose, Captain?î Another whoosh of smoke filled the room.
ìTo determine the possibilities provided by it, sir.î Neill looked up.
Years ago, in basic training, Benjamin Neill and nineteen of his best buddies had been subjected to a motherfucker of a drill sergeant--Sergeant Andrew Curapt. Sergeant Crap, they called him when he wasnít around. One day, when they were fucking around in the barracks waiting for inspection, one of Ben Neillís buddies--Johnny Sawyer--had said something about Sergeant Crap, when said Sergeant was standing outside the door. In the dressing down and KP duty that followed for the next seventy-two hours, Neill and his compatriots had learned the benefits of the stone face. Show weakness and Sergeant Crap would shit all over you. At this moment, staring up into those blank eyes, Neill was absurdly grateful to Sergeant Crap and his idiot buddy Sawyer. His face didnít move.
ìIn the future, Captain Neill, your reports will be comprehensive, is that understood?î
They hadnít reviewed the tape. They didnít know he had been *in* the room. No one was observing the observer, for a change. He had gotten a break. But the proof was on the tapes and all they had to do was look.
ìSir, yes sir.î
ìGood. You are an asset to this project, Captain, but that doesnít mean you canít be replaced.î
Captain Neill turned back to his screen and didnít breathe until he heard the whoosh of the door behind him.
They hadnít seen him, they didnít know, but the proof was on the tapes and the tapes were in the control room, the locked control room, locked in the room, the controls, the tapes, and all they had to do was look, just look.
Ben Neill propped his elbows on the table and rested his face in his hands, gasping for air, words spasming in his head.
He was fucked.
***
Certitude 08/10: Struggle and Flight
by Justin Glasser
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Somewhere in the Antarctic
Day Five
2004 hours
For a long time all she did was sit there next to the tub, her fingers trailing in the water near Mulder's hand while he twitched and whimpered and moaned. It was like watching his worst nightmare, and she hated it because she knew that she couldn't wake him. Whatever tortured Mulder at this moment in his subconscious was a million times better then the hell that awaited him when he woke.
She had been kidding when she mentioned the Budahaas case, but now she recalled that case, the first one, the first time. Mulder has staggered, dazed and groggy, to the car, and she had felt something rough and fierce well up inside her. She didn't know what it was, but she knew that someone had hurt her partner and that they would have to pay. After awhile that feeling had gone--the revenge part anyway. Looking at him now, his mouth open, the bruise on his neck where the needle struck, the thin trembling and shaking of his torso with every breath, she still felt the protectiveness running rampant through her.
If they came back, someone was going to die.
****
Somewhere in the Antarctic
Day Six
0023 hours
ìTell me what you saw, Scully.î
ìMulder, do we have to do this now? How do you feel?î
I felt hollowed and charred, like someone ran butane through me and struck a match, but she was using that as an excuse. I shrugged her hand off of my forehead.
ìI feel like shit. Just answer the question.î
She sighed, leaning back against the toilet. Her hair stuck up in strange shapes and her hands were pruny and pale from waterlogging. She looked almost as bad as I felt.
ìDo you need more water?î She reached for the faucet, but I caught her hand in one of mine.
ìWhat I need is for you to answer my question, Scully.î
She sat back again, closing her eyes. ìYou donít want to hear this, Mulder, but I didnít see anything.î
She held her hand up to silence me before my protest even formed in my throat.
ìI know you donít want to hear it, Mulder, but I donít remember half of what happened to me. I was sick, Mulder. I was unconscious or in shock for most of it. I didnít see anything.î
ìWhat about on the ice, Scully?î
She sighed. ìI felt something. We were thrown free of the cave-in by something, but I donít know what.î
ìWhat about afterwards?î
ìAfterwards?î
ìAfter we fell.î
ìI only saw you. Howís the pain?î
Now it was my turn to sigh, craning my head back against the cool tiles. My whole body hurt with the dull muscle ache of someone who had worked too hard and too long, and once in a while there would be a flash of pain, frightening in its unpredictability and in its echo of the fire that had been in my veins only hours earlier.
ìItís okay.î
ìYou want to try getting out of the tub?î
ìWhatíd you have in mind?î I asked, raising my eyebrows at her. I felt like I had been run over by a dump truck, but I still remembered the bliss of having Scully in my arms, and I still knew that I was wearing only a towel. Thank god the water was cool.
She just looked at me.
ìYou really didnít see anything?î I asked, lurching to my knees behind the dry towel she was holding up. Her head was averted. Scully has a fine sense of propriety for a doctor.
ìMulder,î she sighed, looking up at me only after I took the towel from her and wrapped it around my waist. ìI didnít see anything.î She was still kneeling in front of the tub and I wavered over her, dizzy and awkward. I felt like a monument she was bowed before. ìI didnít have to see anything,î she said, before I could make a bad sexual joke. ìI felt it.î
My knees buckled, suddenly, probably from the injection.
*****
ìI see that Mr. Mulder seems to be recovering nicely.î
The voice startled Neill out of his doze. He had been dreaming that Agent Scully'd tied him down and injected him with her blood, laughing while he screamed. He wasn't sure if the dream was worse than this.
ìSleeping on the job, Captain Neill,î Smith said, smiling around his cigarette.
ìIím sorry sir. I was supposed to be relieved three hours ago.î Not that it mattered. He would be relieved soon enough, he supposed.
ìYouíll be relieved when I say youíre relieved, Captain Neill.î
ìYes, sir,î Neill said, sitting up straight.
ìHeís about ready for another test, wouldnít you say?î Smith pointed at the screen with the butt of his cigarette. On it, Mulder slept.
ìSir, I thought we wanted Mulder alive.î
Smith pinned him with those cold snake eyes. ìWho said we didnít?î
Neill looked back to the screen. Mulder on the bed, Scully in the chair. It had been for nothing, then. His stupid little adventure to reclaim a piece of his own initiative had resulted in nothing.
He sighed.
ìAnother test, sir, would probably kill him.î
ìMr. Mulder wonít die, Captain Neill. Iíll see to that.î
ìAnother test, sir--î
ìCaptain Neill, you should concern yourself with your reports, not your subjects. Leave Agent Mulderís welfare to me.î
ìYouíre not releasing them.î
Smith looked at him and took a drag on his cigarette, letting the smoke plume and swirl around Neillís face.
ìThat shouldnít concern you, Captain. Not if you want another assignment.î
Neill understood. He understood completely.
*****
She helped him into the other room, half dragging him toward the bed. His legs shook and trembled, but he kept saying he felt fine, so she kept moving forward. She knew from experience that if someone insisted they were fine, you had to treat them like they were.
He managed to crawl back up onto the bed himself, sliding under the covers and pulling the towel out from beneath them like magician pulling a tablecloth from beneath a full table. ìCare to join me,î he asked.
She did, but that wasnít the most important thing now (and if she were being honest with herself it was almost never the most important thing). She sat on the edge of the bed, instead, and put her hand on his arm.
ìYou need to rest,î she murmured. ìYou need to recover as much as possible.î
ìWhat can we do, Scully?î he whispered back, catching her mood.
She shrugged. Then she pulled the paper out of the drawer and began to write.
*****
He was impressed by her ingenuity.
He sat, bent over, head in his hands, staring at the screen in front of him, watching as Mulder struggled into the bed, as Scully began to write, and admired her. She knew they were being watched and recorded, she knew that the door was locked and there was no possible way out, she knew that her partner was at risk for his life and she was still trying to resist them. She was what Neillís long dead mother would have called a ìstone cold bitchî and would have meant as a compliment. That idiot Mulder wouldnít even be alive if it wasnít for her.
Neill shook his head. The only thing that saved Mulder from being a pathetic asshole in his opinion was the fact that he had traveled to the end of the earth to get her back. At least he recognized what he had, even if he didnít deserve it.
He didn't deserve it. Mulder didn't deserve the devotion and loyalty and strength that woman showed him every single minute, but he had it.
Neill sighed. Not for long, he thought.
Mulder was a trial subject, he would last another couple of days, maybe a week and then . . . well, he might live, if Smith took him out of the trials as he had suggested he would. But they would certainly be separated in the next day or two, and Mulder would go to the lab and Scully . . .
What would happen to Scully?
Neill looked up, at the screens, at the top of her head, at her profile, at Agent Scully, who was *not* a trial subject, who was *not* the particular pet of a certain man-in-charge-named-Smith, who would *not* be kept around for fun and games after Agent Mulder was subdued . . .
Then he got up out of his chair, and walked out of the office.
*****
That man said if you were injected again, you would die she wrote.
I nodded. She had told me about the man while I was soaking in the tub, weeping a little from the pain. Someone here had come in and told her what they did to me, what they were planning on doing.
We canít let that happen. Her penmanship was as neat and precise as it was on the notes she left herself in our office. ìCall Mom,î those notes said, or ìdonít forget to pick up dry cleaning.î It was reassuring to see that penmanship here, on these notes of my impending doom.
I took the pencil from her and made a single question mark. My hand was still shaking slightly, nerves trembling.
She shrugged again.
I wanted to kiss her then. ìLet me worry about it.î How typical. How absolutely fucking *Scully.* I remembered that stupid Tom Cruise movie, the one about the Marines with Jack Nicholson and Demi Moore in it, which I had considered a total waste of a body like Mooreís. They might as well have gotten an *actress* for the part that she played. When Scully said that to me, wrote that to me, I remembered what the Demi Moore character had said when Tom Cruise asked her why she liked their clients. ìBecause they stand up there and say ënothingís going to hurt you, not on my watch,íî was her answer. Thatís what Scully was saying to me, and I loved her for it. Get me a boob job and marry me to Bruce Willis.
ìScully, you ever seen that Tom Cruise movie with Jack Nicholson in it, and Demi Moore?î I asked. I lay back and closed my eyes.
ìGet some sleep, Mulder,î she said, patting my arm.
ìSure you wonít join me,î I asked again, wondering how Scully would feel against my raw and naked skin.
She just stroked my arm again.
A while later, when I was in the borderlands between sleep and awareness, I heard her get up and flush our paper conversation down the toilet. After that I donít remember much for a long while.
*****
J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington D.C.
When he returned to his desk after lunch, Assistant Director Walter Skinner found a single yellow piece of paper in the center of his dark green blotter. He picked it up and read it, pulled his glasses off, rubbed his fingers into his eyes, shoved his glasses back on and read it again. Then he stood up from his desk and strode for the office door, shouting for Kimberly, his assistant.
The paper stayed behind, placid and open on the desktop. "Mulder Scully alive STOP" it read. "South 79.oo lat East 61.oo long 290 feet STOP Relocation imminent STOP"
*****end 8/10*****
Certitude 09/10: Clash by Night
by Justin Glasser
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Somewhere in the Antarctic
Day Six
0432 hours
She heard the door slide open before she noticed the change in light. She hadn't expected it so soon, but she curled the end of the towel around her hand. If he tried to get near Mulder . . . She had never strangled anyone in her entire life, never been responsible for someone else's death except through the impersonal distance of her gun, but if this man approached her partner, she would strangle him.
And hopefully break his neck in the process.
"Agent Scully," the man whispered. "Agent Scully?"
She slid off the chair silently, squinting to see the man in the void.
"I can see you, Agent Scully. I'm here to help."
Damn, she thought. Damn it.
"Stay away from us," she said.
The man shut the door behind him. "Put these on," he said, shoving clothes into her hands. "How is he?"
"Awake," Mulder said, from off to her right, voice groggy from sleep. "Who are you?"
"Shut up, Agent Mulder. Put these on." She heard the soft thump of clothes landing on the bed.
"What's going on?" she asked, feeling the smooth slipperiness of gortex under her fingers.
"This is going to go a lot faster if you keep your mouth shut and your ass moving," the man said.
*****
I felt rather than heard Scully's resentment of this asshole, but she kept her mouth shut because she knew the same thing I knew.
We were getting out.
I struggled into the parka and snow pants, yanking on the boots without doing the laces. After we were dressed he opened the door again, peering out into the dimly lit hallway before swinging it wide and letting us through.
"Come on," he said. "Move!"
He was military, that much was clear from the way he hustled us through the hallways, stopping at each intersection with his back to wall and peering around the corner to make sure it was clear before moving on. He had on a black ski mask and standard fatigues. I figured him for about five or ten years older than I was, but I don't know why. Maybe because of his voice, thick and gravelly, and used to being listened to. Enlisted, I thought, but I couldn't explain it.
The hallways followed, one after the other like a rabbit's warren, one leading to the next. There were no signs, no markings on the walls. Every hall we turned down looked just like the last.
Then the lights went out, and the halls were filled with blood.
*
**** Scully, who was right behind the man, heard the soft exclamation.
"Shit."
"What happened?" she demanded, grabbing his arm. In the strange flood of the red lights, his face looked like the mask of a demon.
"They know you're gone. I can't take you any farther," the man gasped. "I've got to get back. They'll be tracing me once they find out I'm missing."
"Who are you?" Scully asked, zipping up her coat.
"It doesn't matter who I am. Take this hallway until it dead-ends, about fifty meters, see?" He pointed. Scully followed his finger and nodded. "Take the left hall, then take an immediate right."
"You're him, the soldier who told us what was--"
"SHUT UP!" he hissed. "If you look close you'll see the outline of a door about ten meters down on the right side. Slide this in about where the doorknob would be." He pressed a flat card into her palm. "Good luck."
"Wait, where do we go after that?" Mulder whispered, but the man didn't stop edging away, glancing uneasily down at the box on his belt. "Wait!" Mulder's voice was a harsh demand.
The man disappeared around a corner and was gone.
*****
They ran.
Down the hall until it ended, then to left, and then the right. Scully stopped, running her fingers over the wall in the red light, searching for a door she couldn't see.
"Scully," Mulder said. She turned.
He was still at the corner, pressed flat against the wall.
"I can hear them," he murmured. She could see his chest heaving, even under the heavy coat. She hoped this door went somewhere good, because Mulder wasn't going to get very far on adrenaline alone.
"Tell me when they get close enough to matter," she hissed, still feeling for the door. The pads of her fingers caught on something and in the bloody light of the reserve lamps she finally saw it, a thin black outline of escape. She slid the card into the line.
Nothing happened.
"Damn!"
"Gettin' closer," Mulder whispered.
She turned the card on its side and swiped it like a credit card. The door hummed and the line widened. She slipped the card into one of the huge pockets of the parka. She could feel the door's thin edge, only raised a quarter of an inch from the wall. She bent her fingers around it and pulled. The line widened again, half an inch, three quarters, an inch and a half, two, and she felt the slip of air from one room to the next. She squeezed her fingers into the opening and pulled. It didn't budge.
"Scully," he hissed in warning.
"Mulder, come here," she hissed back.
She took his hand and slid it into the crack between the door and the wall above her own. "You're going to have to help me," she whispered.
"This is a hell of a time for me to have to play He- Man," he said.
"Shut up and pull, Mulder," she answered, and counted to three.
The door moved so slowly it was almost painful. Her blood pounded in her head, and Mulder's breath rasped over her ears. The rhythmic beat of boots on the floor crept closer and closer.
"Come on," she wheezed, straining against it.
"Go, Scully, go," Mulder groaned. She could feel him trembling with the effort.
"Can you hold it?"
"Go!" He kicked at her, and she went, squeezing herself through the opening. She propped herself in the opening, bracing herself with one leg against the wall. Mulder slid in, pressing against her, chest to chest.
"Remind me," he said as they slipped through the opening and fell to the floor, "to escape military complexes in the middle of the Antarctic with braless women more often."
Scully watched as the door eased shut behind them, sealing off all light. "I'm wearing a parka, Mulder."
"It's the thought that counts, Scully."
"Where do you think we go from here?"
"I'm guessing away from the door," he said, grabbing her hand and tugging her to her feet.
They ran.
*****
It only took us ten minutes to reach the other side of the room or corridor, or where ever the hell we were. I ran my hands over the wall, feeling nothing but the chill. If there was a door around here, it probably went to the outside.
"Mulder, look," my partner said, and I knew she was pointing, but she didn't need to. Down near the floor a red dot glowed faintly.
"You still have that--" the key was slapped into my outstretched hand. I knelt, found the opening with my fingers, and pushed the card in. "Scully, if this works . . ."
"We're going to be out in the middle of Antarctica alone without supplies. I know, Mulder."
I waited.
"I'd rather freeze to death than watch you get another one of those injections."
"You sure?"
"You didn't see yourself, Mulder. You . . ." she paused, "you *wet* yourself. I'm sure."
"Jeez, Scully. You sure know how to send a guy off."
I felt her hand in my hair, then on the back of my neck. It lingered there for a moment, and I leaned my cheek against her thigh, and closed my eyes for a second. Just a second.
"Let's go," she said.
I pulled the card from the slot, the light turned green, and the door opened onto the barren wasteland that would surely be our graveyard.
*****
She had known it would be cold, but the pleasure of the crisp bitter breeze still caught her by surprise. She was happy to see daylight again--real daylight inching across the horizon, not light canned and programmed to change every twelve hours like some sick parody of the sun, but real light, fresh and glinting off the snow. She struggled into her gloves and zipped her parka all the way up so that she peered out from a tunnel of fur. Mulder did the same. Behind them, the door slipped shut, and when she turned she saw that it had vanished, camouflaged perfectly by its color and the blowing snow.
Mulder pointed. A hundred or a hundred and fifty yards away, figures trotted back and forth on the snow, vanishing suddenly, rabbits into holes. None of them appeared to notice the two awkward strangers standing off to the far side of the camp. Mulder hooked his arm over her shoulders and they began to walk away, into nothingness.
*****
They managed to go on for almost an hour, until all traces of the camp had faded behind them and Scully felt both frozen and slick with sweat. Her legs trembled. Mulder had already stumbled twice.
"Mulder," she said, raising her voice to be heard through the layers of cloth that muffled her. "I need to stop."
He led her to a snow drift raised by the wind and sat down. She fell next to him, against his arm.
"How do you feel?" she asked, turning her whole body to see his face. He looked pale and bleary beneath his parka.
"Shaky," he said. "I don't think I can get back up, Scully."
"Neither do I, Mulder."
"So this is it, then."
"Barring the sudden appearance of the calvary, I guess so."
They sat in silence for a while, and Scully found herself enjoying the day, the bright glare of sun on the snow, the light breeze. It was lovely. She could just take a nap here, and when she woke up everything would be fine.
"You cold?" Mulder asked.
"Not too bad. You?"
"A little. I'm getting sleepy, if you can believe that."
"I can. It's a standard symptom." She noticed he didn't ask of what. "You gonna go to sleep?"
"I think so."
"Okay."
He was fiddling with his jacket, his zipper. He got it eventually, and pulled his coat wide open, shocking her with his audacity.
"Mulder, what are you--"
"Are you coming in, Scully? 'Cause, in case you haven't noticed, it's fucking cold out here." He grinned at her. She found herself grinning back, and then she found herself pressed once again against Mulder's slim chest, sitting across his lap, her arms wrapped around him. He smelled like sweat and laundry detergent and he was warm, so warm that she unzipped her own parka enough rest her cheek against his collarbone.
"Would you really have left?" he asked, and his voice rustled beneath her. She remembered that sound from a hundred different midnight phone calls.
"I might have left the X-files, Mulder," she said. Here, at this moment she felt she could admit anything, say everything. There was no point in sparing his feelings now, she thought, and that thought made her squeeze him closer.
"Mm hmm," he said.
"I might have, Mulder, but you're not the X-files."
"You'd never leave me."
"I'd never leave you, Mulder." She didn't so much hear as feel the steady thudding of his heart under her cheek.
"Never, hmm?" he asked, leaning down and she tipped her head to look up at him.
"Never," she said, knowing that it was the truth. It was now, anyway, and later didn't look like it was going to matter much.
"And look where that's gotten you." He squeezed her.
She smiled up at him, tilted her face in, kissed his cheek. "No, Mulder, this is because you wouldn't leave me."
He laughed then, a real laugh that shook through his body, and she dozed off on the tail of it.
*****
I don't want to die. No matter how many stupid things I've done, no matter how many risks I've taken, this has never been my intention. Not my death, and not hers. But if this is the way it's going to be, if I am going to be the cause of her death, then I need to go as soon as possible after her, because I sure as hell couldn't do it without her, brave words to the contrary.
I always thought I could die happy with Scully in my arms. I just never thought I'd have empirical proof.
*****end 9/10*****
Certitude 10/10: Help for Pain
by Justin Glasser
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Walter Skinner sat in the bunker of Wilkes Land Research Center listening to the pop and crackle of the radio, and fighting the urge to drift into fitful sleep. It reminded him of Vietnam, of nights spent listening to the static broken by distant voices, voices of men who would soon be ghosts.
Let them be all right, he thought. They had no business being here, and he had no business coming after them, but he would help them for as long as he could. He supposed he had made that decision a long time ago, when Mulder had come back from Mexico, and again when he, Walter, had made a deal with the devil to save Agent Scully's life. And again, now, sitting by this radio, hoping beyond--
"Unit three to base."
Skinner groped for the send button, swatting away the hand of the radio tech.
"This is base. Go unit three."
"We've found them, sir, on our way back from--"
"Are they alive, three?"
"Sir, yessir. MDs are with--"
The voice went on for a few minutes more, but Skinner heard almost none of it. Almost none of it mattered, anyway. They were alive.
He rubbed his hand over his bald pate, and went to get some sleep.
*****
It was a real quarantine, this time, one with about a hundred different doctors, and television and a phone, and an address that Skinner visited almost daily, waving gruffly to them through the glass. They still slept in the same room (mostly because Mulder, who had been the most exposed, demanded it during a semi-conscious shock-induced rant) and she still beat him at Hangman or Gin almost everyday, but at night, listening to the dim murmur of Mulder's television and the faint rasp of his snoring from his hospital bed by the door, it seemed as if her own bed had grown too wide for one person, and she felt a little lonely.
*****
September 5, 1998
Washington D.C.
I saw her coming from across the plaza, hips moving in that black skirt I love her in. She wears it with high heels, really high heels, and she reminds me of one of those Hollywood starlets from the forties, the ones with the really red lipstick and the tweezed brows. She looked so good I wanted to scream, because it was time for her to go, really go this time, to leave without looking back.
I wanted to be happy to see her, but all I could think of were the lies they were already spinning to snare us. Hanta virus, bomb threats, Nazi experiments, crop cultivation . . . I wanted to be happy to see her.
I folded the paper and handed it to her as she came up.
"There's an interesting work of fiction on page twenty-four. Mysteriously, our names have been omitted. They're burying this thing, Scully. They're just going to dig a new hole and cover it up." We had already gotten the reports from the units sent out to investigate the sites we told them about, but aside from a really big hole in the snow, they found nothing. I don't know why I'd expected anything different, but I had.
This time had been different. This time Scully and I had both believed, and I had allowed myself to think for one moment, the justice could prevail, that truth could conquer fact, that I would be vindicated by the government as I had been by my partner in a twelve by twelve room.
"I told OPR everything I know," she was saying, "what I experienced, the virus, how it's spread from the bees from pollen in transgenic crops--"
I almost laughed at the irony, but I couldn't look at her, so I did what I have always done when Scully confronts me with a piece of myself. I walked away.
"You're wasting your time," I said. "They'll never believe you, not unless your story can be programmed, categorized, or easily referenced." I spat the words at her, words that I had teased her with in a time almost before I could remember.
"Well, then, we'll go over their heads."
"No." I whirled on her. "How many times have we been here before? Right here. So close to the truth? And now, with what we've seen, we're right back at the beginning, with nothing!"
She didn't back away from me--Scully never did. "This is different, Mulder."
"No it isn't!" Why couldn't she get it? Why couldn't she go? Why wouldn't she just leave me alone? "You were right to want to quit. You're right to want to leave me. You should get as far away from me as you can. I'm not going to watch you die because of some hollow personal cause of mine. Go be a doctor. Go be a doctor while you still can."
There. Done. That was all I could say to her. All I had left.
"I can't," she said, and I heard the steadiness in her voice. I felt her refusal. "I won't. Mulder, I'll be a doctor, but my work is here with you now. That virus that I was exposed to, whatever it is, it has a cure. You held it in your hand. How many other lives can we save?"
I felt her hand touch mine, fold around it. How many other lives can we save, Scully? You mean after mine?
"Besides," she said, "if I quit now, they win."
No one throws lines back into my face like my partner.
She smiled up at me, the faint lines of fresh windburn already beginning to heal. She meant it. Scully never says things she doesn't mean.
In that second I wanted to grab her and clutch her tight to my chest, to beg her to never ever leave me, but she had already made that promise, hadn't she?
And what good had it done?
Instead, I smiled back.
"C'mon," I said, and we walked back toward the office. I kept her hand, and she allowed me to have it. Everything was fine. Scully was fine, I was fine, and we were going to get the X-files back with Skinner's blessing. We might as well have been riding off into the sunset.
Except, as we headed back to the Hoover building in the late afternoon sun, I couldn't stop the shadow dancing on my heart, or the black thought it trailed the way a girl trails a ribbon on a stick:
Scully, what if they're winning anyway?
*****
Report 1 of
Operative 7477109S
1734 hours
Operative N terminated.
16 hour random M and F subject surveillance re- activated. Infiltration of M/F circle of influence initiated.
Awaiting further orders.
Operative 7477109S
*****end 10/10*****
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