On Tue, 18 Feb 1997 03:13:22 GMT, in alt.tv.x-files.creative
mercutio@europa.com (Mercutio) wrote:
 
 

Murray seemed to deflate as the other three turned to look at him.
"It's just as bad, if not worse.  I've been copying you on the
reports from our investigating team.  They've uncovered enough
corruption in our personnel that I'd have to take everyone
currently at Quantico and press them into service just to maintain
our current staffing levels.  And we still haven't verified that
*those* people are clean.  It just goes on and on, Mr. President."

"You *can* call me, Jack, you know," Ryan said.  He had to hear the
title all day long, and it didn't make it any better hearing it
from old friends and colleagues, like Dan Murray.  At least the
Foleys had gotten it straight.

Murray managed a half-smile.  "Whatever you say, Mr. President."

Ryan laughed, then sobered again in the face of the monumental
problem before him.  "What else have you found out?  Anything?"

"Our other investigations are proceeding slowly.  As you may
remember, we're trying not just to isolate the personnel inside the
Bureau who may be compromised, but also to find out who the
Consortium really is, what they've done in the past, and what
they're capable of doing in the future."

"And have you?" Ryan asked, with a growing sense of dread.

"Yes," Murray said, nodding.  "To some extent, we know who and what
these people are, and what they want."

Ryan leaned forward slightly.  Arnie might tell him that getting
re-elected was the real job of Presidency, but as far as he was
concerned, this was.  Defending the United States against whatever
threats might face it, foreign or domestic.  "And what might that
be?"

"They're insiders.  People with ties to everyone in the government.
Or," Murray said, with a slight cock to the set of his mouth,
"people with ties to everyone who *used* to be in the government.
We're not sure how badly their organization was hurt by the
destruction of the old political system, but it's a fair bet that
it lost most of its political power, at least in the U.S.  Our
understanding is that they operated outside the system, relying on
their contacts inside our government to authorize their actions.
They controlled the FBI in two ways, first by having their own
people inside, and second, by having enough sway over the top
people that no one below could do anything which they didn't
approve of.  I still don't know how involved Shaw was, but I'm
certain now that he had to have some knowledge of this."

"But you've got it under control," Ryan said, a question in his
voice.

"Yes.  We're still rooting out the occasional mole who's hidden
himself well, but by and large, the Bureau is clean.  Outside of
that, though..." his voice trailed off for a second.  "You can't
even begin to imagine how large this is, Jack.  They controlled
*everything*."

"How was this allowed to happen?" Ryan asked.  "Why didn't anyone
stop it?"

Murray shrugged.  "We don't know enough yet to say how it started.
But, at a guess, given what we *do* know, the people in power --
the *legitimate* people in power -- relied on this outside
conspiracy to do the things they needed done that couldn't be done
legally, and it got away from them.  Ultimately, it controlled
them."

"Then they're still dangerous, even with their patrons gone.  If
they've evolved to be *in* control, then they might not need that
infrastructure anymore."

"It's a possibility," Murray admitted.  "We have a team working out
what operations they've been involved with and may still be
involved with.  If they are currently active, and we can prove
that, then we'll know that they're capable of acting on their own."

The Foleys had been listening intently through all of this.  Ed
spoke, "Or they may be reorganizing and regrouping now.  With the
elections..."

Ryan looked cold.  He'd told the states, told the *people* to send
representatives who would actually represent them, to elect
officials who actually *cared* about the welfare of their
constituents, and not politicians.  And he recognized, albeit
reluctantly, that not everyone was going to do that and that many
of the newly elected senators and representatives would indeed be
traditional politicians, influenced more by power and the drive for
re-election than anything else.   Such people would be easy targets
for this conspiracy.

"However," Ed said consideringly, "given the short notice on the
elections, and how quickly everything's happening, they may have
been caught short.  In fact..."  While Ed Foley had never been in
the Intelligence section of the CIA, had only worked in Operations,
that didn't automatically make him *un*intelligent, and he
assembled several facts quickly in his head.  "Instead of
regrouping and trying to grab more power, they may be trying
something more indirect.  Or blatant, depending on how you look at
it."

He had everyone's full attention now.  "What do you mean?" Murray
asked.  This kind of thing was more his responsibility than Ed's.

"Think about it.  Think about everything that's happened since the
crash.  The kidnapping attempt on a member of the President's
family, the Kealty crisis, the leaks at the Agency that made it
into the news... Couldn't all of that be taken as an attack on the
Presidency?  A counterattack by this shadow organization to remove
the influence that they most blame for their loss of power?  You've
done a lot, Jack, and they may have realized that they aren't going
to be able to re-establish their dominance as long as they've got
a non-political President who's bent on destroying them.  They
could be trying to get at you."

Ryan didn't look happy with the news, but neither did he look
overly distressed.  He was used to threats of violence, and
prepared to deal with them.  The Secret Service agents, however,
standing against the wall like so many lamps, were less complacent.
For now, Ryan was confident in Murray's ability to handle this
case, and in the Secret Service's ability to protect him.  If that
wasn't enough, he didn't know what was.

"It's a possibility, Jack," Murray agreed.  "We just don't have
enough information yet to act, that's all."

"Then get the information," Ryan ordered.

"We need more support."

"What kind of support?"

"The military is our biggest stumbling block," Murray explained.
"Most of our leads dead-end there.  If we can believe our files,
the military has covered up most of the conspiracy's activities.
Politicians may have authorized their actions, and they may have
hid the findings, but the evidence that exists is in the hands of
our military.  And we can't touch that.  To prove anything, we're
going to need our hands untied there."

Ryan looked troubled.  "I can get Tony to work with you," he said,
referring to Tony Bretano, the newly appointed Secretary of
Defense, "but if the information involved is classified..."

"It is," Murray confirmed.  "The need for security is one of the
chief reasons given in the files as to why evidence disappeared.
The agents involved were not satisfied with these explanations, but
if you look at the things being concealed -- mass abductions of
private citizens for scientific research, brain wave tampering,
*UFOs* -- you can see why they were.  No one involved would want
word of these sort of things to come out."  He looked steadily at
Ryan, knowing how dangerous a thing he was saying to someone like
Ryan and knowing that he would not have said such a thing prior to
becoming Director, "You have to decide how much you want known
about these things before you authorize us to investigate further.
And how far this will go.  If the things the investigating team is
telling me are true, then this is going to be..." he broke off,
shaking his head, unable to find words to express the enormity of
what was happening.

Ryan made the call.  "I'll have Defense work with you on this.  I
want to know how far this has gone, and when we find out, then the
decision can be made as to how much of it should be made known, if
any of it.  If there has to be a shake-down of the military, then
there will be."  That was perilously close to the kind of
'security' that had served the conspiracy so well in keeping its
actions unknown, but national security was a very real issue, and
Ryan, of all people, was very aware that the public neither had a
right nor needed a right to know everything.  "Keep me posted."

"We will."

With that, the meeting was over, and the Deputy Director of
Operations walked out arm-in-arm with the Director of Central
Intelligence, wondering whether she could get one of her own people
in to see a real live UFO.  And what her husband would say about
*that*.

****

The phone rang, startling her in the quiet office.  Their own
agents were out in the field, and the secretarial staff had gone
home for the day.  The other half of the Consortium Task Force was
officially housed in the same area in order to give them a
temporary workspace in the primary area they would be
investigating.  While the Office of Professional Responsibility was
housed in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, neither the people from
Justice or from the Attorney General's office had that privilege.
However, despite the convenience, none of them had spent more than
a tithe of their time there.

"Scully."

"How professional of you, Scully.  I'm impressed."

"Mulder, where are you?"

"Where do you think?  I don't think I can find my way to the door
through all of this, Scully."

He was still in his office, then.  Only Mulder would call her from
five feet away.  "You were the one who insisted on keeping all
those papers in there.  *I* wanted to file them along with the rest
of the paperwork."

"You would've lost them."

She sniffed.  "I don't think so, Mulder.  Get Sullivan to call you
a dog team if you can't get out."

Scully hung up the phone, and sat there staring at it, waiting for
the inevitable call back.  A long minute later, it rang.

"Yes, Mulder?"

"How'd you know it was me?"

"I could hear you dialing."

"Interesting hearing you have, Scully."

"I can also hear a chocolate candy bar being unwrapped at 50
paces."

"What do you think about Eagan's report?" Mulder asked suddenly,
changing the subject.

Scully held the phone against her ear, fumbling to get the paper in
front of her.  They had sent Norman Eagan to the missile silo in
North Dakota, to determine what, if anything, was in there.  Given
that Krycek had somehow gotten out, it was unlikely that anything
still was, but then again, it couldn't be easy to get a UFO out of
a building like that, and since that was what Mulder suspected was
inside, it was worth a shot.

"Neat," she said, startling a laugh out of Mulder.

"I would have said 'incomplete'."

"What's missing?"

"*Scully*," Mulder said in a tone that indicated how hopelessly
slow she was for not seeing what was so obvious to him and most
likely only obvious to other paranoid schizophrenics, "there's
*nothing* here."

"What do you mean nothing here?  We've got a copy of his expense
report, photographs from the site, relevant newspaper clippings,
transcriptions of the interviews he performed, an itemized schedule
down to the half-hour for everything he did, *and* his report.  If
Skinner had ever gotten something this thorough from you, he would
have ordered a psychiatric evaluation on the spot."

"If Skinner had ever gotten a report this bad from me, he would
have been justified."

"He did get bad reports from you, Mulder.  Frequently."

Mulder ignored her.  "Take a look at what he found, Scully.
Nothing.  You know why he found nothing?  He *did* nothing."

"There was nothing to find at the silo, Mulder.  An earthquake had
collapsed the ground underneath it.  Eagan talked to university
officials and got the seismic readings to prove it, and even
collected newspaper clippings from outlying areas to prove that it
wasn't a localized freak quake.  What more do you want?"

"He didn't even *try* to get inside."

"Mulder, the entrance was blocked by several tons of dirt."

"What kind of excuse is that?"

"And I suppose you would have rented a bulldozer and tried to
unearth the silo?"

There was a moment of silence, and then, sulkily, "And what's wrong
with that?"

She smiled into the phone.  "Only you, Mulder."

"I want to send him back out there, Scully.  He can hire a company
to do it, I suppose," that part was added grudgingly, "but I want
to see what's in there."

"That's ridiculous.  You're not going to find anything.  Even if
there ever *were* anything under there, which I find hard to
believe, it's crushed by now.  And just try to get the paperwork
approved to rent a bulldozer."

"So you admit there *might* be something."

"Mul-*der*."  Scully drawled his name out, feeling a headache
coming on.  "We're making an impressive amount of progress here.
Don't throw it away on wild goose chases."

"Scully, all of this was a wild goose chase when I started working
on it.  No one believed any of it.  And look where we are now.  All
of it was right."

"Not all of it was right, Mulder.  And, with as much evidence as
we're finding, there are more valuable lines of investigation that
Eagan could be pursuing."

"Such as?"

Scully shifted the phone again to search for the file she'd been
looking at when Mulder had called.  "This one.  They've got
isolated cases of the Ebola virus appearing in the United States."

"And?"

"And the Ebola virus is generally restricted to Africa, with a
limited number of cases appearing in people who have had some sort
of contact with the continent.  This particular strain of the virus
-- which may be airborne, according to the Center for Disease
Control in Atlanta -- has started with a handful of cases in
businessmen.  Ordinary people who have not been outside of the
United States recently, who have no exotic plants and no strange
pets.  This could be something, Mulder."

She could hear him mulling it over.  "What's the connection to the
Consortium?"

"I don't know, Mulder.  But if this *is* airborne, it is
potentially a larger threat to United States security than the 747
crash."

"How so?"   His voice wasn't skeptical, instead measured as though
he wanted her opinion.  "They'll stop the spread of the disease.
The total number of victims..."

"Will be high.  There's no known cure for Ebola.  And with a
possibly airborne virus, preventing its transmission will be
difficult.  Ebola is normally contacted only through blood or fluid
contact -- a very difficult method of transmission, and easier to
prevent.  It also prefers a hot climate to survive in.  This
particular strain, which appears to be the Mayinga strain, is not
so affected by climate, and is almost certainly airborne.  Which
means you could catch it from a sneeze or a cough, just like the
flu.  Medical personnel will be in the greatest area of risk, as
well as the friends and families of those affected.  However, the
greatest potential loss of life could very well be from panic."

"Ah."

She nodded.  "I remember the panic with those supposedly killer
cockroaches.  This could be far worse.  Mulder, Ebola is eighty
percent fatal."

"I know."  She could hear him dragging a paper forward, and
wondered whether he was referencing it, or using it as a doodle
pad.  "I've been following the reports.  I don't think this is
worth our time."

"What?"  Scully couldn't believe what she was hearing.  Not from
Mulder, the ultimate conspiracy specialist.  Even she could see
that the spread of this disease was unnatural.  To him, it ought to
be like a huge neon sign blinking 'Look at me, look at me'.

"The government's already got people on it, Scully.  Our
investigators aren't equipped to go after viruses, and you and I
are stuck here in D.C."  The last phrase came out with more than a
little bitterness.  "If it is the work of the Consortium, there's
nothing we can do about this one."

"What's really going on here, Mulder?" Scully demanded.  "This
isn't like you.  You *know* that this is worth following up on.
This is the biggest new lead we've gotten."

She could hear his chair squeak as he leaned back.  When he finally
spoke, his voice was full of a world-weary exhaustion.  "I don't
know, Scully.  I just can't escape the feeling that this is all a
massive exercise in cynicism on the part of the government, and
once we get too close to the truth again, we'll be shut down, only
this time permanently."

"But we've come closer than we ever did before."

"Have we, Scully?  What have we uncovered so far?  Until and unless
the Air Force allows us to examine their facilities, we can't
locate the alien technology that we know they possess.  You've seen
the runaround we've been getting from the Defense Department, with
their weak stories about encouraging cooperation, and then not
actually doing anything about it.  This entire investigation was an
excuse to get our activities out in the open and keep the two of us
out of the field, so that they could keep better control over us."

"That's not true, Mulder."

"Isn't it?  Want me to prove it to you, Scully?  If this *is* real
and we *are* in charge of the most comprehensive investigation into
the supernatural ever mounted by the FBI, then let's send Eagan and
Maddox after Samantha.  If this is real, then I finally have a
chance to find out what happened to her.  She's out there, Scully,
I know it."

"Mulder, you're missing the point."

"Am I?"

"The important thing right now is to bring down the conspiracy.
Once they're out of the picture, then we can look for her."  She
could sense, even over the phone, that Mulder was less than
convinced by her arguments.  "We've looked for her, Mulder.  And
we've found her, more than once.  And every time, it wasn't her.
The trail to your sister has so many blind ends that it would be a
complete waste of the resources available to us."

She waited, but he didn't say anything.  Softly, Scully said, "I
want the answers, too.  I want to know why the women from MUFON
died and the reason why it was necessary that they die."  Her own
cancer had gone into spontaneous remission, no sign of it remaining
in her body.  But the cancer could return, either on its own as it
frequently did, or deliberately, the way it had happened to her
originally.  "But these things aren't as important as finding out
what the conspiracy's ultimate goals are and who is really behind
it."

There was an icy silence on the other end of the line, and then
Mulder's voice said quietly.  "Do you really believe that, Scully?"

With all of the sincerity she could muster, Scully said, "Yes,
Mulder, I do.  We can find Samantha, Mulder; we *will* find her.
But right now is not the time."

The phone was hung up softly, and a few moments later, she heard
Mulder come out of his office, leaving with a determined stride she
could hear from where she sat, Sullivan following in his wake.

She leaned her head into her hand, feeling suddenly too tired to be
there, no matter how important this work was.

****

The hall outside the apartment was well-lit for once.  The work of
the Secret Service, who had quietly gone about making many small
improvements which made it more difficult to skulk about the
building, even this late into the night.  At four in the morning,
the building was unearthly quiet.

Mulder waited a second longer and closed the door softly behind
him.  Sullivan was asleep in the bedroom, and wouldn't notice a
thing.  Hopefully.  As for the other Secret Service agents watching
his apartment building, Mulder was counting both on their lack of
attentiveness at this hour of the morning, and on his own
ingenuity.

His argument with Scully earlier this evening had only crystallized
his resolve.  From the beginning, he had gotten into the X-Files as
a way to exorcise his own personal demons.  To find the sister who
his inattention and inability to protect had lost.  But all that
his investigations had done was to cause more demons to rise,
Hydra-like, out of a seemingly endless black slick of the
creatures.  His father had been implicated in the Consortium's
plots, Scully abducted and her genetic material used to create
alien-human hybrids, her sister killed... and none of it looked
like it would ever be over with.

Until now.  Until they finally had a chance to *prove* the things
they had suspected all along, to bring back the evidence which had
so persistently managed to disappear on them.

It should have been a triumph for Mulder, should have been the
culmination of everything he had ever wanted out of the X-Files.
Vindication.  Belief.

But it wasn't.  Because none of it could or would bring back
Samantha.  Scully was right in her own way.  No one was going to
sanction looking for Samantha, spending all of their effort looking
for one person when they could bring down the entire conspiracy.
But she wasn't right about being able to wait until the Consortium
had been brought to justice.  Mulder *knew* that Samantha was in
danger, was, ironically enough, being endangered by the very search
that was bringing him closer to finding her.  That knowledge had
depressed him for weeks now, dragging at him like a millstone
hanging from his neck.  The closer they came, the more danger she
was in, and the more he needed to find her before she was destroyed
by the Consortium, as a willful child destroys its toys so that no
one else could have them either.

Samantha was at the center of this somehow.  Mulder could sense
that, although he didn't know why it was so.  But every time he had
gotten close to her, the conspiracy had pushed back violently.  It
didn't *want* him to find her.  Which only made it that much more
imperative that he do so.

And since he couldn't do it officially, he would do it on his own.

There.  Mulder slipped out of the shadow of the apartment building,
making his way as casually as he could down the dark street.  At 4
a.m., the street lights illuminated him in a way that felt
painfully exposed, but still, no one had stopped him, even though
he knew there had to be at least one other agent watching his door.
Perhaps his quiet exit had fooled them.  Or perhaps they were
guilty of what every agent stuck on a stake-out feared most -- the
kind of burn-out caused by watching the same unchanging scenery for
hours which led to letting the suspect walkout unchallenged because
you simply didn't notice.

Either way, Mulder wasn't going to count his chickens.  He kept
walking, rounding a corner and getting out of sight.  Once he was
at least ten blocks away, he planned to stop at the nearest phone
booth and call a cab.  A taxi to the airport, then a rental car
from there, the busiest place in the city for such things, and it
would take more resources than Scully or Sullivan had to track him
down.  He would be free to pursue his own investigations.

Something hit him hard, square in the center of his back, sending
him forward a stumbling step.  Mulder turned, reaching for his gun,
as a hand shoved him in the chest, pushing him against the wall.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," a voice said.

Mulder didn't stop moving, gun coming into his hand.  "Yeah, well,
I'm not you."  It was the Consortium.  It had to be.  He damned his
own stupidity.  Of course they would also be watching.  Of course
they wouldn't have given up so easily.  And now he was doomed.
Several blocks from his apartment, in a neighborhood like this one,
no one would see a thing, and they would have him before he even
had a chance to call for help.  Even if he shot one of them, they
could have him out of here before the Secret Service would have
time to react.  If they heard the shot.  If they chose to react.

Even as he weighed the options and came up with no possibility of
escape, Mulder was preparing to shoot.

A shadow detached itself from the wall, forming itself into a tall,
dark figure, clothed in black.  "You really want to do that,
Mulder?"

The voice was entirely too familiar.  Mulder hesitated.

"Mulder, Mulder, Mulder.  What are we going to do with you?"
Sullivan stepped forward into the light.

He couldn't believe it.  Even with all the betrayals that had
occurred, this one still seemed shocking.  Sullivan was working
with the Consortium?  No wonder it had been so easy to get out of
his apartment.  Sullivan had *wanted* him to escape, had wanted it
to look as though Mulder had gone off on his own, rather than a
deliberate abduction by the Consortium.

The person who had shoved him took a step closer, and with a small
shock of startlement, Mulder recognized her as well.  She was also
a Secret Service agent.  One of those who had relieved Sullivan in
their constant dance back and forth trying to keep 24 hour coverage
of him.

"Mulder?" Sullivan asked again.  His tone was slightly harder this
time as Mulder still didn't move, didn't return his gun to its
holster.

Another agent moved to Mulder's other side, ready to jump for his
gun.  Another of the Secret Service agents.

Mulder silently let his hand fall, putting his gun back into place,
and meekly allowed Sullivan to escort him away.  The agents flanked
him as they walked back down the street, right up to his apartment.
What an idiot he was.  Of course they hadn't been working for the
Consortium.  Of course he hadn't been able to so easily escape
Secret Service protection.  They had let him go just far enough to
prove that they were in control of the situation and no further.

Not that he was any happier with them.  His recognition that he had
been foolish to think he had a chance of escaping didn't lessen any
whit of his anger at being so thoroughly "protected" that he
couldn't do what needed to be done.

He waited to protest until they got him back to his apartment,
Sullivan opening the door for him and silently allowing him inside,
locking the door behind them.  The apartment was dark and quiet,
light from the streetlights outside filtering dimly through the
drawn shades.

"How could you do that?" Mulder asked, barely suppressed rage under
his words.  "I was trying to do..."

"You were trying to get yourself killed," Sullivan said flatly.

Mulder looked at him, expression half-incredulous, half-angry.  "I
wouldn't have to take the chance if you weren't trying to wrap me
up in cotton.  I *need* to go after my sister.  You have to let
me."

"The only thing I have to do is keep you alive.  And I can do that
very well from here."  Sullivan's expression was implacable, with
no sign of the humor that he could display when he wasn't on duty,
or even any sign of human-ness at all.

"Here?  I can't do anything from here."

"Exactly."

Mulder stared at him for a long moment, then turned in the other
direction, stormily flinging himself onto the waiting couch, aware
that he looked like nothing more than a small child sulking after
a temper tantrum.  That didn't put him in any better of a mood.

Without conscious thought, he reached for the phone.  A familiar
voice answered the call.

"Hi, Scully."

"Do you know what time it is, Mulder?"

Her voice was sleepy, and he felt a brief moment of guilt for
waking her up.  But he didn't consider hanging up.  She was already
awake after all now; the damage had already been done.  "No,
Scully, what time is it?"

He could hear her fumbling around, and imagined her turning the
clock to face her.  "Four thirty?  Mulder, just what gave you the
inspiration to call me at this hour of the morning?  I have to get
up in an hour."

"Then I'm just in time," Mulder said, gradually becoming cheered
into a better mood by the very familiarity of bantering with
Scully, even if she was going to kill him for this when she
actually woke up.  "Consider me a wake-up call."

"Yours is not a voice I dream of waking up to, Mulder."

"Whose voice did you want to wake up to?"

Instead of answering the question, she changed the subject.  "Why
are you calling me this early, Mulder?  I assume there was a
reason."

"Yeah, there was a reason, Scully."

She let a long moment go by, then asked.  "So, are you going to
tell me what it was?"

"What, you don't feel like playing Twenty Questions, Scully?
C'mon, tease it out of me."

"The only game I want to play with you, Mulder, is
Pin-The-Tail-to-the-Donkey."

"Pins, Scully?  Very kinky."  This time, she didn't say anything
during his long silence, waiting for him to come up with the words
himself.  He settled more deeply into the couch, phone cradled
against his ear.  "You really want to know, Scully?  It's a little
embarrassing."

"No, Mulder, I want to go back to bed without any idea as to why a
raving maniac would call in the middle of the night and ruin my
sleep.  Of course, I want to know."

He half-smiled, a painful expression on his face.  "Sure, Scully.
About a half an hour ago, I tried to get out of here.  Go for a
walk, get some fresh air."

"Mulder..." Scully said.  He could hear her moving, and imagined
her sitting up in bed, and fixing a look at him, even though he
couldn't see it.  "You didn't try to go off on your own, did you?"
 

~~~
 

He heard some sounds behind him, a rustle of noise in the dark, and
assumed it was Sullivan settling in for the night.  Mulder felt
another burst of irritation at the Secret Service agent for his
interference.  "I got caught three blocks from the apartment.  I
think they let me get that far so they could make a point."

"I think they should just get a leash for you.  Really, Mulder.
You should know better."

He sighed.  "I do, Scully.  It's just..."

"Just?" she asked gently, when he didn't say anything more.

"I need to *do* something, Scully," he said explosively, the words
coming out with more force than he intended.  "I have to help her.
Before something happens to her.  I know they've got her, Scully.
And they won't stop at using her to manipulate me.  They've done it
before."

"Samantha?"

"What if they kill her, Scully?" he asked, not quite acknowledging
her earlier question.

"We'll find her, Mulder," she said.

He closed his eyes against that promise.  He didn't want to hear
it, desperately needed to hear it.

Someone came up from behind the couch, a hand settling over his
shoulder.  Mulder stiffened.  He didn't feel like playing any more
games tonight, and certainly didn't appreciate the invasion of his
personal space.  "Sullivan..." he said, voice low and threatening.
"Don't you think that one good scare a night is enough?  Knock it
off."

"My pleasure, Mr. Mulder," an unfamiliar voice said, as a hard
weight descended on his head, and unconsciousness came over him.

****

Eight people were seated around the conference table, with Scully's
Secret Service detail more alert than ever, one of them behind her,
and another outside the door.

Scully looked down at the folder on the table in front of her,
forehead creased.  They were in the conference room closest to her
new office in the Hoover Building.  The bland government issue
surroundings didn't make her feel any more secure, and indeed leant
an air of unreality, an out-of-place normalcy, to their current
quest to find her missing partner.

"And what happened next?" Murray asked.  The acting Director was
there, along with herself and Daniels, to question Sullivan and the
other two Secret Service agents on what had occurred the previous
night.  This was not the first time they had gone through this
material, as the half-empty, frequently refilled coffee cups
sitting on the table attested.  Inspector Maddox had been in town,
the only one of their agents currently in D.C., and was in
attendance, as well as Assistant Director Skinner, who had simply
shown up and not left.  Murray hadn't tried to have him thrown out,
and no one else would dare to make the attempt.  Skinner had been
implicated early in the search for the Consortium; their own
testimony had incriminated him.  However, that same testimony had
kept him in his place when so many others were even now on paid
administrative leave; despite Skinner's involvement with the
conspiracy, both agents had testified that he had never been one of
them.

Scully was glad to have the A.D. there.  There was nothing Skinner
could do, nothing any of them could do, but she knew that he
supported her and Mulder, even if it would be unlike him to say so.
And actions counted far more than any words of sympathy ever could.

Sullivan didn't look away from Murray.  He had gone over all of
this with his own team earlier today, right after they had been
woken up.  Once they finished with this briefing, finding Mulder
would be their top priority.  Their only priority.  "Sulit and
Nance returned to their posts, and I escorted Mulder inside the
apartment.  We had a brief conversation, and then he made a phone
call."

"That was to me, sir," Scully interjected.  "Agent Mulder's
abduction occurred while he was on the phone.  The receiver was
still off the hook when I arrived on the scene."

Sullivan nodded.  "When I saw Mulder pick up the phone, I removed
my coat and began to make a detailed check of the apartment."  He
looked momentarily abashed.  "I had failed to do so before
releasing the other agents to their posts.  That was my fault.  I
should have done so, instead of making only a cursory inspection."

Murray nodded, a go-ahead gesture.  "Too late now.  What happened
then?"

"As I entered the bedroom, I felt something prick my arm.  I assume
I was injected with something.  I tried to make a sound to alert
Mulder, but was unable.  I don't remember anything else between
then and being awakened by the paramedics."

"And those arrived when?" Murray asked.

"They arrived at approximately 5:20 a.m.," Scully said.  "I called
them as soon as I arrived at the apartment."

"Yes, Agent Scully," Murray said, rearranging the notes he was
taking, and looking up her.  "What *was* your role in this?"

"I received a phone call from Agent Mulder at about 4:30 a.m.  We
talked for about five minutes.  At that time, I heard him speaking
to Agent Sullivan, telling him to 'knock it off', that once was
enough for a night.  Then nothing.  I listened, but couldn't make
out any other noises.  I dressed and immediately drove to his
apartment."

"You immediately assumed something was wrong?"

Scully didn't change her expression.  "I didn't know at that point
that something definitely *was* wrong, but I had a strong suspicion
that things were out of the ordinary with the situation, yes."

"But you didn't call for help along the way, and neither did the
Secret Service agents with you."

"I was unsure what sort of help I needed."

Meyer, standing behind her, said, "The agents on duty with Agent
Scully *did* call for back-up  when they ascertained en route that
we were unable to make contact with any of Agent Mulder's detail."

Scully continued.  "I called for medical assistance after arriving
at Mulder's apartment and finding Agent Sullivan on the floor in
the bedroom.  He was unconscious.  After determining that he was
still breathing, I went back out into the living room and found the
phone off the hook.  There were no signs of a struggle."

Sullivan looked grim.  "If it weren't for that, I'd think it was
all another trick of Mulder's."

"Excuse me?" Murray asked.  Skinner gave an imperceptible nod, a
long-suffering expression on his face.
 
"After his first attempt to slip our custody that evening, a
second, more successful attempt would not be out of the question."

"And you think that's what this is?"

Sullivan shook his head.  "No.  Not with the degree of coordination
evinced here.  Not by himself, at least.  Mulder was on the phone
while I was being taken out -- I could hear him talking in the
background.  And he would have had to have help to get Sulit and
Nance as well."

"Agent Mulder would not do something like this," Scully said.
Skinner gave her a long look.  "Not without telling us.  He may
have gone off on his own in the past, but he's always made it very
clear that he was going to go and why he was going to go.  When we
were speaking on the phone, we had come to an agreement that we
would work on the line of inquiry he wanted to pursue in an
official manner."

"And that was?"

Scully didn't drop her eyes, although it took an act of will, and
a knowledge that she couldn't show any sort of weakness here more
than anything else, because she knew how what she was about to say
was going to sound to the people assembled here.  "Agent Mulder is
obsessed with finding his sister, sir."

"His sister?"  Murray was genuinely puzzled.  "What does she have
to do with anything?"

Skinner was seated next to Murray, and Scully could see his
expression; still professionally blank, but with a touch of
sympathy.  She supposed he'd had to make his share of unbelievable
explanations for Mulder over the years as well.  "Agent Mulder
believes that his sister was abducted by aliens, sir.  He also
believes that the Consortium may be responsible for this abduction,
or have knowledge of her current whereabouts."

Murray stopped writing.  "I hope you know how that sounds, Agent
Scully."

"Proof of the existence of advanced technology known to only a few
within the government is exactly the kind of thing we are trying to
prove with our current investigations, sir."  She *wasn't* going to
call it alien technology.  Not even if Mulder jumped out of a
flying saucer and handed her a map to Reticula.  *Especially* not
if Mulder jumped out of a flying saucer.

Murray nodded to her, and got out a blank sheet of paper.  "So what
do we think actually occurred last night, and why?"

There was a moment of silence, as no one quite knew what to say.
The facts of what had happened were easy enough to lay out, if
skimpy, but theories were a little different.

Skinner broke the silence.  "I think it's obvious that the
Consortium had their hand in this.  They've been interested in
Agent Mulder's work from the beginning.  As he and Agent Scully
have gotten closer to the truth, they've become more threatening to
the people behind this."

"As to why," Scully said, "I think it *does* have something to do
with Mulder's sister.  I believe that Assistant Director Skinner is
right about the Consortium's interest in our work.  However,
despite their success in abducting Agent Mulder, I am still here."

Sullivan interjected himself into the conversation.  "When Mulder
attempted to break away from our security last night, he created an
opening which I believe his abductors recognized and exploited by
getting their people in place.  We aren't ruling out the
possibility of an attempt on Agent Scully as well, although the
likelihood may be diminished now that we have been alerted to their
presence and willingness to take action."

Scully wasn't so sure about that.  "We've been aware for some time
now that the Consortium has unusual success in following and
predicting our actions.  It's possible that they have these offices
and/or our residences electronically monitored.  In which case,
Mulder's interest in his sister and refusal to be diverted from his
quest to find her may have motivated this abduction."

Murray duly noted that.  "Are there any other suggestions?"

Davies, Daniels' contact with the Justice department, spoke up.
"We can't disregard the possibility that Mulder had been working
with the Consortium all along.  This would have been an ideal
opportunity for him to reconnect with his true bosses, without
throwing suspicion on himself."

Scully was shocked, her skin going utterly pale.  How dare they,
how dare *anyone* make a suggestion like that?  Mulder's loyalty to
the truth was, or should be, unquestionable.  He was the only
person who had stood by that quest through everything that the
Consortium and the bureaucracy in general could throw at him to
stop him, and he had never given up.  If he hadn't aggressively
advocated the pursuit of the conspiracy to the President, they
wouldn't even be there now.  It should be obvious to even the
dimmest of people that Mulder was the Consortium's worst nightmare.

"That's not a possibility," Scully said.  "Not Mulder."

Skinner nodded, backing her up.  "Agent Mulder is someone who I
would trust unquestioningly to stand on the side of truth."

Davies held up his hands.  "It had to be said."

Scully shot him a look, but held her peace.

"Anything else?" Murray asked.  There was no response from the
group.  "All right then. I concur with the Secret Service's
decision that Agent Scully needs to be more fully protected.
Obviously, this investigation has gotten close to things which our
target does not want revealed."  He looked over at Daniels.
"Roger, I hope you and your department have also taken steps in
that direction in regards to your own team."

Daniels seemed to be taken aback by the suggestion.  "I... no, sir.
I hadn't..."

"You're as much as risk as Agent Scully.  I want you protected as
well.  By now, you should have some idea who you can trust to do
the job.  We don't want the people behind this conspiracy lashing
out and killing off our investigators, now do we?"  No one said
anything.  Murray looked over at Skinner.  "Walter, I'd like you to
take charge of finding Agent Mulder.  This is more than an ordinary
missing persons case.  I want him found, and the people behind it
brought to justice."

Skinner nodded, and Scully could swear there was a gleam in his eye
at being assigned this particular mission.  "Yes, sir."

Murray turned to look at Scully.  "Are you capable of continuing
your part of the investigation on your own?"

"Of course, sir."

"Then that will be all."  Murray looked around the room.  "Let's
get him back, and get the people who did this."

Scully returned to her office, followed by Meyer.  Maddox trailed
behind her.

"What next?" Maddox asked.

Before she could answer, Skinner came to the door.  He looked at
Maddox, and the two men stared at each other for a long moment
before Maddox looked away.  "Mind if I come in, Agent Scully?"

She looked at Maddox, who jumped up.  "I'll be... I'll just go and
get some files I need... that we can discuss."

Scully hid a smile as Skinner took the inspector's place.  "Yes,
sir?"

"I just wanted you to know that you have my sympathy, Agent Scully.
And that I'll do my best to find Agent Mulder."

"That's what means the most to me, sir."  Unspoken was the reality
that, given the power and resources of the Consortium, they would
not be able to find Mulder if the people behind the conspiracy did
not want him found.

"And, given that I've been designated to lead the investigation
into Agent Mulder's abduction, I would like to ask you for any
assistance you would be able to provide."

She could swear his eyes were twinkling.  He was deliberately
letting her in on the investigation, *asking* her to stay abreast
of developments and to be where she most wanted to be right now --
locating her lost partner.  Something she knew that Murray would
most likely not have authorized if he had known, given that
logically, her efforts were better put to use in the continued work
against the Consortium.  Equally formal, she returned, "I'd be glad
to render any assistance necessary."

"Thank you."

He stood up, and she watched him walk out, a small smile playing
around her lips.

****

Mulder was unceremoniously dumped on the floor, and the door
slammed shut behind him.

For a moment, he just laid there, the air knocked out of him, then
slowly picked himself up, propping himself up against the wall into
a half sitting position.

He still wasn't sure what was going on.  The obvious conclusion was
that he had been kidnapped by the Consortium.  He looked at the
generic, off-white walls of the room he was in, the square corners,
and the electrical outlet in the wall.  This certainly wasn't a
flying saucer, after all.  What it was, was a matter of some
debate.  The off-white paint helped in his assumption that this was
a bland, manufacturing plant-scientific-governmental type of
building.  That it was peeling told him that the building was most
likely abandoned, an interesting fact in and of itself, because it
meant that, for whatever reason, the Consortium hadn't taken him to
a working facility under their control.  The paint *could* provide
him with a means to commit suicide, if he so desired, but with his
luck, it probably wasn't lead based.

The room itself could provide no other clues; it had been stripped
of everything that could possibly provide him with a weapon, and
incidentally, anything that might be of comfort to him.  At least
it was carpeted, even if the carpet was the nondescript, worn
grey-white mixture also favored by the same type of institutions
who prized bland, conformist off-white paint.

There was a guard outside his door, one who was very enthusiastic
about his duties, Mulder thought, rubbing his bruises.  So far,
he'd given Mulder meals and escorted him to the bathroom.  There
was more than one of them, but "faceless goon" was a good
description of the guards.  They didn't have the *same* face, which
would have been a definite sign of the Consortium's involvement,
but they might as well have.

And that was all.  No torture, unless you could call fluorescent
lights torture, and no questioning.  Just some petty sadism on the
part of the guard, as he shoved Mulder from place to place.  So
far, Mulder had seen no one else.

What was going on here?  He almost wished that they just get the
torture started.  Give him something to do.

Almost.

Mulder leaned his head back against the wall and began mentally
replaying the movie, "Alien", behind his closed eyelids.  It was
something to do at any rate.

****

Two days later, the investigation into Mulder's disappearance was
almost at the same place it had been before.  However, other events
had moved more rapidly.  The Ebola virus had become the problem
which Scully had foreseen, changing the situation.

"You might as well stay in Nevada," Scully said into the telephone.
The news about the ban on travel had traveled rapidly through the
Bureau.  Too many of their agents would be inconvenienced by the
ban for them not to know.  The rapid spread of the Ebola virus, the
count of the victims known to be infected now over 3,000, and its
conceivably even wider spread, had forced the President into
declaring a ban on interstate travel only days after Mulder's
disappearance.  The ban had caused a general halt to *all*
non-essential travel.  People had until this evening to get where
they were going, and then that would be that.

Scully could get her agents in the field back to D.C. by putting
them on immediate flights out -- but then they would be stuck in
D.C.  Either alternative was equally unpromising.  She had two
choices, both equally bad -- to leave them where they were to
continue their investigations under conditions which would hamper
them and made their job difficult -- and to drag them back to D.C.,
where they could help her, but where there would be nothing to do.
Of course, as FBI agents, and law enforcement personnel, they would
not be directly affected by the ban if they chose to use their
influence, but flights from airports would stop, and she didn't
intend to condemn any of them to driving cross country to get to
D.C.  No, they would do more good where they were once the current
crisis was over.  It was fortunate that Maddox had gotten back out
in the field as soon as he had.

"And do what?" Nelson asked.  Her voice was sharp.  "People are
already in a panic here.  We aren't going to be able to effectively
interview witnesses who are barricading themselves in their homes."

Scully had Nelson and her partner working on the spread of the
Ebola virus.  Despite Mulder's objections to that line of
investigation, Scully had felt it was promising.  The virus had
started in fifteen major cities, including the major air transit
hubs and Las Vegas, the convention capital of the U.S.  That
implied that someone had deliberately targeted it, rather than a
random spread.  The index cases, the people from whom the virus had
spread to others, had all recently attended conventions.  And where
better to catch a large number of people who would all go on to
infect other people?  If this strain of the virus had been quicker
acting or more contagious, then the infected businessmen taking
their commuter flights home or to other convention cities would
have turned the planes into flying conveyors of plague, each
passenger a walking time bomb waiting to in turn infect more.  It
was a nightmare scenario, and one which could have potentially
destroyed the United States.

However, Ebola had not spread that rapidly or that infectiously,
although what damage it had done was irrevocable.  Its victims died
in a particularly ugly manner, with their organs liquefying within
them.  And President Ryan's swift action in ceasing travel would
prevent further unknowing contagion.  People knew now that if they
came into contact with others that they were literally risking
their lives.

"Continue working on what leads you have," Scully said.  Other
investigators were already working on tracing the method used for
transmitting the virus.  Nelson and Sharp were following that
investigation while simultaneously working on the issue of who
would have the ability to do it, and following up with the victims.
It was a large task, and not one easily finished in a few days.
"The danger of contagion will pass, and then the executive order
will be lifted.  At that time, we can discuss other options."

"I'll let you know what we turn up."  With that, Nelson hung up.

Scully set down the phone.  That was the last of her three calls.
Eagan's had been quick enough, and Maddox had actually called
*her*, perhaps scenting the changes on the wind.  All of them were
to stay where they were and continue working as they could, or to
offer their services to whatever local branch of the Bureau they
happened to find themselves closest to if they could not continue
their own investigations.

Which left her with nothing to do but peruse -- again -- Skinner's
unpromising report on leads in Mulder's abduction.

She pushed back the hair from her face and started reading at the
top, as though that would reveal any new information.  It didn't.
The thirty-page, single-spaced document was as complete as anyone
could wish, with attachments that made it bulk out to the size of
a small novel, and yet it had nothing.

Scully took stock of the report.  There was a annotated account of
the evening Mulder had disappeared, with precise times included
where known, collated to reflect all the eyewitness accounts,
including her own.  A detailed background check on each of the
Secret Service agents assigned to Mulder and her own self was
referenced and attached.  The lab's analysis of the drug used to
incapacitate the agents was also attached, although it warranted
only a brief mention in the body of the report.  A copy of Mulder's
phone records and her own for the night showed that he had placed
exactly one call, and that it had been to her.  A detailed
description of what Mulder had been wearing, and what items might
possibly be missing from his apartment.  Scully knew that could
only be a matter of conjecture.  While it was entirely possible
that the kidnappers *had* taken something from Mulder's apartment,
it was normally in enough disarray that identifying something out
of place would be almost impossible, even for someone who knew
Mulder well.

At the end was a summary of the ongoing investigation, including
coordination with state and local police.  All in all, thoroughly
useless.  The report was exhaustive and painstakingly detailed --
and it contained nothing of any good.

What could she contribute to the investigation?  Scully took stock
of her unofficial resources.  The Lone Gunmen were out-of-touch.
Mulder had told her about their little flight at the beginning of
what now seemed like an out-of-control train wreck, the United
States lurching to a halt.  That route was unavailable to her.  She
had already tried to locate Mulder's mysterious contact in the
United Nations, but from all appearances, the person in question
had returned home, out of the U.S., and out of contact.  So there
would be no enigmatic portents of doom to help her out.

What could she do?  Scully looked back at Skinner's report again,
searching for something, anything that hadn't been thoroughly
followed up on.  She *needed* something to do, something which
would make her feel like she was being of assistance, was actually
doing something to help locate Mulder.  She knew he would do the
same if it were her in trouble, *had* done the same many times.

She started with the drug work-up, trusting that her medical
background might give her an edge there in seeing something which
others might have missed.  The lab had identified it by chemical
structure.  Perhaps she could find out what company or companies
manufactured the drug commercially.  That would be something, and
even if it wasn't the most productive thing she could think of
doing, she *had* to do something.

Several hours of research, via computer and telephone, turned up
one brand name and one manufacturer for the chemical.

Scully called Skinner.  "Sir, I have some additional information
for you regarding Mulder's case."

"What is it, Agent Scully?"

She outlined the facts she had discovered.  "The chemical is
manufactured by Allied Pharmaceuticals, which is located in
Baltimore.  I attempted to contact the company directly; however,
there was no response, due possibly to the shutdown of all
non-essential industries."  Pharmaceuticals, along with other
health industries, *were* considered essential and specifically
excluded from the President's order, but that hadn't stopped
company CEOs from closing them anyway.  There was no point to
remaining open when panicked people simply refused to show up for
work.

"Good work.  I'll note the information in my next report."

"Are you going to follow up on it, sir?"

"Follow up on what?"

"On the information.  The manufacturer may be able to provide us
with some idea of who uses this particular drug."

She could hear an almost suppressed sigh on the other end of the
line.  "Agent Scully, I appreciate your concern for your partner,
but I barely have the manpower to pursue the tenuous leads that I
*do* have, much less to run down something like this."

"But, sir..."

"I'll put it on the list, Agent Scully."  His voice softened
slightly.  "Try to get some rest.  I'm doing everything I can."

"Thank you, sir."

She set down the receiver, and only then glanced at the clock.
Both she and Skinner were there after hours.  It was well past six,
which was late enough, although not as late as the hours some
people would be putting in during the current series of seemingly
neverending crises.  Scully took one last look at the report, and
her own research stacked neatly next to it.  She wasn't getting
anything done here; she might as well go home.

Scully stood up, pulled her jacket back on, settling the points of
the shoulders neatly into place, and then moved over to take her
trenchcoat down off of its hook.

Of course, just because she was going home didn't mean she couldn't
make a stop along the way.  She took a step towards her desk and
scooped up her notes.  Just a quick stop.  Skinner couldn't very
well object to that, and the Secret Service...

Her current minder, Allen Ecklund, towered over her as she exited
the door to her office, and Scully revised her original thought.
The Secret Service was not going to like this at all.  She could
sympathize, having been stuck too many times with Mulder when he
got one of his harebrained ideas into his head and gone
gallivanting off into the sunset, with rules, procedures, and
personal safety completely forgotten.  But this was different, and
they would just have to see that.

No matter how much convincing it took.

****

"Stay in the car," Ecklund said, giving her one last glance as he
stepped out.  Scully nodded.  She was sitting in the back seat with
an agent on either side of her.  There wasn't anywhere she *could*
go.  And there was another agent in the driver's seat, ready to
drive away immediately if need be.  She wasn't worried about her
safety.

She shifted position to watch Ecklund as he approached Allied
Pharmaceuticals' office building.  No lights were on in the
building, although the lights from the grounds were on, a small
spotlight illuminating the company's sign which was sitting in the
center of an equally well-lit, elegantly manicured lawn.  The lack
of any sign of human presence was what Ecklund had used to convince
Scully to stay; there was no need for her to risk herself in such
an exposed situation when no one was there anyway.

He walked up to the door, putting on a surgical mask as he went.
Scully watched him as he knocked, and then waited.  After a moment,
another figure came to meet him, opening the door partway.  They
talked for a moment, and then Ecklund returned to the car, taking
off the mask and sliding into the passenger's seat.

"The company shut itself down when the President announced the ban
on travel.  To keep from endangering its employees, according to
the security guard."

"Then there's no one we can talk to," Scully said, disappointed.
The agents with her would be overjoyed.  While she had gotten them
to reluctantly admit that they also were interested in finding out
whatever they could about Mulder's disappearance, and that
interviewing a pharmacologist was hardly a high risk action on her
part, they had still been uneasy about bringing her out here.

"However," Ecklund reluctantly admitted, "when I explained who I
was and the reason for the visit, he gave me the name of the man
who runs this division, Stan Canowski, and his home address.  It's
not far from here."

Scully stared at him.  "Let's go."

He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded.  "Yes, ma'am."

****

Stan Canowski's house was situated in a prosperous suburb of
Baltimore, in a cul de sac with other houses just like it, large,
imposing, architecturally diverse -- and with about as much life as
an exhibit of dead butterflies pinned to a mounting board.

It was late by the time they arrived, almost nine p.m., but lights
were still on in the house.

Scully looked at the agent sitting next to her.  "I'm going in this
time."

He looked at Ecklund for support, Ecklund being the lead agent
while Meyer was off-duty.

Ecklund nodded.  "Johnson and I will come with you.  Let us handle
it if anything happens."
 

~~~
 

Scully didn't argue.  It couldn't be easy for them to have to
protect an FBI agent.  Not only did she go to work every day in an
office full of people just like her, all authorized to carry
weapons and experienced in unarmed combat, but her job was about
taking risks when necessary.  Not that she expected this particular
interview to be in any way dangerous.

Ecklund handed her a mask, and they each donned one before getting
out of the car.  Scully walked up to Canowski's door, Ecklund in
front of her, and Johnson just behind her.  Ecklund rang the
doorbell.

A man answered it.  He was middle-aged, wearing a light blue polo
shirt and tan trousers.  "Yes?" he said in a wary voice.

Ecklund handed him a mask, and the man took it.  It was the newest
form of greeting in the United States.

"Mr. Stan Canowski?" Scully asked after he put on the mask.  She
held out her credentials.  "I'm Special Agent Dana Scully with the
FBI, and these are Agents Ecklund and Johnson with the Secret
Service.  I want to ask you a few questions about a chemical that
I believe your company manufactures."

Canowski looked puzzled, but stepped back.  "Come in."  As he shut
the door behind them, he asked, "Is this something I should have my
lawyer present for?  I don't think we've done anything wrong..."

"You're welcome to contact your lawyer," Scully said, careful not
to give him the idea that they expected to find nothing of legal
value.  She didn't, but if she told him not to call his lawyer, and
then Canowski revealed criminal information, it could produce a
compromising legal situation.  "However, I'm interested only in
technical information about a chemical you produce and who you
produce it for."

"We're not involved in making illegal substances, if that's what
you're insinuating," Canowski said.  He still hadn't moved out of
the entryway.

"No, sir," Scully replied.  "However, the chemical has been used in
a criminal case, and we're hoping that any information you might be
able to provide about who uses it might help us in tracking down
the perpetrator."

Canowski's face cleared.  "Oh.  In that case, please come in."  He
led them into the living room, a large round room, with couches
placed to face the huge windows.  He waited for Scully to sit down,
and then took a seat on a chair opposite her.  Ecklund and Johnson
stayed standing, hovering a short distance away.  Scully could see
him eyeing them nervously, but ignored that.

"Mr. Canowski, I'm interested in this particular chemical."  She
handed him her copy of the lab's report on the chemical structure
of the drug used to knock out the Secret Service agents.  "Does
your company manufacture this drug?"

He took a long time to read through the information.  It was highly
technical, and Scully waited for him to finish.  Finally he looked
up.  His face was loose, and his eyes shifted to Ecklund and back
to Scully.  "No, we don't."

"Allied Pharmaceuticals does not produce this drug?" Scully
queried, just to make absolutely sure that he understood the
question, and that she understood his answer.

"No, we don't."

"Mr. Canowski, I am in possession of information that your company
*does* indeed produce this chemical.  Are you aware that lying to
a federal agent is a criminal offense?"

This time, she correctly interpreted his reactions as being what
they were, attempts at evasion.  He looked down at the papers he
was holding, clenching them in his hands.  "I... I..."

She let him stammer for a moment, then went for the jugular.  She
knew he was lying.  And the only reason she could think of for him
to lie was that he must be covering up something very important.
Perhaps information that could lead them to Mulder.  "We already
know who your customer is, Mr. Canowski."

He looked up at her, a startled expression on his face.  "You do?
How do..."  He broke off before he could incriminate himself
further, but Scully didn't hesitate.

"What I want is the address you sent your shipment to.  I don't
need you to give me the name of your customer.  The group they
represent is already under investigation, and we confidently expect
to have indictments in every case.  You are setting yourself up as
a collaborator by withholding information, and could receive a
prison sentence of up to twenty-five years."  She paused, and let
him think about that for a moment.  "If the judge is feeling
lenient.  The charge we are looking at for your customer is
treason.  Which carries the death penalty."

Canowski sat there silently, unable to look at her, and Scully
could feel the tension in the man.  He didn't know whether to
believe her, but he obviously knew that he'd done something wrong,
and that private knowledge of guilt was eating him away from the
center.  How much did she know?  That was the question he had to be
asking himself.  That, and whether she was prepared to carry out
her threat.

Johnson moved closer to Canowski, standing just behind the man, in
the edge of his peripheral vision, and Canowski broke.  "I'll give
you their address.  But I swear, I was never involved in anything.
I... it has perfectly legal uses.  I didn't *know* they were going
to use it for anything criminal."

Scully sat there coolly.  "The address?"

He stood up, and walked towards the hall.  "I didn't.  Please.  You
have to believe me."

Johnson followed him out of the room, and Scully waited in her
position on the edge of the couch.  She didn't dare relax, not yet.
She needed this last piece of vital information from Canowski
before she let herself show any outward sign of how much this
meant.  She hadn't expected this to be important, but Canowski's
attitude indicated that it definitely was.  However, she *still*
didn't know what she had.

Canowski came back into the room, carrying a piece of paper.  He
had the information at home, then.  That was interesting.  Why
would the head of a pharmaceutical company keep routine, legitimate
sales information lying around his house?  The answer was obvious.
He wouldn't.  But was this the real thing, or an extremely clever
plan on the part of the Consortium to lead her into a trap?  Scully
didn't know.  The best way to avoid a trap, however, was to take
Canowski with them, before he had a chance to alert his "customers"
that they'd been burned.

He handed the paper to her.  Scully took it and, without looking at
it, folded it and put it into her pocket.  "I believe it would be
best if you were taken into protective custody now, Mr. Canowski."

Canowski backed away from her.  "But I gave you what you wanted."

She looked up at him.  "Exactly.  And now that your customer is
aware of that, you are at risk.  Accordingly, I must ask that you
come with us.  You'll be able to contact your lawyer when you're in
a safer location."

Canowski looked away from her, only to find Ecklund in his field of
view.  He glanced over at Johnson, clearly weighing his chances,
then folded.  Scully's detail had been specifically assigned on the
basis of their size to intimidate anyone who might think that their
small, feminine protectee was an easy target.  That they served
their purpose was obvious in Canowski's reaction to them.  Dully,
he said, "I suppose I'm out of options."

Scully nodded.  "Yes, you are."

Ecklund and Johnson escorted Canowski out, and put him into the
second car, while Scully watched from the safety of her seat in the
back of the first car, slightly amused.  They hadn't told her about
the second car, but when she had announced that she was taking
Canowski into custody, she had created a dilemma for them, since
there wasn't enough room for him in the first car.  At that point,
they had revealed the existence of the back-up car.

After getting Canowski settled, Ecklund and Johnson returned to
their places in the car with her, and they turned around and headed
back into D.C.

Scully pulled out her cellular phone even before they got out of
Baltimore.  Skinner was unlikely to still be at the office at this
hour.  Some juggling of the papers she was carrying produced her
address book, and she dialed Skinner's home number.  Her phone was
digital, and as safe as any mode of communication could be.  Her
apartment and every personal possession she routinely carried on
her person had been scrutinized closely at the beginning of the
investigation to determine if she were being electronically
monitored.  They had found nothing from that particular search,
although a similar search involving Mulder had unearthed a
sophisticated electronic device which had immediately been
forwarded to the FBI's lab for further analysis.

"Yes?"

It was Skinner.  He was at home, but sounded as crisply
professional as though she'd rung his office.  "Hello, sir?"

"Agent Scully?  Why are you calling..." he paused, "at ten in the
evening?"

"I ran down the lead on the drug used to sedate the Secret Service
agents, sir."  She didn't wait for him to read her the lecture on
following orders and not going off on her own.  She'd heard it
often enough from when he'd given it to Mulder.  "It is made by one
company, for one customer.  Mr. Canowski, the man in charge of the
Baltimore division of Allied Pharmaceuticals, gave me the address
of the customer."

"And?"

"During our interview, Mr. Canowski seemed agitated, as though he
were hiding something.  I believe that this customer is not an
ordinary, legitimate business, but rather a link, either direct or
indirect, to Agent Mulder."

There was a long pause this time, and Scully held her breath.  He
was either going to reject her idea out of hand, or trust what was
little more than unsupported intuition on her part, and act.

"What do you want me to do, Agent Scully?"

She let out the breath.  "I took Mr. Canowski into protective
custody.  His customer should not be immediately aware that we know
about them.  I have the address to which the drug was shipped.  I
would like to investigate as soon as possible, to maximize the
probability of our finding useful information before it can be
destroyed."

"Very well, Agent Scully.  Do you have the address?"

"Yes, sir."  She pulled the paper out of her pocket and read it off
to him.  "I'm on my way in to D.C. right now, sir."

"Good.  I'll meet you there."

"What are you planning to do, sir?"

"We'll talk about it there."

"Yes, sir."

After she put the phone back into her jacket pocket, Scully sat
motionless in the car, unable to focus on anything but the thoughts
racing through her head.  They had a lead.  The question was, how
were they to take best advantage of it without potentially
compromising Mulder's safety?

****

He couldn't tell what time or what day it was.  There were no
windows in the room, and the constant fluorescent lights denied him
any sense of day or night.  If he'd had his watch, it would have
been easier.  If they'd been feeding him on any sort of schedule,
it would have been easier.  But they didn't seem to care about such
niceties of the jailer routine, attending to him when he loudly
demanded it and not before.  At least the food looked like it had
come out of a vending machine; cans of soda pop, bags of chips,
candy bars.  His usual sort of food.  It would have been unbearable
if they'd fed him vegetables.  Just think of the humiliation in
telling Scully he'd actually eaten health food.

Despite the lack of solid routines or any other clue to judge the
passing of time, Mulder felt fairly certain he'd been here for
several days.  The guards had changed too many times, switching off
between four different faces.

And yet, he still had not seen any sign of a mastermind behind his
kidnapping, no motive, no hint of what might lie in store.  It was
inexplicable, and puzzling.

Across the room from where he sat leaning against the wall, the
door opened.  Mulder regarded it warily, but didn't bother trying
to get up or trying to rush the person entering.  He had attacked
the guards more than once when he had first arrived here, and
eventually put it off as not possible.  They were bigger, stronger,
and better trained than he was.  All he was doing was giving them
some exercise.  Better to wait and bide his time, saving his
strength in case a real opportunity to do something came up.

"Agent Mulder.  You never could keep your nose out of things that
didn't concern you."

Mulder recognized the man instantly.  Cancerman.  The heart and
soul of the Consortium.  "It's a big nose.  Makes things
difficult."

The man flicked an ash from his cigarette contemptuously at Mulder,
and turned to the guard.  "Bring him."

The guards -- two of them -- came in and grabbed him by the arms,
forcing him to his feet, and then walking him out of the room and
down the hall.  "This just gets better and better," Mulder said.
"You ought to market this to Disneyland.  It'd make a great ride."

They ignored him.  He was taken down the hall to an elevator, then
from there down another succession of halls, through a small room
filled with tiny cubicles and then out into what looked like a
manufacturing floor for a plant facility.  What they made there, or
had made there, was a mystery to Mulder.  The floor was covered
with tile, much easier for his guards to drag him along, and mostly
empty, with scars in the floor paying mute witness to where tables
or equipment had once stood.

"Set him down here."  The smoking man stood by a long white-topped
table.  Another man, gowned and masked, was standing next to him.

Without any more warning than that, Mulder was jerked off his feet
and placed ungently on the table.  His head hit hard, and he laid
there dazed for a moment, before mumbling, "You could've just said
'please'."

"Shall we dispense with the small talk?" the smoking man asked.

"Since it's you asking, why not?" Mulder said, taking a moment to
look for the guards who had brought him in.  Damn.  They were still
there, one at the foot of the table, one off to the side.  Escape
didn't look like much of an option.

"In a moment, you'll be much more cooperative, Mr. Mulder."

"Bringing out the big guns now?  Why'd you wait so long?"

Surprisingly enough, the smoking man answered the question.  "The
Presidential ban on travel made it difficult to get our expert
specialist in these matters from Idaho to here where we needed him.
You should remember him.  Or perhaps not.  In any case,
inconvenient questions would have been asked if we had brought him
directly here.  Questions which would not have arisen if you had
been removed before this."

"You brought this on yourself," Mulder said, wondering what ban on
travel the other man was referring to, but dismissing the issue as
unimportant at the moment.  "If the truth had not been covered up,
none of this would have ever needed to take place."

"What is truth?" the smoking man asked.  "Our actions have always
been for the good of the people.  Your actions have been rash and
ill-considered at best.  It really is a pity that Skinner offered
himself up as the sacrifice for Agent Scully's life.  Having you
willingly under our control then would have simplified matters
considerably.  As it is... you will live to regret your rash
actions in attempting to upset our plans."  He smiled slightly.
"I'll make sure of it."

Skinner?  As a sacrifice for Scully?  What was he talking about?
Both his and Scully's lives had been frequently in danger due to
the kind of work they did.  There was her cancer, of course, but
that had gone into remission on its own...  Mulder looked up at the
other man, a sudden ugly suspicion growing in his head.  "You
bastard.  You saved her life because it amused you.  Because it was
worth something to you.  You could have saved the rest of them too,
and you didn't."

"They weren't worth anything alive as Agent Scully was.  They were
worth more as research subjects."

Mulder started to struggle, and the smoking man nodded to the man
in white standing behind Mulder.  "Go ahead with the procedure.
He'll be more cooperative with the drug in his system."

The man in white nodded.  "Hold his head still," he ordered,
looking at the guard.  He held up a hypodermic and checked it.

The guard closest to Mulder obeyed, stepping up and standing behind
Mulder, grabbing his head firmly.  The man in white tapped the vein
on the side of Mulder's neck, and inserted the needle, then
depressed the plunger.

"I really hate needles," Mulder said weakly, as the man in white
nodded again to the guard, and his head was released.

Whatever he had been injected with had been injected into his
jugular.  The effect was almost immediate, and powerful.  He felt
woozy, and it was difficult to concentrate on anything.  The
ceiling above him swam in front of his eyes.

"Shall we begin?"

A noise interrupted whatever he had been about to say next, a
distant crash, and then the more distinct sound of a gunshot.

The smoking man looked irritated.  He dropped his cigarette and
crushed it out with the heel of his shoe, then pulled a cellular
phone out of his jacket pocket.  He flipped it open and punched a
number.  "What's going on?  Who?  Right.  Get two men to cover the
back.  Slow them down, but don't directly resist.  Yes, follow the
contingency plan."

He closed the phone and looked down at Mulder.  "This is a distinct
inconvenience."  He turned to the guards.  "Take him out the back.
We'll..."

A sudden clatter interrupted his speech.  Mulder was too
disoriented to focus clearly on the action.  Gunshots were
exchanged; he was still fairly sure he could distinguish that
sound.  The movement of people around him was nothing but a
confused blur, and his head was spinning too badly for him to be
able to move, even though moving seemed like the smartest thing he
could do right now.  The bullets seemed awfully close.  But,
despite his muddleness, voices came through perfectly clear.

"FBI!  Don't move!"

A little bit late for that, Mulder thought, and then couldn't
decide why he had thought that.

Hands grabbed him by the shoulders, dragging him upright.  The
action caused Mulder to feel violently nauseous, and he resisted.
The person dragging him didn't even seem to notice.  Was he that
feeble?

Probably.

He was pushed to his feet, and Mulder dimly recognized that he was
being taken out of there, his body being used as a shield as the
chief ringleader escaped with the evidence.  Only this time, the
evidence was himself.  And Mulder did have a very clear memory of
what the Consortium did with evidence.  They made it disappear.

With a major effort of will, Mulder wrenched himself out of the
grasp of the man holding him.  He wanted to make a daring getaway,
to get out of there, to accomplish *something*, but all he
succeeded in was throwing himself to the floor.  The shock of
hitting the hard tile nearly knocked him unconscious, but his
drug-induced limpness kept him from serious injury, and he laid
there on his side as still more shots rang out.

He saw the man who had been holding him crumple to the ground and
felt a small sense of triumph.

Then, as abruptly as it had began, the gunfire stopped.  He could
hear voices behind him.  In all the fog surrounding his
perceptions, only sound came through clearly.

"Persistent little fucker."

"Yeah.  Let's get the boss and get out of here."

Footsteps stopped beside him, and he saw, but didn't understand the
image, as one of the men knelt down by the body lying in front of
him.  "Shit."

"Is he dead?"

"No.  Not yet."

"God."

There was more noise from behind him, Mulder noted in the analytic
portion of his mind that seemed to be recording everything, even as
it stood detached from what was happening to him.  Coming from the
direction of the first shots, it sounded like more gunfire,
indistinct shouting and even a muffled explosion.

"Shit.  They're here.  We have to get out."

"What about him?"

"Leave him.  He's almost dead.  He'll only slow us down.  Where's
the doc?"

"Gone already, looks like.  Not so stupid after all."

And then they were gone.  Mulder stared ahead of him, looking down
the floor at the body lying there.  He knew he should be concerned
about this, knew he should be doing *something*, but it was so hard
to think of what.  Without being able to do anything about it,
Mulder watched the Cancerman dying in front of him, all of his
answers slipping away with each choking breath.

The labored breathing continued for what seemed like a long time,
and Mulder listened to it, until it finally stopped, and the only
sound in the room with him was the hum of the fluorescent lighting.

The silence was broken by more shouting, voices he didn't
recognize, but saying familiar things.

"FBI!"

"Nothing over here!"

"Clear!"

A figure bent over him, touching his fingers to Mulder's neck.
"Get the paramedics!  We've got a live one!"  He crawled over
Mulder to the now dead man across from him.  "Another body."

The man came back to him and bent over him.  "You'll be all right,
Agent Mulder.  We'll get you medical attention right away."

Mulder's eyes focused automatically on the closest thing to him,
staring at the man's gun.  He understood the words that had been
spoken to him, but they didn't seem to matter.  Nothing really
mattered.  He was alive; he was about to get medical attention, the
man had said, but it didn't register at all.  His mind was still
struggling to comprehend the most important fact of all, the
meaning of the dead body lying across from him, half-empty pack of
cigarettes falling out of one pocket, but he couldn't process it,
couldn't do anything but lie there and listen.

****

Scully stood back behind the second squad, surrounded by Secret
Service agents, fretting.  They were at the manufacturing facility
specified in the address which Canowski had given her.  The
building had once housed a company known as Quardex Engineering,
but had been left empty when the company dissolved in the wake of
the fall-out from the Wall Street blunder early in the undeclared
war between the U.S. and Japan.  A skillful virus planted in Wall
Street's tallying computers had bollixed all trades on one day,
leaving them essentially unrecorded.  The market had been in
freefall that day; only the swift action of the then-President
Durling had stopped it, by first closing the markets, and then by
declaring all trades after noon on that fateful day to be void, and
restarting the markets at that point.  It had saved the American
economy.

But it had been too late for Quardex, which had died at around 11
a.m., and could not be resurrected.

No one knew yet whether Quardex had belonged to the Consortium or
not.  Scully didn't care.  That could be sorted out later.  The
important issue was whether Mulder was in there, and if so, could
they get him out alive?

Skinner had almost magically produced a search warrant for the
building, based on the assumption that crucial evidence might be
there.  Scully had known that that was the best she could hope for,
that actually finding Mulder there was, if not unlikely, then
certainly wishful thinking on her part.  She knew that whatever
*was* there was important, and that was about all.  She had
convinced Skinner of that, and then he had done the rest, based
solely on his trust in her.  Quietly forming a back-up team who
knew only that they were about to investigate a possible crime
scene involving people who might be armed and dangerous, he had
expedited matters until, not more than twelve hours after the
original lead, they were standing here in front of the abandoned
Quardex building.  The search of the building had gone quickly; the
almost immediate armed reaction that they had gotten to their
initial probe had alerted them that this was definitely more than
just a wild goose chase.  And now all that remained for Scully to
do was to stand here, waiting in the cool morning air, to see what
results her investigation into the supposedly trivial matter of
identifying the manufacturer of a drug would bring.

An FBI agent, clad in the same protective clothing that the rest of
them were wearing, hurried over to Scully.  "They've found him.
He's alive and conscious, but not responsive.  The paramedics have
been called."

She nodded tightly.  "Can I go in?"

Meyer cleared his throat.  He had been called by Ecklund and
alerted to the risks that their protectee was running.  Ecklund had
been more than happy to pass the responsibility of running
interference with her off to him.  "If the building has not yet
been cleared, it isn't safe for you..."

Scully shot a quick glare at him.  "My job is not about staying
safe.  If Mulder is in there and in need of medical assistance, I
need to be with him.  No one else is better qualified to assess his
condition and render medical aid until the paramedics arrive."

It looked for a moment like Meyer would grab Scully and physically
put her back into the car where they could keep her safe.

The FBI agent broke the deadlock.  "We think we've gotten the
building clear.  Teams are still reporting in, but we haven't found
any more live gunmen."

"Then I'm going in," Scully said, and went before anyone could stop
her.

She was recognized and directed through the building to the room
where Mulder had been found, the Secret Service at her heels.  The
stark whiteness of the room hit her at once.  The floor, ceiling
and walls were all in shades of white.

She saw a knot of people at one end of the room, and made her way
there.  They parted for her, and she saw Mulder, lying on his side,
back towards her.  Beyond him, two agents were working over another
body, their actions clearly telegraphed as forensics.  In contrast,
the people around Mulder had stances that virtually screamed 'Stay
away'.  The Secret Service agents.  They had found their protectee,
and they were not going to allow any further harm to come to him.

Scully recognized Sullivan, crouching down next to Mulder.  He was
the only one of the people around Mulder to be down next to him.
The others were all on their feet, ready for anything, now that it
was too late for them to be of any use.

"Agent Scully," Sullivan acknowledged.

"How is he?" Scully asked, kneeling down and checking Mulder's
eyes.  They were open, and he focused on her when she came into his
field of view, which was good, but his pupils were considerably
more dilated than they should have been in the bright light of the
room.

"He hasn't said anything.  No sign of major injury."

Scully was still assessing Mulder's condition, feeling for his
pulse, then tilting his head more to the side as she took in the
needle puncture on the side of his neck.  Putting two and two
together was not difficult.  "He appears to have been drugged."

The Secret Service agents standing around them moved, letting in a
team of paramedics with a stretcher.  Scully quickly gave them a
rundown of what she had already observed of Mulder's condition,
then watched as they began to do the same things on their own.

"How is he?"  The question came from behind her.  It was Skinner,
his gruff voice unmistakable.

Scully stood up, brushing off her clothes.  "He appears to have
been drugged.  I don't know with what.  Other than that, there
doesn't seem to be anything wrong, although he may have bruising or
other minor injuries.  He seems to be generally in good condition."

Skinner looked relieved.  "I'm glad."  He nodded to the body behind
them.  "I'm sure you recognize that man, Agent Scully."

She moved to get a better look at the body.  The agents were almost
done, and she finally saw the man's face, splashed with blood, but
still recognizable.  "That's... I can't believe it."  She didn't
feel anything, which was strange.  She expected to feel something;
this man had been at the root of too many dark occurrences for her
to not feel *some*thing, but there was nothing.  Just a cold
emptiness, no satisfaction at all.

"It's a shame that medical help didn't arrive sooner," Skinner
observed.  "The bullet itself didn't kill him; the bleeding did.
Arterial wound."

"A shame, sir?"

"There's no one I'd rather have brought to justice than him, Agent
Scully."

She nodded slowly.  That was believable.  And she rather agreed.
"It seems wrong somehow that he escaped."

"Or very right.  He escaped all retribution in life, and when he
finally could not avoid it, found his final retreat from it in
death."

Scully turned away from the sight, and went back to Mulder, now on
the stretcher.  Sullivan was standing on the other side, near
Mulder's head, watching the paramedics closely.  He certainly took
'Trust No One' to heights that even Mulder hadn't imagined.

When the paramedics had Mulder secured to their satisfaction, they
moved to wheel the stretcher out to the waiting ambulance.  Scully
followed them, off to yet another hospital to watch Mulder recover
yet again, waiting for his returning mental competency to inform
him of the anticlimactic ending to their search for the truth.
 

-the end-
 

---mercutio@europa.com---
"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true.  You may have to work for it, however."
--Richard S. Bach, "Illusions"
 
 
 

Epilogue:
 

It was a lazy summer afternoon in D.C.; the birds were chirping
madly, the temperature hung at a humid, sweltering 92 degrees, and
the sky was the haze of light blue and cloud that passes for clear
and sunny conditions in a large city.   All of which translated in
terms of the J. Edgar Hoover Building's air conditioning to a brisk
winter morning.  Mulder kept his jacket on.

Sullivan looked perfectly comfortable as he stood in front of
Mulder's office, despite the vent on the wall right above his head.
"Goodbye, Agent Mulder.  It's been a pleasure working with you as
always."

"So the President finally agrees I'm no longer at risk, does he?
About time."  In Mulder's mind, it had been a close call as to
whether he was more at risk with or without the Secret Service's
protection after the news of the abortive assassination attempt on
the President came out.  That had been kept very quiet for public
consumption, but with the acting Director of the FBI personally
involved, it was a hard thing to keep from the Bureau.  A Secret
Service agent, apparently under deep cover, had actually worked his
way into a position of great trust, guarding the President.  His
contact had instructed him to kill the President, an order which
had come at a time of maximum confusion for the United States,
right at the height of the panic over the Ebola virus.  However,
the incident had been averted due to some luck and some excellent
investigative work on the part of the Secret Service.  Fortunately,
the news had come after Mulder was already in the hospital and thus
not in a wonderful bargaining position.  If the assassination
attempt had occurred earlier, Mulder might very well have done his
best to get out of having Secret Service protection at all.  Which
would have led to precisely the same result vis-a-vis his
kidnapping by the Consortium.  An irony at best.

"Actually, I believe it had more to do with your constant whining,
Agent Mulder," Sullivan quipped.  He was no longer on duty, and
could allow himself to relax from the stress of always being on
guard from something that never happened.  Having to lead a life of
constant boredom, always maintaining readiness for that one moment
of terror that could come at any time, did not make for an
ulcer-free future.

"Me?  Whine?  I don't whine."

Scully walked in at that moment of the conversation, for once not
followed by her own minders, and not having heard any of what had
been said.

Mulder looked over at Scully for support.  "Tell him I'm right,
Scully."

She glanced between them, not saying anything.  As Mulder started
to squirm uncomfortably, she said, "You're right, Mulder."

"Aha!" she heard as she made for her office.  Scully shut the door
firmly behind her.  She did *not* want to know what that
conversation was about.

A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door, to be followed
shortly thereafter by Mulder himself.  "Am I forgiven yet, Scully?"

"Did you do something?"  There was a resounding silence from
Mulder.  She took pity on him.  "Yes, you're forgiven."

"Saint Scully washes away the sins of the damned," he said jauntily
enough that it wasn't *quite* blasphemous.

She gave him a steady look.  "I believe that, if anything, I'm the
patron saint of the paranoid, Mulder."

He sat down in the chair in front of her desk, favoring her with a
grin.  "Oh, that you are, Scully.  That you are."

"Did you actually have something you wanted to talk to me about, or
is this just a clever ploy on your part to avoid work?  After
spending time in the hospital, and all morning with psych and
personnel, I would think you would *want* some work to do."

Mulder slouched back in his seat.  "Tell me what happened with our
investigative team.  Or did you just have the Bureau put me through
two weeks of drug rehab in order to secretly take over while I was
gone?"

Scully resisted the urge to roll her eyes over Mulder's hyperbole.
Two weeks of drug rehabilitation indeed.  "You didn't read my
memos, did you?"

"Memos?"

"Mulder..." she said, drawling out his name in an accusing fashion.
"I visited you every other day.  And left those little pieces of
paper with you.  What did you think they were for?"

"Making paper airplanes?"

She really couldn't be angry with him when he gave her that
little-boy grin.  But she fought to keep a stern look on her face
nonetheless.  Mustn't let think Mulder think he could get away with
this kind of thing.  Even if this *was* his first day back at the
office.  "Did you look at any of them before turning them into
flying missiles, Mulder?"

"I prefer the term 'IFOs', Scully."

She definitely wasn't going to get a straight answer out of him.
Nothing new there.  "We've been reassigned."

"No surprise there.  When are they moving us back to the basement?"

"They aren't.  The X-Files have been elevated in status."  She gave
him a Mona Lisa smirk.  "Eagan -- you do remember him, don't you?
-- and another agent, as yet unassigned, will be investigating
them."

Mulder sat up straight suddenly, his face taut.  "They can't do
that!  Who made this decision?"  He threw himself out of his chair
with sudden energy.  "I knew it.  I knew they'd do this.  As soon
as we finished playing their little game, they take it all away.
What are they going to do with us?  Reassign us to a resident
agency somewhere in the wilds of North Dakota?  Put us on wiretap
surveillance for the next ten years?  Force us to teach at
Quantico?"

"Mulder, calm down," Scully said.  "If you'd read the memos..."

"What, Scully?  If I'd read them, I'd've had more time to lodge a
formal protest, is that it? More useless paper to fill up our
files?  No one would read something like that, or if they did,
they'd ignore it altogether.  You know that."

"Sit down, Mulder."

The steely words cut through his diatribe and Mulder stopped,
looking at her.  "What?"

"Just sit down."

He didn't like that tone at all.  Almost meekly, he complied.
"It's something worse than that, isn't it?  That's why you didn't
tell me until now.  You didn't want me to relapse."

"Mulder.  Shut up.  For one minute.  Just shut up."

Now he *really* didn't like the look on her face.  He closed his
mouth and spread his hands, as if to say, 'Whatever you want,
Scully'.

She gave him a long look to determine if he really were going to
comply with her demand.  "The X-Files have been reassigned.  To us.
Eagan and whoever ends up working with him will be reporting
directly to us, along with whoever we decide we need.  Inspector
Maddox has requested the opportunity to work with us on a more
permanent basis; Personnel is still trying to straighten that out.
However, Nelson and Sharp have returned to Chicago and won't be
coming back."  Scully was fairly sure that it was because Nelson
was unwilling to work with her, but had no proof.  "We have a
number of agents already beating down our door for the opportunity
to be involved in our investigations.  Which *also* was in the
paperwork I gave you and you failed to read.  *We're* still
reporting to Skinner, but our own task is the investigation into
what remains of the Consortium, and the technology and information
that was in their possession or concealed by them.  And we have the
full support of both the Assistant Director and the acting
Director."  Scully looked straight at him.  "It's still the
X-Files, Mulder, just the part that you were most interested in all
along.  UFOs, advanced technology and conspiracy theories."

He didn't say anything.  Scully watched him for a moment, and then
it occurred to her that he might still think she was going to do
something to him if he opened his mouth.  "You can talk now; it's
all right, Mulder."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Mulder said, a wounded note in his voice.

"I thought I *had* told you."

"Oh."  Before she could further harass him on the subject, Mulder
fled to the dubious safety of his office.  There was a piece of
paper lying on his desk that didn't belong there.  It was probably
a Scully trick.  After the scene that had just happened in her
office, he wasn't about to throw this one away.  While folding it
into a F-4 and tossing at her had its appeal, this one was probably
about his car being towed or something equally annoying.  He picked
the memo up and read it.  Then read it again.  When it still
persisted in saying the same thing, he sat down in his chair and,
not releasing the memo, dialed the phone.

"Scully."

"Hi, Scully.  You'll never guess what was on my desk."

"What was that, Mulder?"
 
"It's a memo."

"And?"

"It's from the Deputy Director of Operations, CIA."

There was a moment's silence.  "I don't think the CIA is sending
out memos now, informing people in advance that they're planning to
assassinate them.  It's probably not a threat."

"That's not it, Scully."

"Then what *is* it?"  Her tone was edging over into menacing.

Mulder couldn't keep the stunned feeling he had out of his voice.
"It's a request from Mary-Pat Foley, inquiring as to the status of
our investigation into the alleged advanced technology in the
possession of the United States military forces and requesting that
we allow members of her department to serve as observers in any
investigations of material evidence."

"So?  It's a bit unusual; the Intelligence Directorate is the
section of the CIA that should be involved, if anyone, not
Operations, but..."

"She wants a ride in a UFO, Scully."

"Mulder, that's absurd," Scully said, and hung up the phone.

As Mulder set the receiver down, he could have sworn he could hear
muffled laughter coming from Scully's office.
 

---mercutio@europa.com---
"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make
it true.  You may have to work for it, however."
--Richard S. Bach, "Illusions"