Author e-mail: SpearmntXP@aol.com

<Prologue>

Annapolis, Maryland
11:14 PM
December 4
 
 *If there's one thing Mulder's taught me in five years,* mused Scully, *it's
how to pack.*
 *Quickly.*
 In fact, she'd learned never to unpack. The open canvas tote sat ready in her
closet, preloaded with underwear, toiletries, a couple casual jeans-and-T-
shirt combinations and one heavy-duty flannel shirt.
 With Mulder, she never knew where she'd end up.
 She often never knew where she was starting, even when he slapped that
Bureau-issue airline ticket or car-rental voucher down in front of her with a
lopsided, laconic grin.
 *Dudley, Arkansas.*
 *Cheney, Texas.*
 *Home, Pennsylvania.*
 Places that just weren't on your average Rand McNally map.
 Scully pulled out the garment bag and unzipped it open on her bed. She
grabbed the first four business suits she saw, all still in their plastic dry-
cleaning cocoons, and slid them into the bag.
 Pawing through the shoes on the closet floor, she took the first four pairs
she could make. She tossed them on top of the suits, along with a pair of
sneakers. She found her hiking boots and held them for a moment, thinking.
 *Will I need these?*
 She dropped the boots on the closet floor and zipped up the garment bag,
checking the bedside clock as she did so.
 11:21 p.m.
 *Not much time.*
 Scully looked around her bedroom. It had always been free of clutter; but in
recent years, it'd become spartan. She was never here. She couldn't remember
how many nights she'd spent in her own bed instead of on a lump-filled, odd-
smelling excuse for a mattress in one of the countless motels strung through
her life.
 *Sam Houston Motor Lodge.*
 *Victory Falls Drive-In.*
 On her dresser were three framed photographs, each held by a similar silver
frame. Ahab, a couple of years before he died. Melissa, during a long-ago
Christmas celebration. And Mom, Charlie and Bill, six years ago, during one of
the rare instances both Navy men were home.
 Scully gingerly picked each photograph up, handling them like glass, sliding
each deep into her tote bag, between thickly packed clothes.
 Without the photos, Scully thought the room looked truly empty, despite its
full complement of furniture: bed, bureau, nightstands and lamps.
 *I'll have to send for the rest. Or sell it somehow.*
 Her cell phone, lying beside her luggage on the bed, trilled.
 She knew it was him.
 "I should have shut it off," she muttered to herself, sitting down on the
bed.
 It trilled again, seeming louder, more insistent this time.
 *What will I tell him?*
 She picked up the phone, bit her lower lip, tried to think.
 The phone shouted at her, and she stabbed the TALK button.
 "What the hell's going on?" Mulder yelled from the earpiece. She could hear
the swish-splash of other cars plowing through the rain on the highway. He was
en route.
 She took a deep breath, surprised at how ragged it sounded.
 "Don't go anywhere," he said.
 She looked at the clock. 11:25. She *had* to go. She kept the phone to her
ear.
 "I'm on my way, at your exit. Stay there."
 *I can't see him.*  "Mulder-" she began.
 He'd already hung up.
 
 "Goddammit, Scully, goddammit." When he'd left his office, it was a litany,
something he whispered to himself in the elevator. By now, it'd become a
battle cry; he shouted the phrase at a motorist who cut him off at the foot of
the off-ramp.
 He shouted at himself.
 He should've known.
 He'd kicked her out of the office around nine that evening. They'd become so
immersed in the Doyle case that they'd fallen behind on their other paperwork.
A common occurrence--they were always behind on paperwork--but now dangerously
so, enough to get a U.S. attorney on Skinner's back. Consequently, they were
taking a short time-out to finish loose ends on other affidavits and 302s that
had piled up in their in-box. In her typical fashion, Scully had attacked the
manila-folder mountain, categorizing and classifying the appropriate
documents, completing the forms and reports and bundling them back up in their
own red tape.
 *Rigid, but wonderfully so.*
 Mulder made his decision when he looked across his desk at her. She was
tabulating some late expense reports, wrist-deep in motor-lodge receipts and
airline-ticket stubs. A runaway bang of auburn hair dangled near her eye, and
he could see the very tip of her tongue peeking out from between her pursed
lips.
 He must've been staring, because she looked up. Her blue eyes arrested him.
 "Go home, Scully," he said, reaching across, gently brushing the errant lock
back into place. Her eyes followed his hand.
 "But these expense reports-" she began.
 "Can wait until tomorrow."
 "No, they can't," she said softly.
 "Yes, they can. Get some sleep." Her face shone with a light film of sweat.
 "Are you feeling all right? Is anything wrong?" He placed the back of his
hand against her forehead.
 For a split second, her eyes cut away from his, and he then knew what came
next.
 "I'm fine."
 He narrowed his eyes in disbelief.
 "No, really." She took his hand from her forehead, gently squeezing it. "I
am. Just tired."
 "Then get out of here. See you tomorrow," he said.
 She nodded, gathering some papers. He flipped open a file folder and began
signing a final batch of requisition forms.
 "Mulder?"
 He snapped his head up. She was in her raincoat, one hand on the doorknob,
the other on her briefcase handle, her mouth partly open and wrestling with a
word.
 Somewhere in Mulder's mind, an alarm bell went off.
 He began to stand, reaching toward the coat rack. "Why don't I-"
 "No." She smiled wanly. "Never mind. Good night, Mulder."
 Her eyes dropped to the floor as she closed the door behind her.
 Mulder thought she was going home to a hot bath and bed.
 Instead, she had gone upstairs and laid her badge and gun on Skinner's desk.
 So when the Assistant Director had called down to ask why, Mulder forgot to
breathe for a moment.
 Just one moment. He then hung up, grabbed his coat and car keys.
 *I should've known.*
 *This is my fault.*

*I almost lost it when he touched me,* Scully thought as she rifled her own
desk. There was no time left to be neat. She yanked open drawers, dumped them
onto the floor, fishing out disks and letters and other personal documents and
thrusting them haphazardly into her briefcase. The mess stayed where it lay.
 Throughout the day, she'd maintained her composure-with difficulty, but she
had. Of course, it'd helped that she'd spent half the day hiding in the
SciCrime pathology lab, examining and re-examining the Doyle case evidence for
hours, stalling.
 But she couldn't let him know anything was different, anything was wrong, and
she had found him around lunchtime. She'd made her voice steady as her heart
jackhammered.
 She'd looked him squarely in the eye as they conversed.
 *This is all for the best,* she'd kept telling herself.
 But when he'd reached across and brushed back her hair, her throat had
swelled shut.
 *I'll never feel him do that again.*
 It was a little thing, but it was Mulder's little things she cherished most.
 The hand in the small of her back, the occasional kiss on her forehead, the
wink following a joke that he knew only she'd get-all tiny glimpses of himself
that he showed only her.
 When she left, she had turned ready to tell him everything that happened the
previous night-start to finish, damn the consequences. They'd figure out what
to do.
 Together, they'd always figured out what to do.
 But by leaving, she would give him something he'd never give himself.
 *All quests have martyrs,* she thought. *This one had too many. Samantha,
Melissa.*
 *Emily.*
 "Maybe I can be the last," she muttered.
 Her coat lay draped across her desk chair. She rummaged in its pocket for the
only thing she had taken from their office.
 Scully withdrew a large bar magnet and placed it on her computer's hard
drive.
 She snapped closed the latches on her briefcase. That's it. Checking her
watch, she took a deep breath-and frowned.
 *It still smells like smoke in here.*
 Scully was rummaging under the sink for the Lysol when she heard the car door
slam.
 
 Mulder double-parked outside Scully's building and sprinted for the front
door. A woman with a bag of groceries was standing outside, fumbling with her
keys.
 "C'mon, c'mon," said Mulder.
 "Hold your horses," she grumbled. "Who do you think you are?"
 Mulder pulled out his badge.
 She sniffed.
 Mulder opened his coat to display his holstered pistol.
 The woman became a little quicker with the keys.
 The door opened and Mulder brushed past her, charging down the hallway. He
pounded on Scully's door, rapid-fire knocks, as if his hand were spasming.
 "Go away, Mulder."
 "Whatever I did, Scully, I'll fix it. Just let me in to talk."
 A long pause. "No." She'd moved closer to the door, though; he could still
clearly hear her voice, softer now but still wrapped around the unwavering
tone she used to read perps their rights.
 "You've convicted me of something in absentia, Scully, tell me what it is."
 "Why does it have to be about you, Mulder? *Always* about you."
 *Something's not right,* he thought. Her voice was a little hoarse, a little
shrill, worn out and trying not to wave a white flag.
 "I'm not holding this conversation through a door," he said, digging into his
pocket for his key ring.
 
 Scully sat on the floor, her back to the closed door, arms hugging her knees.
 *Another minute, and I would've been out of here.*
 She knew he'd blame himself, the last thing she wanted. *Always about him.*
 But when she heard the jangle of his keys, her eyes narrowed and her jaw set.
 *Don't do it, Mulder.*
 He'd rarely come in without asking permission. Except if he was in danger,
like the time he hid in her dark bedroom while the rest of the world thought
he was dead. Or the other time, with Eddie van Blundht-he of the silent
"h"-when he thought *she* was in danger.
 *Aren't you?*
 Scully sighed and began to move away from the door. Their relationship,
undefined and unusual as it was, still had rules, one of which was that she
meant no. But Mulder always shattered rules if he felt they imprisoned the
truth-a perseverance that she loved.
 *How ironic he now uses it as a weapon against me.*
 But just as she opened her mouth to warn Mulder, the jangling stopped.
 A long pause. She found herself holding her breath.
 She jumped a little when her cell phone rang.
 
 He didn't speak for a moment, just listening to her breathe on the other end.
 The night before last, he listened to her make the same noises while she
slept, air skating across slightly parted lips.
 "Is it me?" he asked.
 A deep breath that hitched in a couple spots. "Yes and no."
 "Which parts are yes?"
 "All of them."
 "So which parts are no?"
 "All of them. It's complicated."
 Mulder leaned back against the door, closing his eyes. Over the past few
nights, he had half-slept through the same recurring dream: sinking into a
deep pool of thick black oil, crying out for help, and seeing Scully standing
on a ledge above him, reaching out.
 *Take my hand,* she says. *Let me help.*
 And each dream ended the same way.
 He takes her hand. And pulls. Hard enough to drag her into the pool. Her eyes
widen a little in surprise. But she doesn't say a word as she sinks with him.
 Mulder winced as he remembered. A tear leaked from the corner of his eye.
 *I've taken away so much from you, Scully. You could've been a doctor,
director of the FBI.*
 *I probably killed Melissa.*
 *I almost killed you.*
 She'd be safer away from him.
 "Mulder?" she asked. Her concerned voice: words hanging off their question
marks, normally accompanied by her hand around his, a gentle squeeze. *Take my
hand.*
 "Not this time," he muttered.
 "What?"
 "You said it's complicated, but it's simple. It just wasn't supposed to end
this way."
 He heard her draw in breath, almost a gasp.
 "I love you, Scully," he said. "And I'm sorry."
 *But this is for the best,* he thought, hanging up.
 
 Scully's right hand flew to her mouth. The cell phone slid from her left,
clattered on the floor.
 *Did he just say-?*
 Her whole body hummed with a high-voltage buzz. An emotional straitjacket
tightened across her chest as she stood.
 With fumbling fingers she undid the chain-lock.
 She didn't know what would happen after the next sixty seconds, but she had
to see his flickering eyes, his stubbled jaw, his unkempt hair, one last time.
She had to smell that wonderful eau de Mulder, somewhere between Eternity and
sweat, the soft soap-and-musk smell the sheets of their bed had a couple
nights ago.
 Finally turning the switch in the proper direction, she threw back the dead-
bolt.
 She had to hold his hand.
 She had to kiss him goodbye.
 She yanked open the door. "I love-"
 He was gone.
 She charged down the hall, flung open the front door. But he'd already pulled
away. Two taillights blinked at her from the far end of the street, and then
disappeared.
 "I love you too, Mulder," she whispered.
 Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. She stood alone on the
sidewalk until two boys sped by on bikes.
 "Hurry up, we're going to be late," shouted one to the other. "Mom'll kill
us."
 With a start, Scully twisted her wrist toward her.
 11:39 p.m.
 *I might still make it.*
 A teardrop splashed across the watch's glass face.
 
<1>
 
Three days earlier
December 1
The MCI Center, Washington
7:51 p.m.
 
 "Even *I* can't believe this," said Mulder. "Can you?"
 Scully just smiled.
 "These seats are awesome," Mulder half-shouted above the shrill sneaker
squeaks that rose from the basketball court's floor.
 She tried biting her lip but couldn't hold in a chuckle.
 "What?"
 "You," she said.
 "What?"
 She wanted to tell Mulder that he'd turned twelve, all drawn-out vowels and
firecracker eyes that flicked back and forth with undisguised glee from the
court to the rafters to his sunflower seed bag to her.
 But he looked so relaxed--more relaxed than she'd seen him for months--and
she wanted to revel in it, not ruin it. "Nothing, Mulder. Watch your game."
 "*Awesome seats.* Don't you think?"
 She shrugged. She hadn't been watching much of the back-and-forth on the
court just seven scant rows in front of her (but enough to know that his
beloved Knicks were up over the Wizards halfway through the second quarter,
32-25); she'd been more interested in watching Mulder smile, really smile, not
the lopsided smirk-and-wince she often got on the job but a real grin that
seemed to straighten out.
 She looked up at the scoreboard. *The clock's moving too fast.* For a pair
that seemed to live and breathe anomalies, tonight had been one they couldn't
explain. Mulder usually depleted the horde of sports tickets he acquired
somehow (a Lone Gunman had to be involved, Scully thought) as currency for the
black market of favors that was the FBI. But tonight he was left with two. For
his Knicks, of all teams. And for once on a Friday night, she wasn't knee-deep
in entrails in some formaldehyde-reeking autopsy bay, and he wasn't knee-deep
in decades-old files full of crabbed scribbles and blurry photos.
 *This is what normal people do on Friday nights.*
 And it was nice, just for a while, to pretend to be normal with Mulder, who
was now intensely concentrating on the game. "Shoot, shoot, shoot!" he shouted
as Ewing planted his feet outside the three-point line and flexed his body,
trying to fire off a shot. The Knick then changed his mind and passed
left--right into the hands of a speeding Wizard.
 "He should've shot," Mulder groaned.
 "No, he should've faked a left pass but then bounced it over to Camby in the
lane, who was open and could've laid it up for an easy two," Scully said.
 She swallowed her smile again and pretended to watch the game, basking in the
heat of Mulder's incredulous stare on her right cheek. She knew the look
without checking--a mix of surprise and awe and, somewhere behind the eyes,
something a little sexual. She first saw it when they were on a drydocked
boat, looking at some video footage from an underwater camera, and she
correctly identified an aircraft as a P-38 Mustang.
 *I just got really turned on,* he'd said.
 She never told him that she knew he'd react that way. Just like now.
 "So," said Mulder, "you played basketball."
 "Yes, I did. It's not inconceivable. What have you done with my partner, the
one who believes in extreme possibilities?" She looked at him, eyebrows
playfully arched. "In San Diego, my father installed a basketball net above
the garage door and the four of us used to play after school while we waited
for him to come home."
 "Did he play?"
 A collective wow rose from the crowd as the Wizard sank a trey from close to
half court. But Mulder's eyes remained focused on Scully, no longer flickering
but almost smoldering, more green than gold in the hazel now, and intensely
concentrating on her.
 *I just got very turned on.*
 What was happening here?
 "He and Mom," she said quietly. "She'd be on the boys' team, and he'd be with
Melissa and me. Sometimes he'd turn on the car lights so we could keep playing
after dark."
 Mulder's eyes grew cloudy for a moment, and he nodded, and in both Scully
inferred a lot: his alcoholic father, his two-timing mother and a missing
sibling. And now she knew why she loved seeing Mulder act like a 12-year-old-
because he'd never been one, not the kind that played basketball in the
driveway with his parents. He'd been the kind that went from house to house on
Martha's Vineyard, maybe riding his bike, maybe walking, handing out notices
he'd somehow, somewhere, managed to Xerox.
 She'd found one, once, in his office, buried in a folder.
 *MISSING,* it cried. *SAMANTHA MULDER. Age 8. Brown hair, brown eyes,
4-foot-7. Last seen in Chilmark. Please contact Fox Mulder.*
 He didn't trust his dad to take the phone call, even then.
 And now he was a 37-year-old who rarely smiled--and ate too many sunflower
seeds. He had been fishing his finger around the empty bag, looking for
stragglers; finding none, he crumpled it. "Want anything from the concession?"
 "No thanks," she said.
 "Something to drink?"
 "Nope."
 "You're a cheap date."
 "So this is a date?"
 She'd meant it as a joke, but the words gained weight as they fell from her
lips. Mulder wasn't simply a friend or a partner; he was *Mulder,* her other
half, the arms she knew would catch her when she fell, the hands into which
she could unhesitatingly place her soul without fear of damage.
 Sure, it was a bond that crackled with sex--a flicker when he'd reach across
a table to rub barbecue sauce from her face, a spark when her lips brushed
against his ear while she whispered something to him. She didn't find it
strange that the physicist in her was the one that often tried to explain her
attraction to Mulder, on all levels. *You ever wonder what positive and
negative ions feel like as they approach one another? Like you with him. That
sweet, frustrating tension that builds in your mind and body as you feel
yourself moving toward him--*
 But she knew ions made molecules when they collided; people, on the other
hand, often made messes. And she didn't want her and Mulder to do that. It
wasn't worth the risk.
 *Then why did that fall out of your mouth, Dana?*
 She had managed to continue looking at Mulder, whose eyes became a little
more gold. An amused look. Scully almost sighed.
 "You tell me, Scully," he said, turning back to the court. "Do you want it to
be?"
 *Oh, touche,* she thought--and then panic settled into her belly. What's my
next line?
 Angles began creeping back into Mulder's face, and his brow furrowed.
 "What's wrong?" she asked.
 Mulder stood. She followed his eyes.
 Play had stopped on the court. Ewing held the ball against his hip, towering
over a knot of referees. All of them stared at the seats across the court,
where one woman clad in soccer-mom wardrobe--sweatshirt and blue jeans,
scrunchie around a ponytail--appeared to part a sea of spectators, who were
shoving each other in a mad dash to get away from her.
 Paying no attention to the commotion she was causing, she moved toward a
phalanx of cops that had formed at the foot of the stands.
 Her left arm was draped lovingly across the chest of a preteen boy who was
marching in front of her.
 Her right arm held a .22-caliber pistol to the boy's right temple.
 As she reached the bottom of the stairs, Scully managed to get a good look at
the woman's face.
 "Oh my God," she said, standing up.
 "What?" Mulder turned toward her.
 But Scully had begun to brush past him, pulling out her badge as she moved
toward the stairs. "I know her," she said.
 
Mulder followed Scully as she elbowed and shouted her way through the flood of
panicked people trying to swim upstairs.
 She easily slipped through the crowd. *She might think it's the badge
talking,* Mulder mused.
 But he knew different. It was her eyes. When she wanted her way, they blazed.
 He could only remember vague snapshots of an emergency room in Alaska (one of
several global landmarks where he almost died; he often wondered if he should
set up a map, with pins marking the locations), but he remembered seeing her
eyes during one of the few moments he'd managed to struggle to the surface of
consciousness. She'd been shouting orders, something about his body
temperature. But her eyes flashed with fury.
 *The hottest flames are blue,* was the only thought he'd managed before
sinking back into the void.
 And the cop Scully was approaching was about to learn that.
 She tinned the Metropolitan Police officer. "I know her. She's Anne Doyle,
one of the deputy assistant attorney generals in antitrust at the Justice
Department."
 Mulder turned back to look at the woman, who had now stopped at center court,
surrounded by a loose ring of nervous security officers and, just beyond that,
another ring of television camera operators. In his mind, Mulder redressed the
woman in a conservative suit, put a gold choker around her neck, shook out the
ponytail and balanced a pair of cat's-eye spectacles on her nose, and she
became a front-page photo in a recent issue of *The Washington Post,* standing
behind the Attorney General.
 "We went to college together. Let me talk to her," Scully was explaining.
 The officer looked over Scully's head at Mulder.
 *Big mistake, chief,* Mulder thought.
 Scully reached up and pulled the officer's chin back toward her. "I was
speaking to you, Officer. You don't have a problem with that, do you?"
 He looked into her eyes.
 "No...ma'am," he said.
 Scully pushed past him and took two steps out into the circle.
 Mulder followed her, a step behind.
 
*What's the boy's name?* Scully couldn't remember. The last time she'd seen
 Anne had been at a party she'd attended right after she joined the Bureau,
back when she attended parties. Then, the boy had been a photo in a Anne's
wallet, four or five instead of the current twelve or thirteen. *Jason?  I
think it was Jason.*
 She took another hesitant step toward Anne, slowly lifting up her hands,
facing her palms out. "Anne?"
 The woman kept looking from one officer to another, frantically swiveling her
body and her boy, as if she were trying to find a wall to back up against. She
looked so much different than even her recent newspaper shots, Scully noted.
Her skin was drawn tight against her face, every muscle tense. Rivulets of
sweat flowed from her scalp, plastering her hair to her forehead. She shivered
like a just-struck tuning fork, and her eyelids were fully drawn back--like a
wild animal's.
 "Anne?" She had to shout to be heard above the crowd's din. "Anne? It's me,
Dana Scully. Remember me?"
 She looked at Scully, but didn't otherwise acknowledge her.
 "Anne, this is a friend of mine, Mulder." She could sense Mulder behind her,
to her right, letting her lead the way. Trusting her.
 Anne kept looking at Scully.
 "We're not going to hurt you, Anne. We just want--"
 Anne began screaming in a foreign language, machine-gunning Scully with
glottoral consonants. Saliva spewed from her mouth, pink with blood.
 She glanced over at Mulder.
 *Hebrew,* he mouthed, shaking his head a little from side to side: *Maybe.*
 She raised her eyebrows.
 He shook his head.
 The boy started to cry. "Mom, you're hurting me," he said.
 Scully took another step, now standing about three feet from Anne. "Jason?"
she asked. The boy looked over at her. "Jason, I'm Dana. I went to college
with your mom."
 "Make her stop," he said, sniffling.
 Anne spouted another hysterical tirade. Scully pursed her lips as she watched
the woman's gun hand begin to shake, rubbing the barrel back and forth against
her son's skull.
 Scully could feel her legs begin to shake. *Oh God, what do I do now?* She
quickly estimated the distance between her raised hands and Anne, knowing that
she had no chance of grabbing the gun before it went off.
 And in this crowded arena, no one dared to shoot Anne, not until they
evacuated the stands behind her-something they were trying to do right now..
 "Jason, do you know why your mom's doing this?" Scully asked.
 He shook his head. "She a-asked me if I wanted a pretzel and then the next
thing I know she's pulled out this gun and she's b-b-babbling at me-"
 "Do you understand what she's saying?"
 "I don't understand *anything* here," he yelled, crying again. His sobs
punched Scully in the stomach.
 From a dark corner of her soul came a shout: *Another child's going to die
because of you.*
 Scully clenched her open palms into fists.
 With another burst of foreign words, Anne thumbed the hammer back on the
revolver.
 "There's still too many people behind her, Scully," Mulder warned quietly.
 *Dammit, Mulder, I know that.*
 "Anne, remember when you and I met last, at Tim Foster's party, about seven-
eight years ago? You showed me pictures of Jason. Do you remember?"
 Anne was breathing heavier, faster. Jason was sobbing.
 "Anne, listen to me. Remember telling me about how you read Jason bedtime
stories? About his favorite story? What was his favorite story, Anne?"
 Anne blinked twice. Her brow furrowed.
 "What was Jason's favorite bedtime story?" Scully repeated.
 Anne's lips quivered. Her blinking became more rapid.
 "*Anne,*" Scully screamed, "*tell me Jason's favorite story!*"
 "*Winnie the Pooh,*" she croaked.
 Scully took another step forward. "Thank you. I knew you were in there, Anne.
You were so happy because *Pooh* was your favorite, too, right?"
 Anne nodded once, twice.
 Scully slid her right foot across the floor, walking as if she were treading
paper-thin ice. "Anne, don't you want Jason to read *Pooh* to his child?"
 She was so close. She could see the goosebumps on Jason's flesh, smell the
salt of his tears.
 Tears streamed from Anne's eyes.
 "Dana?" she asked. She sounded like a little girl.
 Scully smiled. "Anne. Give me the gun."
 She nodded. "OK."
 And then the noise exploded in Scully's ears.
 *Who's shooting?*
 She instinctively dove for Jason, grabbing his hips, pulling him down to the
floor, draping herself over him.
 Then she felt someone fall on top of her. Soap, musk, the faintest whiff of a
smell like peanut butter. Sunflower-seed breath. *Mulder.*
 Then she heard a scream and a gunshot.
 The boy was bawling.
 "Are you hurt?" Scully asked him.
 "Keep him down," Mulder whispered into her ear.
 His voice was tight, tense. She knew without looking. *She's dead.*
 She rose to a kneel, lifting Jason's head carefully, quickly assessing him
for injuries. She wrapped a hand around the back of his head and gently pushed
his face into her shoulder.
 He kept crying, slowly reaching his arms around Scully.
 *Oh God. He knows.*
 "Shhhhhh," she said, placing her cheek against his. She looked to her left.
In her peripheral vision, she could see a crimson streak shine against the
polished wooden floor. The copper smell assaulted her nose.
 *Anne.* She closed her eyes, and felt her heart sink as tears refused to
come.
 *You've just seen too many people die, Dana. You're used to it.*
 She turned her head as far as she could. "Mulder," she called.
 
 An EMT, on call in case one of the millionaire basketball players twisted his
ankle, rushed over right after the gunshot, but it only took him ten seconds.
He checked his watch, looked up at Mulder, shook his head. He shrugged off his
jacket and laid it over what remained of Anne Doyle's skull.
 Two of the cops began to run toward Scully. "Leave her alone," Mulder said,
holding up a hand.
 "What do we do now?" one of the officers asked Mulder.
 "Fuck if I know," he muttered, clumsily pirouetting on his feet. The stadium
was still half-full of spectators; some were screaming hysterically, but most
were standing still, shocked motionless.
 A flashbulb went off somewhere.
 "Get the press out of here now," Mulder said.
 The cops, now armed with marching orders, swung into action. Mulder beckoned
for the EMT. "Let's check out the boy."
 He turned back toward Scully, who knelt on the floor, cradling the boy in her
arms. His heart stopped.
 *She's holding him like she held Emily.* Tight against her shoulder, like
she'd never let him go. Rocking him just a little.
 He had to look away for a moment, up into the rafters of the MCI Center,
anywhere but Scully's eyes.
 *If I hadn't met her, she could still have children.*
 *If I hadn't met her, Emily might still be alive.*
 *If, if, if...*
 "Ma'am?" the EMT was asking Scully.
 Mulder turned back. She pursed her lips, curtly nodded and whispered
something to Jason.
 "No," he sobbed into her shoulder.
 "Yes," she said, softly but forcefully. "He needs to make sure you're OK."
 Jason pulled away a little to look into Scully's face. She nodded. Still
focused on Scully, he gingerly stood up.
 "C'mon, big fella," the EMT said. He led Jason away, gingerly placing a hand
on the back of the boy's head, keeping it turned away from his mother's body.
 Mulder fell to his knees next to Scully. Without touching her, he could feel
her shaking. Sweat glistened on her forehead and the back of her neck. The
blue fire had reignited her eyes.
 "Who shot her?" she asked through half-gritted teeth.
 "She did," Mulder said quietly.
 He suppressed a shiver, replaying the scene in his mind's eye. Anne had taken
a step back from Jason. A manic grin had split her face. And then, in one
fluid, almost practiced motion, she brought the gun up to her temple, angled
downward, and fired. Four cops were now clustered around the bullet, lodged in
the MCI Center parquet.
 "But the noise I heard," Scully began.
 "It was the clock," he explained. "No one had shut off the clock. Buzzer
sounded for halftime."
 "Jesus, Joseph and Mary," Scully muttered, running a hand through her hair,
staring at the floor.
 He wanted to hold her like she held Jason, let her cry, *make* her cry
instead of letting her repress her rage. He'd learned to read her: every bit
lip, every "I'm fine," every tongue in the cheek marked another emotion that
Scully bottled up and laid in some weird wine cellar of pent-up feelings, deep
within her soul.
 He wondered how many of those bottles had his name on them.
 But he knew she wouldn't let him comfort her in front of others, and forced
himself to settle for placing his hand on her shoulder. He felt knots in every
quivering muscle under his fingertips.
 "You're shaking all over," he said.
 "Mulder, I'm fine," she said.
 He sighed.
 "I need you to do something." She looked back up, at him, *into* him. "I want
to know why she was about to kill her child."
 He nodded once, squeezed her shoulder. She reached up and brushed her fingers
across his knuckles.
 Mulder stood and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He pointed at one
of the senior Washington Metro officers. "She's ours," he said.
 "On what grounds?" the cop asked.
 *Good question,* Mulder thought. "She's a Justice Department official," he
blurted. "That's automatically our jurisdiction."
 *Isn't it?*
 Mulder felt his poker face start to slide.
 But the cop just shrugged. "Fine by me, Fed. She's all yours."
 Mulder began to dial.
 
<2>
Beirut
4:44 a.m. local time
December 2
 
 Akhmed al-Hadithi was already awake when the phone rang in the other room. He
was lying in bed, smoking a Turkish cigarette, his ears still ringing from the
nightmare. In the dream, he replayed the worst 20 minutes of his
life--watching American fighters turn his armored column into a line of
blackened metal and charred bone, a graveyard that stretched for miles along
the road to Basra. While 100,000 of his brothers-in-arms had died, he had
survived, and his curse was this dream, one where fire perpetually rained from
the sky and his friends screamed in agony as they watched their life pour from
them in messy geysers of blood. The explosions were the worst; earsplitting
thunderclaps, packing a concussion that punched through his eardrum to smash
against his brain.
 The phone rang twice again.
 *He's late,* al-Hadithi thought as he slid on his pants and looked at his
watch. He had expected the warning calls around two or so. But the Silver-
Haired Man was a special contact, one for whom all rules had been abandoned.
Whatever he wanted, he got.
 Akhmed walked into the other room of his apartment and unlocked the front
door. He opened the sliding door to the balcony. The night was placid; he
could hear the Mediterranean surf lazily lap against the beach fourteen
stories below.
 He then smelled the smoke--a flat monotone of an odor compared to the sharp,
acrid notes of his cigarette, which he stubbed out in an ashtray as he turned.
 "Perhaps you were a cat in an earlier life," he said. "With silent paws.."
 "You wanted to see me," the Silver-Haired Man replied. Without invitation, he
sat in one of the room's two armchairs.
 Akhmed took the other. "My superiors want to know if you found the
photographs adequate." He clipped his vowels, one of the few remaining
vestiges of his Oxford education.
 The Silver-Haired Man drew deeply on his cigarette, fixing Akhmed's eyes with
a glare cold enough to seep into the Arab's bones. During his seven years with
Iraqi Intelligence--four of them spent as a "cultural attaché" here at the
Beirut Embassy--Akhmed had handled all sorts of contacts, from mild-mannered
university professors to knife-wielding borderline psychotic transvestite
hookers.
 But the Silver-Haired Man was the only one who had scared him. His eyes, a
colorless shade of gray, seemed to judge the world and find everyone and
everything in it guilty.
 *An executioner's eyes.*
 "The samples were adequate," the man said in a tone that added *just barely
so.* "I would like to send my team to the site."
 "That isn't a problem. We will bring them through Jordan, as previously
arranged."
 The Silver-Haired Man drew deeply on his cigarette.
 "My government has asked me to give you this," Akhmed continued. He leaned
over to push a small box and an envelope across the low table between their
chairs.
 Leaving the cigarette in his mouth, the Silver-Haired Man opened the
envelope. "I don't read Arabic," he said, replacing the small note.
 "It's a note from *El Rais,* our leader, thanking you for what you've done
for our country," Akhmed said.
 The man then opened the box, a long, flat black jewelry case. A polished-
silver medal winked in the apartment's dull lamplight.
 "Our country's highest honor. Secret, of course," Akhmed explained.
 The Silver-Haired Man closed the box and stubbed out his cigarette in the
ashtray on the table. "I'd like to begin tomorrow."
 "That's fine."
 "Is that all?"
 Akhmed felt his jaw go slack. "I've just presented you with a letter from my
President--a *personal* letter--and a decoration which only nine of my
countrymen have worn, most of them posthumously. In seven days you have done
what my country has labored to do for 20 years. And yet you sit here as if
this is all in a day's work."
 "In a way, it is," the Silver-Haired Man said.
 "So you are like me, an intelligence officer."
 "I didn't say that."
 "But you are American."
 "I didn't say that. Are we done?"
 Akhmed sighed. A maxim of his mother's came to mind: *When God smiles, don't
try to make him laugh.* This man had approached him unsolicited to make an
offer that, within a few days, should change history-and Akhmed's stature
within the Mukhabarat. As a lowly Fourth Directorate rank-and-file agent, the
most Baghdad had expected of him was being able to verify the rumor of the
month, something he hadn't been able to do that often anyway. And now, he was
doing something that even the al-Tikriti--the President's kinsmen, and Iraq's
de facto ruling class--had never been able to do.
 An American friend of his at university had used an expression she said was
similar: *Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.* Whatever *that* meant.
 "For now," Akhmed said. "By the way, my government has asked me to tell you
that we plan on testing one of your gifts." He checked his watch.
"Momentarily, actually."
 A flicker of interest sparked in the man's eyes. "So soon?"
 Akhmed nodded. "Isn't that what you wanted?"
 "It is what I expected." The man withdrew another cigarette from a crumpled
red-and-white pack, which he replaced in the inside pocket of his crumpled
brown suit. He'd lit a match before Akhmed could offer one. The flame bounced
lightly, up and down.
 The Silver-Haired Man's hand was shaking, Akhmed noticed.
 He lit the cigarette and stood. "I'll be in touch."
 Akhmed watched him leave, realizing too late that the medal case and the note
still sat on the table.
 He checked his watch. 5 a.m.
 He wished he could feel a little tremor shake the building.
 Even though this explosion would be meters and meters underground, he
imagined it as loud enough to drown out the sounds of Basra in his head.
 
<3>
FBI Headquarters
9:58 p.m.
 
 Her voice derailed his train of thought.
 "Hmmm?"
 "I said, what are you thinking?" Scully asked.
 *About you.* About her shoes, actually. She was wearing a new pair today:
black, with the heel a little higher than normal. Mulder didn't know an Armani
from an Adidas, but he knew they were new on Scully. Today's outfit was a
stand-by--charcoal gray over a button-up white blouse--but the shoes redefined
it, turning it from a Fed-at-work uniform to something far more dangerous.
Part of Mulder's mind enjoyed cataloging Scully's clothes, especially over the
past year, as she'd turned on the siren in her wardrobe: foreign fabrics that
hugged curves rather than hid them, new four-alarm shades of lipstick.
 *Ever since the cancer.*
 And the psychologist within him knew that he didn't buy back--above face
value, no less--those Knicks tickets from Langly because he wanted to see a
basketball game. He'd wanted to see Scully somewhere other than a pathology
lab, where she wasn't holding a corpse's large intestine or that little saw
that he couldn't stand to watch, the one that made the horrible screech when
it cut into a bone.
 He'd wanted to see her in new shoes.
 And it was a date, no matter how much he tried not to admit it to himself and
certainly wouldn't admit it to her. And he knew that when he'd turned her
question inside out and handed it back to her, he'd been asking something
entirely different.
 *Are you wearing those for me?*
 Whenever he phrased the question like that in his head, it always triggered a
rapid-fire series of possible endings, playing like fast-forwarded movies. But
the scenario he feared the most was always last, always played at normal speed
and always prone to create this sick, sloshy feeling in the pit of his
stomach. Lines of disgust would crease Scully's face. *No,* she'd say, with a
caustic laugh. *My world doesn't revolve around you, Mulder.*
 She had taught him that, harshly, a couple of years ago with a trip to
Philadelphia. That was a lesson he'd since kept close to his heart.
 *Never again will I take her for granted.*
 But he'd already done so much damage, as her brother reminded him every time
they met. Mulder could pinpoint the second worst moment in his life: when Bill
Scully Jr. had walked up to him in a hospital corridor, his dying sister one
room away, and fixed him with a glare that said *This is all your fault.* The
worst moment had occurred a second later, when Mulder thought: *You're right.*
 "Mulder?" Scully asked again.
 "I was thinking about what Anne was saying," he said.
 The elevator doors opened with a *ping.* They walked toward Skinner's office.
 "You think it was Hebrew?."
 "Sounded like it, but I'm not sure." Mulder was thankful to shift his brain
into a different gear. "I remember a little from the few times I went to
temple, and some of the words sounded very similar."
 "When was the last time you were in temple?" Scully's voice carried an
incredulous note.
 "Nine years ago," he said.
 He had few memories of that day, but the ones he had were vivid: the crunch
of the glass under his heel, softer and quieter than he thought it would be; a
kiss that tasted like vanilla and spice.
 "For a wedding," he added.
 Skinner's secretary Abby had left long ago, leaving her boss to burn the
midnight oil alone with his office door wide open. The big ex-Marine sat on
the edge of his desk chair, eyes riveted to the television set across the
room, which was bathing the room in an ashen light. Scully knocked softly on
the doorjamb.
 Without looking up, he waved them in.
 "Sir, we-" Scully began.
 Skinner held up a finger.
 Both agents turned toward the TV, now filled with CNN anchor Bernard Shaw's
serious face and baritone voice, superimposed over a BREAKING NEWS graphic..
"For those just joining us," he said, "in a few minutes the Pentagon is
expected to confirm reports of an underground nuclear weapons test conducted
hours ago in the Iraqi desert."
 "Oh my God," Scully softly muttered. A worry line erupted on her forehead as
she pivoted on her foot and walked into Abby's office, picking up the phone on
the secretary's desk.
 A map appeared on the TV, showing the likely location of the blast, deep in a
part of western Iraq unblemished by place names or landmarks.
 "Government geologists," Shaw droned on, "have recorded tremors in the region
that are indicative of a ten-kiloton blast, somewhat smaller than the bombs
recently exploded by India and Pakistan."
 "Backpack nukes," muttered Skinner.
 Mulder turned to look at Skinner, who returned his gaze for only a fraction
of a second. Then the dark eyes skittered away, returning to the television.
 "An official with the Iraqi Embassy in Cairo refuses to confirm or deny
reports of a nuclear test," Shaw continued, "but did say Saddam Hussein will
go on television to address his nation at 7 a.m. local time, about an hour
from now."
 "You know," Skinner said quietly, "I remember the night Kennedy gave the
speech about the Cuban missile crisis. I was 15 and making out with Sylvia
Hennessey in the bomb shelter we'd built in the back yard. No one ever went
out there. We were alone in the dark, feeling our way around each other."
 Mulder conjured a mental picture of a teenage Skinner copping a feel--and
felt his skin crawl a little, as if he'd imagined his parents having sex. "Did
you love how she ran her fingers through your thick, dark hair?" he asked.
 "I'm trying to make a point, Agent Mulder," he said in his Marine-cultivated,
FBI-honed I'm-the-boss-dogface voice.
 "Sorry, sir."
 "Suddenly," Skinner continued, "the door burst open and my father turned on
the light and I thought I was done for. But he just nodded at us and began
counting the cans on the shelf."
 "Cans?"
 "Yeah. Soup, creamed corn, all the bomb-shelter food. He was sweating and he
kept dropping cans as he counted. He didn't say a word, but I knew, just by
watching him, how scared he was."
 "That must've scared you."
 "Not as much," Skinner said, lifting his chin and pointing it toward the
television, "as this does tonight."
 Mulder turned back toward the TV, now showing a Pentagon press conference
where a group of hastily dressed generals were pointing at maps but looking at
each other with wide-eyed faces that said *We didn't see this coming at all.*
 Then an odd memory surfaced: lying on the couch, his father seated in the
armchair, the two of them watching *The Day After.* He couldn't have been a
day younger than 23, but he still wanted to hide his head under the throw
pillow when the flashwave melted everyone.
 His dad must've sensed his fear, reaching across to touch him on the arm.
 "There are worse ways to die, son," he had said quietly, clinking the ice
cubes in his scotch glass.
 For years, he had cherished that sentence as one of the rare times his father
had tried to make it all better, to console his son and protect him from bad
things. But today, Mulder knew his father better--and realized that he was
simply telling the truth, that he had seen people die deaths more horrible
than the instant double-whammy of sound and fire that preceded the mushroom
cloud.
 *Dammit, Dad, what did you do to Samantha? To me? Why?*
 Now an admiral was speaking on the television. "The aircraft carrier *George
Washington* and its battle group are already stationed in the Persian Gulf..
We've taken them up to the highest level of readiness."
 *The* George Washington. *Isn't that-*
 He swiveled toward Scully, who was still on Abby's phone, one hand shielding
her eyes and massaging her temples.
 *Charlie's on the* Washington, Mulder remembered.
 He walked into Skinner's anteroom. "It'll be really late, Mom," she was
saying, "but I can come over... do you want me to?...are you sure?"
 With a whir, the fax near Abby's desk awakened.
 "Call if you need me. I love you, Mom."
 "Please don't tell me you're fine," Mulder said as she hung up.
 She looked up with a half-smile. "She's really worried. Her only consolation
is that Bill's still in the Pacific and unlikely to--"
 She dropped the sentence, staring at the paper which the fax machine was
spitting out.
 "Scully?"
 Mulder saw mushroom clouds in her eyes.
 She snatched the paper from the fax machine's tray and roughly brushed by
Mulder to return to Skinner's office.
 "What the *fuck* is this?" she shouted, tossing the paper onto his desk..
 Skinner's head snapped around so fast Mulder heard vertebrae click. "What did
you-"
 Mulder, too, had felt his mouth fall slightly open at Scully's expletive. He
knew Scully could curse. He had listened to her once through a bathroom door,
when she had the cancer, muttering a blue streak as blood gushed from her
nose.
 But she'd never spoken like this to Skinner.
 *I don't even think she's spoken like this to me. And I drive her nuts
sometimes.*
 "You heard me. Explain this. *Sir.*" The sarcastic venom dripped from
Scully's lips.
 Skinner glared at Scully for a moment, letting his eyes harden into ebony
opals before he looked down at the page.
 And then his forehead crinkled with confusion.
 "I don't--that's not my signature--"
 Mulder looked over Scully's shoulder to read the form. It bore Department of
the Army, Judge Advocate General letterhead and requested surrender of
evidence from the FBI--namely one corpse, that of Anne Doyle--as part of a
pre-existing and ongoing investigation of a classified nature. And the bottom-
most signature--that of Walter Skinner, Assistant Director--looked just like
every other Skinner signature Mulder'd seen at the end of endless
requisitions, commendations, reprimands and countermands that coursed through
the veins of the J. Edgar Hoover building.
 Anger seeped through Mulder's torso--not hot fury, but the tired, all-too-
familiar here-we-go-again feeling, more a sigh than a scream. Another piece of
evidence stolen from them, another so-called ally apparently turning turncoat.
Skinner's face held some hope--with the peaked eyebrows and the shaking head,
he seemed genuinely surprised.
 "It's not my signature," he repeated.
 Scully took a blank piece of letterhead from the top of his desk. "Sign your
name," she commanded.
 Skinner complied. Scully laid the result over the fax and held it up to the
light of the television.
 A perfect match.
 "They must--" Skinner began.
 "They? *They?* Who's *they?*" she shouted.
 "Our chain-smoking friend, for one--"
 "What exactly is your relationship with that man?" Scully folded her arms
akimbo, planting her feet solidly spaced, fully in interrogation pose. The
television's light cast her in an eerie silhouette, the edges of which seemed
to spark with white light.
 "We don't *have* a relationship, as you--"
 "Do you work for him?"
 "No," Skinner growled.
 "You were going to let me die," Scully said in a softer tone.
 *That's what this is about,*  Mulder thought. Last year, after he'd faked his
death, Scully had told him about the deep doubts she'd harbored about Skinner
while she had her cancer, especially after they'd discovered seventeen phone
calls from an assassin to the FBI PBX node that included, among others,
Skinner's extension. Of course, it also carried Section Chief Blevins'
extension--a man later revealed, posthumously, as a mole within the Bureau..
 *Trust no one,* of course, was Mulder's credo, but he *wanted* to trust
Walter Skinner. Even as he watched the video of Skinner talking with Ray
Thomas, seemingly incontrovertible proof that he had been involved in the
detective's murder--and therefore a cover-up, one that involved bees and
viruses and cigarette-smoking men in some bizarre equation he still couldn't
balance--Mulder knew in his gut, in his *heart,* that Skinner was telling the
truth when he said, *I was framed.*
 He had the same feeling now, watching Skinner's face crumple at Scully's
accusation. "Agent Scully--Dana--" the assistant director began.
 "Don't call me that," she hissed.
 Mulder inched himself out on the limb. "Scully, he's telling the truth."
 She turned toward him, inscrutable in the darkness.
 "Agent Mulder," Skinner warned.
 "He tried cutting a deal with our tobacco-state friend to save you from the
cancer. But Joe Morley reneged."
 Mulder felt the temperature in the room plummet, and silence settled for a
long moment, only punctuated by the generals' voices from the television.
 "Why didn't you tell me?" she finally asked.
 Mulder turned toward Skinner.
 "No, *goddammit,* Mulder, I'm asking *you.*" Her voice quivered with anger.
 He felt the ice begin to crack under him.
 *The truth, Mulder. Never lie to her.*
 "He did it because I asked him to," he said.
 "You asked him to aid and abet a criminal? To break the law?"
 "Yes."
 "That's *conspiracy,* Mulder." And then a chuckle, somewhat caustic. He saw
her at the basketball game, wearing new shoes. *My world doesn't revolve
around you, Mulder.*
 *But dammit, maybe mine does around you.*
 "I did it because I wanted to save your life," he said, surprised at the
volume of his voice, the spit that flicked from his tongue.
 "And why was that worth more than everything we've been trying to uncover?"
she shot right back, taking a step toward him.
 And he felt the words begin to slide off his tongue: *Because I love--*
 But the key of her voice had unlocked another memory, an unpleasant one: the
day seven years ago where another woman had asked the same question when he
had announced, somewhat proudly, that he was reopening the decades-old X-
Files.
 *Why?* Laura had asked.
 And when he told her, she'd thrown the wedding ring at him.
 *Truth is sometimes overrated,* Mulder thought.
 The words screeched to a halt. Backed up. Regrouped.
 "Because together we can beat them," he said.
 "And *them* is who it's all about, isn't it, Mulder?"
 The question felt like an icicle, cold and sharp, pointed at his heart.
 "*Sir.*" Scully let the form of address slouch lazily as she said it. "If you
want to prove where you stand, perhaps you'd be kind enough to secure Anne's
office. If someone hasn't been there already."
 "I can do--" Mulder began.
 "No, we need to go out to--" Scully picked up the fax. "Fort Detrick. I have
a feeling that body's not going to be there for long, and I may need some help
with the autopsy."
 Mulder didn't like the sound of that, but decided not to argue.
 Scully brushed past him, out the door. Mulder began to follow, but the
television caught his eye as he turned. One general, visibly sweating, was
holding up a picture of an odd-looking device.
 "The characteristics and yield of the explosion seem to indicate Saddam may
have used one of these backpack nukes," he was saying.
 Mulder swiveled to glare at Skinner, who had his back to him, retrieving his
coat from the rack.
 "Get a move on, Agent Mulder," he said without turning around.

<4>
En route to Fort Detrick, Maryland
11:18 p.m.
 
 The silence between them had grown humid, noticeable, like the feeling you
got standing in the bottom of a deep well, anticipating the booming echo your
voice would make if you used it.
 Scully leaned her forehead against the passenger side window, watching the
street lights fly by, thinking about Mulder's voice as he drove, at high
speed, toward Frederick. The first few times they'd met, she'd found his voice
horrible--a droning monotone made for delivering monologues that meandered in
vain for a point. But over the past six years she'd discovered that what
seemed to be the only color in Mulder's voice--she usually thought of it as
blue, a reaction that saddened her--was actually thousands of shades, each
with its own distinct meaning. She now could tell simply by listening whether
Mulder was happy or frustrated or panicked or aroused. She loved the aroused
voice--fluid, soothing, punctuated with a gulp or two.
 Sometimes she wanted to drown in that one.
 Now she'd settle for anything, even one of those meandering monologues that
made her gnash her teeth.
 *And that bothers me,* she said, watching the streetlamps become sodium-vapor
comets as Mulder sped up. With six sentences and a hangdog look--the one she
hated, the one that made him look like a kicked puppy--Mulder had confused her
more than any flukeman or shapeshifter she'd been at a loss to explain
scientifically.
 He'd once again confirmed the double standard in their relationship. Whenever
she withheld information--like the apparitions she'd seen of murder victims
shortly before their deaths and, almost, hers--he'd berated her. *Why didn't
you tell me,* he'd complained.
 But vice versa, keeping things sub rosa from her was OK. He chalked it up to
*protecting her.* And that didn't make her as angry as realizing that part of
her *wanted* to dress Mulder in the shining armor of a knight, to *let* him
protect her. She remembered--with a frown of distaste--her conversation with
Ed Jerse in a Philadelphia bar, when she told him about her problem with
"father figures." And yet when she had discovered that she might have been
tattooed with poisoned ink, who was the first person she called?
 The lights become less frequent as Mulder approached the Army reservation.
 She looked to her left, watching him drive, his jaw set tight, hands gripping
the wheel in knuckles that might've been white in better light. If Mulder was
a knight, he was definitely more a Quixote than a Lancelot, she
thought--tilting at every windmill with this dogged perseverance, looking for
the people who stole Samantha, his parents, his life.
 And yet he always showed he'd drop that lance in a heartbeat for her. He'd
never say why--the chains around that part of Mulder were old, rusty and
clearly unbreakable, at least so far--but he'd proven what he was willing to
give up.
 On a bridge, trading his sister for her, he'd shown her his heart.
 And she didn't know if that enraged her or excited her.
 She had a headache.
 Now he was glancing at her.
 "You know," he blurted, "sometimes I'm a prick."
 It was the way he said it, as if he'd just had an epiphany, that made her
laugh, softly but uncontrollably.
 "Did you just open yourself up to that extreme possibility?" she asked.
 "Isn't your line, 'No, you're not?'" he asked with a half-smile.
 "No, it's not."
 "So I am a prick."
 "Sometimes."
 "On the prick-meter, where do I rate?"
 "Is there a prick-meter?"
 "Sure. I just invented it."
 "How does it work?"
 "It rates from zero to, let's say, four."
 "Only four? That's not much of a prick, Mulder."
 He chuckled. "Twelve then."
 "Is twelve good or bad?"
 "No one's complained."
 "*Mulder.*"
 "OK. Zero is a saint and twelve is, twelve is I'd-laugh-at-your-execution
prickdom."
 "Most of the time," she said quietly, "you're a negative number."
 "But--"
 "But you can be a six," she finished.
 He slowed down, approaching the gate to Detrick.
 "I'm sorry," he said.
 "I know," she answered. "I'm tired. Let's get this over with so we can go
home."
 He pursed his lips.
 *He thinks I'm still mad.*
 *Am I?*
 She reached over and touched his arm.
 "Tomorrow, you can help me build a prick-meter," she said.
 Mulder drove up to the guardhouse. Their badges worked fine at the front
gate.
 "A *corpse*?" said the corporal on duty, scrutinizing Mulder's ID.
 "Yeah."
 "Didn't see one."
 "Well, maybe you can--" Mulder began.
 "I did see a *body bag,* though, come in about an hour ago."
 "A full one?"
 "Seemed so."
 "Maybe that was it," Mulder said flatly.
 "Think they took it to Building 20."
 "Where's that?"
 "You sam rid," the corporal replied.
 "What?"
 "USAMRIID." Scully spelled out the acronym. "The Army's Medical Research
Institute for Infectious Diseases."
 "Infectious diseases?" Mulder muttered as they drove away.
 "If Anne had one, we've already got it, Mulder. Her gunshot scattered enough
blood droplets to infect everyone on that basketball court." Scully frowned.
"But I don't think she's infectious. If she were, they would've taken here to
someplace with a higher MOPP level than Building 20. I think they're just
hoping to hide her in the medical trash."
 "Among kidneys and stomachs and spleens?"
 "Oh, my," she said without a smile. "Only people like us root through the
body-part trash for things like Leonard Betts' head." She shivered. "Do you
have a plan?"
 "Of course I have a plan."
 Mulder began thinking of a plan.
 He parked down the street from Building 20.
 As the two agents walked up the sidewalk, Scully muttered, "You don't have a
plan, do you?"
 "Just look like you know what you're doing," he replied.
 She snorted.
 He burst through the swinging doors that opened on a guard desk.
 "We're here for the body," Mulder said.
 The desk sergeant stood, and leaned his hands on the desk in front of him.
They seemed as thick as tree trunks to Mulder.
 "ID?" the sergeant asked in a basso-profundo rumble that seemed to emanate
from somewhere deep within his sequoia of a chest.
 The agents tinned him. He rolled his eyes from one to the other.
 "You don't have clearance," he boomed.
 "I don't need clearance. I've got the vaccine," Mulder said.
 The sergeant's forehead wrinkled. "What vaccine?"
 "They didn't tell you about the vaccine?" Scully asked, a panicked note
creeping into her voice.
 The sergeant's eyes flicked back and forth between Mulder and Scully as a
faster pace now. "What vaccine?" His basso was creeping into baritone
territory.
 "What do you think, Doctor?" Mulder turned to Scully.
 "His pupils are dilating a little," Scully said, leaning close. "And his skin
appears clammy. I'd say he's got it."
 "Got *what?*" Sweat broke out on the sergeant's bald head.
 "*It,*" Mulder said. "Damn. You don't even know what *it* is?"
 "Two, maybe three hours," Scully said, folding her arms. "Unless he gets the
vaccine."
 "*Give me the vaccine.*" He grabbed Mulder by both arms.
 "Wish I could, big fella, but I don't have clearance," he said.
 "And, more to the point, we don't have enough vaccine to spare for you,"
Scully added.
 "Who does?" The sergeant's voice leapt across the alto border.
 As if on cue, the two agents looked at one another.
 "Fuck it. I'm gonna find out. I'll ask the CO." The sergeant stormed past the
agents and fled from the infirmary.
 Mulder watched him go. "We don't have much time."
 They found a door labeled MORGUE at the end of a long corridor. It was
locked.
 From his coat pocket, Mulder withdrew a plastic device that looked like a
caulking gun, except that a short thin wire, not a long paste tube, served as
the nozzle. He slid it into the door's keyhole and began to manipulate the
tumblers.
 Scully squatted next to him. "Where'd you learn to do this?" she whispered.
 *At the Academy, same as you. What kind of a question is that?*
 But her breath, warm and moist, tickled his ear and made him shiver. He tried
for a joke. "Boy Scouts," he sputtered.
 "What else did you learn in Boy Scouts, Mulder?"
 He could feel her lips barely brush his earlobe.
 *Was that a double entendre?*
 *Am I just imagining things?*
 The lock saved him by popping open.
 Scully passed him, fishing a penlight from her pocket and shining it around
the room. He closed the door behind him.
 "I haven't done an autopsy by flashlight before," she muttered, hanging her
coat on a peg near the door and walking to the far wall. She began
methodically opening body-bay doors, checking the occupants.
 "You can teach a class on it at the Academy." He put her coat over hers.
 "Mulder." Her voice had lost all levity. "I found her."
 He walked over. Scully had pulled out the body tray, which was fortunately at
waist height, and was pointing her flashlight at Doyle's naked torso, now
trifurcated by a sloppily stitched Y-incision.
 "Someone beat us," he said.
 "Looks like it. Hold this." She handed him the penlight, and snapped on some
rubber gloves from a box sitting on a nearby crash cart.
 Mulder looked at the corpse and felt the hot dog he'd wolfed down before the
basketball game do a nauseating somersault. Doyle's body was totally devoid of
color, the skin gray and pasty, almost like modeling clay. Her lips were the
exact same shade. Her hair, mottled with blood, dully reflected the
flashlight--no shine at all. Her breasts hung limp, the nipples barely
visible.
 Scully had found a scalpel and begun reopening the sutures.
 "What are you looking for?" he asked.
 "I don't know. Blood. A sample of brain tissue. That might be the best we'll
be able to do. I just want to see--*shit.* They've drained her blood."
 The body cavity cradled a group of flaccid gray organs, looking like a bunch
of deflated balloons. He burped and tasted vomit.
 Scully rummaged through tools on the nearby crash cart.
 *Not the saw. Not the saw,* Mulder thought.
 "Here." She handed him a dagger-sized needle.
 "And what am I supposed to do with this?"
 "Stick it in her heart. Sometimes the atria or ventricles hold some blood at
death."
 Mulder looked at the colorless lump of muscle that used to beat within Anne
Doyle's chest. It looked like a big piece of gristle.
 Scully had taken a scalpel and begun tentatively probing at Doyle's exposed
brain. "I wonder if there's a bone saw," she muttered to herself.
 Mulder froze.
 "Probably too loud," Scully continued.
 He turned back to the body. Doyle's lifeless eyes stared up at him.
 He lifted the syringe over his head, Norman Bates-slasher style.
 He closed his eyes and, on the count of three, brought down the needle.
 Opening his eyes, he found the needle protruding from Doyle's right lung.
 "Give me that." Scully pulled the syringe from the lung, and in one practiced
motion sank it into Doyle's heart. The tube began filling with viscous, nearly
black, blood.
 "Where'd you learn to do that?" Mulder asked around a dry tongue.
 "Brownies," Scully shot back. She was cutting out thin slices of brain,
placing them into small plastic containers.
 Both agents jumped a little when they heard a door slam.
 Mulder lay the penlight on Doyle's belly and walked over to the door,
carefully peering out through the window.
 The sergeant was back, apparently unamused with their ruse. He was kicking
open every door in the hall. He held an automatic pistol in the hand that
wasn't balled into a fist.
 Behind him walked two MPs with large automatic rifles.
 "Scully," he hissed.
 "I'm done," she said.
 "We can't get out."
 She quickly played her flashlight along the firm's walls.
 *There must be another exit,* Mulder thought.
 "Fire door," said Scully softly. "But it's alarmed."
 "That'd give them an excuse to start shooting, maybe," Mulder said.
 The sergeant was now only two doors away.
 He heard Scully rummage through the crash cart tools.
 Then he heard her start to open and shut body-drawer doors.
 *Oh, no.*
 He turned to find her squatting by one of the bottommost bays, apparently
built for extra-large corpses; its door was slightly bigger than the others.
 She turned to him, pointing the flashlight in his face. "You first," she
said.
 He smiled.
 "What's so funny?" Scully asked.
 "I always knew," he whispered, "you'd like it on top."
 She snapped off the penlight so he couldn't see her face.
 He quickly clambered into the hole, face down, feet first.
 He heard Scully rip something that sounded half like plastic, half like
paper.
 Then he felt her wriggling in on top of him.
 She took the length of tape she'd fixed to the inside of the door and yanked.
 It shut just as the outside door to the room opened and the sergeant snapped
on the overhead lights.
 
The inside of the body drawer was a claustrophobe's nightmare: pitch-black and
cramped. Scully's shoulder blades dragged against the roof of the bay as she
wriggled a little farther back, enough to let her heels hit the rear wall.
 She gently laid her head sideways on the back of a Mulder she couldn't see,
her cheek resting against a knob of bone that felt like the top of his spine.
 *Have I ever held him this close?* she wondered.
 They touched--even embraced--often, but not like this, not with her breasts
squeezed hard against his back, her pelvis squeezed against his, her hands--by
fortunate accident, she thought with a little thrill--in his hair.
 She couldn't help brushing her cheek a little against the skin at the nape of
his neck. Not too rough, but not too smooth.
 With her ear against his body, she could hear his blood pump through him,
listen to his heartbeat.
 A rapidly pulsing heartbeat. Coupled with ragged breathing.
 *Is it danger or is it me, Mulder?* she wondered.
 She wriggled backward--just a centimeter or two, all she could
manage--feeling her nipples harden as they roughly rubbed against the double-
silk of her bra and blouse.
 *He feels so sculpted.*
 *Trapezius.*
 *Rhomboid.*
 *Latissimus dorsi...*
 Imagining Mulder's bare back sent a hot, wet wave coursing through Scully.
 And his heart pounded, like a piston, harder in her ear.
 She felt an incomprehensible--and nearly uncontrollable--urge to gently bite
the hard muscle (*levator muscle of the scapula*) at the base of his neck.
 *All that's between us is some fabric--*
 Her body seized as she suddenly remembered the clothes they wore into the
room--two coats, now hanging on the opposite wall of the morgue room.
 
*This would be a lot easier,* Mulder thought, *if she didn't smell so damn
good.* Sea-breeze and soap mixed with rose-petal and a splash of Chanel.
*Essence de Scully.*
 It also hadn't helped that the first thing he felt as she snaked across his
back, pulling the door shut behind her, was her new-shoe heel digging right
into his solar plexus, sending sharp white pain rippling through his lower
back.
 But he forgot about that quickly as the rest of Scully slid across him--her
lithe legs, flat belly, the soft weight of her breasts, warm through the back
of his suit jacket, her doctor's fingers gently brushing through his hair.
 He felt her cheek, cool and smooth, come to rest at the back of his neck.
 The thick door to the body drawer was soundproof. All he could hear was her
breathing... quick, irregular, shaky.
 *Is it me or the danger, Dr. Scully?*
 He felt her exhale hot, wet air on his right ear.
 *Her lips must be so close.*
 *Are they wet too?*
 He felt himself begin to stiffen against the cold metal floor of the drawer.
 *Getting a hard-on in a body drawer. This could only happen to me.*
 Scully tensed a little. Then her cheek moved, slowly, as she turned her head.
 He felt her lips teasingly drag themselves over his earlobe. He began to
quiver.
 Then she whispered two words into his ear.
 "Our coats," she said.
 *Shit,* Mulder thought.
 Then, deep from his jacket pocket, his cell phone began to trill. He could
feel it vibrate against his chest.
 "Shit," Mulder hissed.
 *Can they hear that outside?*
 He decided he'd better not take any chances. He tried to move his hands back
behind his shoulders, to reach for his gun.
 "No," Scully whispered.
 He felt her hands slide down around him, then up his sides. Her nails lightly
raked across his shirt.
 She found his holster, unbuttoned the flap and withdrew his sidearm.
 He then felt her right hand slide up his shoulder, up his arm, finding his
right hand.
 Carefully, her left hand handed him the pistol.
 Mulder took a deep breath.
 With the automatic's muzzle, he pushed open the body-drawer door.
 "*Federal agent!*" he shouted, hoping for an element of surprise.
 But *he* was surprised; the room was empty.
 Scully slid up his body, gingerly poking her head past his.
 "All clear," Mulder muttered.
 "Then let's get out of here," Scully said, laying her palms against the
inside walls of the drawer. With one quick thrust, she pushed hard enough to
drive the drawer forward, out into the room--and her hips hard against
Mulder's.
 *Do that again,* a voice screamed in his head.
 They retrieved their coats and moved, carefully, into the corridor.
 Their sergeant and his two heavily armed colleagues were clustered around the
building's front desk, in an animated what-to-do-next discussion. Both agents
slipped past them in mid-argument, quietly moving through the door and out
onto the street.
 "That was close," Mulder muttered.
 "What about the front gate?" Scully asked.
 "We'll have to worry about that when we get there."
 But inexplicably, there were no worries; the same guard who admitted them
cheerfully waved them through without a second glance, and Mulder sped away,
back toward I-495 and the capital.
 "Do you think she was poisoned?" he asked after a few minutes.
 No answer.
 When he turned, he found she'd fallen asleep.
 
Scully knew it was a dream when she realized she was standing in the Johns
Hopkins medical school pathology lab, a room she hadn't set foot in for at
least a decade. And it was the Hopkins lab of ten years ago; Richard Marx
quietly dribbled from an overhead speaker.
 *So this is a nightmare,* she thought.
 Yet she was having trouble finding that mental off-switch, the dreamscape
exit-sign that showed the path back to the waking world.
 And it seemed so real. She could feel the scratchy, olive-green disposable
scrubs against her skin; smell the acrid, sinus-clearing formaldehyde.
 Anne Doyle lay on the table in front of her. Scully found herself holding a
long, evil-looking suture needle, attached to industrial-strength catgut. She
must have been sewing Anne back up.
 *I forgot to do that,* a voice whispered deep inside her.
 The double-swing doors into the lab crashed open. In came a gurney wheeled by
Mulder. It carried a gunshot victim.
 "What's going on, Mulder?" she asked.
 "Got you another customer," he said with a nonchalant shrug.
 "Is he dead?" Scully said. Blood still gushed from several holes.
 "Good as. No rest for the wicked," he said over his shoulder as he left.
 Scully moved toward the cart, only to hear the doors open again.
 Now Skinner wheeled in another body.
 "Appears to be strangulation," he said, flicking a finger toward the bruises
around the neck. "But you'll tell me for sure."
 "I-" Scully began.
 Skinner went out. In came Bill Jr. and another gurney.
 "Grenade," her brother said, without looking at her.
 Scully looked over at the first victim Mulder had brought in. Blood now
gushed from the body like a fountain, cascading onto the floor.
 Bill Jr. left. Margaret Scully came in.
 "Mom?" Scully asked plaintively.
 "Male prostitute, anally raped before bludgeoned to death," her mother
replied flatly, departing.
 Scully felt liquid lap around her calves, and looked down to see the floor
covered in about six inches of blood.
 *Is it blood?*
 It wasn't red... it was ebony.
 And it felt *alive.*
 The doors crashed open again. Another gurney, seemingly moving under its own
power.
 Then Scully saw two tiny hands wrapped around the rear handle.
 "Please, God, no..." she wailed.
 Emily walked from behind the stretcher. The black liquid on the floor came up
to her knees.
 "Last one, Mommy," Emily said.
 With a trembling hand, Scully reached out and pulled the sheet back from the
corpse.
 Mulder stared back at her, a bullet-carved tunnel now connecting his temples.
 His eyes blinked.
 "Scully?" he asked.
 Scully backed away, chest heaving.
 "Scully?"
 The air in the room felt colder. Something gentle brushed against her cheek.
 "Scully, wake up."
 She snapped bolt awake in the car seat.
 "You're shaking," Mulder said.
 She realized she was, like a storm-blown leaf.
 "Bad dream," she said.
 Mulder pursed his lips and nodded. "I know what those are like."
 Scully looked out the window and saw her apartment building. She checked her
watch. Nearly 1:30 a.m.
 "Do you want me to take the samples into SciCrime and-" he began.
 "I don't trust the FBI lab. I'll do the analyses myself first thing tomorrow.
Mulder, go home."
 "I will."
 "No, you won't," she said with a sigh. "You're headed back to the office.
You've got insomnia written all over your eyes."
 "That was Skinner who called while we were checking out the body drawer," he
said. "His voicemail indicates that he secured most of Doyle's office and home
effects. But he believes someone was there before him. Things seem too clean.
He's brought several boxes of evidence back to headquarters. I might take a
look through them."
 Scully sighed. "Do you want me to--"
 "No." He reached across Scully and opened her car door. As he sat back up, he
squeezed her shoulder. "Get some sleep, in your own place, your own bed.
You'll be OK. I only have one nightmare a night."
 She reached up and touched his hand.
 "You shouldn't have any," she said quietly. "G'night, Mulder."
 Scully made it as far as the couch before she felt her body begin turning off
its lights, conserving power after sheer exhaustion.
 She kicked off her shoes and turned on the television.
 The Israeli Prime Minister was making a furiously animated speech on CNN,
talking about the Iraqi bomb.
 Scully felt her eyes grow heavy as Netanyahu talked about vague
"countermeasures."
 *The television as a lullaby.*
 *Do you do this every night, Mulder?*
 And then sleep took her.
 
<5>
Claridge's
London
8:32 a.m. local time
3:32 a.m. Washington time
December 2
 
 "You're lucky this isn't an American hotel," said the Well-Manicured Man.
"They'd have no ashtrays."
 "You called me," his breakfast companion replied, a Morley hanging from his
lower lip.
 "A status report," the Englishman demanded, leaning back into the armchair.
 The room-service waiter politely coughed; the Briton fished a five-pound note
from his wallet and shooed him away.
 His colleague waited for the door to close. "As you instructed, we have
secured the site in Iraq."
 "And at a terrible price, I'm afraid." The Well-Manicured Man began to tear
into his eggs florentine. "Will satellites be able to tell?"
 "I doubt it."
 "Make sure."
 "I worry more about United Nations inspection teams that are sure to demand
access to Iraq."
 "The U.N. is another person's problem. And I'm sure President Hussein is
currently showing the door to any remaining blue helmets within the country."
 The Cigarette-Smoking Man nodded.
 "Bronschweig?"
 "He's already there."
 "Good. How much time do you think they'll need?"
 "It's unclear at this point."
 "Very well." The Londoner reached for his tomato juice.
 "I remain uncertain that this will work," the American said.
 The Well-Manicured Man stopped in mid-sip, dabbed his lips with a napkin. "Is
your... skepticism... in the plan, or in me?"
 His only response was a puff of smoke.
 The Englishman sighed loudly. "Must I resort to the time-honored and timeworn
art of blackmail to ensure you cooperate?"
 "I know everything you know."
 "Of course." He leaned across the table. "But you see, I know everything
*you* know. And therein lies my advantage."
 The American's smoking hand was steady, but his eyes widened.
 "Yes," the Well-Manicured Man said with a smile, leaning back. "I know about
*him* and *her.*"
 "They are to be left out of this."
 "Then you are to do what I say."
 "The Elder will find out."
 "The Elder thinks you are dead, remember? You were shot." The Well-Manicured
Man chuckled. "Besides, my colleague's too busy accelerating the timetable.
I'm sure you saw this morning's *Financial Times.*" He placed a folded copy of
the salmon-colored newspaper on the American's unfilled breakfast plate.
 Through his own smoke, the man read the only visible part of the headline:
*Merger to un-*
 He left it unfolded on the table. "I've seen it," he said.
 "The formal announcement was made in Frankfurt an hour ago. That should keep
the Elder busy for a while. Of course, I'm more concerned about *this*."
 He made sure to unfold the late edition of the *International Herald-Tribune*
and open it to page three before putting that in front of the smoking man.
 *U.S. justice official kills self on nationwide TV,* blared the main
headline.
 *Mother releases hostage son before suicide,* added the subhead.
 The picture showed Anne and Jason Doyle, locked in their deadly embrace, as
what the newspaper described as "two unidentified FBI agents" approached them.
 Mulder and Scully.
 The American stubbed out his cigarette and quickly lit another.
 "So much for handling things discreetly," muttered the Well-Manicured Man.
 "Admittedly, an error."
 "A *serious* one. Not only did the woman die in a way that will clearly
provoke investigation, but she had to do so in front of *these two.* You are
to ensure that *these two* do not become involved any further."
 "They won't. I promise." The American rose. "Is that all?"
 The Well-Manicured Man frowned. His eyes narrowed. "Do not betray me," he
said, slowly rising from his chair. "I know you Americans have no sense of
history. But on this continent, history resides everywhere. And in the last
war, there were people like you who had no beliefs, no ideology, just a
burning desire to ally themselves with the victors, no matter who died in the
process."
 The Cigarette-Smoking Man inhaled deeply, listening.
 "We called them quislings, after one of their more spineless examples."
 The American reached for his coat. The Well-Manicured Man put a hand on his
arm.
 "And after the war," he said in a light tone, "we shot them."
 
<6>
FBI Headquarters
December 2
7:17 a.m.
 
 The moan was loud enough for Scully to hear through the locked office door.
 Her first reaction was panic. *Don't hurt him--*
 But then she realized it was a woman's voice-husky and throaty, but also
tinny, as if she were speaking through a telephone. Or a television speaker.
 And that this woman seemed to be enjoying whatever was happening in her
world.
 Enjoying it *very* much.
 She stood outside the door, listening to the various gasps and groans,
clearly the end result of poor acting.
 *Is this what you call 'going through other evidence,' Mulder?*
 *Have you been doing this* all night?
 She wasn't shocked by his habit, but she was surprised that he was being
rather blatant about it this morning. His... hobby, she guessed... embarrassed
him. *Whatever tape you found in that VCR isn't mine.* Downcast eyes, stammer
in the voice. He moved the hiding place for the videos after that, but she
still occasionally found a catalog.
 *Sleazy Rider,* an epic tale of the motorcycling life, was the title of the
tape she had discovered three years ago. She had watched one scene, laughing
her way through the whole thing.
 *What does he get out of it?*
 *I want to find out.*
 Scully slid off her shoes and coat.
 She waited for an especially loud groan to slide her key into the lock and
open the door.
 The office was dark except for one lamp, augmented by the dirty-white glow of
the television. Both sat behind a large corkboard on wheels that blocked
Scully's view. Pinned to the board was a huge National Geographic Survey map
of the U.S., speckled with pins of several different colors, each representing
a different alleged alien sighting or, in some cases, alleged abduction.
 Lightly, she touched the black pin Mulder had placed in Skyland Mountain.
 She missed the Mulder who would spend hours arguing the use of "alleged,"
whom she'd leave most nights standing in front of this map, staring at it,
trying to find patterns in the colored dots. What Mulder lacked in empirical
evidence for his beliefs, he had made up with passion--intense and infectious,
sparking from him like electricity. When she saw his eyes flick over the map,
back and forth, wide and curious and on fire, she, too, wanted to believe.
 But now...
 Darts and pencils had been randomly flung at the map, which now hung limp
from an unrepaired rip. He'd torn down the old title card: ENCOUNTERS, written
in Mulder's very precise drafting-class block print.
 Ever since finding out his discovery of an frozen alien body in the Arctic
was nothing more than a Barnumesque hoax, Mulder had wanted to forget more
than believe. And at one point, he even admitted to Scully that he sometimes
doubted if aliens took Samantha--a confession that would have formerly been
blasphemy in the church of Mulder.
 A gasp from the television reminded her why she wasn't wearing shoes. She
quietly walked up to the map, then slowly moved toward its side.
 *What if he's crying while he's watching it?*
 *What if he's taking notes about it?*
 *What if he's touching himself?*
 Scully felt a delicious little shiver pass through her.
 She took a deep breath, and stepped out from behind the corkboard.
 Technicolor pornography was belching from the television.
 But the man sitting in front of it was fully clothed, from his academy-gray
sweatshirt to his sneakers.
 And his knitted brows, semi-ajar mouth and focused squint proved he was more
confused than aroused by this selection from the Mulder Film Library.
 "May I help you?" Scully asked quietly.
 "Oh!" The man's head snapped up in shock. He fumbled for the *stop* button on
the remote, but instead hit the *volume up* button just as the two female co-
stars began a chorus of... Scully wasn't exactly sure how to describe the
sound. The man finally managed to stab the *off* button with a shaky hand.
 He blushed, straight past red to crimson. "I thought this was something
else," he said, plastering a nervous smile onto his face.
 "That's what my partner often says."
 "You must be Scully." He rose, and Scully took a better look at him; about
Mulder's age, but looking older, with salt-and-pepper already sprinkled in the
dark hair around his temples. "Fox said you might come in early."
 *Fox? He doesn't let* anyone *call him Fox.*
 The hairs on the back of her neck began to come to attention.
 "You're not wearing a visitor's pass," she said, carefully rolling her eyes
across his clothing. He didn't appear to be carrying a weapon.
 His smile frayed at the edges as he began quickly patting down his pockets.
"I think maybe Fox--"
 *That name again.*
 "--held onto it when we came in early this morning. You see, I was jogging--"
 "I'm sorry, who are you?" Scully interrupted.
 "Oh, I'm sorry, David, David Tremblay." He extended a hand.
 Scully let it hang. "And what are you doing here? *Without* a visitor's
badge?"
 *What's missing from the office?*
 And then her heart leapt into her throat: *Mulder was going to bring back
evidence from Doyle's office last night. Where is it?*
 "Fox wanted me to see something, although I'm not sure exactly what it is."
 "You're a law enforcement officer?" Scully asked.
 "Well, no. Actually, I'm a rabbi."
 "My partner's never mentioned you," said Scully, carefully pivoting on her
feet, placing herself between Tremblay and the basement office exit.
 "Well, actually, we haven't seen each other in a long time. About eight,
almost nine years now. Since I married him."
 *Gotcha,* Scully thought.
 She grabbed her SigSauer from its beltline holster at the small of her back
and assumed a firing stance.
 "Keep your hands where I can see them, please," she said quietly.
 "Wait, whoa! Is that thing *loaded?*" Tremblay reached for the sky. Sweat
began rolling downstream from the widow's peak on his forehead.
 "The next time you try impersonating a colleague of my partner's, I'd learn a
thing or two about him first, like if he was ever married previously."
 "But I was *there,*" he said.
 "What are you really doing here?" Scully asked.
 Behind her, keys rattled in the lock, and she heard the door open.
 "Hey, Scully, your shoes are outside here. Listen, I like to play Twister as
much as the next guy, but I don't think we have the room--"
 Mulder emerged from behind the corkboard.
 Scully glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He held steaming
styrofoam cups in each hand, and a donut box was under his arm.
 He looked past Scully to Tremblay.
 "I see you've met my partner, Dirty Harry," he said, nodding his chin toward
Scully. "She must like you. She normally waits for the second date to show
people her toys."
 Scully left the pistol where it was but turned her head toward Mulder. "This
man, who lacks a visitor's pass, claims to have officiated your wedding."
 Mulder's eyes widened and flicked toward Scully for only a second, but it was
enough for her to read. She felt her arms slacken and drop slowly to their
sides.
 *Mulder?*
 *Married?*
 A cacophony of questions, like an overcrowded press conference, exploded in
her mind.
 But Mulder looked away, back toward Tremblay. Storm clouds rose in his eyes,
turning the hazel to something darker.
 Tremblay shrugged. "What did I do?" he asked.
 "He's telling the truth," Mulder said softly.
 Scully *felt* her eyebrow arch toward the stratosphere. Mulder tried to hold
her gaze, but couldn't; his eyes skittered across the room, from filing
cabinet to ceiling light to floor tile.
 "Married, Mulder?" she asked. "In this life? Not a past one?"
 He nodded.
 "I don't mean to be rude, Agent Scully," Tremblay said quietly, "but could
you put that away?" He stared at the pistol.
 *Mulder?*
 *Married?*
 She shook her head lightly, trying to free herself from the surprise. "Sure,"
she said, reholstering her sidearm. She extended her hand. "I'm terribly
sorry. But you don't have a visitor's--"
 "Damn. Sorry. Catch, Dave." Mulder fished in his pants pocket and tossed the
laminated plastic card to the rabbi, who deftly caught it in his left hand
while using his right to return Scully's handshake.
 "No harm, no foul, Agent Scully," Tremblay said. "Now I've had more
excitement in the past hour and a half than I've had in the past five years."
He attached the pass to the collar of his sweatshirt. Right up front.
Prominently.
 "Scully, Dave is an old friend of mine whom I've asked to review some of the
press tapes from last night. When he was younger, he spent a lot of time in
Israel studying languages, like ancient and modern Hebrew." But Mulder didn't
look up as he spoke; instead, he closely inspected the donut box, opening it
as if he were counting, preparing to arrest someone if there weren't exactly a
dozen.
 Scully pulled a chair closer to her and sat down, still watching Mulder.
 *What was she like, Mulder?*
 *Why haven't you told me?*
 *And no pictures?*
 Something fiery erupted in the pit of her stomach.
 "I was there during the Gulf War, too. That was pretty intense," Tremblay
said in a trying-to-alleviate-an-awkward-situation voice, punctuated with a
fake, nervous laugh. "But Fox--"
 Like an arrow, Scully shot a *what-gives* glance toward Mulder, who didn't
see it.
 "--I couldn't find the tape. All I could find was this one." He ejected
*Sleazy Rider* and handed it to Mulder, who made an annoyed sound as he
recognized it.
 "Evidence from a different case, sorry about that," he said, a slight stammer
creating a mid-sentence hiccup. "Remember this case, Scully?"
 *You're not getting any help from me.* "No," she said.
 "Yeah. Well. It's closed now." Mulder tossed the video into a nearby half-
bent garbage can. He rummaged through a pile of tapes on the VCR cart,
withdrawing a different one. "Here."
 Tremblay placed it into the machine and turned everything back on. An image
of the MCI Center came into focus.
 "OK, then." Tremblay sat back in his chair, rubbing his hands together,
smiling as if his favorite feature film was about to start.
 "Um, Scully. Could I speak with you for a moment?" Mulder said, jerking his
head toward the front of the office, toward the other side of the corkboard.
 "Sure. Whatever."
 The two agents walked around the bulletin board. Mulder thrust his hands into
his pockets and analyzed the floor for a moment.
 Scully stood, back against the corkboard, following Mulder's gaze to the
floor. She realized her body language: arms folded tightly across her chest,
lips pursed hard against her teeth.
 *I'm pouting.*
 *How childish,* said a voice in her frontal lobe.
 But from deeper within her howled another question: *Do you compare me to
her, Mulder?*
 She let her brain win and looked up. "Mulder, I'm sorry about the gun, I
didn't know--"
 "I didn't expect you to find out like this," he interrupted, finally matching
her gaze.
 *Did you expect me to find out at all?* But all she said was:"It's fine."
 "You don't seem *fine* about it." He injected some venom into the fourth
word.
 "Your personal life is your business. It just was a shock."
 As soon as the last word fell out of her mouth, something changed in his
face. His jaw set tightly, and his eyes grew even darker.
 "A shock that someone would marry me rather than commit me?" he asked
hoarsely.
 *Oh, shit, what bruise did I just poke?*
 "No, no," Scully said. "Of course not. It's just that... I thought..."
 *I thought I knew everything about you, Mulder, but I don't.*
 "People usually talk about their exes, is all," she finished lamely. "I told
you about Jack."
 "Only because he was the principal in a case. Look, it was a short,
unpleasant mistake that I don't like to relive any more than I have to. That's
all," he said.
 "I'll never bring it up again," she said, with a sharper tone than she'd
intended. It cut him somewhere; he winced.
 Their eye contact collapsed; both stood for a moment, looking at the floor.
 "I need you to do a favor," he said. "I'd do it, but I had a hard enough time
convincing Dave to show up. I kind of ambushed him while he was jogging... I
went through some of the things Skinner and his team pulled from Doyle's
office and home last night. One was a hard drive that I dropped off with the
boys around three this morning. Langly said it should be easy to crack, he
might have it done. Could you go get it, see what they have to say?"
 "Sure. Whatever," she said.
 "Fine," said Mulder, and left her standing there as he returned to the other
side of the corkboard.
 
Mulder winced again as the door slammed shut behind Scully.
 "I'm really sorry about that," Tremblay said. He was using the VCR's frame-
rewind function to find a specific segment of the tape. "I didn't know that
your marriage, short as it was, is a state secret."
 "I don't have secrets," Mulder said, collapsing into a chair.
 "Oh, yeah, right." Tremblay laughed and reached for a donut. The powdered
sugar on his fingers betrayed the fact that it would be at least his second.
"Your partner's one."
 "Who? Scully? Scully's no secret."
 "In a way, she is. One that you're keeping from yourself."
 "What?"
 "Forget-- Damn. I mean, oops," Tremblay said, letting his finger slip from
frame-rewind to rewind and moving way past his target spot. "Forget it, Fox."
 Mulder chuckled.
 "What?"
 "That's why Scully pulled the gun," he explained. "No one calls me that
anymore."
 "It's a name that didn't leave the Vineyard, huh?"
 "Exactly."
 "Gosh, everyone we knew growing up, though, did leave. There's no one left on
the island. You, me, Pete, Laura. Chilmark's Four Horsemen, that's what your
dad called us. Creepy."
 "His idea of a joke," Mulder replied in a tone that said *yes, creepy.*
 "We were only *eight.* We didn't need jokes based on the end of the world."
 "I think *he* might have needed them," Mulder said.
 "But anyway, who would've thought Pete would become a *mutual-fund manager,*
of all things? Who would've thought you would join the *FBI?* Who would've
thought I would become a *rabbi?* And live in *Washington?* And have two
*kids?* Certainly not *me.*"
 Mulder smiled, remembering the beach, *their* beach, up until he was
twelve--and Samantha was taken, and things got very bad, very quickly, and his
dad came home one day and said they were moving to Washington. They'd race
back and forth across it during the day, playing a plethora of games for which
they'd make up thousands of rules. In the evenings, when the crowds died down,
they'd swim. And at night, they'd lie back on the sand and look up at the
stars, thousands of them, worlds waiting to be conquered by their
imaginations.
 He still remembered the first day he stopped looking at Laura as yet another
of the four horsemen. They were ten and running to get home to supper. She
stopped him, however, and handed him a seashell--one like he'd never seen
before, a mottled purple and blue with dozens of curlicues. He found something
new in it every time he looked.
 *For me?* he'd asked. *But why?*
 *Because you'd like it,* she'd replied, squeezing his hand.
 "How is Laura?" he asked.
 "Last I knew, fine. Remarried. But you knew that," he replied, glancing over.
 Mulder nodded.
 "I knew it was a mistake the day I married you two," Tremblay said.
 "Then why'd you do it?"
 "If I remember correctly, you asked me."
 "Why'd you let me, then?"
 Tremblay shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe the idealistic part of me thought if
*I* loved the two of you enough, if *God* loved the two of you enough, it'd be
OK. But it wasn't. Here. This is the part I wanted to show you."
 The rabbi activated the tape, and Doyle exploded in a storm of diphthongs.
 "That doesn't sound like any verb I conjugated in Hebrew school," Mulder
said.
 "That's because it's Arabic," Tremblay replied, hitting the pause button.
 "You're kidding."
 "Nope. An old, old dialect, however. Ancient and nothing really like the
modern-day language. It's almost closer to Coptic than Arabic, but Coptic's
got a Greek influence; this has the signature sounds and structure of the
latter. It's like a patois, a kind of hybridization of the two."
 "Only I could confuse languages that represent two nations who have fought
each other for two thousand years," Mulder said.
 "Actually, they sound very similar. When they put on the new Israeli-
Palestinian *Sesame Street,* they have to be careful because Hebrew words
sometimes sound like different Arabic words."
 "Those consonants must be hell for Oscar the grouch. Can you tell what she's
saying?"
 "Most of it sounds like variations on the same command: 'Leave me alone.'
Except this." Tremblay hit the pause button again. On the TV, Doyle thumbed
the hammer back and burst forth with another torrent of words.
 "'They come forth with plague to smite the innocent and bring a thousand
years of darkness upon the world,'" the rabbi translated.
 "Not exactly light conversation," Mulder said.
 "Downright spooky if you ask me."
 Mulder clenched his fist, then let it go. "Is that all?"
 "Pretty much. Except these two also seem to be amateur Egyptologists."
 "What do you mean?"
 "Well, check this out." Tremblay fast-forwarded to a close up of Anne's head-
and-shoulders. "See this?" He pointed to a shiny piece of jewelry, pinned to
her sweatshirt.
 Mulder stood, walked over toward the television and peered at the brooch.
"Looks like hieroglyphics."
 "Hiero*glyphs,*" Tremblay automatically corrected. "That's called a
cartouche. It's a piece of jewelry that spells out a short prayer. Looks like
it's pewter or silver. You can get them from any of those crap catalogs they
carpet-bomb your mailbox with nowadays."
 "What's this one say?"
 "Now leaving what Dave Tremblay knows about ancient Egypt, visit again soon,"
deadpanned the rabbi. "You'll need to hijack another jogging expert for that
one. Do you have the cartouche in evidence?"
 Mulder shook his head. "Her clothes have gone missing."
 "That's odd."
 "In the whole scheme of the last six years," Mulder said, "not really."
 "Well, you've got another sample." Using the frame advance, Tremblay
following the panning camera, in slow motion, down Anne Doyle's neck to her
son's head and then freezing the picture on a close-up of Jason. "Check out
around his neck."
 Another cartouche, hanging on what looked to be a rawhide leather--
 *Wait a second.*
 The memory returned with enough force to knock Mulder back a step.
 *Give it back, Fox, it's my necklace.*
 Sam's voice.
 *Say you're sorry for calling me a boogerbutt,* he said.
 *I'm sorry.*
 He had almost given her back the necklace when she recanted.
 *You're not a boogerbutt, you're a turdhead.*
 *That does it. You'll be sorry, Sam.*
 *Fox. No!*
 He had pulled the scissors out from his desk drawer.
 *Don't cut it! No! It's mine! Mom! Mom!*
 The leather was difficult to cut with school-issue scissors--he was fraying
it apart, rather than making a clean *snip,* right near the silver-looking
pendant.
 He should've just untied the knot that held the two ends of the rawhide loop
together, but that simply wasn't destructive enough for an 11-year-old.
 *I'm telling! I'm telling!*
 He'd finally cut it, holding the open necklace up for inspection.
 *Stupid hieroglyphics,* he remembered thinking.
 Of course, his mother made him repair it, retying the two ends of the broken
rawhide in a sloppy second knot that always hung closer to the cartouche.
 The same sloppy second knot stared back at him from the television screen.
 He knew it, both in his eyes and in his heart.
 *That's Sam's necklace.*
 
<7>
8:32 a.m.
The Lone Gunmen headquarters
An undisclosed location in Virginia
 
"Great timing," said Byers as he finally opened the door, after spending
nearly three minutes unlocking all the deadbolts. "We're just finishing the
printout. Did Mulder come with you?"
 "No, I guess I'm just the little errand girl this morning," Scully said,
surprised at the taste of her words. *Pretty bitter.*
 Byers led Scully back into the largest of the rabbit-warren of offices that
constituted the Gunmen's publishing headquarters. Langly, dressed in a
threadbare robe, Anthrax T-shirt and dingy white boxers, sat at the largest of
several monitor-and-keyboard terminals, eating what appeared to be a bowl of
Froot Loops swimming in chocolate milk. Scully's teeth felt fuzzy just looking
at the meal. She didn't want to look too closely at Langly.
 "Hey-hey, Agent Scully," he said. "Had breakfast? Want some cereal?"
 "No thanks, Toucan Sam," she replied. "Nice outfit."
 "It's my Gulf War homage." He pointed to the Anthrax logo. "Poor man's nuke.
Saddam could've saved himself a lot of money. He already has enough of *this*
to poison most of New York or Los Angeles. So why'd he need the bomb? In our
next issue, we'll have excerpts from a secret CIA report detailing--"
 Byers cleared his throat.
 "Anyway, we're finished with the hard disk." Langly ripped open four sugar
packets and dumped their contents into a tall styrofoam cup of coffee. "Very
simple to crack. Not very worthy an opponent."
 "What did you find?" she asked.
 "Only one document." Frohike emerged, troll-like, from behind a carrel full
of racks of computer equipment. He carried a thick sheaf of freshly laser-
printed papers. "But it's a doozy."
 Even from a yard away, the cologne hit Scully like a tidal wave. "Did you
swim through a pool of Old Spice this morning?" she asked.
 "I just freshened up when I heard the lovely Agent Scully was at the door,"
he said.
 *I knew geeks like this in high school.*
 *We called them the audio-visual club.*
 Frohike handed Scully the document. She began paging through it. "Looks like
a preliminary draft of some kind of antitrust lawsuit."
 "Lovely and lawyerly," sighed Frohike. "You're right."
 "The encryption on it was very, very kindergarten. Frohike's *mom* could've
hacked this," Langly interjected from around a mouthful of cereal.
 "Your mom can do a lot of things too. I can tell you some--" Frohike began.
 "Shut up. Scully, someone *did* try to erase the drive."
 "But you never really delete computer files," Scully said. "You just
overwrite them eventually. So there's often stuff still on the disk."
 Langly nodded as he slurped his coffee.
 "In any event, it looks like Doyle was either very well connected with Wall
Street or has a crystal ball somewhere in her desk," Byers said.
 Scully looked over at him, puzzled.
 "You haven't seen today's papers?" he asked.
 "Of course I have."
 "The business section?"
 "You mean to follow the investments I've made after earning millions with the
Federal Government?"
 Byers offered a half-smile and pulled up a Web browser on a nearby computer.
 The front page of the *Financial Times* materialized.
 Scully leaned over a little and read:
 
 *MERGERS TO UNITE THREE FIRMS INTO BIOTECH GIANT*
 
 *LONDON--GSK AG, the German chemical manufacturing conglomerate, is expected
 to announce as early as tomorrow its intent to purchase a large American drug
 company and a smaller US biotechnology firm, reliable sources have confirmed.
 GSK will announce a $10 billion stock swap to purchase Pinck Pharmaceutical,
 an Indiana-based phamaceutical concern--*
 
 "Oh my God," Scully muttered. She remembered a horrible night in a Virginia
prison, sitting in a makeshift lab, looking into a microscope she was
adjusting with a trembling hand and wondering if she would see her own death
once she focused the instrument--if the test would show she had been exposed
to a toxin that was violently killing some of the prison inmates.
 *By that point, I'd already been poisoned with the cancer and didn't even
know it.*
 She turned to Byers. "Pinck is the company which Mulder and I believe
poisoned a number of inmates in a Virginia prison a couple years ago."
 "Read on," said Byers. "It gets better."
 
 *-- which has recently seen earnings surge thanks to the sale of its new
 anti-impotence drug, Eureka.*
 *GSK will also purchase Rausch Technologies, a privately held biotechnology
firm headquartered in Arizona, for an undisclosed amount of cash that is
expected to be immaterial to earnings.*
 *Rausch is heavily involved in genetic research, founded by American veterans
of the Human Genome Project, the worldwide scientific initiative to map DNA.*
 
 "Section Chief Blevins was taking kickbacks from Rausch," Scully said. "We
discovered that after he was shot."
 
 *GSK officials declined comment last night about the acquisition rumors, but
sources close to the company said firm officials hope to leverage the acquired
technologies in creating a new strain of genetically engineered drugs designed
to cure cancer.*
 
 In a reflex, Scully reached up and laid her fingers beside her nose, probing
and feeling for the mutinous brigade of tumor cells that she knew--she
*hoped*--had since disbanded.
 *Sometimes, late at night, I can still feel it.*
 *Like something growing under my skin.*
 *Devouring me... eating me alive...*
 
 *If European Union officials approve the merger, it will catapault GSK from
seventh to fourth place among the world's largest pharmaceutical companies.*
 
 The story used comments from talking heads to blather on to an abrupt
conclusion.
 "Wonder if Doyle bought the stock," Byers said quietly, looking at yet
another monitor. "The Germans confirmed the merger early this morning in
Frankfurt. GSK's stock's up eight percent on the DAX so far today. Pinck's
should skyrocket when Wall Street opens."
 Scully had returned to the document, rapidly paging through it. "It looks
like Doyle was trying to stop the merger."
 "Interesting that she was trying to stop it before it started," Byers said.
 "There's big holes missing in her argument," Scully said. "There are whole
sections missing. Have they been extracted?"
 "Not that we can tell," Langly said.
 "We think she never finished writing this," Frohike added.
 "It looks like she was designing this as some sort of friend-of-the-court
brief, trying to prove to EU officials that the merger was anticompetitive.
But that would be a hard case to prove," Byers said. "GSK and Pinck have
highly complementary product lines. Merging them wouldn't increase their
market share significantly in any business segment."
 "Did you see page 242?" Frohike asked.
 Scully turned to the page in question.
 It was a list of items Doyle wanted to subpoena.
 Halfway down the list she saw the two notations:
 
 *Affidavit of Special Agent Fox W. Mulder, Federal Bureau of Investigation,
in re case X4012*
 *Affidavit of Special Agent Dana K. Scully, Federal Bureau of Investigation,
in re case X4012*
 
 *Our statements about the prison.*
 "Mulder always told us X-Files couldn't be subpoenaed," Byers said.
 "Technically, they can," explained Scully, "but it's very difficult; Mulder's
resisted any efforts to add the files to the Bureau's evidence database. But
the reports we make to Skinner, which are affidavits, *are* in the Bureau's
database, and can easily be subpoenaed."
 "So this means GSK's behind Doyle's death?" Langly asked.
 "It creates a possible motive," she replied, "but there's no proof any of the
companies staged a hit. It could've been any of their shareholders, or
environmental terrorists upset about another big drug company, or simple
psychosis on Anne's part. I'm running some toxicology screens on her blood
later this morning. That may prove something." She paused, chewing her lower
lip. "I've heard of GSK, but what do they make, specifically?"
 "Poison gas," said Byers.
 "What?"
 "Well, no, not really. The rumor is that GSK was founded by some of the
German scientists that helped invent Zyklon-B, the gas used to kill Jews in
Nazi concentration camps. But the connection's never been proven. They're
famous for antibiotics, actually; medicines designed to weaken viral
infections, stuff like that."
 "We can find out more for you," Frohike said. "Smells like a good article
from our end. Conspiracy among the pharmaceutical-industrial complex. We've
been tracking that for years now."
 "That'd be great," Scully said, relieved that the trio could provide some
backup. "And I have another question for you."
 "Shoot," said Langly, pouring some sugar packets over what remained of his
cereal.
 "What can you tell me about Mulder's ex-wife?"
 Langly looked at Byers.
 Byers looked at Frohike.
 Frohike looked at Langly.
 Silence descended.
 "Did he tell you about her?" Byers finally asked.
 "I found out by accident," Scully admitted.
 He began to fiddle with the end of his tie. "We're not... we promised..."
 "What, you guys signed a blood oath out behind the gym after school?"
 All three of the Gunmen looked away.
 *This is unfair of me,* Scully said.
 *But I* want *to know. So badly.*
 "OK," Scully said, holding up both hands. "OK."
 She picked up her briefcase and turned to leave.
 "Her name was--well, is--Laura," Frohike said.
 Scully turned toward him. He sat at a terminal, absently pushing a mouse back
and forth with his finger, refusing to look at her.
 Byers and Langly coldly stared at their partner.
 "We met Mulder in the summer of 1989," he continued. "He was engaged at the
time. He knew her from growing up, they were neighbors or something. They were
married at the end of the year. Nice ceremony. We weren't invited, but we...
well, you know... made arrangements to tape it."
 "He didn't invite you three?" Scully asked. *You are his closest friends.*
 "She didn't care for us," Byers said, almost apologetically.
 "She thought we were freaks." Langly slurped the chocolate milk from his
bowl.
 Scully moved closer to Frohike. "What happened?"
 Frohike shrugged. "One night, two years later--this is actually the night
after he opened the X-Files--he showed up in the middle of the night. Drunk.
Crying. We put him on the couch. Byers noticed his ring was gone. The next day
he said they'd fought over having kids, and it was over. And we were never to
mention it again."
 Scully put down her briefcase and sat next to Frohike. "I don't believe that,
and neither do you," she whispered.
 Frohike looked up and nodded. "She dumped him because he began chasing
aliens."
 *Oh, God, Mulder, I'd never leave you. Do you think that? Is that your
nightmare?*
 She looked into Frohike's rheumy eyes. "Me?" she asked.
 He shook his head sadly. "I don't know. Maybe. You scare him sometimes."
 Scully reached over and turned Frohike's chin toward her. She bent over and
planted a feather-soft kiss right above his right eyebrow.
 She leaned back and smothered a giggle. He looked as if he'd just been
electrocuted.
 "Thanks, boys," she said.
 As Byers walked her to the door, she heard Langly say, "What are you doing?"
 "Checking the mirror," Frohike replied. "Maybe I turned into a prince."
 "You did. Of *Transylvania.*"
 "We'll call when we get more info on the merger," Byers promised Scully.
 "That's OK. Your *mom* says I'm her Prince Charming," she heard Frohike
respond.
 "That's funny, because *your* mom's mouth's always full when I--"
 Fortunately, Byers closed the door on the end of Langly's sentence.

<8>
FBI Headquarters
8:20 a.m.
 
 Mulder seethed during the whole elevator ride.
 *Skinner.*
 He had just returned from seeing Tremblay to the front gate. He'd kept his
thoughts of Sam to himself; he couldn't remember what lie he had told Dave
about him and Laura, but he was sure it didn't involve his missing sister.
 *Maybe not so missing anymore, huh?*
 *Hope hides in Pandora's box,* he mused, and tried to splash cold water on
his crackling nerves, which kept humming: *You're closer, you're closer,
you're closer...*
 "Are you all right?" Tremblay had asked at the metal detectors.
 "Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Dave." Mulder had shaken his hand.
 Tremblay had held onto Mulder's. "Fox. Come have dinner with me and Rachel.
Please. I don't want the next time we meet to be in two-thousand-twenty, when
you jump out of the bushes and surprise me during some geriatric jog."
 Mulder offered an honest smile, one so unused that his facial muscles creaked
a little in protest. "Will you try to get me to return to temple?"
 "No," said Dave, cocking his head. "But I will try to get you to return to
the Fox I once knew. Bring your redheaded friend. And call Simon. If anyone
knows those hieroglyphs, he will."
 Mulder waved, turned around, pulled his cell phone from his pocket and fished
in his shirt pocket for the Egyptologist's phone number, seven digits Tremblay
had scrawled on a piece of donut-box paper.
 The cell phone rang.
 Mulder punched the talk button. "Scully, you won't believe what just--"
 "Agent Mulder," Skinner growled.
 "Sir?"
 "I'd like to see you in my office."
 "Sir, right, I'd just like to--"
 "Now, Mulder." An abrupt *click.*
 Mulder boarded the elevator with his face screwed up into a snarl of disgust.
 *He can't take this away from me.*
 *I won't let him.*
 *Maybe Scully was right about him.*
 *Hope hides...*
 Abby was absent when Mulder arrived. He paused outside Skinner's half-open
door, about to rap on the jamb, when he heard the assistant director speak.
 "I received your message and I'm about to take care of it."
 Skinner was holding a phone conversation; he sat in his desk chair, swiveled
away from the door.
 Mulder's knocking fist stopped in mid-air.
 "This is the last time, and I'm not sure I can stop him."
 A long pause. Mulder found himself holding his breath.
 "I'm not your servant. I've repaid my debt to you. In full. With interest."
 A shorter pause. Mulder felt his body wind up with anger, every muscle
drawing taut.
 "Fuck you," Skinner said, slamming the phone receiver back onto the cradle.
 "That's how I always end my conversations with old friends," Mulder said.
"Especially ones who smoke."
 He saw Skinner's chin drop to his chest for a moment in resignation. Then the
Marine backbone returned, head and neck stood at attention on shoulders and
back, and the assistant director twisted his chair toward Mulder.
 "Who's *your* friend?" Skinner began.
 "My friend?"
 "The one I saw you enter this building with at 6:42 a.m."
 "Old childhood friend of mine. We went jogging and I decided to show him his
tax dollars at work. He was jealous of my office."
 "You went jogging? Dressed like that?"
 "Sure."
 "Difficult to run in dress shoes."
 "Scully does it in heels."
 "Where is Agent Scully? She's not answering her cell phone."
 *Smart girl,* Mulder thought, until he realized that she might be screening
her calls to avoid him.
 He cringed as her remembered her face crumpling, her gun arm collapsing, in a
rare, unguarded and certainly unScullylike moment of pure surprise and
confusion that only he knew enough to catch before she became all G-girl
again.
 *I was going to tell you, Scully. I want to tell you everything.*
 *Someday I'll be able to do something without hurting you.*
 "Agent Mulder?" prompted Skinner.
 "Beats me. Sir, did you call me up here to discuss footwear because, if you
did, I'd be surprised you were into that sort of thing."
 "I called you up here to tell you that the D.C. police are contesting
jurisdiction, and want to take control of the Doyle murder."
 "The D.C. police, among the most underfunded in this country, are asking for
more work?"
 "So I understand."
 Mulder longingly looked at Skinner's metal wastebasket, wanting--needing--to
kick it until it was a crushed aluminum ball. "OK. Just let me see the
paperwork, and I'll turn over the evidence. That is, all the evidence that
hasn't already been stolen."
 "You don't need to see the paperwork."
 "I think regulations say otherwise."
 Skinner sighed. "Are we done with the playground games? You're off this
case."
 Mulder stood silent, examining his fingernails.
 "What, Mulder?"
 "I was waiting for the 'or else,'" he said.
 "I don't know what the 'or else' is, Mulder, OK?" Skinner exploded, standing
up, leaning across the desk at his subordinate. "I don't know if the 'or else'
is an order from the Attorney General shutting down the X-Files or a car bomb
outside this building or a bullet in the back of your head."
 *Blah blah blah,* Mulder thought. *I've heard this before.*
 "Or Scully's," Skinner finished.
 Mulder *felt* his blood pressure skyrocket in his wrists, in his carotid
artery, in his head. His teeth ground together. His nostrils flared.
 He leapt across the desk at Skinner, reaching for his throat.
 The ex-Marine neatly feinted to the left, using his left hand to grab
Mulder's right wrist and twist it. Quickly, he then grabbed Mulder's right
arm, directly below the elbow, with his other hand. He twisted in the opposite
direction.
 White-hot pain flooded Mulder's arm. He was sure the next sound he'd hear
would be the *crack-pop* of the bone snapping.
 Skinner leaned over the desk to look into Mulder's eyes.
 "I'm on your side," he said.
 "With friends like you," Mulder grunted, jerking his head toward his
restrained arm.
 Skinner let go, but held Mulder's gaze. "You're so goddamned paranoid, and
maybe that's helped keep you alive so far, but you have to believe me when I