By: pusher
pusher@unforgettable.com
 

RATING: R
CLASSIFICATION: XA
SPOILERS: Up to Elegy

DISCLAIMER
Don't own 'em.  'Nuff said.

NOTES
References to TS Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Edward Abbey and Nabokov scattered abound.  I apologize with the big gap of space between Ch 5 and the rest of these, but them were a lotta werds ta be writin' <g>.  Thanx fer yer patience.

* * * * *
S  I  X
* * * * *
 

 "And if it rains, a closed car at four.
   And we shall play a game of chess,
   Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door."
     -T.S. Eliot
 

Death has never particularly terrified Fox Mulder.  His death at least.
He has always known that with his demise, the world would not cease to
function.  There would still be conspiracies, secret governments, and
Reticulans forever imbedded in the woodwork of mythology.  At times he
even looked forward to it.  Wanted it, even.  The easy way out.  With
death there would be closure, rest, the final chapter snapping shut on
his otherwise abysmal existence.

When it turns its fickle attention to others, however, he is not so
keen.

 
Office of the Assistant Director
FBI Headquarters
 

"Agent Mulder, what is this about a case I never--"

He looks up surprised as an ID wallet and holstered gun drops onto his
desk, then drops his eyes back down to the service weapon, a custom Sig
Sauer 230, crafted to fit the smaller hands that command it with
unflinching accuracy.  Carefully maintained, well oiled and cleaned,
the gun would alternately purr and roar in the care its owner lavished
upon it.

"Where?" he finally asks.

"Scully's been admitted to Holy Cross."

"I'll send your forms through for a temporary leave of absence as well."

"No, sir."  The older man looks up at him in surprise.  "I'd like to
keep working.  I need to."

He could either work or watch her die.

"Get the paperwork done and I'll approve it."

The agent nods, then leaves, and Skinner watches his retreating, bent
back.  Mulder, seeming so much smaller, almost broken by the weight of
his partner's illness.  Throwing himself headfirst into something that
could possibly guarantee some sort of salvation or certain death,
drowning, desperately grasping to every illusion and red herring in the
futile, desperate hope that one will turn up a cure, a miracle, anything
substantial,instead of merely drifting through his clutching fingers
like sand or mercury.

Then there was that same look in the younger man's eyes, the same mental
state for nearly three months during his partner's absence, churned up
to a pitched frenzy when he had thought Scully was going to die at
Georgetown.  Mulder had requested for an initial "meeting" with the
Cigarette Smoking Man, got it, and resisted the path to revenge.
That look came by a second time when he requested another meeting, down
a different fork in the road, but Skinner chose to cut him off at the
pass.  Because all paths with the Smoking Man led to darkness.  But
today, today he had not requested another meeting, as the AD thought he
would have surely done at this juncture.

Odd.

Skinner wonders how long it will be before another resignation letter
appears on his desk, knowing this time he would not be given the chance
to refuse it.
 
 

Richmond, VA--
 

So sad, the Chrysalis muses, touching the downturned, partially shadowed
face in the fuzzy picture snapped so hastily a few days ago, stroking
the lines etched into the man's forehead, wanting to smooth out the
creases of age, of conscience.  Such beautiful eyes, reflections of the
soul hidden behind appaling blinders.  But the man's aura is so strong,
so prevalent, not even the sunglasses can block it out, the unmistakable
black presence oozing out of every pore, covering him in a diffuse grey
nimbus like a surrounding fog.  He has fought valiantly against nature,
against urges, against truth, and like those who refuse to see, he will
be put down.

When the predator stops hunting, it becomes the prey.

But not now.  Not yet.  When the time is right.  When the transformation
is complete.  When--

"Get--get in here right now, you little asshole!"  comes the shriek from
the living room outside.

"What is it sis?"

>From her seated position, the older woman hurls her clam chowder at the
entering figure, striking with impressive accuracy, and splatters the
scalding liquid over the front of the new blouse, bits of potato,
shellfish and celery, clinging with sticky, thick constitution to
slightly drooping breasts.

"Stupid!  Dickbrained!  Fuckhead!  Retard!" she snarls in a gravelly
alto, pointing at the large-screen TV, and the news spewing its
obligatory instant news report in snazzy sound-bites and jerky,
surreptitious footage.  "I know what you did.  Look!  What the hell
possessed you to try this?"

"Sis," returns the cajoling plead.  "I had to do it.  I think I saw
another--"

"Think?"  The screeching interruption accompanies a wildly flung spoon.
"You don't have enough..." the utensil rebounds with a light thunk off
right temple, leaving just a faint creamy smear.  "...there, to think!
I'm the one that thinks.  I'm the one in charge.  Don't ever, ever try
to think for yourself again, do you understand?"  No response.  "I said
DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

Still nothing.  Just an intense fascination with the pixels dancing
across the news screen, and a soft, dreamy phrase.

"He is one."

"One what?"

The Chrysalis walks to the screen, to the shaky snippet of video
footage, the grainy, poorly-lit picture panning the site, glibly passing
over one figure standing listlessly against the background of the
blackened panorama.

"Another one."

"Nathan, you are a fucking idiot," Barbara Benedict sneers.  "Katy!"

"I'm sorry, mom," returns the impossibly high voice of a child near
tears.  He kneels down by her wheelchair, head down, and after a moment,
she takes his head, pressing his face against her breast.

"Darling, now, now.  I still love you.  Just remember I am with you all
the time," she purrs, stroking his hair.  "The only one you love is me."

Her body then shudders, twitching helplessly, lashing up completely
stiff for a second, then flops back limply in her seat.

The kneeling figure before her stands up, delicately wiping tears from
the corners of eyes.

"Someone has to do the thinking around here," purrs the voice of Barbara
Benedict.
 
 

9:05 PM--
 

Five minutes late already.  Actually, he isn't late.  He's been sitting
outside in the rental car since 8:15.  Watching.  Waiting.  Unwilling to
move.

And for the first time in what seems like forever, his mind is clear,
the hazy fog of nausea and migraine pressure lifted from his cranium in
a brief respite.  A moment of grace.  A warning.

(Gotta get with the program...make the performance of a lifetime, G-man.
Don't even think of screwing up.)

Glancing up at himself one last time in the rearview mirror, Mulder
notices his eyes have taken on a lighter, brighter tinge.  He doesn't
bother to think about it further as he shoves himself out of the car.
 
 

Marita Covarrubias' Apartment
New York, NY
 

"Agent Mulder," the blonde breathes through the 6-inch expanse of door
and frame, in an attempt to look surprised.  Her look scrapes over his
form, settling somewhere between the tucked in areas of t-shirt and
hooks of his button-fly jeans, before drawing back up to his face.  She
opens the door wider.  "Come inside."

"Can I fix you something to drink?"  The rep calls back over her
shoulder as her hips swing away from him in a saunter back to the living
room.  Mulder steps in behind her, taking dispassionate inventory of the
surroundings: dim lighting, candles, music, and a bottle of just-
uncorked Merlot.  Then, her: a short blue silk kimono, cut at least four
inches above the knee and belted at the waist, the soft, clingy sheet of
fabric enhancing her shoulders and the curve of her back, moving,
shifting with every minute gesture.

"No.  I'd rather not."

"Ah."  She pours a glass for herself and downs it before turning back to
the agent with hooded eyes.  Marita takes a deep, unconscious breath as
he approaches, striding purposefully towards her with an undefinable
expression on his face, closing the distance from fifteen feet...to
ten...five...to where she can feel the heat emanating from his body as
he brushes up against her...

Then shifts his gaze over and reaches behind her for the folder sitting
beside the discarded wineglass.

"Is this it?"  He draws slowly back from her, a subtle zoom-out from
proximity into the overstuffed chair across the room, and she slowly
lets out her breath, disappointed at the vacuum of thermal intensity his
absence leaves behind.  She would have never figured the dour Special
Agent Fox Mulder for a tease.

"Yes.  Nathan Benedict's file was rather...interesting to say the
least."  She can play too.  "In late 1994, he was undergoing
psychological evaluation in regard to his gender dysphoria."

Eyes lift.

"Nathan Benedict was a transsexual?"

"Evidently."

"That would explain the supposed disappearance.  He was living for two
years as a woman.  Is this the doctor?  F.P. Nayba?"

Marita slips up behind him, dropping a perfectly manicured hand on his
shoulder, feigning interest in the contents of the folder.

"Yes, his credentials were readily available."  Reaches past him to turn
a page, letting the silk of the thin robe stretched across her chest
brush against his right ear.  "Doctor Nayba has been in practice for the
past ten years."  she pauses, dropping her voice a smidgin lower, a
level huskier.  "Why is this information so important to you?"

"It answers a lot of unasked questions."  He turns his face to hers,
evading her with a lazy smile.  Frohicke, he wills silenty, creating new
four-letter expletives with whatever combinations of consonants and
vowels remain unexpurgated.

Twenty seconds.  Words beginning with 'D' or so begin rolling around
before his phone finally chirps.  Breaking eye contact, he reaches for
his cell phone.

"Mulder," mutters into the headset.

"It's me.  Sorry I'm late.  I got tied up."

"This better be important."  Sotto foghorn.

"It took a while to get this line secured."

"That's perfectly okay."

"But of course if you're..." a polite cough on the other end, "...busy,
I can always--"

"No, no, I'll be right over."

"Try not to sound too relieved there, Mulder," the other voice drawls
before hanging up.

"I have to go," the agent mutters, shutting off his phone, letting a
trickle of phony disappointment leak out.

"Oh."  Genuine disappointment.  "Then perhaps, some other...?"

He slips out before the last languorous word drifts past her lips.
 
 

Outside--
 

Passing by a row of phone booths, not making any eye contact with, not
acknowledging the Garth double from a "Wayne's World" movie lounging at
one of the three mini-cubicles, Mulder strides past the lanky blond
without pause or the slightest flicker of recognition.  The Lone Gunman
waits until the he disappears, then pushes the frames of glasses futher
up his nose and turns back to the booth.

"Elvis has left the building," Langly mutters into the handset.
 
 

Mobile Office of the Lone Gunmen--
 

"--think she's going to do it?"  Langly's high-pitched nasal question
squeaks through the cheap radio shack speakers attached to the ceiling
of the modified van.

"She won't risk any sort of connection to her private line."  Mulder
answers, stepping from the passenger seat to the back where the two
remaining Gunmen fiddle with their equipment.  "Is everything set up?"

"I've got the unit on the last phone in the row."

"Don't you have more than just one of anything?"

"We're not the Federal Government, Mulder,"  Frohicke grouses.  "WE
don't have an expense account.  And then there are certain people who
have conveniently forgotten to return loaned surveillance equipment."

"I gave you Scully's number.  That's not exactly returnable either."

"But she moved!"  A shuffled stamp from the little man enhances his
petulant whine.

"It's not my fault."

"Aw, come on."

"No way, Frohicke.  I've already been shot by Scully once.  She'll
probably aim lower next time."

"Dana's already shot through my heart."

"Yeah, and you give love a bad name.  It's not my heart I'm worried
about."

A pause, and the Lone Gunman drops his eyes to the floor.  Softly--

"How is she, Mulder?"

The agent absently fiddles around with a few controls, picking up and
putting down a few obscure pieces of equipment, before replying.

"She'll be better if this plan works."

"Shh," comes a static hiss from Langly.  "The mark's arriving--

"Mark?  Who are you, George Hayduke?"

"--guess you're right after all."

"Of course I'm right," Mulder retorts.  He turns to the bearded man
hunched over a laptop, the one who would seem otherwise odd if not
attached to a computer console of some sort.  "Ready Byers?"

"Ready."

"Wait!" Langly's anxiety ripples through the speakers, freezing all the
men.  "Something's wrong!"

"What?"

"She's headed for the wrong phone!"

"Do something Langly!"

* * * * *

Slamming down his own receiver with the grace and subtlety of an elk on
skates, Langly hops over and snatches away the other handset just as the
delicate fingers of the blonde brush the receiver.

"Sorry," he apologizes with a slightly goofy grin.  "The other one's
broken."  He pumps in a quarter and dials, obliquely turning away from
her.

Marita Covarrubias throws an irritated glare to the back of the
unresponsive figure, then moves over to the phone at the far end.

"What happened?"  the voice picks up the other side.

"Hey ma!  The surgery came out just fine."

"Is she at the right phone?"

"Yep.  Nose job turned out perfectly.  You should think about getting
one for that honker of yours, ma."

"Langly?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't quit your day job for stand-up."
 

Minutes later, the Special Representative to the Secretary General hangs
up and walks away.  After a few more minutes of waiting, Langly takes
the little round metallic device sitting unobtrusively against the side
of the speaker, and slips it into his pocket.  Whistling to himself, he
saunters into the night.
 
 

10:42--
 

"Okay, what we do is feed the sounds through this digital tone
analyzer."  Frohicke generously explains to the agent.  "This little
piece of equipment is so sensitive it can separate the pitches of
individual tones, analyze them, and then categorize them into their
corresponding numbers on the digital readout panel."

Squatting on his haunches to inspect the compact piece of machinery with
the square LCD face, Fox Mulder turns a dubious eye to the older man.

"This looks like a caller ID unit."

"Well..."

"Is it a caller ID unit?"

"I guess you could..."

"What you're basically saying is, you're going to play the dial tones
back into this caller ID unit to find out what the numbers are."

"If you're going to put it that way..."  the older man mutters in an
irritated voice.

"It's a D.C. call," announces Langly.  "555-4417."

Byers nods, then spins to his terminal, entering the data into a reverse
directory search.

"Frohicke, I need you to look up someone else as well.  An F.P. Nayba,
M.D..  He should be with the medical registrar.  See what unofficial
information you can dig up on this guy."

"Okay, got a match," Byers calls back.  "Oh, you're going to love this--
The number is registered to a Jack Colquitt."

Christ.  Talk about delusion.

"That's the one, boys."  Mulder slaps Frohicke excitedly on the
shoulder.

"Here's the address--"
 
 

1654 Lexington Ave, #212
Washington, D.C.
 

The place was a dump.

In the apartment, he'd searched everywhere, but the Cigarette Smoking
Man kept no records.  Evidently he'd paid everything in cash.  Nothing
except nearly twenty bottles of Bud Light, several boxes of Morleys.
And that:

"The Liar, the Killer, and the Conscience"

Mulder flips through the neatly typed pages of the newest Raul
Bloodworth novel, bound and numbered in manuscript form, speed-reading
the entire contents before dropping it back down on the kitchen table.
Not that Mulder had any sort of weakness for Mack Bolan testosterone
novels or such equivalent writings, but, this, to simply put it, it was
bad.

Really bad.

A bonafide stinker.

No writing talent.   Whatsoever.

Now he's _sure_ the raisin-lunged bastard couldn't possibly be--

A visitor slips through the doorway, gun raised, even as the agent spins
to whip his piece unflinchingly at the entering figure.

"Here to play again?  Your detective skills have improved tremendously,
Agent Mulder," the Cigarette Smoking man grates, cooly ignoring the hard
plastic of the Glock's barrel pressed against his right eye socket, as
he flicks his left one over the younger one in mental inventory.

The boy is haunted, but at the same time his eyes, his demeanor, is
cold, an aloofness never present before settled over his features.  Even
when Mulder last held the gun to his face over two years ago, he still
reeked of an innocence, a charming naivete that still reflected hope and
desperation, a loathing to take a life, even for the prospect of sweet
revenge.

Back then, he had been easy to manipulate, easy to talk down.

The recent months have made the young Mulder hard and bitter.  The man
standing before him has tasted the thrill of the cold-blooded kill, the
fringes of desperation, and the absolute willingness to sacrifice
everything.  He will not hesitate this time.  He will simply empty his
gun into him and walk away, without remorse, without a second thought.

But that would assume the kid ever manages to get the first shot, which,
at this point, is unlikely.  Unlikely, because of the Colt .45
reciprocally jammed into the agent's left temple, fully cocked.  Less
trigger pull, fewer milliseconds.

Advantage, Colquitt.

"You're not difficult to find,"  Mulder replies, equally cooly.  "All I
had to do was follow the trail of cigarette butts."

A long moment passes with neither man moving, speaking, the quick,
shallow breathing barely audible in the room as both gauge every bare
movement, from a simple twitch of the others finger or hand to a barely
perceptible nuance of expression flickering across the face.  The older
man breaks the silence first, with a tone betraying only slight
nervousness.

"Put your gun away, Mulder.  My arms are beginning to tire."

"You first."

"My, a bit paranoid are we?"  He sneers, slowly easing up on his weapon
from the side of Mulder's head, lowering it, then placing it back in its
holster.

"Actually, I was beginning to enjoy this Mexican standoff."  But the
agent nevertheless releases the pressure on the eye socket, reluctantly
putting his own away as well.

"How is Agent Scully doing?"

"You know very well how she's doing."

"Then I gather you're here to bargain for her life?"

"Skinner already did that.  I'm just making sure you follow through."

"Another death threat, boy?  You've not only become boring, you've
become redundant as well."

As the smoking man calmly tears open a fresh pack of Morleys, fishing
out the comfort of a burning stick, a familiar green-and-grey striped
tie pokes out from his jacket, catching the agent's eye.

Mulder pushes the thought away, unwilling to entertain _that_ genetic
possibility.

"No, I know your pathetic little shit of a life doesn't mean much to
you,"  he leans back against the unpapered wall.  "And quite frankly I
don't care much about mine either."

"That much is obvious."

"However, should it become apparent that any fatal circumstance should
fall on me, my mother will be extremely distressed."

The flame of the lighter pauses for a just an instant before continuing
on its journey to light the cigarette.

"Fox," he smiles as a barely perceptible twitch skitters across the
younger man's jaw.  "Are you are using your mother to blackmail me?"

Mulder tilts his head, reading every single pause, every movement

"Doctor Kevin Scanlon, oncologist on staff of the Allentown Hospital.
Funny thing is, he wasn't an oncologist.  In fact, there's more than a
likely chance he was responsible for the deaths of all of the abducted
MUFON women, including Betsy Hagopian."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"Scanlon, surprisingly enough, was also employed by Lombard Research
Facility, which I've heard is undergoing a few legal problems and
investigation right now.  Something about unauthorized research.
Dangerous retrovirus and genetic experiments and such."

"I have no idea what you're talking about agent Mulder."  But his breath
comes just a little faster, higher, his hands shake just a little before
he takes that long, deep draw on his cigarette.  "And besides.  This so-
called Scanlon is dead.  I heard it on the news."

Mulder reaches into the pocket of his coat and pulls out a zip disk,
casually holding it up between the first two fingers.

The Cancer Man lights up another cigarette.

"Another man tried to bluff me once.  A pity, what happened to his
wife."  His cool demeanor rapidly begins to flake off as words grate out
faster, harsher.

"I think you're familiar with the term 'Vegreville.'

Good.  He has his attention.

"You have a thing for my mother, a past, and reason why I'm still
around, as much as it turns my stomach to admit it, is because of you.
However, I have come into possession of...certain items of interest to
your superiors, and should this...information go public, and there are a
number of ways that I have to make it happen, there will be no doubt
that I'll find a bullet in my head.

Now for the kill.

"So the fact of the matter is, will you break my mother's heart by
taking both her children from her?  I don't think she'll ever forgive
you or even physically be able to handle it.  And while you may be an
ice-cold black-lunged bastard, you're still only a man."

The Cancer Man takes a deep draw from his cigarette,

"You give me too much credit for my compassion, Agent Mulder.  And for
my power."

"I don't give a fuck about your compassion."

"So all your work, your eternal search for the elusive truth, you would
willingly throw away?"  Sneering.  "For a woman?"

"I never said I wouldn't go public with the information.  I still may.
However, should Scully die because of what your people did to her, you
will find out just how quickly information can be disseminated to the
general public.  And as you know, I am extremely high profile."

"In essence, you do not guarantee your silence either way.  What
makes you think I'll deal with a losing prospect like that?"

"Because you have no choice."
 
A fog of smoke covers the old man, the odor of old and fresh tobacco
assailing Mulder's nose.

"I see you have become quite adept at playing this game now.  You have
the potential for ruthlessness Bill lacked."

If the remark affects the Agent, he doesn't show it.

"So I take it we have a deal."

The old man looks at him, almost sadly.

"There are bigger concerns of the world than just your partner, boy."

"Like you give a damn about anyone besides yourself."  Mulder's jaw
tightens as a nagging suspicion creeps stealthily into his mind,
something that spills over him, a quick freeze racing down inside his
ribcage.  "You don't have anything.  You've never had anything.  There
is no cure, is there?"

"Don't underestimate yourself, Mulder.  All the answers you need are
locked up in your head."  He exhales a large cloud of smoke.
 
"And what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"I've already told you everything you need to know.  It's up to you to
decipher them."

Mulder exits, every motion, every expression impassive, a performance
for the hidden eyes that follow him to his car.  He does not relax until
he is way out of range.

Using his own mother as a bargaining chip for Scully's life.

Jesus.  When did he become so cynical?
 

The last bit of grey wisps out of the nearly dead end of the cigarette,
dissolving into the air as the Cigarette Smoking Man thinks of the past,
remembering another man years ago, another one willing to give
everything up for a woman. Watching history repeat itself in front of
his very eyes, wondering if he was ever that young, that naive, that
hopeful.  That desperate.  But of course he was.  Round and round and
round Karma goes, where it stops...

He thoughtfully drops the remains of the butt down the neck of an old
empty bottle of Budweiser, watching it fizz out in puddle of stale beer
and emit a trail of whimpering smoke in its final hurrah.  The boy had
always on the outside, always been one step behind.  Now, with this, he
has finally entered the game as a full-fledged, card-carrying member.

Better and better yet.

* * * * *
S  E  V  E  N
* * * * *

"War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If
you can't grin, keep out of the way 'till you can."
      -Sir Winston Churchill
 
 
Fox Mulder's Apartment
Alexandria, VA
 

The door opens to the same apartment, the same hallway and door, and the
same tall figure with slightly stooped shoulders shuffles in, coat
shifting restlessly against his form.  A small yellow bag emblazoned
with the "Tower" logo dangles precariously from the edge of an index
finger, the slight weight making a shallow indentation in the tip.  As
the other weary hand reaches for the light switch to engulf the room in
unwelcome light, it pauses in mid-movement before dropping back down.
Eyes flicking back and forth in detailed appraisal, the rods in his
corneas slowly readjust to the murky expanse as Fox Mulder surveys the
apartment, eidetic memory comparing his present surroundings to the
mental snapshot he took this morning, before coming to the obvious
conclusion:

Someone's been here.

Not surprising.

But they'd found nothing, despite the expert ransacking.  They'd
probably get the office too, if they hadn't trashed it by now.

Well, at least they'd attempted to put everything back in place this
time, the nervous directive expelling from that gravelly-voiced
ashtray's mouth in grudging paranoia, and that somehow his little
performance had, in fact, unnerved the bastard into action.

But perhaps there is an assassin in the shadows just waiting for the
perfect moment to put a nice large caliber slug into his forehead.
Well, this is his lucky day, cause 'ol Spooky isn't gonna be putting up
a fight tonight.

Cure or kill.  Either resolution is acceptable.

Just as long as it isn't Krycek.

Jesus, please, no.

Anyone but that fucking faggot.

It would be insulting.  Humiliating.  The most degrading death
imaginable.

Well, except maybe for auto-erotic asphyxiation.

Despite everything, a wry smiles creeps across his face as he waits for
his personal up and close encounter with 300 grains of hot lead.

Nothing.

Tossing the bag of Rachmaninov cds onto the kitchen table, he leans his
forehead against the cool, machinery induced comfort of the
refrigerator, letting out something between a breath and a deep sigh.
It would be too easy to rub him out, and they never did anything the
easy way.

He sighs again, feeling that same old familar feeling threatening to tug
him down into a complete sobbing wreck...

But no.  Not tonight.  Simply too tired.  Too tired to cry, too tired to
think, to care.  Let the world implode in its own insanity, as long as
they just leave him the fuck alone.

<Creak>

He almost misses it.

<Creak>

Eyes flicker open.

Light, hesitant footsteps making their way down the hall.

The building manager never bothered to fix the squeaky floorboards
outside, despite numerous complaints from the neighbors.  Mulder never
had a problem with them.  It made the task of sneaking up to his
apartment an annoyingly difficult feat.

>From their resonance and aural proximity, he estimates 10 more steps
before they hit his door.

Nine.

So, what to do?

Eight.

As satisfactory as volunteering himself up for target practice sounded a
few minutes ago, another emotion has managed to creep up and suffuse
itself in the interim, a blackened, dead sort of feeling.

Seven.

Reflexively dropping to a crouch in the shadows, he unholsters his
Glock, ratching back the hammer, swallowing a few times, as he listens
to the footsteps gradually near.

Six.

Something past despair, past anger, past anything really.  Nothing much
except for the urge to really, really want to kill somebody right now.

Five

Kill one of those assassins.  Kill the Secretary General's Rep.  Kill
the Morley Man.

Four.

Walk into the office where all the bastards congregated with fifty
pounds of dynamite strapped to him and blow him and every cocksucking
self-appointed arbiter of the world up into little chunks of consortium
kibble.

Three.

He narrows his eyes, attempting to divine the image of the mystery
attached to the shadow of a pair of shoes that bend and break up the
continuous strip of hallway light wiggling in under the door.

Two.

Stop.

A half-second later, he points his weapon squarely at the middle of the
door, no longer particularly concerned whether his would-be assassin
wears Bruno Maglis or not.  Contrary to popular belief, no one cares
what footwear you're wearing when you're dead.

His fingers tighten on the trigger, anticipating the shattering and
splintering of wood and the surprise on the fucker's face when bullets
come shooting out of the door straight into his chest, when the
preliminary silence is interrupted by a knuckled rap.

A puzzled pause.  Then Mulder slowly unwinds, feeling somewhat self
conscious.  As far as he knows, killers don't usually knock.  Even the
most polite ones.
 
Wishing he had a peephole, he opens the door a crack.

"Mrs. Scully," he stammers, nonplused, at the figure in front of him as
the nag of something terrible causes his intestines to seize.  "Scully.
What's happened to--?"

"Dana...is as well as she can be at this moment."  Red-rimmed eyelids
flutter with exhaustion, the unconscious action enhanced by the dark
rings around deep-set sockets.  "She asked me to give you this."

The older woman holds up a white paper bag, meticulously folded at the
top.

The agent looks at it blankly.

"What is it?"

"I don't know.  She made me promise not to open it."

He nods dumbly, taking the offering from her slack hands.  Maggie
brushes back the locks of hair straggling over his forehead to look into
his hooded, listless eyes.

"You haven't been by the hospital for nearly two days.  How are you
doing, Fox?"

Mulder shrugs, not trusting himself to answer.  She waits, but any
further action not forthcoming, simply takes the hand clutching the
mysterious paper bag and gives it a gentle squeeze.  Then she looks at
the other hand, the one still tightly gripping his gun.

With another nervous shrug, he decocks it and stuffs it back into the
empty holster.

"Try to stop by the hospital tomorrow, if you can, Fox.  Dana--we, want
you there."

He nods mutely, head bobbing slightly in acquiescence.

One more hand squeeze and Margaret Scully turns away.  Mulder listens to
the fading creaks of delicate footsteps carry her away before shutting
the door.

Dropping onto the sofa, he unrolls the closed flap of the package and
blinks twice at the contents--a bottle of Erythromycin and a note.
Fingers the lined notepaper supplemented with an ad for Claritin stamped
at the top, then unfolds the lower half of sheet taking in the precise,
neat penmanship:
 

 'Mulder,
 

 'The lab report from the autopsy revealed Miriam Acheson to
       have had a mild form of Chlamydia, and given the type of
       contact you had with her, there is a good chance you
  were also infected.'
 

Translation: Idiot.  You didn't use a rubber and now you have a nasty
social disease.  Hope your dick falls off.
 

 'The medication should be taken exactly as instructed and
       completely finished.  You should  also abstain from sexual
       intercourse until you have completed the regimen.'
 

Translation:  I've given you the biggest, foulest pills I could find,
sincerely wishing you'll choke on them, so you think twice about where
you stick your buddy the next time.  Hope your dick turns green, then
falls off.
 

The writing changes from here, a slightly larger space between
paragraphs, a slight shift in the angle of the letters, a moment of
hesitation before writing the next section.
 

 'Mulder, it is none of my business whom you choose to have a
       relationship with.  However,  as your friend and partner, I
       strongly suggest you consider some sort of protection in the
       future, for your sake, if not anything else.'

 DS'
 

Fox Mulder slumps back into the leather cushions, reading the label on
the bottle.  Despite his abandoning her at the hospital, she still
worries about him enough to write a prescription, fill it, and of all
things, apologizes for interfering in his life.

He can imagine her, sitting up in bed, the morphine pack hanging from
her shoulders--no, she had refused the morphine, choosing the clarity
and excruciating pain over drugged somnolence-- as thin, pale fingers
struggle to press the pen against the paper.  He can see her, leaning
back in exhaustion, dropping the note in the package and folding the
opening up, before sitting shakily up and handing it to her mother, all
with explicit orders not to pry.

His head rolls back to fixate on the ceiling, a lonely part of his mind
dully preoccupied with the bumpy texture and creases, trying not to
think, not to feel, willing himself to just fade away, for his atoms
split in a giant ball of light and heat until there is nothing left of
the shell sprawled in the living room.  But physics are not so kind.

"Mulder, you are a world-class, royal asshole," he mutters.

Even that infernal voice in his head agrees.

* * * * *

Another night of sleeplessness finally crawled into day as Fox Mulder
watched the bluish ozone light filter into the room, the penetrating
straggle of sunlight gradually creeping across the floor in an obstinate
mission to pour its blazing glory across his face.  After several
minutes of fruitlessly trying to stare down the sun, he gave up and
stumbled into the shower.

In the hospital's gift shop, he bought a bouquet.  Had gotten thirty
feet when the strongest urge of hypocrisy overtook him and he dumped the
contents into the nearest trash bin.  And somehow, he ended up dragging
his feet through the hallways of Holy Cross with empty hands stuffed
into the pockets of his trenchcoat, wondering what he could do, what he
could say that would even make a damn bit of difference.

Sit with Scully again?  Another session of talking to her, talking to
himself?  Of trying to say something that would make some form of sense?
If words could heal, he'd spout off the entire unabridged Webster
dictionary in twelve different languages.  If words could create
miracles, he'd chant the entire contents of the Bible, the Baghavad
Ghita, the Koran, and the Epic of Gilgamesh and believe every single
letter.  If words could mean anything, he'd tell her things that were
kept locked away inside of him, words that had never left the sanctuary
of denial, escaping only once in four years in a conversation about iced
tea.

But words were just words.  A bunch of phonemes linked together to
assign labels to things, to feelings, to things that just weren't meant
to be said.  They didn't do anything, they didn't mean anything.

They were just words.
 
 

Room 204
Oncology Ward
Holy Cross Memorial Hospital
 

The room's oddly dark and aloof countenance clicks Mulder's finely honed
sense of paranoia into full alert.  Peering in through a corner of the
window, he catches a glimpse of unidentifiable shadow hovering over
Scully.  Too tall, too thin to be her mother.  As part of the figure
backs into the light, the creamy bright glow of a lab coat reveals
itself, then ruffles back into the penumbric darkness.

The agent retreats silently to the nurses station with long, dynamic
steps, an agitated, walking bundle of overloaded nerves ready to bust an
internal breaker.

"Nurse!  Hey, you!" he motions the nearest person.  "Is there a doctor
in with Dana Scully right now?"

She searches through her charts as he looks back at the still-closed
door, fiddling with something beneath the folds of his coat.

"Um, no sorry.  The last resident came by room 204 an hour--"

Halfway down the hall before she finishes, running, flying as fast as he
can, praying he's not too late as whips his gun out and bursts through
the door, snatching a glimpse of needle sliding into the IV, a slow,
poisonous snake.

"Hold it the fuck right there!  Drop the syringe!  I said drop it,
asshole!  You have no idea how much I want to find any excuse to shoot
you right now."

The figure slowly, carefully withdraws the needle and places it down on
the bedside table.  Then slowly turns around to face him.  Breathing
hard, the agent's face twists into confusion only able to muster a--

"You?"

Kurt Crawford.

"I--I'm sorry, Agent Mulder, I just wanted to see how..."

He looks over at Scully, still in bed asleep.  Undisturbed by the
commotion.  Or unconscious.  But still alive.  Her chest rises and falls
in a hypnotic, steady rhythm to the syncopated heartbeat he can somehow
hear in his ears, a heart fighting, willing to struggle on.

Still breathing hard, he drags the hybrid outside into the hallway,
thrusting his pistol into the young man's ribs, his face only several
inches from the other's as strained words leave in a guttural growl.

"Did Cancer Man send you?  Were you trying to kill her?  Answer me!"

"No!  We told you what we were trying to do.  I was trying to save her!"

"How do I know you're not lying?  How do I know you haven't changed your
minds?"

"Agent Mulder, you do realize what will happen to you if you shoot me?"

A sardonic smile drained of any warmth yanks at the corner of his right
lip before departing post-haste.

"Thanks for reminding me."  He roughly turns the clone around, shoving
his face against the wall and jams the barrel of the gun against the
base of his skull.  "Now answer."

"I'm not lying."  His voice drops lower, almost to a whisper.  "She's
all we have left."

"Why should I believe you?  Why now?  Why wait until she's gotten this
far?  Why not earlier?"

"It still hasn't been tested out to satisfaction.  We've been working on
a modified factor of the hybrid gene, using her code of branched DNA.
We were hoping for a little more time.  But now..."

Mulder feels his head go light, a rush of something filling his brain,
his body with a sensation that seems almost foreign to him, something he
hasn't experienced in years--A flicker of hope.  Maybe Pandora wasn't
such a bitch after all.

He eases off on the Kurt, just a little.

"This...hybrid gene, was that what you were trying to inject into her?"

"Yes."

"You think it'll work?"

"Right now we don't have a choice.  Now will you please let me do this?"
 

* * * * *
E   I   G   H   T
* * * * *

Her heart is the first thing Dana hears, the soothing rhythmic thud
squeezing out life into the twisting, turning ropes of blood vessels, of
lymph, blood cells, protein, plasma hissing through  one-way lanes, a
constant, pulsating journey to the limits.  Lanes divide into smaller
streets, forks branching out sideways, backwards, snaking out every-
which way into gradually narrowing capillary-fingered extremities, but
like prodigal children always return back to the source.

She travels down the lines of the main artery, a foreign body within
herself, braving the rapids of the bloodstream, of cells merging,
macrophaging, dividing, bursting, spiraling down into veins as metallic
voices, fragments, thoughts combine in a mental mosaic of frenetic
intensity accompanied by the sucking sounds of lungs gasping for oxygen--

 'Trust no one'

 'I had to trust them'

 'You can trust us'

Turning, spinning, blood and viscera, ligaments, muscles, contracting,
flexing, tightening, relaxing, a twitch driven into frenzy by a rush of
loose ions and salts--

 'You never trusted me...!'

 'You're the _only_ one I trust...'

 'I trust you're telling me the truth...'

Building, rebuilding, rebirth of flame in the lungs, spitting fire and
molten steel, burning cells with charred intensity--

 'The truth is in me...'

 'The truth will save you, Scully...'

 'Truth, truth, there is no truth...!'

A single body bursting through, killing, destroying, rebuilding in the
agonizing cycle of birth, death, mortification, and rebirth, living and
dying, over and over and over--

 'How do I die...?'
 
 'You don't...'

 'You don't...you don't...you don't...'

Twisting and arcing up into the stratosphere, struggles, kicking,
pushing up, breaking through the liquid mass of warmth, ten feet, five
feet, three, one, breaks the surface, rippling the atmosphere like a
riptide pool, a silvered fish shattering the air--

She bursts into the light.

* * * * *

The spiraling journey towards the flicker of illumination at the end of
the tunnel comes to an abrupt halt upon the reintroduction to physics of
the material world--in this case, Special Agent Dana Scully's headlong
collision with an immovable object, specifically, the nose of Special
Agent Fox Mulder.

"Ow!"  His head snaps up upon the impact and he falls back into the
bedside chair, cupping the bridge of his nose in one hand.

"Sorry," Scully mumbles, rubbing her forehead, before settling back into
her pillow.  She closes her eyes, feeling the new throb rise from the
side of her skull.  Then, ever so slowly, her eyes flutter open again,
as a thought occurs to her.

"Mulder."

A "whuh?"  manages to filter through his hand.

"Where am I?"

"Not at the hospital."

"I see that."

She sits up in the bed absorbing the contents of the room's interior as
much as the mysterious intravenous solution attached to her wrist.  Out
of a corner of her eye, she spots a Kurt Crawford checking her vital
signs monitor, at the far end of the room, another Kurt reading a chart,
beyond that, a third Crawford hovering into view with some
unidentifiable, yet obviously medical, tool.  Her eyes track slowly from
one clone to the other, stopping slightly at each one, then finally
swivel back to her partner.

"Mulder."

"Huh, Scully?"  Two fingers tweak his nose, gently assuring its bruised-
but-unbroken status.

"What the hell is going on?"
 
"You're at Lombard Research Facility."

Her expression doesn't change.

"In Pennsylvania."

Still no movement.

"I brought you here."

Not even an eye twitch.  He shifts uncomfortably under the silent
drilling.

"These Kurt Crawfords are hybrids.  They've been working to help you,
Scully.  To help us."

Like a damn statue.  Dogs would lose a staring contest against Scully.

"I didn't think there was any other choice."

Her eyes flicker around, re-absorbing the information, before another
question coalesces and exits.

"How did you manage to get me transferred from the hospital, Mulder?"

"Ah, you weren't exactly transferred."

"I see."

"In fact," he scratches the edge of an eyebrow.  "I might be wanted for
kidnapping."

An exasperated, but ultimately unsurprised, sigh.

"Did you at least let my mother know?"

"I couldn't let tell her, Scully.  It might have proven dangerous."
 
"Ah, you're awake, Agent Scully."

Both turn to the set of clones slowly coming up behind the one that
spoke, exact replicas of the original lined up in perfect planar
imitation.  The second one, the one reading her chart, looks up with a
smile.

"How are you feeling?  Are you experiencing any nausea?  Discomfort?"

Noticing, for the first time, she unconsciously touches her forehead.

"No, I'm..." her head tilts slightly to the side, surprised at the
truthfulness of her words "...fine.  What kind of treatment have you
been administering?"

The third one speaks up.

"How much do you know about transfection, Agent Scully?"

"Just the basics," the agent frowns.  "It's a process that involves
implanting cells that produce a retrovirus vector for a gene into
tumors.  The modified bacterial or viral product enters and changes the
cell."

The hybrid nods.  "You might also be familiar with bacterium 3924,
retrovirii hosted in chloroplast infusion, base pairs five and six."

Her chin lifts, then sets, as the final pieces fall into place.

"Purity control."

"They're injecting you with monkey pee, Scully,"  Mulder whispers
conspiratorially in her ear.

"What kind of side effects should I expect from this treatment?" she
looks at the glowing chartreuse intravenous solution distastefully,
remembering bubbling green goo and several lost pairs of shoes.

"There are advantages to green blood, you know?"  Mulder smirks.  "Next
time some lunatic comes lunging at you with a sharp instrument, 'pfffft'
they'll be dead."

She smacks his shoulder as the hybrids smile thinly.

"No green blood at all.  That is a more desperate measure.  What we
_are_ going to do is introduce this virus as a vector into your tumor
cells.  The host bacteria have been modified to your specific genome
code, and will basically destroy any cells producing signs of the
branched sequence."

Mulder bends closer to her, a little crease marking his forehead.

"What's wrong, Scully?"

"How did you know when I was about to say something?"

Lightly brushing her left eyebrow with a gentle finger, he slowly draws
down the tiny little lines in the corner of her eye, the lines that have
slowly developed over the past few years, carving themselves into her
features like thin cracks on an alabaster statue.

"Like a crooked pin,"  He murmurs.
 
 

46th St.
New York, NY
 

The machine remembers his first professional kill well.  A man.  An
important man in a high place.  He had no idea what that particular
person did to warrant a sanction or why they wanted him dead, but that
was fine.  Extraneous facts usually got in the way of the job.  He
waited from an alcove as the man left the United Nations building at
1:57 am in the morning of December 1st, 1973.

One bullet to the head and it was over.

Admittedly, he felt a slight twinge in the following few minutes as the
30.06 round erupted from the barrel and the acrid smell of gunpowder
infiltrated his olfactory senses, but ultimately, everything becomes
easier with practice.

Killing has become not second nature to him, but first, the icy recesses
of thought, of conscience no longer defined by law or morality.
Conscience is a liability for a professional.  Sanctioning is his job,
his existence, and he does it well.  He asks few questions, and performs
as directed.  And though the years have passed with the blood of
hundreds and his hair has greyed all around, he still remains the
machine.

He asks no questions about his new assignment.  He never does.  He only
listens, fingering the gimlick with an almost absent fondness, the spike
plunging out of the pen-like base with a slick, metallic "shhhk."

"You understand the directive?" comes the faintly annoyed question.

Twirling the alien icepick in his fingers, the machine snaps the needle
back in before returning the object to his overcoat.

"Yes.  What about the clones?"

"Terminate them all.  They've been nothing but trouble.  Besides,"
yellow-stained fingers carelessly flick the air in front of them.
"There's always more where they've come from."

"Incoming reports say that there are two others in the building as well.
One man and a woman."

"How long have they been there?"

"Four days."

"What would you like me to do about them?"

His superior, the other man, the other killer, takes a long draw of his
Morley, holding that long, poisonous breath in before finally exhaling.

"If absolutely necessary, terminate them too."
 
 

Lombard Research Facility
Lehigh Furnace, PA
 

The Lombard Research Facility hasn't changed much since the last time he
wandered through the halls with Byers and an assassin at his heels.  Of
course they've replaced the shattered bulletproof door and upgraded the
alarm system, which made it difficult to go anywhere without being
picked up on one of the main cameras.  So how the hell seven clones
managed to lose Scully within the expanse of less than 5000 square feet
reaches beyond Mulder's panicked comprehension.

"What do you mean, you don't know where she is?"

"She's never wandered off before," one of the Kurts shrugs nervously as
the others mill about, weaving back and forth through the septic tanks
like children looking for a lost ball in a field of tall grass.
"Usually she's asking one or more of us questions or observing the
developing tanks."

"Scully!"  Looking around, the walk turns into a slight jog that
accelerates through the hallways of the facility as the agent scours the
area's nooks and crannies.

His gut plunges somewhere near his ankles as he slows down to a stop in
front of the vault.

Her back is turned to him, the gap in her hospital gown revealing a hint
of the tattoo etched into her lower back, its head hissing at him while
green IV solution hanging from the dolly clasped in her left hand winds
its way down to her wrist.  In front of her, the S- drawer lays open as
Scully holds one of her own test tubes up at eye level, not turning as
he enters, absorbed, contemplating the mysteries of her inner self so
grotesquely displayed in the litle glass vial.

"What is this, Mulder?"

His mouth opens and shuts a few times before regaining the ability to
speak.

"They're ova."

"That was a rhetorical question, Mulder.  What I really meant was 'why
didn't you tell me?'"

"Scully--"

"You did know about this, didn't you?"

His silence confirms her suspicion.  She turns to him, eyes flickering
an ambiguous topaz.

"How long have you known?"  He looks down, unable to answer.  The lack
of reply only infuriates her more, the end result culminating in an
eruption of her vocal cords.  "Goddamn you, Mulder!  You had no right to
keep this from me!"

Soft, barely audible--

"I...I couldn't...I didn't know...I couldn't..."

"You couldn't what?  What the hell gives you the right to make that
decision?"

"Penny Northern had just passed away, I didn't think--"

"You've known since then?  It's been four months, Mulder, why couldn't
you find the time in four months?"

"Because you were sick.  Because..."

"Because you thought I was going to die."  His eyes do a reflexive
little dance up from the floor at the brusque sentiment of her words.
"So you decided to spare me this pain, is that it?"

"Scully, I--"  He takes a step towards her.

"Get away from me."

The four words are evenly spaced, dripping none of the vitrol that he
expects, no hatred, no anger, or even a touch of scathing commentary.
It is the reduction of his presence to a non-entity, those toneless,
flat words, that makes Mulder back away in miserable retreat.
 
 

Hybrid Development Room--
 

The hybrid tanks, he finds, have a lulling soothing rhythm that reminds
him of those oil-an-turpentine moving-wave sculpures that rock endessly
back and forth on every yuppie desk.

The naked boy suspended inside the bilinous green liquid, turns slighly
out, yawns languidly, then curls further into the fetal position before
becoming still again.

Just like Scully, Mulder muses.  Sleep through damn near anything.  But
how much of the boy was Scully?  How much Betsy Hagopian?  Penny
Northern?  How many of those ova did it take to combine with whatever
alien male chromosomal genes to create the genetic combination of this
particular Kurt-Crawford-to-be?

As if sensing the drifting string of thought, or perhaps, finally of the
presence directly outside its artificial womb, boy turns, his eyes
fluttering open in the thinly opaque septic fluid.  As it focuses on the
agent with a speculative, calm expression, it doesn't take Mulder more
than a few nanoseconds to recognize those same piercing blues
scrutinizing him with pointed intensity.

"Agent Mulder," an adult clone approaches from behind.

"Just wondering, you know, how much of Scully is in it," he gestures
vaguely at the tank.  "Him.  What would you say be an average
percentage?"

"Does it really matter?  They are all our mothers."

He continues studying the boy, and the genetically developed Uber-
redhead returns his gaze with unblinking, intelligent eyes.

"How's Scully doing?"

"Why don't you ask her yourself?"

He laughs, a silent, self-deprecating chuckle as the boy loses interest
in the staring match and turns away to resume its slumber.

"I doubt I'm on Scully's christmas card list anymore.  I think she's got
me up there with the guy who was her last date."

For the first time, the hybrid turns a impatient eye to the unshaven,
unkempt man stubbornly holding his place in front of the tank, before
letting out a shot.

"Did it ever occur to you, Agent Mulder, that the world doesn't revolve
around you?"

Mulder's eyes snap up, the import of familiar words somehow sinking in
their final context.  He shuffles his feet in contrition, then looks at
the Kurt ruefully.

"You know, a wise woman told me that once.  Somebody's mom, I think."

"Come on, Agent Mulder."

He glances back one last time at the boy in the tank, contemplating the
mysteries of probability and genetics, before following the hybrid out.
 
 

Richmond, VA--
 

Breasts, the Chrysalis notes in the reflection of the full length
mirror.  Breasts make the woman.  Not this, the atrophied pectoral
muscle and saline implants bulging from deeply scarred and puckered
tissue on the chest.  Breasts are a piece of art, the perfect symbol of
feminism and motherhood wrapped in the soft, pliable mounds, worshipped
in innumerable carvings of the Venus of Willendorf since the beginning
of time.  He lifts one scarred and drooping breast up to finger the
jagged line of white crisscrosses running in the crease.

Time.  Time and money will fix the wrongs of the world.  But for now,
revenge will have to suffice.

"You are a freak, Nathan" a voice hisses out from behind him.

He covers himself hastily, drawing the open front of the shirt closed
over his scarred and mutilated chest.

"Stop calling me that!  He promised.  He was going to make me
beautiful..."

The engine of the electric monster hums as Barbara Benedict rolls
forward into the room, gnarled, stringy fingers clicking back and forth
on the side buttons of her wheelchair.

"Only I can make you beautiful, Nathan," she sneers.  "Because I am
beautiful.  You, by yourself, you're nothing but an ugly shell."  Then
the voice drops into the husky silk of seduction.  "You know how I can
make you beautiful..."

Automatically, he kneels, lowering his head, a movement automated by
years of habit as much as any Pavlovian reflex.  She takes his face
caressing it, preparing, when he suddenly stands up, roughly pushing her
away, toppling the wheelchair backwards and

"No! I am beautiful!  He knows...he sees..."

"Look at you, Nathan," her sibilant low growl grates against his inner
ear.  "You want to be a woman, you want to be me...but you'll never
succeed, not without me, understand?  You will live and die a freak
without me!"

Hate comes easily to one who has experienced it first hand for nearly
four decades.  Self-loathing festers in the veins of decaying skin,
roping and burrowing into the core by sheer energy of its own power.
The Chrysalis lives on loathing, on humiliation, it kills for the
exquisite agony of death.  Because in self-hate and destruction, the new
flesh can rise from the the old.

(Feed)

"Shut up!"

"Freak!"

(Feed the worm)

"Shut up!"

"Freak, freak, freak!"

(Feed the one that really loves you)

"Shut up!"

He reaches down, takes her by the arms, ignoring her ineffectual
flailing against him.

"Shut up!"

Wraps his hands around the beautiful head, swinging thrashing her body
like a pitbull worrying a broken toy.

"Shut up!"

Harder, faster, struggling, tighter, whiplash, until the satisfying snap
rings in a lullaby to his ears and she lolls in his arms like a loose
rag doll.

Hugging all the warmth out of the rapidly cooling body, the metamorphosis, sacrifice, begins anew with another mate, and the
butterfly dries its wings out in the morning sun, raising new arms to
the beckoning light.

The transformation is complete.
 
 

Lombard Research Facility--
 

"Agent Mulder?  Agent Mulder!"

The agent twitches once, twice, then the world zooms back into reality,
pupils relaxing from pinpoints of black into normal charcoal pools, as
the ceiling comes back into screaming focus.  Mulder shudders
reflexively, his chest heaving with a spasmodic twitch before lurching
up into the Kurt bent over him.

"What happened?"  He feels a strong pulse tugging at this throat,
crawling up toward his chin, as still useless arms flop bonelessly at
his sides.

"I'm not sure," the clone speaks slowly, appraising the situation.  "You
were walking along behind me when you suddenly clutched your head and
collapsed."

"How long have I been out?"  He shakes his fingers, as tingling
needlelike sensations spike through his arms in unsympathetic
belligerence.

"Ten, eleven minutes at the most.  Are you epileptic, Agent Mulder?"

"No."

"Are you sure?  I think you might have had a seizure."

Mulder brushes the hybrid's arm away and gets up, wobbling slightly
against the pinpricks runing rampant down his legs.

"Cheer up.  Maybe it is an aneurisym after all," he mutters.

"What?"

"Nothing."

The Kurt stops in place, phasing out, as if listening to another voice
only audible to the hybrid's ears before turning suddenly pale and
dashing off towards the main room.  Mulder pauses, incensed for a
second, then curiously follows the clone, freezing as the picture before
him carves itself in his mind for eternity--

The sight of Scully pale and doubled over in bed, involuntarily
jacknifing to some mysterious internal crisis while bodies of xerox
Kurts run back and forth, crisscrossing and swarming in front of him.

"Something..." she gasps, clutching her midsection.  "Something's not..."

He stands here, helpless, hopeless, dumb, unmoving, wanting nothing
better than to crawl up the nearest wall, to scream and scream until his
voice gives out.

"What happened?" his tinny and disembodied voice ekes out to no one in
particular.

"BP's seventy palp."

"She's crashing!"  One Kurt shouts.

"Someone mix up a Dopamine drip!"  The second one orders.

The third one slips the needle in.

"BP doppled at sixty."

"She's not stabilizing," comes the fourth.

He grabs the nearest running Kurt by the collar, shouting, shaking him,
fighting down the blood rushing into his eyeballs and forehead.

"What the hell is going on?"

"Splenic sequestration crisis," he shouts back.  "But it shouldn't be
happening to her.  We made sure of it during diagnostics!"

"What the fuck is that?"  He shakes harder.

"A blood filtering problem.  We checked!  I don't understand..."

"I swear, if anything happens--!"

"Something's not right!  It's not suppposed to only destroy the cells
with the proper double helix strand!  Something in her blood..."

The younger man's face crumples with the unsuccesful effort to stifle
emotions, shaking his head, about to burst into tears, when a flash of
something hits Mulder's memory.  He drops the clone.

"Smallpox."  The word leaves a dull, bitter taste in his mouth.

Seven pairs of eyes swivel instantly to him.

"Her smallpox vaccination.  She said there was a gene tag in her scar.
If it's in the vaccine as well, I think think the retrovirus might...oh
God..."

"It's attacking all cells carrying that genetic marker," one finishes.
"Get that IV out!"

The needle is pulled before the second phrase hits completion, the Kurts
working in sympathetic motion, when a shot rings out, their roars
shattering the sterile chaos with smoke and violent  intensity.  Several
bullets rupture the drip-bag, sending its green contents spraying over
Scully and the clones, as the hybrids scatter formation in the sudden upheaval.

Running towards his partner amid the barrage of bullets, Mulder dives
into her, rolling her off the bed onto the ground, and turns the steel
hospital frame up sideways as a makeshift shield.  He snaps his weapon
out of its holster and fires a few stray shots over the top before
peering over the edge to see a familiar grey-haired figure leveling pair
of .45's directly at him.

* * * * *
N   I   N   E
* * * * *

Lombard Research Facility
Lehigh Furnace, PA

Positioning himself in front of his partner's form, Mulder waits
breathlessly for the barrage of shots to puncture through the bed,
knowing the mattress and frame would serve about as useful protection
from teflon-coated cop-killers as a stick of butter against a hot knife.

He sees the finger against a trigger tighten just a twinge.

The slight node of his Adams apple bobs up and down in a strangled half-
swallow.

Flat eyes narrow a fraction.

Tighter.

His throat stops in mid-movement.

Half a second more.

Tighter.

The grey-haired man shifts his aim.  Deliberating for a fleeting moment
which eye he should plant the bullet in when he catches something:

A twitch.

A barely perceptible shift of focus.

Behind him.

He spins, just as a clone closes in the distance between the them and
methodically opens up his wrist with a scalpel.  The rattlesnake's hiss
of toxic, biological chemicals spews out the green, gaping wound
launching deadly blood into the atmosphere.

But the Machine is prepared for such occurrences.  He snaps off the
visual and olfacory functions, grasps the hybrid's head forcing the
Kurt's head down.  The spike of the gimlick slips out with an icy sigh
and slips its way into the base of the clone's skull with expert tactile
reflex as the redhead chokes and sputters into dissolution.

Flinging the quickly decomposing form away, he counts to fifteen to let
the retrovirii dissolve and die in the light and air before opening his
eyes.

Swerving back to find his former targets, he sees they have taken the
advantage to run.
 
 

Hybrid Development Room--
 

Of all the locked-down double-redundant-bullshit systems in the world,
of course had to have chosen the one room that didn't have a goddamn
lock on it.  Ignoring the screaming pain shooting through his back,
Mulder drags a development tank across to the door, wedging the edge of
the table underneath the doorjamb to secure it into place--

And just in time as he hears a despearate rattle on the latch of someone
trying to find their way in.

Wheezing from the effort of hauling the quarter ton mass of liquids and
electronics nearly thirty feet, the agent slides down the front of the
tank, leaning his back against it to make sure it holds as a barricade.

"Agent Mulder!" he pauses as a Kurt's panicked voice filters through the
wall.  "Agent Mulder.  It's me, let me in!"

He doesn't move, closing his eyes, as the pleads cut off suddenly with a
thump, shriek and gurgle, trying to shut out the screams of the dying
Kurts outside, focusing on the lapping waves, the soothing rhythmic
motion with a single-minded concentration.

And nearly leaps into the air as a pair of hands work its way under the
trousers of his right leg.

"Uh, Scully," he drawls tightly over the hammering in his chest.  "As
interesting as the offer is, I don't think now is an appropriate time."

"Shut up, Mulder."  Faintly audible, but nevertheless authorative.  From
her prone position, she slips the Walther PPK from its ankle holster and
drops down the safety.  "Now give me your jacket."

"What?"  Marveling at her intestinal fortitude, his mind blanks itself
of all amusing reply as he watches her brush back several locks of red
with a thin, shaky hand.

"Your jacket, Mulder," Scully repeats, as if talking to a slow child.
"I'm not dressed for the occasion."

"Oh."

Shedding his coat, he notices the pair of legs stretching out from the
hospital gown hitched up a good six inches above her knee, the hem
moving up even higher as she reaches for the coat...

"Mulder!"

The line of sight instantly leaps up to her face with a guilty hiccup as
she sits up, donning the charcoal-grey armani and finding her arms
swallowed up by the sleeves.

"S-Scully, I--"

Several shots rip through the door, blowing out the glass of the giant
fishtank right next to the agent's head.  The agent ducks under the
shattering glass as the water pours down on him, dislodging the nearly-
grown inhabitant onto the floor along with the slippery green stuff.
The body flips and flops like a fish on terra, buckling in its sudden
premature birth from the glass womb before finally going still.

But the door holds.  Amazingly.  Blessedly.  Despite several powerful
thrusts at the mauled wood, it remains intact with the table edge still
jammed under the lever.  After a few more seconds of futile banging and
firing, the assault stops.

Mulder ponders for a few minutes considering the implications of this
particular bout of grace, when the faint acrid odor grips his sense of
smell.

A smell he would recognize anywhere.

Yanking the table back with clumsy, panicked movements, he flings open
the door and nearly falls backwards on top of Scully as she yells out
his name and yanks him in from the adolescent flickers of flame reaching
greedily for him.  He slams the door shut, breathing heavily and staring
glaze-eyed at the burning fingers trying to worm their way in through
the nickel-sized holes in the wood, as the word echoes over and over in
his mind in a nightmarish curse.

Fire.

Oh god, fire.

The flashback of putrescent stench and burnt clothing, seared nails and
hair emitting nauseous fumes acts as a fist pumps rapidly at his
stomach, bile crawling up his throat trying to find its way to freedom--

Get Scully out.

He staggers to the nearest tank, pushing it towards the door and topples
it over, spilling the viscous fluid and its contents uncermoniously on
the floor, but it does little to stymie inexorable charge of fire to a
new fuel source.

Sandpaper rasping against larynx, seizing breath, saliva, mouth flopping
helplessly, a fish twisting, writhing in the open air--

Get Scully...

He vaguely hears her calling his name...to get what?

Struggling, twitching, heat, unbearable in it's ravenous fury, licking
in singed foreplay of deadlier, blacker things to come, burning rubber,
plastic, cement,

Flesh.

Hands tugging at him.  Her hands.  Pulling, reaching, initial strength
failing with the inexorable mass of dead weight.

Get...

Black smoke on the ceiling creeping down, a cigarette fog, carbon
monoxide seizing lungs, thoughts dimmer, a slow decrescendo into black
as the final pleading thought seeps in through his consciousness--

Can't, can't do it...

No exit.

(Snap out of it!  Get up!)

Mulder cracks open his eyes as the fuliginous heat and flames lap at the
edges of his fingers, nipping like puppies learning to teethe.

"Can't..." comes the hoarse whisper through a rapidly fading breath.
"Scuh--"

(Just sit up and shut up, g-man!  I'm going to help you through this.
Just listen to me, do what I say, and we'll all get out of this fine.
Sit back, relax, and let me do all the work...that's right, just think
of a breeze...)
 
 

Security Room--
 

The last touches to arson line in glorious arrays of oxygen and propane
tanks ready to send the research facility skward in a blaze of fury.
The Machine attaches a digital counter strapped to a one-inch block of
C5 behind the tanks and sets the counter to T-minus three minutes.  His
fingers nearly depress the 'set' button, a when movement on a monitor
catches his eye.

Watching with mild curiosity, he sees the figure of Fox Mulder rise from
the crumpled fetal heap on the floor and open the door as an impossibly
bright flickering mess roars its way inwards to him.  The little
jittery, grainy figure then bends down to pick up his partner.  Turning
her face towards his chest, he lifts the collar of the jacket over her
head, and together they leap through the fiery flare and disappears out
of camera range.

The Machine considers the relative unimportance of this particular
person, then weighs that against the impertinence of having someone
escape twice from under him.  Making a final snap decision, he resets
the clock to six minutes before setting the countdown timer.
 
 

A Hallway--
 

The Machine pauses in the roaring inferno of the hallway, dodging
shattered and melting glass strewn everywhere, searching for the signs
of life moving about the crackling, burning facility, and glances down
at his watch.

Four minutes, eleven seconds.

A shuffle and and soft crunch of footsteps upon broken glass catches his
ear from fifty feet northwest in the adjoining hall.  With a half-smirk,
he snaps back the barrel of his .45 and follows the source of the sound.

Turning a corner, he spots his main target not more than twenty-five
steps up the hall, the one who got away once before, singed damp
clothing and hair, half-carrying his pale and coughing partner through
the scorched furnace, a walking, sodden, dripping mess of pure...

Calm.

The one known as Fox Mulder looks up at the new obstacle blocking his
way to freedom and his expression changes.  Predictable, except that the
new one replacing the stroll-in-the-park look swiches to not uninhibited
terror, but of annoyance.  He carefully, lowers his partner to the
ground, despite her vocal protests and stands in front of her.

The Machine is used to seeing fear, weakness and confusion oozing out of
trembling pores from his targets.  In fact, he expects it, relishes his
moment of ultimate power over a fleeting thing such as life.  But this
one, strolling confidently up to him, as casually as if he was about to
ask for a light on his cigarette, this one gives him moment for pause.

Even over the deafening crackle of pylons crumbling to dust, his voice
comes out as a soothing, syllabic rhythm.

"From what I've seen, I know you're a crack shot."

He saunters closer.

"However, even crack shots miss sometimes.  The next bullet could be a
dud.  Or misfire.  The chamber could jam.  Any number of things could go
wrong."

That voice is hypnotic, convincing, steady like a metronome.

"And it wouldn't even be your fault.  One bullet.  And I have a full
clip.  That's fifteen opportunities for me."

The agent is nearly at point blank range, and yet the Machine doesn't
fire, watching with insatiable curiosity, the man whose eyes seem
somehow different.

"So you might as well put that thing down."

Impulse, coercion, an undeniable persuasion tugs at his mind.  The
barrel of his weapon unconsciously lowers slightly in the rhythmic
assault.

"That's right.  Just lower it."  He smiles.  "Hey, I'd like you to do a
favor for me--"

"Mulder!"  Scully's shout shatters the spell.

His eyes catch the barest twitch of movement of the grey-haired man's
features and snaps his head to the right as a bullet roars past his left
ear, leaving the heat of powderburn and a shrieking ring in its wake.
Almost in slow motion, he sees it drive into the head in front of him,
splattering fragments of bone, blood, and brain everywhere.

Spinning around, he sees Scully in a sitting position, faint tendrils of
smoke rising up from the PPK edging out the accordioned right sleeve.

He then turns back and casually rifles through the man's pockets for any
passes or keys before spotting the watch counting down from a minute and
fifty-four seconds.  Dropping the arm, he trots back to help Scully up
on her feet.

"Come on, we have to get out of here."

"What the hell was with the Buckaroo Banzai move back there, Mulder?"
She yells over the roar of the flames as another girder crashes down
behind them.

"He was blocking the only way out."  He slings one arm over his shoulder
and pulls her along.  "I had to do it."

"By walking up to him and asking him to let us go?"

She doesn't see the cold, half-smile cross her partner's face.

"Sometimes that's all it takes."
 
 

46th Street
New York, NY
 

The Elder.  A bullshit title for a bullshit job, the Cigarette Smoking
Man silently contemplates as he watches the other's sausage fingers work
the small gold ring on his left finger, twisting it gently over and over
in a nervous, contemplated habit.  But, he supposes, a much healthier
one than a pack of Morleys a day habit.

"The security breach at Lombard has been taken care of as promised," he
begins, striking and lifting a match to the ever present cancer stick
hanging from his lips.

The fat man considers his associates's words for several seconds before
leaning back in his chair with his characteristic strangled mumble.

"I heard there was a problem."

"A problem?"  The cigarette twitches slightly as the question filters
through his teeth.  "Do clarify, please."

"The man you dispatched seems to have met with a...fatality.  In the incident."

Nothing the Smoking Man didn't already know.

The Machine was a valuable asset.  He carried out assignments with the
utmost punctuality, always did as directed, and never questioned the
motives of any sanction.  Sometimes, however, assets begin recognizing
their worth, their value, and then they become ambitious.  Killers never
asked for more than what was necessary to carry out his assignments, but
with time, with whatever meager scraps of information leaked his way, he
began piecing together the larger picture.  The Smoking Man also knew
his man carried out other directives not authorized by him, orders
coming from some unknown level above his.

So it became necessary to divest certain interests.  To liquidate
present assets.

And thus the last assignment for the Machine.  He had not counted on
Mulder and Scully to be at Lombard, but at the same time could not
afford to give away any more information of his particular interest in
preserving a certain pair of agents.  A test had been laid out before
him and he continued to play his bluff, counting on that strange mixture
of Karma and dumb luck to rescue the two once again.

And he was not disappointed.  If there was one person who was terminally
lucky enough to escape from certain death time after time, it was Fox
Mulder.  He had expected nothing less.

The Cancer Man shrugs, grinding the remains of the butt into a half-full
ashtray.

"Accidents will happen."
 
 

Fox Mulder's Apartment
Alexandria, VA
 

"A mysterious fire took place in Lehigh Furnace late last night--" huffs
the nasal, monotone voice of the Channel 2 news reporter through the
invisible speakers on the 19-inch tv.

The mixture of blue and red light pulsing from the screen play shadow
puppets on the blank, drawn face of Fox Mulder half-hidden in the depths
of his couch, as he presses a button on the remote control, rapidly
flipping through snippets of channel dialogue.

"Firefighters spent the evening unsuccessfully trying to put out a blaze
that engulfed Lombard Research Facility--"

<click>

"Sources allude the Pennsylvania arson case may be related to the string
of other--"

<click>

"JFK, blown away, what more do I have to say?"  His finger pauses for a
second, leaving the image of Billy Joel playing on VH-1, and then, "We
didn't start the fire--"

He jams a finger onto the mute and the room falls silent for a few
seconds to the flickering images on the tv screen before faint sounds of
the street outside playing on the periphery of the windows slowly filter
in.  Pulling himself up wearily, he pops in "The Devil in Miss Jones" on
the vcr and lets it play in the background as he bends to pick up the
discarded tape recorder off the floor.

Lombard Research Facility.  Burned.  To the ground.  The internal
explosion had blown out all the doors, making a fire so hot it felt like
a blast from an open furnace door, even as bits of wood, metal and glass
shotgunned by them as they hit the ground.

And Mulder lay there, unmoving, even as the sirens of approaching fire
trucks and police cars accelerated their way towards the scene.

It was gone.  All the evidence.  All the Kurts.  Everything completely
obliterated.

Along with his last hope.

"At least they've managed to slow down the clock a little,"  Scully
murmured, sitting up, then turned pale at the green, sticky fluid
running out her arm.  She tried to wipe it off, but it kept leaking,
that mysterious mildewy lymph that turned from friend to foe in her
body, more and more and more of that greasy stuff just oozing from where
the IV used to be.

And Mulder hunched over and tried so hard not to gag, but the urge was
too overpowering and he just vomited, stomach contracting wildly,
spewing out sticky black fluid that spilled nearly invisible against the
charcoal pavement at night.  Reality spun shakily around and veered back
into sharp focus as the voice had left him in third person faded back
into the recesses of his mind.

But nevertheless, something had changed.  Something inexorably ugly.  A
mark upon his brain.  What began as a spot at the edge of consciousness,
he can feel spreading and blossoming like a plague of corruption in its
parasitic journey through his nervous system.

Stained, somehow.

He glances down at the pictures scattered on the floor, shining up in
glossy polaroid relief from peripheral light and television
illumination.  Bodies upon bodies upon burnt, decayed, mangled bodies.
All victims, all dead, all crafted by the same monster that had bought a
moment of respite for him and Scully.

Scully.

He had taken her back to her mother's, quietly slipping away when the
door opened to Maggie Scully's surprised face, unable to face her
accusing eyes.  He had failed.  Fucked up.  And where he could tell his
father he had lost Samantha, he couldn't tell her, the mother of Scully,
that he had gambled with the devil and lost.

"All the answers you need are locked up in your head."

Bastard.

Answers to the question of Samantha, answers to the question of the
killer, answers to the question of Scully.

And all the devil asks for is everything.

He could do it.  He had done it before.  He can do it again.  Except
this time, he will not step back towards safety.  Complete sublimation
into the other.  Bring the monster to the fore and let it reveal all its
secrets.

Turning the tape recorder around in his hands, Mulder flips the cassette
over to an unused side and hits the record button.  His tongue runs over
dry, chapped lips a few times before the weak, raspy vibrations of his
throat embed themselves on magnetic tape:

"For the sake of duty, I have always driven to the edge of madness, to
the brink of feeling myself, one foot stepping off the ledge and
plummeting my soul into the unknown horrors of the evil of man, to
identify with and become those who thrive on the outskirts of human
misery. You, you have always brought me back from that precipice,
prevented me from taking that final step from which I can never return,
you, who have always been there, have always been my salvation, but I
fear this time, however, you will not be able to take my hand to lead me
back..."

* * * * *
T  E  N
* * * * *

Maggie Scully's Residence
Baltimore, MD
 

Look like crap, Scully muses as she faces the mirror for the first time
in a long while. Inspecting the dark rings around the eyes of some
unrecognizable stranger, a ghost of what she used to be stares back at
her in reflection: sallowed cheeks, a perpetually pinched and tired
expression scampering with rampant abandon across her face, and blue
veins and lines exhaling in sharp relief against glassy skin.

Lifting her fingers up to her left ear, she snaps her thumb and middle
finger, sighing when the lack of response confirms her prognosis.  Her
hearing had rapidly declined over the past two weeks and was now mostly
gone from infection and the irregular pressure of fluids in her left
cochlea.

The auditory loss had been a slow, terrifying process, a loss she tried
to make up for with extra alertness, and no one had suspected otherwise.
But at Lombard, when Mulder had smiled and touched her eyebrow and
whispered something into that ear, she couldn't hear what he said.  She
didn't dare ask him to repeat it, refusing to let him know the extent of
damage her illness had caused, something even the gene therapy could not
fix, so she lay there, resigned to never knowing.

And it was not just her hearing either.  The accompanying loss of
equilibrium aggravated by the pounding between her eyes disturbed her
balance so much that she could barely hold the PPK straight when she
blew the assassin's face off, terrified that she would hit Mulder
instead.

But despite the never ending headache, despite the losing the left ear,
Dana's mind is still focused, still sharp, even as she questions herself
the inevitable: if it will always be this way up until the very end.
Will she be able to retain the ability to remember, to write, to
formulate logical, coherent thoughts, to keep control over speech, over
bodily functions?

Or will her mind simply fade into oblivion like her body's losing
struggle?

Not Goddamn likely.

Unlike Mulder, who had quietly slipped away without a word four days
ago, slinking off in some form of self-imposed punishment, Dana Scully
refuses to lay down and let it happen.  With the old anger building up
in her again, for the eleventh or twelfth time today, she hits the auto
redial number on the cordless phone.

"I'm not here," the familiar lackadasical voice statically drones over
the earpiece of the telephone handset.  "Leave a message."

"Mulder, pick up the phone,"  Scully snaps into the other end, and
pauses, waiting for the click of the receiver being lifted.  "Mulder are
you there?"

Nothing.

With a frustrated sigh, she clicks the off button and paces the room
three or four times before making a decision.

"Dana, where are you going?"  Calls the voice behind Scully as she tucks
the t-shirt into newly baggy jeans, grabbing her car keys on the way to
the front door.  She continues moving, oblivious to the question.

"Dana?"  Margaret Scully repeats.  "DANA!"

The younger Scully turns around, surprised, to face her mother.

"I'm sorry, mom."  Her eyes drop and dart around, inspecting the wooden
floor, as she hunts for an explanation.  "I was preoccupied."

"Where are you going?"

"I need to check up on someone."

"On Fox."  Not a question.

"Mom, Mulder hasn't answered his phone in four days.  I need to make
sure he's all right."

"Why don't you take care of yourself first?"

"I--I'm fine mom.  Really."

"But what if something happens to you?  What if--?"

"Nothing will happen to me mom.  Besides," she jokes weakly, "If
something does, you can always reuse that old tombstone you bought."

Maggie Scully reacts as if being struck, the etchings around her mouth
becoming more pronounced to the frown already set in her lips.

"That's not funny, Dana."

Scully sighs, feeling the momentum drain out of her feet.

"I know, mom.  I know."  She looks up, gazing into her mother's eyes.
"Mom, you told me that when I was in Georgetown two years ago, Mulder
refused to let you and Melissa take me off life support."

"Dana..."

"I'm not blaming you, mom," she adds in hastily, "I did specify the
terms in the living will, and I'm glad you respected my decisions enough
to follow its wishes."  She pauses, hesitates, trying to formulate the
right words.  Finding none, she simply bulls forward.  "But Mulder,
he...he refused to consider the tombstone."

Shaking physically from holding back tears, from holding back emotions
threatening to erupt from the core, Margaret Scully says nothing but--

"I understand."

She takes her daughter in a hard, fierce hug before finally releasing
her.
 
 

Fox Mulder's Apartment
Alexandria, VA
 

After exactly three knocks followed by no discernable response, Scully
lets herself into her partner's apartment with the key used so often,
she can recognize it by touch.  She drops the unmarked key back down
into the collection on the ring, not having bothered to replace the
"Mulder" label after it peeled and fell off months ago.

The light from the television and red glowing buttons on the VCR plays
some dreadful low-budget porn flick with the sound cut off, and strains
of piano keys banging through the speakers over the background of a
hyperactive orchestra.

But no Mulder anywhere.

Scanning the room in its deep fog of tightly closed windows and curtains
and musty used air, the light of the answering machine blinking in sad
solitude catches her eye.  After suffering a millisecond of guilt for
invading his privacy, she presses the button and adjusts the volume up
to the highest level as the tape rewinds and settles before rolling out
its first beep and message.

"Langly here.  Byers looked through every on-line database, Mulder.
There's just no one with the last name "Nayba" in any reverse directory
search in the world.  Are you sure you spelled it right?  Sorry, man."

The beep announces the next message.

"Hey Mulder, Langly again.  Byers had an idea.  The name could be an
anagram, like your pen name, MF Luder.  Just thought you might think of
that."

Another beep

"Mulder, this is Skinner.  I still need that 302 from you on my desk
before I can approve the case you're working on.  Get it to me now."

And the final message.  Hers.

"Mulder, pick up the phone.  Mulder are you there?"

Sighing, she turns off the button on the machine.

"I know, sometimes I can't believe it's my voice either."

Scully jumps, spinning around, trying to divulge out of which shadow of
the room the voice came from.

"Mulder?  Why are you in the dark?"

A long, tired pause.  From out of the barely illuminated black of his
apartment, his voice floats through.

"I've used up all my good replies for that question."

Crossing back to the hallway, she snaps on the light, then reconsiders
shutting it off, if just to banish the horrific sight in front of her:

The sight of her partner huddled against the fishtank, his legs crossed
underneath him, unkempt, covered in sweat with a half-week's worth of
stubble covering his face and matted hair falling lankily into bloodshot
eyes.  And then, surrounded, no, covered, by an island of photographs,
images and images of the dead, charred victims everywhere around.

"Mulder.  I came--"

"To inspect my wallpaper?"  He doesn't look up.  "I'm fine." A voice
tinged with tired irony. "What are you doing here, Scully?  I'm pretty
sure it's not to comment on my interior decorating."

"You look awful, Mulder."

"Anyone ever tell you you've got a lousy bedside manner?"

"That's why I went into Pathology," she jokes weakly, edging closer to
him.  "How long has it been since you've slept?"

He considers that for a while, then gives up.

"What day is it?"

"Mulder, you can't drive yourself into the ground like this."

"I've done it before.  It's not so bad."  Her eyebrows crinkle.  "At
least this way I don't dream."

Her hand briefly brushes his hair, but he flinches from her touch, as if
burned.

"Don't, Scully."

"Mulder--"
 
"I'm working."  And when he looks at her, his eyes aren't quite the
same.  A different hue perhaps.  Or a different presence.

"Is this why you haven't been taking anybody's calls?"

He shrugs.  Scully clenches and unclenches her hands, feeling the
frustration mounting.

"Those words in your field notes, what do they mean?"

"What words?"

"Chimes.  Mark.  Hand.  You had them scribbled in your journal.  What do
they mean?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Why won't you tell me?"

"It's not important.  Go home, Scully.  You need to get as far away from
me as you can."

The bubble descends in a slow, soft arc reducing the sounds of the
atmosphere to muffled murmurs.  She could have said something, she could
have stomped and yelled and thrown something, but he doesn't really hear
her anymore, simply focusing with single-minded determination towards
divulging the secrets within the pictures, within the hunt and the kill.

He only senses the door clicking open, then shut, then picks up the
recorder and presses the only button worn down from repeated use.

"I reread Moby Dick again, hoping for some reason the ending might have
changed...but in an ordered universe, Starbuck never survives the
madness of Ahab...except in mine...and this time, despite everything,
you can call me a selfish bastard, and I will be the first to admit it,
I am glad I will be the one to go first..."
 
 

FBI Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
 

The main lobby of the J. Edgar Hoover building always held a
particularly unpleasant reaction for Special Agent Dana Scully.  Even as
she waits impatiently in line to enter the main corridor, she hesitates
when her turn comes up, pausing in front of the detectors as a mild
anxiety settles on her in a flashback of the fateful squawk of sirens
nearly two years ago.

And of course, Johnson is there again.  He remembers too, nodding
sympathetically as she takes a breath, blinking a few times to settle
herself, then steps through.

Silence.

He winks at her as she exhales, and she returns a shaky half-smile
before turning to the elevators.
 
 

Office of the Assistant Director--
 

Though the Skinner would never admit it, the presence of Scully standing
before him in his office is heartening, even if she is, at this point,
lecturing him about the foolhardiness of letting Mulder carry out an
assignment that was proving detrimental to his mental health.  She had
stormed despite the fact of it being after-hours and faced him with the
crossest, iciest look he's ever seen in her since their clash in the
Office of Personal Responsibility.

His relief and disquiet comes from memory of the pallid, weak state she
had been in at Holy Cross in contrast to now.  Despite her features
ravaged by sickness and worry, behind it, an almost inhuman
determination holds her up before him, refusing to crumble to
exhaustion, illness or anything else that would have driven someone
lesser towards resignated defeat.  And of course, she is here because of
her partner.

"Sir, I have reason to believe a serial killer is targeting Agent
Mulder.  He needs to be put into protective custody."

"And how do you figure that, Scully?"

"The killer is now choosing her victims deliberately.  A...a woman Agent
Mulder was acquainted with was the most recent--a sloppy maneuver
targeted towards him."

"I see."  He picks up a phone.  "I'll assign a couple of agents to watch
him."  He pauses as he realizes she is still standing there.  "What
else?"

"I'm also requesting permission to be reactivated for field duty."

"Denied."

"Sir," her eyes flash.  "I know more about this case than anyone else
besides Agent Mulder."

"I'm not going to reinstate you, Scully.  There is no way I will send
one of my agents out into the field to die."

"With all due respect, sir, if you don't reinstate me, there will be
more than just my death."

The words skip out, each syllable pronounced with quiet calm, as
casually as if she had been ticking off an expense form, and the simple
way in which she says it gives Skinner some pause.  After several
moments of silent consideration, he finally accedes.

"You will have two junior agents assigned to you.  Use them."

"Sir, I really think--"

"They will follow your directives in this investigation, but should
anything drastic happen to you while on this case, I will be immediately
notified and you WILL be removed."

"Sir--"

"Do I make myself clear?"

She opens her mouth to protest, then shuts it.

"Yes, sir."

Silently praying he doesn't regret this move, he slowly opens the lower
drawer of his desk, and pulls out her ID and gun.

"Welcome back, Agent Scully."
 
 

Fox Mulder's Apartment
Alexandria, VA
 

His car is still outside.  He is nowhere at his apartment.  His couch.
The bathroom.  Kitchen.  Nowhere.  From the look of things, Mulder also
left in a hurry.

Picking up the phone, Scully dials his number.  Nothing.  Fifteen rings.
Sixteen.  Seventeen. Eighteen...

"Um, Agent Scully?"

She turns blankly to the young, fresh-faced caddie at her right, who
suddenly looks down in a nervous bout of self-consciousness.

"Spit it out, Fischer."

Fischer gesticulates apologetically in the general direction of left.
"The couch is ringing."

Turning her good ear carefully towards the sofa, the familiar chirping
sound ringing from the recesses of the cushions confirms the junior
agent's observations.  After some digging, Scully comes up with Mulder's
cellular.

Damn.

She hangs up, looking at his most recent phone of five months.  Mulder
had been pouty about the whole idea of cellular phones at first, liking
the idea to being kept on a virtual leash when she dragooned him into
phone hunting, but the mood vanished as he immediately fell in love with
the shop, cheerfully playing with all the button features, the little
flip-mouthpieces, and programmable options.  He was always such a sucker
for gadgets.  After an eternity of agonized deliberation, he finally
settled on the most expensive, slickest model complete with alphanumeric
pager features, caller ID, and twelve different ring settings, while
she'd chosen a simple, functional model sans all of the annoying bells
and whistles and cheesy doodads that Mulder absolutely had to have.  And
she put up with his thirty-odd calls a day for nearly a week as he felt
obligated to put every feature of his new piece of equipment to good
use, though he was mildly disappointed they couldn't come up with a
model that could also make coffee and feed the fish.

Such a little boy, excited by his cool little toy.
 
Moving over to his desk, Scully clears some space of the pictures and
takes his field journal out from her valise, gripping the chapped
leather thoughtfully.

But then, this weird dichotomy, his absolute refusal to get a laptop,
insisting on writing his field notes in longhand.  Broaching the subject
with him only resulted in her partner muttering something about Umberto
Eco and the Mac being the modern symbol for Catholicism while PC
compatibles were Protestant, and then outrageously asserting his staid
atheism.  As if getting a laptop would suddenly force him to some sort
of moral religious dilemma.

Though she surmises, he'd probably go crazy if she ever took him to
Computer City, picking out the model that was crammed to the gills with
maximum cpu power, at least 64 megs of ram a cd-rom/sound blaster combo
and 56X2 fax modem, of course loaded with Super Tetris and the X-tra
Large version of "You Don't Know Jack."

She stops that thought, biting her lip.  She will never be able to take
him laptop hunting, he will not call her up in the middle of the night
for no other reason than to tell her a ridiculously stupid pun he'd
heard that day, he will never open doors for her, guiding her with that
ubiquitous hand to her back, or give her one of those rare, self-
conscious smiles, or brush the hair out of her face and call her "Dana"
again, and that is the truth.

The two young agents who have followed her into the room her shuffle
uncomfortably behind her, watching their senior stand there staring at a
cellular phone and book.  The other one finally coughs, breaking Scully
out of her reverie.

"Um, Agent Scully.  Since Agent Mulder isn't here, what should we do?"

"Velasco, I want you to put an APB out on Agent Mulder.  Notify all
local authorities.  You and Fischer do a scan of the local area within a
25 mile range.  If you find Agent Mulder, contact me immediately."

"Where will you be?"

She looks down at the seven or eight of those little tapes laying around
on the floor, scattered among frayed and worn snapshots.

"I'll be right here."

Settling herself down in the chair, Scully picks up the microcassette
recorder and hits "play."
 
 

Office of the Lone Gunmen--
 

"Not to be rude or anything, Mulder," Langly wrinkles his nose as he
moves upwind of the agent.  "But how long has it been since you've had a
bath?"

"Ah, don't mind him," Frohicke offers sympathetically back over his
shoulder.  "I've had week-long benders like that."

Mulder approximates a soundless, humorless laugh that falls flat
somewhere between his face and the six inches of air before it.

"Not getting much here, Mulder."  Byers, as usual, permanently attached
to his computer.  "The only permutations of the name F.P. Nayba that the
anagram engine came up with are combinations of "'by Pa FaN.'"

"Maybe he likes the Steelers," offers Frohicke.

Mulder scratches his forehead in verisimilitude of concentration.  "One
of the victims was murdered in Erie."

"Lombard was in that state too."  Byers, again.

It strikes Mulder right then, that same feeling.

The last time he had been too drunk to understand, to be aware of the
presence of her constantly looming at the edge of his consciousness.
But now, it all clicks into place.  Buying himself a first class one-way
ticket to hell did have its priveleges, and was taking the entire
screaming shuttle ride into complete mental oblivion, where crypic
messages scramble back into place with previously invisible clarity.

F.P. Nayba.

So stupidly obvious, it was ridiculous.

"Who'da thought Pennsylvania would be such a popular place?  Hey, where
you going?" Langly stumbles back, nearly falling on his ass as the agent
roughly shoulders him aside on the way out.

Now Mulder knows where to go, he knows where he will find her.

Because empathy is not a common emotion.
 
 

Fox Mulder's Apartment
Alexandria, VA
 

 '...Had the killer been abducted?  Unlikely.  The very nature of
       the killings precludes all evidence of abduction.  Scully
       is right.  This is simply an escalated fetishist with
       an obsession that hits particularly close to home...'

Static buzz.  Scully forwards the tape to an area where it clears up.

 '...She does not do this out of pleasure, rather, out of
       necessity, but unlike Tooms or Incanto, her hunger is not of a
       physical nature.  She is feeding something that is not a  part
       of her, something almost vampiric in nature that forces her to do
       what she does.  An impulse, if you will call it.  Or a voice...'

More buzz.  In a pattern that has become monotonous, she clicks the
search button, listening to the squiggled speech and hissing that seems
to interrupt the recording every thirty seconds.

 '...There have been numerous accounts of serial killers who have
       claimed to have heard  voices in their heads issuing commands,
       giving them that impulse.  'Son of Sam' Berkowitz and Ted Bundy,
       come to mind, but few, if none, of these claims were genuine in
       nature, with the possible exception of Duane Barry.  However, the
       possibility of his 'hearing  voices' more than likely involved an
       external medium...'
 
A tedious few hours later, Scully rereads the screen on Mulder's desktop
computer, staring at the stilted monologue transcribed from his tapes,
the sections that had not been obscured with that annoying buzz.
Breaking into system was easy.   He was nothing, if not predictable in
his choice of passwords.

His voice notes had started off with dispassionate analysis, textbook
theories, fact laying, observations.  As she listened further through,
his voice took on an air of desperation, short attention, meanderings,
ramblings, occasional bouts of incoherence and strangled noises.

She pops the last tape into the recorder and, fingers poised at the keys
to type out the next fix of half-stilted mumblings, freeze, unable to
drop in synchrony to the next words spilling out of the speaker.

 "This darkness creeps up on my soul, looming like a plague of
       locusts, I drown in their buzzing shadow, feeling them devour me
       until nothing is left but dry, empty bones.  Sometimes it feels
       as if I'm drowning, hands drawing me down into a sea of blood,
       the screams...the visions...like Cassandra of Troy, these visions
       carry a curse...I enter their minds, their lives and deaths
       intertwined in the ecstasy, the glory of the kill...I feel the
       monsters, I become them, I am Burke, Boggs, Pfaster, Roche, in
  the spiraling miasmic descent, the anguished screams...and in my
       mind...when I close my eyes, I can only see the blurred, scarred
       faces of countless unnamed victims...oh God, Scully..."

A large mass of static electricity blurs the rest of the recording, its
insistent guttural hiss overshadowing all other text.
 
Feeling her throat close, Scully clicks off the recorder, unable to
listen any longer.  This is the first time he has uttered her name.  To
her.  She never imagined hearing it would cause her insides to lock and
twitch.

She had been afraid of this, afraid for him.  Afraid he will not allow
her to go down the road of her mortality by herself, as he throws
himself in front of every creature every killer, every evil challenging
them, begging them to destroy him first.

She had always been annoyed at Mulder's recalcitrance to show her the
aspects of profiling they had never taught at the Academy.  She'd wanted
to learn his insights, his ways of how he could get into the mind of a
killer.  "Next time," was all he would say, in the same fashion as "you
can get the next mutant," and then invariably, he would conveniently
forget.  For a while she wondered if his reticence was because he felt
threatened by her gaining knowledge, but Mulder was never the type to
feel jealousy over any such thing, so she remained puzzled over his
particular lack of enthusiasm for this role, never realizing until much
later, that he had been trying to spare her the horror, preferring to go
down that dark tunnel alone.

Jack had always known when to draw back, when to leave, when he was
coming too close.  Mulder never had those boundaries, always toppling in
headfirst, heedless of the dangerous undercurrents.  It was those lack
of boundaries that made him brilliant, gave him the ability to make
outstanding leaps and insights, though the toll nearly submerged him
innumerable times.

She had never been able to appreciate that until she was forced to place
herself in Gerry Schnauz's mind.  In their contact, she had seen the
horror reeling in that man's head.  That moment had shaken her to the
core, and she had gained a new respect for her partner, for the way he
could see demons in a photograph, the mind and motivation of a killer in
the muddle of forensic evidence.  The way he could see it all, and not
go insane.

She had told him of this, and he had made a joke.

"Welcome to the Hotel Sanitarium.  You can check out any time you
like..."  His words were light, but the look, the look on his face--

God.

It had been so sad.

For her....And she knew why he shut her out so often, why he in these
cases would become suddenly distance and shuttered.  Because of her.  He
wanted to keep her out of the slaughterhouse of his mind.

The same mind that had managed to find Patterson, Roche and Gasman.

The same mind that would find this killer.

And now, now she has find a way to enter that same dark tunnel.

To find him.

Rubbing her eyes tiredly, she rewinds the tape, then plays it again,
transcribing it into the computer.
 
 

HN Hampshire Lounge
Alexandria, VA
 

Seven glasses of iced tea, the ice all but melted in all but the last
one, the sweat of condensation long gone from the rest of the room
temperature beverages.

A strange man who pays for drinks he does not consume, simply sits there
waiting, prodding a wilted lemon browning at the edges, poking at it
until it falls off its perch atop the rim of the Collins glass.

And then it happens.

Like a play, she enters from stage left.  He looks up from where he is
waiting, stage right.

Her head turns unconsciously, drawn by that same impulse that craves
mortis towards him.  She smiles.  He knows.  She is watching him.  She
wants him as the next one.

He stands up slowly walks towards her, even as her legs carry carry her
to him in that slow, predatorial gait.

They meet in the middle.

She will take him.  Comfort him.  Show him the joys of her flesh, of her
spirit and madness.  And then she will kill him.  One final soul to feed
the worm.

He smells it on her, from her perfume, from her skin, her aura.  He can
almost see the blood dripping from her fingers.

Deadly.

He has found the Chrysalis.

The woman smiles.

"Hi.  I'm Barbara Benedict."
 
 

Fox Mulder's Apartment
Alexandria, VA
 

The quiet chirp of incoming mail notification flashes on the screen,
disturbing Scully's study of the long, rambling transcription from
Mulder's tapes.  Glancing up at the headers, she finds:

 From: lovemachine@magicbullet.org
 Subject: Another woohoo! from alt.sex.stories
 To: f_mulder@fbi.gov

In a slightly desperate measure born of half-hope towards some sort of
new clue popping up out of the ether, she opens the message.  Then
stares long and hard at the screen, feeling the frustration build up at
finding everything written in complete gibberish.

Lifting the receiver of the phone, Scully dials a number she has always
known, but never, ever considered using, until now.

One ring and the line picks up.

"Domino's Pizza."

"Frohicke," she smiles at the familiar voice.  "It's Dana Scully."

"Dana!"  The warm combination of surprise, relief, and unfettered
adoration packaged in the expression of one word, is only slightly
marred by a muffled 'hey, do a trace on this' filtering through the
background, despite Frohicke's indelicate attempts to cover the
mouthpiece.

"Don't bother.  I'm calling from Mulder's apartment."  She allows the
old man a few seconds grace to pick his throat up from the ground.

"Oh.  How are you doing?"

"I'm fine."  The familiar line slips out of her mouth without a second
thought.  "But that's not what I called you about.  You just sent an e-
mail to Mulder with subject "Another woohoo."

"Uh," the other voice suddenly chokes before stammering on, "You don't
want to read that.  Take my word for it."

"I _can't_ read this," Scully retorts.  "It's encrypted.  What method
are you using?"`

"It's called Rot-13.  Here, let me get Byers on the line to explain."
She hears the shuffle of the phone being juggled with a muttered 'you
take this' before the scramble of hands places her at the next Lone
Gunman's ear.

"Rot-13 is a simple encryption method,"  Byers finally answers, voice
accompanied by the tapping of keys in the background.  "Basically, you
move a letter 13 spaces forward in the alphabet.  "A" becomes "N," "B"
becomes "O" and vice-versa."

"Not much for security."

"It's not meant for security.  It's more of a choice issue for people
who may be offended by certain message contents."

She raises her eyebrows.

"I find it difficult to believe anyone who reads alt.sex.stories could
be easily offended."

"Well, if you don't want to read it, you can't.  If you do, there's the
option to decode it under the message window."

"Charming," she answers dryly.  "I'll have to remember that.  Has Mulder
contacted you at all?"

"He was here earlier tonight.  Why?"

"When did he leave?"

"About two hours ago."

"If you see him again, let me know."

"Sure thing."

"Wait!"  Scully adds quickly, remembering.  "What was that name he was
having you investigate?  Did you come up with anything?"

"Nayba?  Nada."

"Spell the whole name out for me."

She types each individual letter in the first line of the body of mail
as the Lone Gunman retells it to her.  "It's totally fake though," he
adds in afterwards.

"Not necessarily.  It seems, to me, too...original, too deliberate.  It
might be fake, but there's _something_ there."

"We'll keep looking into it."

Hanging up, she looks at the screen, letters playing along the page in
tantalizing cryptograph.  Letting curiosity get the better of her, she
finds the Rot-13 button and decrypts the message, revealing the closely
intimate details of Nikki Grinder's latest anatomical adventures.

Scully rolls her eyes, finger on the mouse button prepared to send the
electronic letter back into e-mail oblivion when she glances up at the
letters she had typed out at the top.  Reading it carefully, the agent
sits there blinking rapidly for a few minutes, staring at each letter,
moving the Rot-13 cursor back and forth between what she typed out only
a few minutes before to the translated revelation before her.

F.P. Nayba, extrapolated 13 letters, resulted in an S.C. Anlon.

Scanlon.
 

* * * * *
E  L  E  V  E  N
* * * * *

Special Agent Fischer returned to Agent Mulder's apartment at 02:30
hours to check up on her senior agent, as per confidential request of
the Assistant Director.  It seemed the rumors regarding Agent Scully's
physical condition were true after all.  She also heard that the doctor
and her partner curried favor with the Assistant Director in spite of a
number of escapades that would have shown anyone else the back door of
OPR.  She had pretty much chalked them all up to office pool gossip,
until her visit to the AD's office.

He had ushered her and Velasco in and told them quietly, but in no
uncertain terms, that should anything untoward befall Agent Scully,
notification to him was imperative.  Failure to do so in a timely manner
would mean immediate and irrevokable reassignment to back-room wiretap
duty at the Anchorage Field Office.

Stepping in, she watches her Senior Agent work tirelessly in her search:
making calls, flipping through reports, photographs, and listening to
those tapes, when her movement stops abruptly.  Scully lifts a trembling
hand to her head, closing her eyes, head tilting forward unconsciously.
Then, a solitary drop of red falls onto the desk in front of her,
staining the first page of the evidence report.  Reaching into her coat,
Fischer's fingers move over the upraised buttons of the cell phone,
ready to dial the numbers drilled into her head, when Scully's voice
stops her short.

"No calls, Fischer.  I'll take full responsibility."

"Agent Scully, your health is a mandatory--"

"I said NO CALLS."  She lifts her head up, eyes swiveling to focus on
the junior agent.  "What happens to me is inevitable.  But I can stop it
from happening to Agent Mulder."

After a few seconds, Fischer drops her eyes, letting the phone slip back
into her pocket.  "Velasco's still on moving watch.  Is there anything
you need me to do while I'm here?"  Alaska was said to be quite nice in
the spring time.

Scully picks up a report from the pile, flipping through the contents.

"Go on-line and search through the American Medical Association's
Physician database.  See if there's a reference to an F.P. Nayba or a
Kevin Scanlon in there."

Fifteen minutes later, the agent calls out her victorious find over her
shoulder.

"There's a couple of them here.  Kevin A. Scanlon, Boca Raton, Florida.
Kevin F. Scanlon, Salem, Oregon.  , Kevin P. Scanlon, Erie,
Pennsylvania.  Kevin no-middle-initial Scanlon, Arlington, Virginia."

"Try the Pennsylvania one."

"Kevin P. Scanlon, M.D..  Medical License suspended 1983...for grevious
malpractice and operating without proper consent.  Evidently, he liked
to 'dabble' outside his field."

"Genetics or Oncology?"

"Reconstructive Surgery."  Scully's head lifts at that.  "But wait," the
younger agent's fingers tap tirelessly over the keys.  "In 1995, it
says, his license was reinstated."

"Without a review by the board?"  Scully considers that, chewing on a
fingernail.  "Try the Arlington one."

"Kevin Scanlon, M.D., Alexandria, Virgina."

"Reconstructive Surgery?"

"No.  Specializing in Endocrinology."

"When was he licensed?"

"May 1996."

"What about F.P. Nayba?"

A few minutes of silence, only interrrupted by the tapping of keys.

"Nothing."

Scully's eyes drop down to the report in her hands.

"Look up this name--a James Donnish."

Her fingers work the computer, pause, then, "James Donnish, M.D.,
Alexandria, Virginia.  Specializing in Endocrinology."

"Licensed?"

"May 1996."

"Interesting coincidence."

Fischer frowns watching the gears turn in her senior agent's mind.  "And
this person is...?"

"Barbara Benedict's primary care physician."  Liftin the receiver,
Scully dials the number on the police report.

"What are you thinking?"

"That perhaps it isn't Scanlon that was killed after all.  They never
did find his dental records."

She listens as four rings sound before the answering machine picks up.
The same husky voice of Barbara Benedict is there, apologizing
breathlessly for the non-presence of the occupants, but the agent is
captured by something else -- a strange, ethereal tinkling in the
background, the barely audible noise filtering through, replaying one of
the words in her partner's field journal.

Then, almost too soon, the long beep sounds.

In disbelief, she calls the number again, listening.  Confirming.
Before motioning to the junior agent.

"Come here."  She dials again, playing back the message and surrendering
the handset.  "I want you to tell me what you think this is in the
background."

Fischer picks up the phone, listening to the muffled discharge in
concentration.

"I dunno.  Sounds like an ice-cream truck.  Or maybe one of those old
wooden wind chimes."

The agent nods thoughtfully.

"Set a team up for 2290 Dakota Drive."
 
 

Barbara Benedict's Residence
Richmond, VA
 

The footsteps and weapons of twelve SWAT team members ransacking the
place, breaking doors and windows, thunder through the two-story house
as they tear apart the place with efficent, professional brutality.

Storming through the kitchen, Scully glances cursorially at the calendar
covered in a plethora of red circles, times, and exxes through them
before heading towards the living room.  Five steps later, she turns
around and backtracks to inspect the dates more carefully.

"Team's sweeping this place,"  Fischer doubles back to her moments
later.  "So far, nothing.  They did, however, find a number of surgical
instruments, needles and wire in what looks to be a little girl's room.
They also found--"  She stops as Scully doesn't turn from reading the
calendar.  "Agent Scully?"

"Fischer," she finally answers slowly.  "Pull up the record of Barbara
Benedict's police statment and tell me the date it was taken."

The younger agent nods, running out.  Five minutes later, she comes back
in.  With the M-16 slung over her right shoulder, she pulls open the
valise and digs around inside for a while before finally coming up with
the folder.

"Um, statment documented June sixteenth, 1997," she mutters, trying to
balance the folder, briefcase, and rifle at the same time.  "Time,
sixteen hundred thirty hours, taken by Special Agent Dana Scully,
Federal Bureau of Investigation."

Scully lets her finger drift over certain marked days in the calendar,

"These here, the dates circled, they're the days and times of Barbara
Benedict's dialysis sessions."  She points at one date marked on the
calendar before her.  "Including this one."

"June sixteenth."  Fischer squints, reading the tiny numbers of the
apppointment hours.  "Three to six P.M.."  She looks up.  "That
means..."

"Barbara Benedict could not have been at the police station when she was
also having dialysis."

"We found something!" A muffled shout from out behind pierces the air,
and the two agents dash out to the source of the news.

They had come to arrest Barbara Benedict for the serial murders and for
the attempted murder of a Federal Agent, but upon discovering her, the
first particular notion swiftly flies out of her head, throwing yet
another twist into the investigative proceedings.

Because Barbara Benedict is very much dead.

An agent had discovered the shriveled form of the woman folded up and
crammed into an industrial-sized, lift-top freezer built to hold
approximately six-hundred pounds of meat.

Barbara had obviously been dead for only a little while, as freezer burn
from exposure to the cooling elements in confinement still had work cut
out for it.  Upon a cursory inspection Scully, finds a clumsy suture in
the neck.  Another mark.

And somehow, she finds it impossible to stir up sympathy for a woman who
had at least been an accessory in the murder of her own child, if not
the actual hand herself.

Despite the obvious, unnatural angle of the woman's neck, Scully pries
open the woman's eyes, searching for telltale pinpoints of red for
asphyxiation.  Even clouded over with the cataracts of death, they still
reflect the green in the irises.  She pauses.

Green.  Natural green.  The woman she spoke to wore green contact
lenses.

Then, whom had she spoken to at the police station?

Think, Dana.  Think.  The person who had pretended to be Barbara
Benedict, had to have enough knowledge of the family to be able to pass
it as her own.

Lifting up the dress of the dead woman, she reads the rows of collapsed
veins and bruises along Barbara's thighs, pockmarks and fresh venous
scars, mottled and weaving in a tapestry of venous disarray.

Someone for whom it wasn't mandatory to show up for dialysis sessions.

"Wrap this up and ship it back to Quantico," she orders the nearest
agent, as she heads back inside the house.

Searching the living room, she finds a picture on the fireplace mantle.
It is of Barbara and another woman, both of the same fair hair and
remarkably similar features, with Kathy, in front of the Richmond
Memorial.  Except the Barbara she talked to was standing behind them and
the Barbara in the freezer was the one in the wheelchair.

Judging by the looks of the little girl, the photograph could not have
been more than one year old.

Barbara had said her family members were all dead except for a brother
in Amsterdam.  She could have lied.  But that would have been too easy
to trace.  And of course it could be completely coincidental that these
two women should look so much alike.  Identical twins?  There were too
many dissimilarities for such.  Perhaps fraternals.

She looks more carefully at the picture of the woman standing in the
back, towering over the two forms in the front, feeling somehow, she's
missing something.  Her eyes drop to one hand resting on the seated
Barbara Benedict's shoulder.

An unusually large hand.

Hand.

The "Est--" label on the pill