By Danielle Culverson
smythja@aston.ac.uk
Date: Wed May 21 17:07:39 1997
This is a fiction story based on the characters created by Chris
Carter. No infringement of copyrights held by 10/13 Productions,
Twentieth Century Productions, or Fox Broadcasting is intended. All
unrecognised characters and plot-lines belong to me. Names,
characters, and places exist solely within my imagination, or are used
fictitiously. No connection to any person, living or dead, is
intended, and any resemblance is entirely coincidental. Feel
free to
distribute, but please keep me as the author.
Rating - 18 (R) - For content that couldn't be shown on Fox involving
language and sexual descriptions..
Classification - X, A.
Summary - Mudler and Scully investigate the latest in a series of
murders, but Mulder realises he has an unpleasantly close connection
with the deceased.
This is for Gerry Hill, whose idea it started out as.
Danielle Culverson.
~~~
Deviant
By Danielle Culverson
Fox Mulder turned over in bed and tried to
hold onto the
last moments of sleep as they slipped away.
Consciousness
stole over him with the unwelcomeness of a
large phone bill, and
gradually enough awareness returned for his
consciouss mind to
remind him that it must be time he got up
and headed to work.
Mulder sighed in reluctance to leave the haven
of his warm
double bed, and then gave a sleepy frown as
he searched his
mind for the reason he had chosen to sleep
in his bed last
night.
Then it all came back to him in a rush, and
his lips
stretched wide in a satisfied smile as he
opened his eyes. -
Tracey.
Mulder stared in surprise at the other side
of the bed,
which was empty. The sheets were in
a state of disarray,
but the pillows on the far side of the bed
didn't even look
like they'd been slept on. Mulder gave
a faint sigh, - now
he knew what it felt like to wake up alone
the morning
after.
The previous night he had gone to a bar in
Great Falls Park, just
south of the Potomac River. He had only
been there a couple of
times before, but for some reason he had decided
to go there
instead of his usual bar, - "Ripleys", - last
night. And he had
been very glad he had.
Mulder had met Tracey at the bar, - an attractive,
long-legged brunette, who had just had an
argument with her
date, and he had left her alone at the bar
without a ride
home. She and Mulder had got talking,
and after a few hours of
friendly conversation, what had started up
as an interesting
short-term friendship had been definitely
headed somewhere else.
They had both been aware of it, and both knew
it for what it
would be, - a one-night stand, giving some
enjoyment to both of
them before they parted their ways the next
morning.
So, when the bar owner had announced closing
time, Mulder
and Tracey had finished their drinks, walked
back along a
track through the woods at the side of the
Potomac to where
Mulder had left his car, and he had driven
them back to his
apartment.
Then...
Mulder gave a satisfied sigh, and crossed his
arms across
his chest as he closed his eyes to let the
memory continue
in full force. It had been the best
night he had had in a
long time...
Giving in to the persistent voice in the back
of his head
which reminded him he had to be at the office
in less than
an hour, he swung his feet off the bed, and
headed for the
shower.
* * *
Mulder entered the ground floor of the J. Edgar
Hoover
building, and made his way quickly through
the "bull-ring"
towards the elevator that would take him to
the basement
office where he and Dana Scully worked.
As usual, he appearance created something of
a stir amongst
the people he worked with, most of whom knew
him only by
reputation. Conversations stopped and
started around him,
and staring eyes followed his progress across
the room, but
as usual, Mulder didn't notice the hostility
aimed at him.
His mind was still in a daze over the events
of the previous
night, and he was silently, and almost unconsciously
amazed that
a girl he had known for only a few hours had
had such an effect
on him.
He yawned as he crossed the room, and the good
manners he
had been taught as a boy showed through as
he unconsciously
lifted one hand to cover his open mouth.
"Up late chasing UFO's were you last night,
eh "Spooky"?"
came a call from across the room. There
was some laughter
amongst the agents who had paused in their
work to watch
Mulder's passage, but Mulder barely heard
either the remark
or the laughter. - He was so used to tuning
them out now
that it was second nature to him.
Reaching the elevator, Mulder pressed the button
for down,
and the door opened immediately. He
stepped inside, and the car
descended to the basement level.
The basement was much quieter than the busy
area upstairs,
although the work done down here often created
a much larger
disturbance in the upper echelons of the Bureau
hierarchy. Mostly
the basement was full of old files, case notes,
and bits of
information gathered by the FBI since it had
first begun
investigating federal crimes.
Also, the basement was home to the X-files.
Mulder opened the door of the X-files office,
and nodded to
his petite auburn-haired partner who was already
sitting at
her desk. She looked up at him, and
smiled in greeting.
Getting up, she raised a hand to stop him
removing his black
overcoat.
"I'm glad you've got here, Mulder. - We've
got a new case,
and Skinner wants us to get started right
away." She moved
towards the coat-stand, where she retrieved
her own
overcoat, and put it on.
"Oh?" Mulder asked. Scully picked
up a file from her desk
and lifted her briefcase with her other hand.
"A young woman was killed in Great Falls Park
last night, -
strangled. - Skinner wants us up at the scene
as soon as
possible." She held the case-file out
to her partner, but
he waved it aside with one hand, preferring,
- as always, -
her to tell him the important points of the
case as they
headed towards the scene.
They hurried towards the elevator, on their
way to the FBI
car park, as Scully explained what they knew
so far.
"The woman hasn't been identified yet.
She was found in the
woods of Great Falls Park this morning by
one of the park
rangers. The cause of death appears
to be strangulation. The
time of death has been placed at 11.30pm last
night. Sexual
intercourse took place, probably just before
death. - That's
pretty much all we know. The general
profile of the suspect is a
male in his mid-thirties, of average to above
average height, and
quite fit."
Mulder nodded in silence as he turned the facts
over in his
mind. They entered the car park, and
moved quickly towards
his car. He unlocked the drivers door,
and then leaned
through inside to open the passenger door
for Scully.
"Any photographs in there?" he asked,
nodding towards the
case-file she still held in one hand, as he
did up his
seat-belt. She shook her head.
"Not yet, - the body was only discovered a
couple of hours
ago."
Mulder shrugged, started the engine, and pulled away.
"And there's more good news. - Skinner wants
us to work with
Agent Greeber and Agent Walbrook on this."
"Oh, great." Mulder muttered. Scully smiled.
* * *
Twenty minutes later they had left the morning
traffic of
Washington, and were entering the woods of
Great Falls park. The
road they were on led past the bar where Mulder
had been the
previous night, and he nodded to it as they
passed.
"If we're still around here at lunch time,
we're eating
there." he told Scully, "They
do the best fried chicken
north of Alexandria."
Scully smiled, and said nothing, wondering
how her partner
could even be contemplating food so early
in the morning. A few
minutes later, she directed him into a clearing
where a couple of
police cars were parked. Mulder pulled
up behind a sedan he
uncomfortably recognised as belonging to Agent
Greeber, and
switched off the engine. Getting out
of the car, he and Scully
moved across the clearing to where a small
tent had been set up
to protect the site. A police officer
approached them.
"Special Agents Dana Scully and Fox Mulder."
Scully
introduced herself and her partner to the
officer, "If you
don't mind I'd like to take a look at the
body."
"Be my guest." the officer replied, gesturing
at the body
behind him with one hand. Scully moved
ahead of her partner to
where the body was still lying, and squatted
down at the side of
it to get a good look. Mulder took a
good look at the area first
before approaching the body, - corpses had
always been more
Scully's thing than his. - He leaned over
her shoulder to get a
look at the dead girl, who was lying on her
back, one hand thrown
up above her head. He drew his breath
in sharply when he saw her
face, and turned quickly away. Scully
heard his quick retreat,
and glanced around in concern. She saw
him move towards the car,
and quickly finished up her examination before
rising to her feet
again and going to see what was bothering
her partner.
"Mulder?" Scully asked, taking off the
rubber gloves she
had donned to examine the body, "Are
you alright?"
Mulder turned towards her, and she saw a haunted
look in his
eyes.
"I know who she is." he said quietly,
his eyes fixed on his
partner, "But... are you sure she died
at 11.30pm? - She
couldn't have been killed later?"
"Well, I need to carry out some more tests,
but I'd say from the
state of the body, and the amount of cooling
so far that 11.30pm
was a pretty good estimate." Scully
replied, looking at her
partner in concern, "Rigor mortis has
set in completely, so she
must have been dead at least eight hours,
possibly longer."
Mulder glanced at his watch, and saw that it
was not yet
9am. He frowned in confusion.
"What's this about, Mulder? - Who is she?"
"Her... her name's Tracey. - I don't know her
last name."
Mulder replied, "I was up at the bar
here last night, and
we got talking. She came back to my
apartment with me
afterwards..." He trailed off, and from
the look on his
face Scully didn't need to ask what had happened.
"We were
up until at least 2am," Mulder continued,
"but when I got
up this morning, she had already left."
"Mulder, there is no way this woman was alive
at 2am last
night." Scully said, shaking her head,
"How much did you
have to drink last night?"
"Not much, - I was driving back. - Tracey and
I walked
almost right past here, on the track just
through there on
the way back to my car." He pointed
through the trees in
the direction of the woodland track.
"Your car? - What was your car doing out here?"
Scully
asked. Mulder shrugged.
"I parked it down the road from the bar. -
I'm not sure why
I left it quite so far away though."
Scully shook her head slowly. "I don't
know what to make of
this, Mulder." she said carefully,
"I really don't think this
woman could have been alive much after midnight
at the latest. -
And how she could have got back here from
your apartment, after
2am..." She trailed, shaking her head
again.
"Well, look who it is. - "Spooky" and Agent Scully."
Scully turned around to see Agents Greeber
and Walbrook
approaching with the park ranger who had found
the body with
them. Mulder looked up at the two men,
groaning inwardly, and
prayed he wouldn't lose his temper with Greeber.
* * *
Scully glanced at her partner as he parked
the car behind
Greeber and Walbrook's outside the bar.
It was only five
minutes drive from the crime scene, and probably
about
twenty minutes on foot. Mulder had been
silent throughout
the journey, and hadn't bothered to tell the
other two
agents that he knew the victim. Scully
was concerned for
him. - For a woman he had known only briefly,
however
intimately, he seemed to be taking her death
very badly. -
although she supposed that being told he had
spent the night with
a dead woman could come as a bit of a shock.
Scully felt sure that if the woman had been
dead *before*
Mulder had met her, he would quite happily
have passed off
his encounter as being with a ghost, - or
a succubus, as
Mulder would probably have called it, - and
that would have
been that. - But the woman had definitely
been alive when
Mulder had first met her.
Mulder switched the engine off, and Scully
removed her
seat-belt, and got out of the car as he did
the same.
Greeber and Walbrook were already out of their
car, and
ascending the two wooden steps to the bar
built in the style of a
wooden mountain hut. Walbrook rapped
hard on the door as Mulder
and Scully joined their colleagues.
The main door behind the
glass outer door opened, and a middle-aged
man with a pipe in the
corner of his mouth, and a small goat-beard
looked out.
"We're closed." he said shirtily, and
started to close the
door again.
"FBI." Walbrook held up his ID badge,
"We need to ask you
a few questions, Mr...?"
"Rogers." the man completed absently,
squinting slightly to get
a good look at Walbrook's ID through the dirty
glass of the outer
door. Lifting one hand to take the pipe
from his mouth, he
opened the glass door to let the four agents
enter the bar.
Scully looked around at the sort of place Mulder
liked to
spend his evenings and pick up unattached
women. The wooden
tables were round, their surfaces marked with
long years of
glasses being placed on them, and cigarettes
being stubbed out on
them. The whole room was dim, with only
a few small windows,
covered over with net, and oil lamps to light
it. Posters for old
films covered the walls, growing faded and
tatty at the edges.
Scully refocused her attention on what was
going on. Rogers had
retreated to the bar again, where he had apparently
been cleaning
up after the previous night. Greeber
and Walbrook had followed
him, and Mulder was a little way behind them,
apparently feeling
a little nostalgic for the previous night
as he gazed around the
room. Scully joined the three men near
the bar.
Greeber produced a photograph from his pocket,
- one of the
polaroids which had been taken at the scene,
as the main
scene-of-crime photos hadn't been developed
yet. - It showed the
dead woman's head and shoulders.
"We just want to ask a couple of questions,
Mr Rogers."
Greeber said, and passed the photograph to
the bar owner,
"Have you seen this woman before?"
Rogers took the photograph, and looked at it.
Then he
looked up, a slight frown on his face, and
nodded.
"Yeah." His tone showed the confusion on his face.
"When?"
"Last night." Again, Rogers' tone indicated
surprise and
confusion at the question, "She came
in her about 5.30pm
with one of the regulars. - I hadn't seen
her before. - She
and the lad she was with had an argument,
and he stormed
out."
"So she left alone?"
"No." Rogers frowned again, and nodded
towards Mulder,
"She left with him."
Greeber and Walbrook glanced at Mulder in surprise,
and
something like anger crossed Greeber's face.
Mulder saw the
expression, and groaned inwardly. Walbrook
tried to regain his
composure.
"Umm... did you see anyone at all suspicious
hanging around
last night? Anyone who left shortly
after the girl?"
Rogers shook his head. "Not that I noticed,
but then they
didn't leave until closing time."
Greeber nodded. "Okay, thank you, Mr
Rogers. - We'll get
back to you if we need to ask you anything
else." His anger
showed through slightly in his voice, and
as he turned away from
the bar owner, he glared at Mulder.
The four agents moved to the
door, and went outside.
"What the hell is going on, Mulder?"
Greeber demanded as
soon as the door had closed behind them,
"Why didn't you
tell us you knew who the victim was?"
"I did tell Agent Scully." Mulder defended
himself. Scully
nodded in agreement. "There wasn't time
to tell you, - we were
in a hurry to get here."
"But we didn't need to come here, - if you
left the bar with her
at closing time, you must have been the last
person to see her! -
She died only half an hour after the bar closed."
"Last but one person to see her." Mulder
corrected, "The
last person was the one who killed her."
Greeber shrugged non-committally, and then
tried a new line. "So
how come you left together?"
"We got talking after her date ditched her.
- She didn't
have a ride home. After a couple of
hours talking, we were
getting on very well. When Rogers announced
closing time, I
invited her back to my place. We left,
and walked down the
woodland track to my car."
"So how come she didn't go back with you? -
Or do I need to
ask?" Walbrook asked. - The inference
in his addition was
obvious. Mulder hesitated for a moment,
and then admitted.
"She did come back with me. - I drove us back
to my
apartment."
"But you couldn't have. - She was dead at 11.30pm,
and she
was killed here." Walbrook countered.
Mulder shrugged.
"I know, but all the same, we spent the remainder
of the
evening at my apartment, went to sleep at
about 2am, and
when I woke up this morning, she was gone."
"Well I'm not surprised, she was here. - And
you'd dreamed
the whole thing in some alcohol-induced stupor.
- As if a
girl that attractive would need some weird
jerk like you,
anyway." Greeber said cuttingly.
Mulder bristled with
anger, but said nothing, merely shaking his
head.
"So how much did you have last night, Mulder?"
Walbrook
asked.
"Three alcohol-free beers." Mulder replied,
and he met
Walbrook's gaze, and held it. "I wasn't
drunk."
"You wouldn't need to be, - you can hallucinate
well enough
without it." Greeber remarked in an
undertone, "That's why you
keep seeing little green men."
"Grey." Mulder contradicted, also in
an undertone. Scully
elbowed him to keep quiet as Greeber looked
up in confusion.
"Look, there's obviously something strange
going on here."
Scully said, "Perhaps if we wait until
I've had a chance to
properly post-mortem the body, and can determine
exactly what
happened prior to death. - Then we'll be working
with something
slightly more definite."
"Okay." Greeber agreed grudgingly, and
then glared at
Mulder, "Just as long as you're not
planning on leaving the
state, Mulder." With that he turned
on his heel, and stalked off
towards his car. Mulder stared after
him as Walbrook followed
his partner, and Scully looked at her partner
in concern.
"Come on." she said, "Let's get
back to Washington, and
sort this out."
Part 2/4
* * *
Scully entered the morgue, and her eyes moved
to the
sheet-covered figure lying on the stainless
steel autopsy
bench in the centre of the room. As
the swing doors closed
behind her, she moved to the sink, and started
to scrub her
hands and arms.
The morgue was a cold room, with white tiles
on the walls,
and stainless steel sheet on the floor, curving
up to meet
the tiles without leaving any corners.
The smell of strong
disinfectant permeated the air, and infused
everything in
the room. Trolleys of instruments stood
waiting around the
room, their impressive array of clamps, saws,
and knives
like the artifacts of a medieval torture chamber.
Along one wall
were the heads of the stainless steel refrigerated
drawers where
the bodies were kept before and after the
autopsies.
Scully pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, washed
her hands
again, and then turned to face the corpse
in the centre of
the room. She moved towards it, lifted
back the sheet at
the head to expose the head and shoulders
of the young
woman, and then moved to the feet to check
the toe-tag on
her left foot. Reaching up, she switched
on the overhead
light, and the microphone that would record
her observations as
she worked.
"Preliminary examination, carried out by Special
Agent Dana
Scully, at 11.21am, on the 9th of November,
1996. Case
number PR-2100-67837. Investigating
agents are Special
Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, and Agents
Greeber and
Walbrook. Victim identified as Tracey
Hilton, aged 29."
Scully moved around the body with a tape measure,
recording
her measurements as she did.
"Victim is a Caucasian female, five foot eight
in length,
brown hair and eyes. She has a mole
on her left shoulder,
and a small birthmark on her lower right leg,
but no other
distinguishing marks. The body shows
some bruising and
abrasion around the neck, consistent with
strangulation, and
there is no other visual cause of death.
There are no marks on
the wrists as would have been consistent with
a struggle,
suggesting that the attack, when it occurred,
was over very
quickly. However the body does show
signs of recent sexual
intercourse."
Scully picked up a long pair of tweezers, and
a small mirror from
the tray at the side of the autopsy bench.
Leaning over the
body, she examined it carefully for any clues
about what had
taken place in the woods. Holding the
mirror between the
corpse's legs, she frowned.
"Although the tissue lining the vagina is torn,
suggesting
recent and somewhat violent intercourse, there
is very
little bleeding, suggesting that intercourse
took place
*after* death had occurred." Scully
tried not to think to
hard about the implications of what she was
saying as she
removed a small piece of a dead leaf from
the body with her
tweezers, and put it into a glass bottle.
"There are
particles of dirt and plant material within
the vagina,
strongly suggesting that intercourse took
place in the woods
where the body was found. The evidence
at the scene also
suggested that the victim was killed in the
place where she was
later found."
Scully took a deep breath as she turned away,
and picked up
a scalpel from the tray at her side.
She wondered briefly
what her partner was doing with himself, -
she had left him
in the basement office on their return to
Washington. - He
had barely spoken all the way back from Great
Falls Park,
although what had been going through his mind
she couldn't
imagine.
Turning back to the body, Scully began making
the Y-shaped
incision that would open up the thorax.
* * *
Scully opened the door of the Assistant Director's
office,
and went inside ahead of the three agents
with her. Mulder
was immediately behind her, and behind him
came Agents
Greeber and Stanton, who since the autopsy
had started
treating Mulder as a suspect for the crime
they were
investigating. The Assistant Director
looked up in surprise to
see so many visitors, and put down the pen
he had been working
with.
Scully stopped by the desk, and turned back
to glare at
Greeber and Walbrook, her arms crossed across
her chest. -
She just couldn't believe they were suspecting
Mulder of
committing the crime, which was coming to
look more gruesome by
the minute.
"Good afternoon, agents." Skinner said,
a slight frown on
his face, "I doubt you can have solved
your case already?"
"No, sir." Walbrook replied testily,
and glared at Mulder,
who shrugged and sat down, as no-one else
seemed to be
interested in the two chairs in front of Skinner's
desk.
The whole affair was beginning to bore him
now, despite the
fact that he hadn't yet managed to come up
with an
explanation for how he had started the previous
evening with a
woman who had been very much alive, and apparently
finished it
with her ghost.
"So what's the reason for this?" Skinner enquired.
"We've run into... complications." Walbrook said cagily.
"Huh!" Greeber grunted behind his partner.
Mulder raised
an eyebrow, but said nothing. Skinner
frowned.
"Would someone care to explain to me what's
going on here? -
Agent Scully?" Skinner turned towards
the smallest agent,
knowing her to normally be the most sensible
of the four.
"Sir, when we arrived at the crime scene this
morning, Agent
Mulder identified the body, - a young woman
by the name of Tracey
Hilton."
"You knew the victim, Agent Mulder?"
Skinner asked,
surprised.
"On a short-term basis, sir." Mulder replied.
"Very short-term." Greeber snarled.
"Umm... Agent Mulder met the victim at a bar
about twenty
minutes walk from where the body was found,
last night."
Scully continued, trying to find words to
describe just what she
gathered had happened between her partner
and the woman. "They
left the bar together at closing time, - about
11.05pm, - and
walked back along a woodland track to Agent
Mulder's car, parked
about a half-hour away. Agent Mulder
drove them to his
apartment, where the woman stayed the night,
except that she was
gone when he awoke this morning."
"Am I to understand by this that you were intimate
with the
victim last night, Agent Mulder?" Skinner
turned to
Scully's partner. Mulder nodded.
"It was more this morning, than last night."
he muttered,
and seeing the look on Skinner's face, explained,
"We
didn't go to sleep until 2am."
"However," Scully continued, "when
I post-mortemed the
body, I ascertained that the woman died at
about 11.30pm
last night, certainly no later than midnight.
She was found a
short distance from the track she and Agent
Mulder had walked
along on their way to his car, at a point
consistent with where
they would have been at the time she died.
- In other words,
Agent Mulder and the victim passed the place
where she was
killed, at the time she was killed, and proceeded
on to his
apartment."
Skinner raised an eyebrow, and glanced at Mulder,
before
returning his concentration to Scully.
"The woman was killed by strangulation, and
the profile we
were given was that the killer was probably
male, in his
mid-thirties, of average to above-average
height, and
reasonably fit."
"And guess who that fits." Greeber muttered,
"It's so
consistent it's *spooky*."
Mulder's face went suddenly impassive, and
Scully recognised the
reaction as meaning Greeber had struck a nerve.
She quickly
continued with her narration.
"The body wasn't moved from the place where
the murder
occurred, and during my autopsy I discovered
that what we
previously believed to have been mutually
consenting sexual
intercourse at some point not long prior to
death, was
almost certainly actually intercourse taking
place in the
woods where the body was found, *after* death."
Mulder's head snapped round to look up at his
partner, and
Greeber and Walbrook stared at her as well.
- She hadn't
informed them of this particular twist in
the crime when she had
completed her autopsy.
"Agent Scully, - you're saying that the killer
raped the
victim in the woods *after* killing her?"
Skinner asked.
She nodded. "You're sure about that?"
"Yes, sir. - The physical evidence was quite conclusive."
Skinner looked down at the papers in front
of him for a
moment while his mind processed the horrible
information he
had just been given. Then he looked
up at the agents again.
"So, as I understand it, Agent Mulder says
he spent the
night with a woman who was being murdered
at the time he was
passing the place where she was murdered.
We have a woman who
was raped after being murdered. And
Agent Mulder... - I assume
the two of you were intimate in the fullest
sense of the word?"
Mulder had the decency to flush slightly. "Yes, sir."
"And Mr Rogers, the bar owner." Walbrook
added, "He claims to
have seen Agent Mulder leaving the bar with
the victim at
11.05pm."
"Well, at least there's one thing we all agree
on." Skinner
said. He glanced at Mulder, "There
seem to be too many
over-lapping facts here. Either Agent
Scully's autopsy results
are wrong, or Agent Mulder isn't telling the
whole truth about
what occurred between him and the victim,
or we're missing
something vitally important."
"A time warp?" Mulder muttered. - Even
in his position, he
was perfectly aware of how ludicrous the facts
were, and he
was surprised that Skinner was taking it so
well. - If
Greeber had had his say, Mulder was sure he'd
have been
charged with murder by now.
"Memories are very subjective things."
Skinner continued,
looking at Mulder again, "So many things
pass us by as they seem
totally innocuous at the time. - Perhaps if
we could know every
little detail of what went on in the woods
at Great Falls Park
last night, we'd find the vital link we're
missing."
"What are you saying, sir?" Mulder asked calmly.
"Agent Mulder, I'd like you to undergo regression
hypnosis,
to see if you remember anything other than
what you've
already told us from last night."
"Sir, is that really necessary?" Scully
interrupted,
"After all, Agent Mulder has a photographic
memory..."
"Still, people sometimes shut out things they
don't want to
remember." Skinner answered.
"It's okay, Scully." Mulder told his
partner, "I've done
it before."
Indeed he had, when he had been trying to recover
his
memories of his sister's abduction. - And
Scully knew how
much those memories had damaged him.
She didn't want it
happening again.
Part 3/4
* * *
Mulder entered Dr. Heitz Werber's office slightly
ahead of
his partner. Greeber and Walbrook were
waiting for him
outside. - They had been unwilling to let
him go in without
them, but had eventually had to back down
to the conditions
Scully had laid down.
The office looked pretty much like it had when
Mulder had
last been in. The dark leather couch
and wing-backed chair
looked like something out of an old movie.
Dr. Werber sat
at his wooden desk to one side, and he looked
up as the
agents entered, a small smile of greeting
on his face. He
rose to his feet, and moved around the desk
to shake both
their hands.
"Agent Mulder, how nice to see you again."
he exclaimed.
Mulder said nothing. - He had broken off his
sessions with
Werber after recovering his memories of his
sister's
abduction, despite the psychiatrist's belief
that he needed
further counseling. He was perfectly
aware of the very thin
barrier that was between his conscious and
his painful memories.
- And he didn't want that barrier breached.
"And you must be
Agent Mulder's partner, Agent Scully."
Werber turned towards
her, "Assistant Director Skinner called
me and told me you were
on the way, - although he didn't say what
was so urgent?"
"I need to go over my memories from last night."
Mulder
replied shortly, "Skinner wants as much
detail as possible
about everything that happened between 6pm
and my waking up
this morning."
Werber raised his eyebrows, "But as I
recall, you have a
photographic memory... - Are you suffering
from amnesia?"
"No." Mulder said sharply, "But
Skinner wants precise and
detailed information. - He thinks I may be
blocking
something out."
Werber shrugged. "Okay. - Agent Scully,
will you be staying for
the proceedings?"
"Yes." Scully replied, knowing that Mulder
needed her
strength as well as his own at the moment.
Werber nodded,
and moved towards the couch.
"Would you both like to sit down?" he
said, indicating the
couch for Mulder. Scully pulled the
chair from Werber's
desk over to the couch, and sat down.
Werber took the
wing-backed chair.
Twenty minutes later Werber turned to Scully,
and announced
that Mulder was in a hypnotic trance.
"He said from 6pm. -
Do you know what he was doing at that time?"
"He was at a bar in Great Falls Park."
Scully replied,
"He'd just arrived, I think." Werber
nodded.
"Mulder, I want you to think back to last night.
- Do you
remember going to a bar?"
"Yes..." Mulder said in the slow drawl
of a hypnotic
trance.
"Do you remember what time you arrived?"
"5.50pm, - the sports news had just finished
on the radio."
Mulder replied slowly.
"Okay, I want you to go back to that time,
just as you were
arriving at the bar. You're just going
inside now. - What
can you see?"
Mulder opened his eyes, and looked around him,
although he
didn't focus on anything in the room.
"Just the bar." he replied, "It
hasn't changed much since
I was last here. There's an old man
and two loggers sitting on
the bar stools, and Al Rogers is behind the
bar, talking to the
old man. He's looking at me now, looking
to see who's coming in.
I doubt he recognises me, - it's been
a while since I was last
up here."
"Is the bar busy, Mulder?"
"Not too bad. - There's a couple of youths
by the juke box,
sharing a cigarette that doesn't look to legal.
There are a few
people sitting at tables. - A man and his
wife, eating sausage
and chips. A small group of bikers in
their late twenties and
early thirties eating fried chicken burgers.
And a man in glasses
reading a newspaper which he's laid out on
the table."
"What are you doing now, Mulder?"
"I'm going up to the bar. Al asks me
what I want. I order
an alcohol-free beer. - Got to drive myself
home tonight,
Scully won't be happy if I call her up asking
for a lift at
midnight."
Scully smiled slightly at this declaration,
and crossed her
left leg over her right.
"Al brings me the glass, and I pay for it.
Now I'm going to a
table in the corner, where I've got a decent
view of what's going
on. It's not too far from the bar, either."
Mulder turned his
head slightly, and looked into the distance.
"There's an
argument going on amongst the bikers. One
guy is yelling, and the
woman with him is crying, and trying not to
show it. He's got up
from his seat, and is going to the door.
She turns away from him
as he goes out, and I can see the hurt in
her eyes. She goes to
the bar, and orders another coke. Al
brings it to her, and she
sits down on a stool at the bar. The
other bikers are getting to
their feet now, and are leaving. She
doesn't even look around as
they go, although she must hear them. - I
hope she's got a way to
get home now, if she came with them."
"Do you find the woman attractive, Mulder?"
Werber asked,
perceptively picking up on the tone of Mulder's
voice.
"Umm... she *looks* quite attractive."
Mulder replied
slowly, "But I doubt from what I've
seen of her so far that
she'd anywhere near match up to some of the
women I know."
"What do you mean, "match up to"?"
"The attraction's only on the surface.
She's pretty, but I
want more than that."
"What sort of woman *do* you want, Mulder?" Werber asked.
"I'd like her to be pretty, but I'm more interested
in
someone intellectually drop-dead gorgeous
than physically
so." Scully raised an eyebrow at this
statement.
"Do you approach the woman at the bar?"
"Yes. - When I finish my drink, and go to the
bar to get
another one, I stand quite close to her.
While Al is busy
getting the drink, I mention that I saw her
date leaving,
and ask if she's got a lift home. She
nods and says she'll
be alright, but I get the impression she's
just a little
wary of me. I return to my table without
saying anything
else, and a couple of minutes later she comes
over to me."
"Why does she come to you?"
"She says she's sorry she was rude at the bar,
but she
thought I was trying to hit on her.
She's sitting down at
my table, and she says that she'll probably
call one of her
friends to come and pick her up later.
She says her name is
Tracey."
"Do you talk to Tracey for long?"
"Until Al calls closing time."
"And how do you get on together?"
"Very well. - I think she's attracted to me
too, although I
think we both know it's only a sexual thing."
"What happens at closing time?"
"Al calls out from behind the bar that last
orders are over. I
ask Tracey if she wants a lift home, or if
she wants to come back
to my apartment."
"You feel comfortable asking her that?"
"Yes."
"And what does Tracey say?"
"She says she'll come back to mine. We
finish our drinks,
and leave to walk to my car. We walk
along the woodland
track through Great Falls Park. - I left my
car about a half
hour's walk from the bar."
Scully put one hand on Werber's arm, warning
him not to rush
through this time. He looked around
at her and understood, -
this was what was important.
"Do you talk while you walk with Tracey?"
he asked Mulder. The
agent nodded slightly.
"We carry on talking like we were in the bar." he replied.
"And what do you talk about?"
"Her memories of coming to the park as a child,
and having
picnics with her parents." Mulder answered.
"Do you see anyone as you walk to your car?"
"No." Mulder answered, "There's no-one about here at all."
"Do you notice anything unusual as you walk?"
"No. - It looks pretty much as it did last
time I walked
down here."
"Okay, what's happening now?"
"We're about ten minutes walk from my car.
I haven't seen
any sign of anyone since we left the bar.
- No-one's
followed us, and no-one even realises where
we've gone. I
put my hand on Tracey's arm, stopping her.
She's turning
towards me, an expression of concern on her
face. I pull
her towards me, and she puts her hands against
my chest,
trying to push away. I'm stronger than
she is though. I
kiss her, and...
"Owww!!! - She bit me!" Mulder exclaimed,
one hand rising
to cover his "injured" mouth. "You bitch!
- You'll pay for
that!"
"What's happening, Mulder?" Werber asked.
"I've pushed her to the ground, and I'm kneeling
over her,
my hands around her neck. I'm looking
right into her face,
and I can see her terror as I crush her neck
with my hands. She's
afraid of me. - She's wishing she hadn't agreed
to come out of
the bar with me now, the stupid bitch. - Her
eyes are watering,
but she's barely blinking, her eyes fixed
on me. Now they're
starting to lose their focus.
"I can feel her pulse in her neck beneath my
hands. It's
growing weaker now. Fading. She's
not struggling any more.
There, her heart's stopped. She's gone,
and good riddance. Now
she'll have to give me what I want."
Scully lifted her hand to her mouth in horror,
her eyes wide at
what Mulder was relating. Surely what
he was saying couldn't be
true? Surely in a minute he would sit
up and laugh and say he
hadn't really been hypnotised at all, he had
just been playing
games because he was angry with Skinner for
not believing his
story completely.
But it didn't happen. After a few moments
in order to
recollect himself, Werber spoke to Mulder
again.
"What are you doing now, Mulder?"
"Stripping the bitch." came the immediate
reply. Scully
blanched. "Going to get what I came
for."
"Tell me exactly what you're doing."
Werber said, and
Scully heard a slight tremor in his voice,
and guessed that
the psychiatrist really didn't want to know
any more about
what Mulder had done. - But she had a pretty
good idea what
was coming.
"I'm pulling her jeans off. - Damn tight things
won't come
past her shoes. - There, that's done it.
Now her panties.
That's better. - She'll give me what I want
now. Better
this way anyway. - Don't have to worry about
keeping her
happy while I'm having a good time.
All the fun and none of the
pressure of trying to keep the relationship
going. - Who knows,
if no-one finds her I could even come back
tomorrow for seconds.
- A steady relationship, if you like.
Ha-ha."
Scully closed her eyes for a moment, and swallowed
convulsively, wondering just what it was that
was going
through her partner's mind right now.
He continued with his
ghastly monologue.
"Now I'm removing my own jeans." There
was a short pause,
and then a grunt as in his mind Mulder apparently
entered
the corpse. Scully couldn't drag her
eyes from his face,
much as she wanted to close them and look
away, or make
Werber stop the session. In horror she
saw that he was
smiling faintly as in his mind he raped the
body. "She's
still very warm." Mulder commented,
a tone of disgust in
his voice, "Never mind, other people
cope." There were a
few minutes of silence, punctuated by occasional
groans from the
prone man on the couch. Then his eyes
snapped open again, as he
apparently finished his deplorable act.
Werber took a deep breath, steeling himself
for the answer. "What
are you doing now?"
"Putting my jeans on again." Mulder replied,
as though it
were the most normal thing in the world,
"Now I'm getting
up, going back to the track, and heading for
my car. It's
only about ten minutes away. I should
be home by half past
twelve."
"Do you see anyone on your way to the car?"
"No."
"And what happens when you reach it?"
"I get in and drive home. Then I go to
bed." Mulder
replied. Werber looked around at Scully,
and she could tell from
the look on his face that he wanted to wrap
this up as quickly as
possible. She nodded weakly, still trying
to process what she
had just heard. - How could Mulder possibly
be responsible for
Tracey Hilton's death? How could he
do something as terrible as
what he had just described?
"Mulder, I'm going to count to five, and when
I reach five
you will be wide awake, feeling refreshed,
and you will
remember everything. - One, two, three, four,
five."
Mulder opened his eyes again, and stared up
at the ceiling
for a moment. Then he turned his gaze
towards Scully, and
she saw the horror and pain in his expression.
The monster
who had been on the couch a moment ago had
gone, and now she saw
only the petrified face of her partner.
"Scully." he whispered hoarsely, "What have I done?"
Scully held his gaze for a long time before
being able to
formulate an answer to his question.
Finally she shook her
slowly, and said,
"I don't know, Mulder. - You must have projected
what you
know about the case onto your memories, and
this was the
result."
Mulder shook his head, "But I remember
it now, Scully. -
Clearly. More clearly than I remembered
Tracey coming to my
apartment, which was always more a knowledge
that she had, rather
than a memory of it, if you know what I mean."
Scully nodded weakly, "Mulder, people
are always coming up
with false memories under hypno-regression..."
"No, Scully. - This was real." His tone
was filled with
dejected conviction.
"Mulder, how do you know?"
"Because it is. Because it has to be."
he said simply, and then
lowered his head as he admitted, "Because
I remembered what
happened to Sam under hypno-regression, and
if I can't trust
those memories, then I've got nothing to live
for."
"Nothing?" Scully felt a twinge of hurt
that he could so
casually dismiss all the work they had done
in the X-files,
all the work which was normally so important
to him. He met her
eyes.
"Nothing except you." he amended.
Scully's eyebrows rose.
- It hadn't occurred to her that he hadn't
included her in
his statement. - She reached out to him and
took his hand in
hers, hoping to offer some comfort.
But Mulder's eyes were
filled with the painful knowledge of what
he had remembered
doing, and he seemed reluctant to make physical
contact with her,
as though his evil could be passed to her
through his touch.
From outside the room, Scully heard the sound
of raised
voices. Glancing briefly at her partner
again with an
expression of concern on her face, she rose
to her feet, and
moved towards the door to see what all the
shouting was about.
She was halfway across the room when the door
burst open, and a
red-faced Agent Greeber came in, his gun in
his hand. He was
closely followed by Agent Walbrook, and from
the looks on their
faces Scully knew immediately that they had
been watching the
session from the observation room next door.
"You're not going to tell me where I can and
can't go!"
Greeber yelled as he stormed in, apparently
still raving at
Werber's secretary who had been refusing to
let him enter
the room while the doctor was in session.
The agent's eyes
met Scully's, and hers narrowed.
"Agent Greeber, how dare you storm in here
while Mulder is
in session." she said in a low voice,
standing between the
angry agent and her partner, who was still
lying on Werber's
couch.
"I'm going to take that... that animal to Assistant
Director
Skinner," Greeber declared, his eyes
small and fixed on Mulder.
"No, you are not." Scully countered,
her voice rising.
Greeber tried to push her aside, reaching
for his handcuffs
as he did so, which were in a holder just
behind his gun
holster.
"I don't think you heard me properly."
Scully yelled, and
shoved Greeber back towards the door,
"Agent Mulder isn't
going anywhere just yet. When he's ready,
we'll all leave
together. - Now get out!"
To emphasise her point Scully reached for her
own gun, in a
holster at her waist. Greeber finally
got the point, and
unwillingly backed out of the door in the
face of Scully's
anger. She turned back to look at her
partner, and saw his
eyes cloud over with pain. For a moment
she thought she saw
tears in his eyes, and then he turned his
face away from her to
hide the emotions he could no longer hide
behind his usually
impassive mask.
Part 4/4.
* * *
Mulder walked through the main entrance hall
of the J. Edgar
Hoover building, his head lowered in shame.
His hands were
handcuffed behind him, and in any other circumstances
he would
have felt embarrassed and angry to be publicly
humiliated in this
way, but right now he was in too much stress
mentally to worry
about what other people were thinking.
Scully was walking at his side, her head up,
looking
confident, her eyes defying anyone to say
anything about
what was happening. Behind them walked
Agents Greeber and
Walbrook. Both the agents had their
guns trained on Mulder, and
Walbrook held Mulder's own gun in his left
hand, having taken it
from this distraught man before they left
Werber's office.
Mulder had said nothing when they demanded
it. He hadn't said a
word, or even made any acknowledgement as
Greeber roughly patted
him down as he looked for other weapons.
Since coming out of the
hypnosis he had retreated into a small part
of his subconsciouss,
and was quite happy to stay there.
Scully glanced around briefly at Greeber and
Walbrook, and
glared at them when she saw that they were
still blatantly
keeping their guns on Mulder. The four
had been forced to
use the main public entrance to the building
as the swipe
card system that operated one of the entry
doors at the
entry most of the agents used was off-line.
It just wasn't
right that they should be exposing Mulder
like this, - why
didn't they believe that he hadn't been involved?
Glancing over at her partner, Scully sighed
inwardly, - even he
didn't believe he hadn't been involved. -
This was the last thing
he needed now. It might well be the
final straw which snapped to
let his sanity crumble.
They approached the metal-detector arch and
security desk
which monitored who went in and out of the
building. Scully
smiled at the young security guard there,
and showed her
identification.
"Good evening, Agent Scully." the guard
nodded, smiling
back, "Would you mind putting your weapon
in the dish while you
go through, - it scares off the visitors if
the alarm goes off."
"Sure." Scully took out her gun, placed
it in the dish on
the security desk, and walked through the
detector arch.
Picking her gun up again, she turned to see
Walbrook coming
through behind her.
"You'll have to take his handcuffs off."
Walbrook commented to
his partner, nodding towards Mulder,
"Or it'll set the alarms
off."
"Who cares?" Greeber asked arrogantly,
"So everyone will
turn and look at the necrophiliac and wonder
what's going
on. - Big deal."
"Take the cuffs off him, Greeber." Scully
said angrily,
"Or I'll come back through and do it myself."
From her tone
Greeber realised that making her do that was
definitely not a
good idea. Glancing at the security
guard again, he nodded in
unwilling acquiescence, and started to remove
the cuffs from
Mulder's wrists, trying as hard as he could
not to come into
contact at all with Mulder's skin. Finally
the metal rings fell
free. Greeber lifted his gun again.
"Now walk through slowly, and let Walbrook
cuff you again." he
ordered. He dropped the cuffs in the
dish on the counter. The
security guard frowned, wondering what was
going on, as he
recognised Mulder to be an FBI agent. Mulder
turned to the
archway, and walked through it.
The alarm went off. A shrill beeping
sound which cut
through the air for a few moments until the
guard cut it
off.
"He must have another weapon on him!"
Greeber yelled to his
partner on the other side of the archway,
although there was no
need to shout as they were only a few feet
away from each other.
Walbrook trained his gun on Mulder, who was
standing passively on
the other side of the arch. Greeber
dropped his gun in the dish,
and went through quickly, picking it up again,
and training it on
the agent once more.
Walbrook moved forward, and patted Mulder down
again. then
he stepped back, shaking his head.
"He doesn't have his other gun with him."
Scully said, "He
keeps it at his apartment unless we're going
away on a case."
Greeber and Walbrook both looked disbelieving
at her words.
The security guard picked up his metal detector
wand, and
stepped out from behind the security desk.
He ran the wand
over Mulder, but couldn't find anything metallic
on the
agent.
"Walk through the arch again." he instructed.
Mulder
shrugged, and walked back through the turnstile
and then in
through the arch. The alarm went off
again. The security
guard frowned. "It's always been very
sensitive."
"Yes." Scully said thoughtfully,
"It has. - Could I borrow the
wand for a moment?" She held out her
hand to the security guard,
and he shrugged and handed it to her. Slowly
and carefully, she
ran it over her partner, making sure it covered
all of him. As
it ran close over the back of his neck, it
beeped. Scully pursed
her lips, and handed the wand back to the
security guard.
Standing on tip-toe, she pulled the collar
of Mulder's grey
jacket down at the back, and then his shirt.
Looking closely,
and pressing his skin with her fingers, she
found what she was
looking for, - a small hard lump beneath a
tiny red scar.
"What's that?" Walbrook asked, looking
over Scully's
shoulder.
"An implant." Scully replied. Mulder
turned his head
sharply to look at her, the first interest
he'd showed in
anything since leaving Werber's office.
"Like the one you had?" he asked.
"I can't tell." Scully replied,
"But if we go to one of
the labs I can take it out under a local anaesthetic
for
you, and then we can get it analysed."
"Wait a second, - he's got to go and see Skinner.
- He's
under arrest for murder." Greeber protested.
"This may be why." Scully said simply,
and, putting her
body between Mulder and Greeber, she pushed
her partner
along in the direction of the lab she wanted
to go to.
* * *
Half an hour later, Scully lifted the small
piece of metal
from Mulder's neck. She gazed at it
closely, and then
exclaimed in awe,
"It *is* a micro-chip!"
Mulder said nothing, afraid to get his hopes
up. He was
sitting on a high stool in the corner of the
lab where
Scully was carrying out the minor surgery.
A bright table
lamp shone down on the back of his neck, and
it felt
slightly warm, although he didn't know if
that was just
psychological as he couldn't feel anything
from his neck to
his elbow except the numb proddings of Scully's
rubber-gloved fingers. Across the room
from them, Greeber
and Walbrook were watching the proceedings,
unwilling to let
Mulder out of their sight.
"I'm going to take it upstairs to Pendrell."
Scully
announced, "- I want an analysis of
it as soon as possible. -
You just stay here and wait for the local
anaesthetic to wear
off. And don't worry. It'll be
alright." She glanced around
the lab, and her eyes fell on the small room
off to one side
where the technicians went for coffee.
It had a row of soft
chairs, which Mulder would be able to lie
down on. She took his
hand in hers, and pulled him to his feet.
"Come in here, and lie
down for a bit. - Whatever happened last night,
you must be
exhausted." She smiled as she spoke,
to tell him that she knew
he hadn't killed Tracey. Mulder barely heard
her words or noticed
her expression, however. He followed
her into the room, and lay
down on the chairs when she urged him to.
Scully glared at the two agents who had come
to stand in the
doorway to tell them to give him some peace
while she was gone.
Then she hurried out of the room with the
micro-chip to go and
see Pendrell.
Mulder took a deep breath, and, suddenly realising
how tired he
was, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.
* * *
Scully pushed open the door to the electronics
lab Pendrell
worked in, and hurried inside. The young
"tekkie" was still at
his work bench, as always working longer hours
than he was really
supposed to, because he was still too new
to have been
disillusioned with the job.
Pendrell looked up when he heard the door open,
and an eager
smile spread across his face when he saw who
his visitor was.
Leaping up from the stool where he had been
sitting for the last
four hours, - and quickly regretting it when
he realised his left
leg was completely numb, and he nearly fell
over right in front
of Scully, - he asked,
"What can I do for you, Agent Scully?"
"I wondered if you had the time to take a look
at this for
me." Scully held up the small glass
sample tube she had put the
micro-chip in. Pendrell glanced at it.
"Sure I do. - I'll have a look at it now for
you, - if you
don't mind waiting, that is. - I haven't had
anyone come in
here for ages." Then, apparently realising
his innocent
statement could be taken two ways, he reiterated,
"That is,
no-one's been in here for a long time,...
I..."
He held his hand out for the tube. - It was
easier than
trying to save himself when every word he
said only got him
in deeper, and Scully was starting to smile
in amusement at
his confusion. As he accepted the tube
he saw her face
light up in a smile of gratitude, and he could
feel his face
reddening as he turned away from her towards
the microscope he
used for examining micro-chips. Placing
the chip carefully on
the platform, he adjusted the height of it
until the chip came
into focus on the screen at the side of the
microscope. He
looked at it closely.
"Wow..." he muttered, Scully almost forgotten
for a moment
as he looked closely at the image. After
a moment's
silence, Scully broke into his thoughts.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Umm... Agent Scully, this chip is years ahead
of current
technology. - I didn't think we could produce
anything like
this yet."
"But it is man-made?"
"Yes." Pendrell agreed, "Not like
that chip you found in
your neck last year. - It looks like some
sort of memory
chip, but there's something about it that's
not right. -
It's like it's set up to send, instead of
to store. It's
extremely complex. Like a whole virtual
reality program
scaled down onto one little chip."
"Virtual reality?" Scully asked, one
eyebrow raised.
Pendrell nodded. "Agent Pendrell, if
this chip were part of a
computer, what would it do?"
"Well, I guess it would transfer whatever's
been encoded on
it onto the memory of the computer."
"Like a computer disk?" Scully enquired. Pendrell nodded.
"Sort of. - A highly advanced one."
"And if it was implanted into a human being?"
"What? - You've been pulling micro-chips out
of yourself
again, Agent Scully?" Pendrell laughed,
thinking she was
joking. Then he saw the serious expression
on her face.
"Umm... I guess it would impose whatever's
been encoded on
it onto the mind of the individual."
he replied. Scully's
eyes lit up with an undefined possibility,
and she smiled
suddenly, and picked the chip up from the
platform,
returning it to it's bottle.
"Thank you, Agent Pendrell." she said,
and then turned and
hurried from the lab.
* * *
When Scully arrived back at the lab downstairs
where she had left
Mulder, she found him sitting up on the chairs
where she had left
him lying. An expression of surprise
adorned his face, and he
looked up at her as she came in.
"Mulder?" Scully asked, sensing something
had changed. She
glanced at Greeber and Walbrook, who had taken
seats opposite
Mulder, but they both shrugged in response
to her unasked
question.
"Scully, I... I'm remembering something else now."
Scully nodded. She had been hoping ever
since she left
Pendrell that this would be the case.
If the chip really
had been imposing it's memory onto Mulder's,
then hopefully
it's removal would restore the true memories
to his mind.
"What are you remembering, Mulder?" she
asked, and
belatedly hoped that it was not some new variation
on the
story he had told in Werber's office.
However, one look at
his face told her that it was a good memory.
"I remember talking to Tracey at the bar.
When I asked her
again at closing time if she had a lift, she
said no, so I
gave her my phone to call a taxi-cab, and
offered her some
money for the fare. She didn't want
to take it, but
eventually she did. - I didn't invite her
back to my
apartment. I went outside with her to
meet the taxi. She
got in, and then I left on my own to walk
back to my car. I
drove back to my apartment, and went to sleep
on the bed for
once.
"Then I was woken by three men holding me down.
Two were
holding my arms, and one my legs, and another
gave me a shot of
something, which I think was sedative.
Then he held what looked
like a gun at the back of my neck, and I heard
a bang. It hurt
like anything, and for a moment I thought
he'd shot me. Then I
guess I fell unconscious. The next thing
I knew I woke up."
Scully smiled. "They must have implanted
the chip in you
then. - Pendrell says it's a highly advanced
micro-chip,
which seems to be capable of storing and transferring
information. Without me telling him
what had happened, he
said that if it was implanted in a human,
he thought it
would cause the information encoded onto it
to be
transferred to the individual's memory."
"So I didn't kill Tracey?" Mulder asked,
thankfully.
Scully shook her head.
"No, you didn't." she smiled.
"So we've explained my memories of murdering
her. - But why
did I remember her at my apartment at first?"
Mulder asked.
Scully shrugged.
"I don't know, Mulder. - Possibly a side-effect
from the
chip. - But with your twisted mind, who knows?"
Mulder
grinned for what felt like the first time
in weeks, and
looked over at the two agents watching him.
"Do you think there's any chance they'll let
me go before we
catch the real killer and make him confess?"
he asked his
partner. Scully glanced over in the
direction he was looking.
"No way." she smiled. Turning back
to her partner, her
eyes met his, and her hand searched out his.
She squeezed
it reassuringly, and he squeezed back.
Now all they had to do was convince Skinner.
The End.
I'd greatly appreciate any comments or constructive criticism from
fellow X-Philes. Email me at <smythja@aston.ac.uk>.
Danielle Culverson.