By Martin Ross and Beth
fwidsvnt@ilfb.org
 

Spoilers: The Truth, Jump The Shark,
This Is Not Happening
Category: Mythology
Rating: R for language, violence,
graphic descriptions
E-mail: Beth at Starbuck70@aol.com
Martin at rossprag@fgi.net
Gibson Praise has vanished, Reyes and Skinner are left for dead, Mulder and Scully begin a journey in search of the truth, and Doggett is set on the trail of a shadowy new enemy devoted to "saving" mankind and a possible threat to humanity.

I’ve come to realize that there many more things in this world than I care to know. But I also realize that, now, I have to care.
John Doggett

~~~

Resurrection
By Martin Ross and Beth
 

Brady , Texas
5:18 a.m.

"Wake up."

The voice was quiet but insistent in the breaking light of dawn. Mulder struggled against the comfort of sleep to open his eyelids at the sound. There was a pleasant weight resting against his back, an arm curled around his waist. He could feel her even breathing against his neck, and heard an occasional soft snore from behind him. The voice had not come from Scully.

"Mulder, you have to get up." The voice was more persistent now, almost pleading, but Mulder could not fathom where it was coming from. "They're going to kill him."

At those words, Mulder forced his eyes open all the way, to glance around at what surroundings he could see without dislodging himself from Scully. There was no sign of the man who had spoken the words.

He was still in the same dingy motel room in Texas where he had fallen asleep in the night before. His covering was threadbare and the curtains did little to stop the slowly encroaching sun. It was cooler now than it had been, thanks to the unexpected rain from the night before -- he and Scully must have crawled beneath the barely sufficient covers sometime in the night.

Mulder turned, careful not to wake the still-sleeping Scully, and regarded the other half of the room. He saw nothing at first until a slight motion near the door caught his eye. In the corner, hidden in the shadows of the retreating night, stood Alex Krycek , ominous yet strangely reassuring. He took a step forward and the faint light from the window illuminated one half of his body.

"Who's going to be killed?" Mulder whispered.

"You need to get to him." Krycek glanced at the window, then back at Mulder .

"Who?!" His voice was more demanding, but he kept the volume low. Scully nuzzled against his shoulder, and Mulder hoped she wouldn't wake to see him speaking to ghosts.

"Your son, Mulder. You have to save him."

Mulder felt his heart jump into his throat. William…no. Just then, Scully stirred against him, and Mulder glanced down to see if she was awake. She blinked her eyes open at him, smiled, then closed them again, burrowing further into the covers. When Mulder looked up again, Krycek was gone.

Mulder was angry that the apparition had disappeared so quickly: There were questions that needed to be answered now, obstacles he had no idea how to bypass. How could he save his son? They had lost everything -- all their contacts, all their credibility. They were being hunted by God knows how many mystery men: Shadow government agents, alien supersoldiers , shape-shifting bounty hunters... the list went on and on.

"Mmm... were you talking, Mulder?" Scully's voice was still saturated with sleep; it was early, before six.

Mulder ran a hand over her hair. "No," he whispered. "Go back to sleep." He needed time to think as she slept, to figure out how they were going to begin to solve this problem, not to mention how on earth he was going to explain all this to Scully, how he would tell her where his tip had come from.

**
"Scully, we have to go." Mulder was rushing around the motel room, picking up their various belongings (which didn't amount to much en masse), and frantically trying to decide what to do next. They had to get out of Texas -- that much was clear.

"I understand, Mulder. I'm hurrying." Scully sighed as she pulled her shirt closed and began buttoning. "I just don’t understand why, all of a sudden, we need to tear out of here so fast."

Mulder looked up for a moment from the money he was counting, pausing long enough to meet her eyes, but he didn't reply. He hadn't told her yet about his vision of Krycek, about the mysterious ghost's warning. Sighing, he turned back to the small wad of cash in his hands. When he was satisfied with the amount he was carrying, Mulder stuffed his wallet into his back pocket and tucked the other bills into a suitcase.

"Mulder?" Scully was beginning to get irritated. His actions had been strange this morning, which was not entirely unusual, but he was avoiding her questions, buzzing around the room filled with nervous energy. It was nothing like the quiet calm he had expressed the night before as they lay together, dozing and waking every few hours.

Finally he walked over to stand in front of her and placed his hands gently on her shoulders. "Scully, do you remember when I told you about listening to the dead when they speak to us?"

Scully wrinkled her forehead, looking up at him with confusion in her eyes. She searched his expression carefully. "Yes..."

Mulder sighed, thinking how to phrase this the best way. "I've had some experiences that were a little more...literal than I may have inferred." He dropped his hands and looked away from her.

"What do you mean?" she asked, moving her head to catch his gaze. He watched her face intensely. "Mulder, what are you trying to say?" Scully's voice was gentle, prodding.

"I had a vision, Scully," he admitted. "More than one, really, but this morning was the first time it's happened in weeks." He swallowed. "Scully, this morning I saw Alex Krycek, standing in this motel room." Her eyes widened at his revelation, but she said nothing. "He told me...he told me that William is in danger, that we need to get to him as soon as we can."

Scully's jaw fell open slightly and her knees started to buckle beneath her. Mulder had his hands on her shoulders again instantly, leading her over to the bed to sit down.

"Oh, God," she said, her vision unfocused somewhere in the corner of the room. She had thought she was protecting him by sending him away, but instead... Guilt began to settle heavily over her. Distantly, she felt the weight of Mulder's hands on her shoulders, but she had trouble focusing on anything in particular. "But...how do you know? How can you trust a vision?" The words came out flatly, without conviction. She trusted Mulder, and as much as she didn't want to believe the words he had spoken, she could feel their truth.

"He's helped me before, Scully."

She didn't reply, just nodded, still staring at the water stain on the wall. Her fingers began shaking as the import of his words finally sank in. She stood quickly, retrieving her belongings and checking around the room one last time for anything she may have left. She looked afraid. She felt afraid. She had no idea how they were going to save their son, but she trusted Mulder. They would come up with something.

They had to.

Truslow , Ariz.
2:48 p.m.

Gibson Praise had been silent for nearly 400 miles, content merely to view the transition from East to Midwest to West along the myopic confines of the interstate highway system. The woman, Reyes, had offered him reading material for the long ride, but he needed little external stimulation to stave off boredom.

Gibson Praise’s brain generated a lifetime of sensory output in a minute’s span, using neurons most of the rest of the human species had long ago retired from genetic expression. The scientific community called it “junk DNA,” a misnomer Praise found abstractly amusing: Men had schemed and many had died to collect the “junk” in his skull. According to Fox Mulder , one of his few friends outside the tribe and a close colleague over the past several months, Praise’s gift, Praise’s curse (truth be told, Praise thought of his glorious junk in neither context) held the clues to an invisible universe beyond Man’s puny yardsticks and scales, and indeed the key to Man’s ultimate salvation.

He thought now of Mulder, who had been able to comprehend Praise’s feeling of detachment from the rest of humanity, and his friend Scully, who if failing to totally understand Praise, was willing to offer up her life in his defense. The man and the woman in the front seat held a similar commitment, Skinner out of duty and loyalty to the now-departed Mulder and Scully, Reyes out of a more maternal impulse. Praise was beholden to both agents, but chose to trust more in Skinner’s stable sensibilities than Reyes’ potentially risky emotions.

Skinner was deeply concerned about his friends and former underlings, who’d been forced into exile by government and alien forces. He knew Mulder had concealed a monumental, even apocalyptic revelation from himself and everyone else he trusted. He knew Mulder and Scully would be erased from existence should the shadow conspiracy find them. What Skinner did not know was what awaited him upon his return to Washington and the FBI. It was a large part of the reason why, when Praise asked to return to his “home” in the desert, the assistant director had readily agreed to personally shepherd him to his doorstep rather than risking air or bus travel.

Praise once had felt it wrong to invade the thoughts of others, but the atrocities inflicted upon him in the name of science and, often, under the guise of friendship, had convinced him that psychic investigation was essential to sorting allies from enemies and assessing risk. Later, as he learned to trust Mulder and Scully, he learned his telepathic skills were as essential to protecting others as they were to safeguarding himself. He had demonstrated this at Mulder’s military tribunal, exposing the extraterrestrial presence in the FBI.

Reyes, in the seat next to Skinner, was glancing at a book on Native American animism, but her mind was focused instead on the uncertain future. She worried about the missing Mulder and Scully, of course, but she was even more preoccupied with the fate of the X-Files, which she felt was somehow crucial to mankind’s survival, and with her partner, Doggett, whom she loved more deeply than her conscious mind would allow. While she respected Doggett’s professional savvy and abilities, Reyes now wondered if they had made the right decision, assigning herself as shotgun to Skinner and Doggett as the X-Files’ eyes and ears back in Washington. Neither the agents nor Skinner had yet received any word on whether the government-ravaged files would be restored, though Doggett had told Reyes the evening before that he had been summoned to a lunch meeting by some highly-placed but unidentified federal official.

Gibson Praise returned his gaze to the road, or rather his thoughts. They now were crossing the desert, and Praise was vaguely calmed by the arid, spare environment that so aptly reflected his own life, free of extraneous feelings and attachments.

**

Gene Arnsen’s expertise in psychology was accredited by no major university or agency. It had evolved in the arid vacuum of the desert, amid shelves of beans and dried beef and racks of now-faded caps and T-shirts and battered coolers of soda and water (the pop distributors were Gene’s single regular conduit to the outside world and, beyond the Direct Satellite dish nailed to the roof of his general store/diner/home, his major source of world news).

And when you had occupied most of your adult life baking in the sun, waiting in silence to service the next minivan, Jeep, or SUV or feed or supply the next carload of Yuppies and Yup-Pups or bus full of seniors, you had to grab off all the human insight you could until the next contact.

Gene pretended to peruse the Arizona Republic car ads as he analyzed the “family” quietly munching burgers in the corner booth. Family my ass, he would’ve told the guys at the bar or his poker buddies that night, had he had any poker buddies or if there had been a bar within 75 miles.

The “mother,” a pretty young gal, was conversational, warm, polite when served; the “father,” a towering guy ­ ex-Marine, probably -- with a cueball skull, silent and coolly responsive. Not unusual ­ take Archie and Edith on Nick at Night, or Raymond and Debra on Monday nights. But no physical spark passed between the two ­ no pecks on the cheek, no playful swats to the ass, not even any of the sharp words or looks that connected most couples. They definitely had some sort of relationship, but not personal: Their conversations, low and serious, abruptly halted when Gene approached with the burgers and ketchup.

And there was the boy. He gave Gene the royal blue-blooded creeps: He went straight to the table when his “mom” and “dad” entered the store, and he didn’t look up when Gene took their orders and brought the food. Except for the once: Gene had been thinking what an odd duck the kid was (didn’t look anything like the Earth Mother or the Marine), when the boy glanced up sharply and then returned hastily to his sandwich. Like some kid outta Stephen King (the miniseries, not the books ­ Gene didn’t take to reading).

Family, my ass, Gene thought, climbing the stairs to the stockroom for a new carton of bottled water (he still nearly shit his pants laughing thinking about the price folks paid today for good old H-two-oh). Can’t put one over on Gene Arnsen, he thought ­ I oughtta be one of those FBI profiler guys like on TV.

The shots rang out while he was wrestling the yuppie water toward the stairs. Gene’s heart jumped, but he instinctively knew not to yell out or drop his load, or whoever was shooting up the main salon would be up here in a beat. Two shots, he noted, not three. Hoped it wasn’t the Angels, popping the dad and kid and taking the mom for a ride to nowhere.

The storeroom was windowless, but a few moments later, he heard at least three sets of tires tearing at the gravel out front. He nonetheless waited in the dark loft, hands ludicrously full of spring water, until he could ascertain the shooters were gone and he could hustle down to help whoever might still be helpable.

They were on the dusty wood floor, halfway between the booth and the cash register, blood seeping from the Marine’s gut and the upper left quadrant of the woman’s chest.

“Jesus fucking mother of shit,” Gene breathed, dropping to a creaking knee to check their signs. The man was out of it, but he still had a pulse. The woman’s eyes were filled with agony, and blood seeped from the corner of her mouth as she tried to speak.

“Praise,” she whispered hoarsely, wincing from the effort.

“Yes, ma’am, I sure will,” Gene promised, trying to get up for the phone.

She grabbed his sleeve and croaked something else that sounded like “Give some praise.”

“I will, honey,” he said, patting her arm and pulling her fingers from him. The kid was nowhere in sight. “I’ll pray to the Lord for all of you after I get the state cops movin’.”

Three minutes later, Gene cradled the ancient rotary phone. There hadn’t been a lot of explaining necessary: His store wasn’t exactly hard to locate amid the sand and saguaros. But he knew how long it might take for the state boys to get there, and he didn’t want to give odds on the couple sticking it out that long.

He was trying to work out just how to stop the man’s gut from bleeding when the bell above the door jingled. Gene stumbled to a sitting position, waiting for the silhouetted man in his door to blow him to hell. Instead, the man, older, with a haggard face and kind eyes (an odd thought for Gene, who’d never really thought of eyes possessing such qualities), stood over the trio.

“Please move away,” the man requested, as if ordering a cheeseburger.

Le Café Precis
Washington, D.C.
1:30 p.m.

Ramon Yoruba recommended the coq au vin with the vichyssoise, and John Doggett dutifully ordered it. Yoruba, a blocky but handball-tightened executive of a man, was a man of quietly powerful bearing, and Doggett already was somewhat intimidated by the cut of his suit and the expense of the limo that had delivered the U.S. secretary of transportation to the door of the out-of-the-way French bistro. Intimidated, and baffled.

Yoruba ordered a white wine pronounced excellent by their waiter. Doggett knew better, and requested coffee, black.

“Did my office give you any indication of why I asked you to lunch, Agent Doggett?” Yoruba asked, mocha eyes intent behind two crisply clear lenses.

“Uh, no, sir,” Doggett murmured.

“Good. This needs to stay just between us, Agent ­ mano a mano, as my people would say.”

“I gotta...I have to admit I’m a little at a loss, Mr. Secretary,” Doggett confessed. “You could have an assistant director, probably the director himself, here without the cost of a pricey meal.”

Yoruba smiled, gently twirling his wine. “Good. Direct is what I want. And call me Ramon...John? Not being falsely democratic, John ­ just establishing that what I’m going to ask of you is out of the line of conventional duty.”

Doggett’s gut tightened. Yoruba wanted his own private cop for something. Many agents would’ve welcomed the opportunity for such a weighty deposit in the career favor bank; Doggett wasn’t one.

“And what would that be?” the agent asked.

Yoruba held up a hand, as if to ward off Doggett’s anxiety. “You were recommended to me as a man of integrity, of persistence, who cares deeply about children.”

There was an unspoken “and” hanging at the end of the sentence. “And,” Doggett provided.

“I guess there’s no use trying to play footsy here,” the transportation secretary sighed. “I was told you were a man who wasn’t out to make a name or take over the Bureau someday. In short, that you were willing to piss on your career if it meant doing what was right or necessary.”

It was such a blunt, unflattering appraisal that Doggett laughed. “Jesus, you put it that way, it’s kind of a downer.”

Yoruba shrugged, grinningly grateful the comment had been received in the spirit in which it had been intended. The Cabinet official then grew sober. “I would like to ask you to look, confidentially, of course, into a rather delicate and urgent matter. It’s my niece, Melinda ­ she seemingly has disappeared.”

Doggett frowned silently as the waiter placed his coffee before him. “I don’t get it,” the agent said. “We got a Bureau full of guys who specialize in missing persons, not to mention the D.C. cops. There something hinky about this case you aren’t telling me?”

Yoruba breathed deeply. “My brother’s daughter has never been a happy child. She’s brilliant ­ Melinda excels in her studies ­ but she was never quite...in synch, I guess. What I say here doesn’t leave the room, right? Well, Melinda had a shot at Harvard, full ride, but she decided she wanted to ‘hang out’ for while. She went goth, body piercings , death poetry, the whole nine yards. Then she got into raves, and she wound up with a couple of DUIs . It didn’t stick to my nomination ­ nowadays, everybody’s got a Billy Carter or a Roger Clinton in the woodpile ­ but Rick was concerned, and he got her into therapy.”

Yoruba’s brother, Enrique, also was CEO of a high-profile energy corporation, and he felt any repercussions of family indiscretions all the way up his Dow Jones, Doggett mused. He smiled encouragingly.

“We thought she was doing pretty well. Given her erratic behavior, Harvard had politely suggested a university environment closer to home and ‘exerting less stress on Melinda’ might be of benefit to Rick, and she’d transferred to the University of Maryland . Her grades picked up, and we were pleased by the boy she’d begun seeing. Then, a week ago, the boyfriend, a psych major, called Rick and Anita ­ Rick’s wife ­ wondering if she’d come home. They’d had a falling out a few days before, and she’d just disappeared from campus. Her disappearances were nothing unusual, but normally, they’d only last two or three days, and she’d pop up cheerful or annoyed, depending on which stage of her manic-depression Melinda was in at the time, as if nothing had happened. We still don’t know that there’s any reason to panic.”

“You call DCPD Missing Persons?”

Yoruba was silent.

“Why don’t you just tell me why, with all the resources you gotta have at your disposal, you’re buying me a fancy lunch and airing your family’s laundry?” Doggett prodded gently.

“It’s the X-Files,” Yoruba exhaled. “There are some unusual dimensions to this case, and I fear ­ I mean feel ­ that we need someone of your expertise.”

Doggett nodded. He should’ve figured this out: Whenever the freak show came to town, he and Monica the head barkers. He’d come to this juncture by accident, attached to the X-Files primarily only to locate ­ and, as it turned out, get something on -- the missing Fox Mulder. Soon, he’d wound up tagging along with the wary and reticent Agent Scully on bizarre cases that ended as much in mystery and frustration as in any resolution he could feel comfortable in committing to a report. When they finally located Mulder, Doggett thought he finally could return to the world of the sane, but then, with a handshake, Mulder had sealed his fate and promptly fell back into the black hole.

Monica had joined this confederacy of madness by then, drawn by her thirst for the unknown and, Doggett knew, her need to help provide him with closure in the case of his son’s murder. Doggett had become infected by the low-grade madness that surrounded him, only to discover through Mulder’s arrest and kangaroo trial that this was a terminal madness that could end only in futility. Mulder and Scully were gone with whatever monumental secret Mulder claimed to harbor, leaving Doggett and Reyes and, indeed, the X-Files, to an uncertain fate.

Even if somehow the FBI’s most unwanted ­ a class to which A.D. Skinner, too, had resigned himself ­ managed to survive, Doggett couldn’t imagine how he and Monica could continue to feel about in the darkness without Dana Scully’s hybrid scientific rationality-paranormal intuition to steer them. Doggett despaired of continuing period without Monica, but a part of him concealed the hope that the ax would fall and he’d be transferred back to investigating terrorist threats or tracking drug movements or busting bank robbers.

This was it, Doggett thought: Time to let the freak show leave town without him. Thank Yoruba for the fine chicken, wish him well, and find the exit.

“Why?” Doggett heard himself ask, a hollow sound of doors closing.

**

“Melinda was only about seven when it happened for the first time,” Yoruba began. “She’d gone away to a summer camp in Virginia, mostly kids of CEOs and undersecretaries, and one day, Anita had a horrible dream. Daydream, I should say, because she was wide awake in the middle of the day. Or maybe a vision, I don’t know any more. They only told me about this, and everything else, after Rick sent her for therapy.

“Anita dreamed or saw a huge white horse, a winged horse, like the movie studio logo or that old Greek creature, you know, a pegasus. But there was something evil, something wrong with the animal. It’s eyes were red, and it had claws where hooves should be. And somehow, Anita knew she had to call the camp, that Melinda was in danger. So she called, and they put Melinda on the phone, and she said, no, everything’s fine and I’m loving it here, and Anita laughed it off as some kind of early menopausal quirk.

“Rick got the call the next day at work. Melinda and a couple of the other campers had been riding, when her horse starting acting snappish and bucking. It threw Melissa and stepped on her arm before a counselor could get control of it. No lasting damage, thank God. It turned out the horse had contracted some disease, some kind of equine encephalitis, I think it was, and they had to put it down. But Anita couldn’t shake the feeling that Melinda had sent her a message. With her mind.”

“There are cases, or at least stories, about mothers sensing when their kids are in danger,” Doggett suggested. “Maybe some kinda maternal bond, like that psychic connection twins are supposed to have.”

Yoruba shook his head assertively. “Don’t you see? Melinda wasn’t in danger when Anita had that vision. I know it sounds insane, but it’s as if it was some kind of involuntary thing ­ like Melinda’s subconscious sent Anita a message of impending danger. But how would she have known that horse was ill, was dangerous? Wait, John; I’m far from finished.

“When Melinda was 13, her school had a spring dance. She was in charge of decorations ­ this is relevant ­ and she spent several days in the rafters of the gym, hanging banners and streamers. Anyway, at dinner a couple of nights before the dance, Anita has another one of these dream/visions, this time about ghosts ­ a gymful of dead kids, dancing with each other to some song she’d never heard before. Again, she had this irrational feeling that Melissa was in danger, and she refused to let her attend the dance.”

Doggett felt his chest contract. “Don’t tell me...”

Yoruba held up a hand. “The gym roof collapsed hours before the dance, after school let out. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but Anita was convinced Melinda ‘felt’ something up there in the rafters ­ something she subconsciously communicated to her mother.”

“Coulda just been a—”

“Coincidence? I think Anita would’ve been happy to believe that, except about a week after the gym collapse she heard the song. The one the dead teenagers were dancing to. It was coming from Melinda’s room, a CD. Melinda had just gotten a dubbed copy from a friend at the school, who’d been mailed the original by a cousin in Oregon. It was some studio group from Portland, a homemade album. No chance Anita had heard it booming out of somebody’s car or flipping past MTV.”

Doggett wished fervently he’d gone to Mickey D’s today.

“When Melinda was a senior, her mother had a horrible dream about a boy from Melinda’s school, basketball player. He was some kind of werewolf, ripping women apart and eating their flesh. Two weeks later, they arrest this kid for a couple of rapes. One of the victims was a friend of Melinda’s.”

Tell him to call the D.C. cops and walk away, Doggett told himself.

“...and a couple of days before Melinda’s second DUI ­ her last one -- Anita nearly cracked up on the freeway when she had this sudden vision of living trees, trees attacking her, snapping at her. That last DUI’s of Melinda’s, she drove into a grove of trees off some country road, very likely would’ve killed herself, but luckily she hit a couple of utility barriers before she reached the trees.”

“What are you saying?” Doggett asked. “That somehow, this ESP, this whatever it is, is connected with your niece disappearing?”

Yoruba rubbed his face with a well-manicured hand. “Anita had another dream. The night before anyone last heard from Melinda.”

Del Rio , Texas
10: 02 a.m.

The road hummed beneath them quietly, pointing off into the distance like a long gray finger in the dusty landscape.

They had actually driven over a tumbleweed not too long ago as they accelerated through a field filled with cacti and desert shrubs. The SUV had crushed its brittle gray thistles beneath its left front tire and sped unstintingly down the deserted road.

Even at rush hour, only two or three other cars had crossed their long straight path. Scully wished she could say she was surprised, but after nearly two months of similar towns and roads and tumbleweeds, she didn't think much of it.
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She sat in the passenger seat now, folding and unfolding the map nervously as Mulder took them further south.

"How much longer until Eagle Pass ?" Mulder asked.

Scully glanced up at the road sign then back down at the map. "Only about 55 miles."

Mulder nodded, listening to the near-constant crinkling sound of the paper as Scully checked over and over again how far they needed to go. He knew she didn't like this little jaunt out of their way, but they needed to be rid of this SUV, and quickly. They'd moved south from Brady to the border, hoping to throw off anyone who was looking by making them believe they had headed into Mexico .

A man at a local diner just outside the last town had informed them of a “dealership” in Eagle Pass that specialized in the kind of vehicle swap Mulder and Scully were looking for. In actuality, they weren't losing too much time through their detour.

It was still early yet, and with any luck, they would be done with the trade and back on the road by lunch time, assuming everything went well. It should, Mulder thought. Their SUV was new and in great shape. A reliable replacement should be quick and easy to find.

"We'll be there soon, Scully," he assured her. After their stop, they would take their new car back on the road to Washington , D.C. , where they would face the monster head on and try to save their son.

Beltsville, Maryland

5:21 p.m.

“There were flowers everywhere ­ big yellow flowers, miles of them as far as the eye could see,” Anita Yoruba said, eyes wide as she examined Doggett’s face for any sign of ridicule or wariness. He sat on the edge of Mrs. Yoruba’s very expensive couch, across from the transportation secretary, willing his features into neutrality. “There were hands...coming out of the earth, from under the flowers. They were scratching, clawing. A few of the, um, buried people had their heads above the flowers. No faces, just the tops of their heads.”

Doggett looked to Yoruba, who was nodding encouragingly to his sister-in-law. “But you’re daughter wasn’t anywhere in this...dream?”

Anita’s jaw tightened. “I recognize how absurd this sounds to you, Agent Doggett. But after nearly eight years of these messages, I no longer question them. I felt the same sense of anxiety, of dread, as the other times. My daughter’s in danger, and we’re asking you to help us.”

“I told your brother-in-law I wasn’t sure what I could do,” Doggett said. “I’d really recommend you take this to the police.”

“They won’t listen,” Anita hissed, nearly frantic. “If I told them the basis for my suspicions, they’d have us all committed. And with Melinda’s history...Ray?”

“John, please,” Yoruba entreated. With his position, he likely could pull a few strings, but his eyes were sincere, his voice low.

“I don’t even know where to start,” Doggett finally sighed. The Yorubas relaxed with relief. “I’ll need the boyfriend’s name, any professors or friends she might’ve shared things with. Oh, and—”

His cell phone trilled, and the agent held up a delaying finger as he barked, “Doggett.”

“John, this is Deputy Director Kersh.” The director’s voice rumbled with his usual official aplomb, tinged this time with a strangely solicitous note. “I just received a call from the Arizona State Police. Agent Reyes and Assistant Director Skinner apparently have been attacked, shot.”

Doggett’s right hand fumbled for the arm of the couch. “John?” Yoruba inquired, concerned by the agent’s white face.

“How did...? Are they, are they...?”

“They’re alive, John, but I don’t know too terribly much more at this time,” Kersh said. “I want you to get out there and find out what’s going on.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Doggett’s mind could barely process what his superior was saying.

“And, John,” Kersh added gravely. “This isn’t the time right now, but once we know their condition, I am going to want to know what your partner and Skinner were doing out there. You’d better get moving, Agent.”

“Yes, sir,” Doggett responded numbly, but Kersh already had ended the call.

St. Aquin Hospital
Phoenix

9:37 p.m.

Monica and Skinner had stabilized, if that could be considered the correct term.

“It’s nothing short of astonishing ­ that’s all I can say,” Dr. Paul Morales told Doggett as they stood in the ICU corridor. “The wounds your colleagues sustained were potentially fatal, in the case of Mr. Skinner’s, almost inevitably fatal. But somehow, while there’s no question these were fresh gunshot wounds, the usually entry damage is inexplicably minor, and the healing process appears to be well underway. Your friends certainly are not yet ambulatory, but they’re in far better shape than we would have had any reason to expect.”

Doggett frowned, relieved, of course, but confounded. “Can I see them?”

“Of course, but not for long,” the physician cautioned. “C’mon.”

Monica smiled weakly as her partner pushed past the curtain. She was drawn and bone-white in the overhead fluorescents, an IV plugged into her arm, but Doggett agreed she looked far better than he would’ve anticipated, given the report he’d received from the state police commander who’d met him at the airport.

“You got any Maalox on you?” she asked, squeezing back as he grasped her hand. “I think the cheeseburger I had for lunch is bothering me more than my wound.”

“So I noticed,” Doggett murmured, mystified. “I was told you two were shot point-blank. But you look like maybe you had your tonsils out. You got any explanation for this miraculous recovery?”

Monica looked up. “I have a thought. The doctor told me a man came into the general store after we were shot and, according to the store owner, checked us over. Then he left before the EMTs could get there.”

“What are you saying?”

Doggett’s partner paused. “Do you remember when we found Mulder? That man who’d healed all those UFO abductees? The man Dana thought could save Mulder? Jeremiah?”

Doggett released her hand abruptly. “Whoa, Monica. The guy Scully said was an alien or something? Look, even if this Jeremiah was some sorta extraterrestrial George Clooney, I thought they took him away. The, ah, aliens.”

“I don’t know, John,” Monica sighed. “I’m just trying to put this altogether. By all rights, Skinner and I should’ve been dead. Jeremiah seemed to be working with some kind of alien resistance. Who would have grabbed Gibson? What if somehow the aliens were shadowing us, and Jeremiah Smith was trailing them, maybe trying to protect him.”

Doggett dragged a chair over to the bedrail and slumped into it. “Listen to what we’re saying with a straight face, Monica. Mind-reading kids, aliens, miracle healers... This is what you two almost got killed for, what we’ve chasing around in the dark for.”

“John,” Monica said intensely, her eyes sharp. “You’ve seen it firsthand. You know these things are true.”

“What if they are?” he murmured. “What if they are, Monica? Where does that take us? Mulder took the roadmap with him. Why? ‘Cause he knew that whatever it is that’s going on, we’re not the team to stop it. We’re out of our depth, and I’m beginning to think that the sooner we see that, the sooner we can get back to our lives. Get our lives back.”

Monica’s eyes were shining. “We can’t walk away, John. We’ve come too far, we know too much. There are things to do.”

“We’re not the people who can do it, Monica,” Doggett said with finality. “Not me, at least. Look, I’m going to look in on Skinner. Think about it, Monica ­ is this worth everything we’ll probably never know?”

He left the room before she could answer.

**

“This is really what you want, John?” Skinner answered, adjusting slightly in physical discomfort.

“Yeah,” Doggett sighed. “I feel like I’m running in circles, and somebody else is turning the hamster wheel. I gave it the old college try, but it’s time for a change. The X-Files is dead ­ even if we knew what the next step was, they’re going to close us down.”

“Look. John, think it over,” the assistant director urged. “It’s going to be a fw days before I can get out of here, and a few more before I’m back in D.C. You working anything?”

“Yeah,” Doggett said grimly. “An X-File.” He described the particulars, including the muscle behind the case.

“You go back home, get on it,” Skinner said. “We’ll talk transfer when I get back. I’d just ask you to think about one thing, John. Mulder sacrificed everything for the X-Files: Career, friends, security, family, maybe even a piece of his sanity. For nearly a decade, it was his life. But when the time came, even though his work was far from done, Mulder walked away. He put his life’s work in your hands.”

Doggett smiled grimly. “You’re calling me a quitter? Fine.” He began to turn away, and muscular fingers seized his forearm.

“You’re not listening to me, Agent,” Skinner said, low and stern. “Mulder put his life’s work in your hands. That was a supreme act of faith. He saw something in you that I don’t believe you see in yourself. Look good and hard at yourself before you just toss it all in.”

“You’d better save your energy,” Doggett advised, gently. Skinner released his arm, and the agent disappeared into the corridor.

Eagle Pass, Texas/Mexico border

12:34 p.m.

José Consuelinas was a short round man with fat fingers. He had a mustache that curled on one side and stuck straight out on the other, which gave him an odd and somewhat mismatched appearance that went well with the unusual business he ran. His establishment, José's Old and New, was used car dealership that doubled as a fertilizer warehouse.

Mulder suspected it was more than fertilizer that the man shipped in and out, but made no comment as he shook hands with the small, smiling entrepreneur. Who was he to judge a man who had the patience and the stomach to bury illegal substances in wads of animal dung?

Scully also shook the man's hand and smiled politely as he commented on her “lovely eyes.” He eyed their Ford SUV excitedly as they introduced themselves and explained what they needed before ushering them inside the enormous warehouse type building.

José led them through isles of stacked fertilizer bags that reeked despite being sealed, all the way back to his office where it was quiet, comfortably cool, and thankfully scent-free. There was a window air conditioner groaning and clicking away just to the left of his desk, spewing cool air and dripping fat cold drops into a bucket that stood below it. When he indicated to the pair that they should sit in the two stuffed chairs facing his desk, they complied promptly. Mulder and Scully wanted to make this fast and painless.

"You drive a very nice car. New." He smiled toothily as he spoke, revealing two gold incisors. "I am assuming it runs well..." He sat back in his chair, folding his hands out in front of him.

“Yes," Mulder said. “It's a very smooth ride. Only about nine-thousand miles on the odometer."

“Ah." José grinned. "Good." The dark-haired man reached into his desk and pulled out a stack of papers. He leafed through them briefly, licking his thumbs to get a grip on the paper, before pulling out the sheet he was looking for.

“Here," he said, turning the paper around to face them, “are the cars in your trade-in price range." As Mulder and Scully looked down the list of relatively new and nice cars, José pulled out another paper and began filling in blanks with a blue ballpoint pen. From the window, the air conditioning made a sputtering sound and nearly quit running before the choked noises stopped and it continued to drip and grumble.

José looked back at the air conditioner, then smiled at the couple holding the list. “She's a bitch some times, but she always comes around."

Mulder smiled at him. "Sir, I think one of these Outbacks would be best for us." Scully had nodded in silent agreement when Mulder had tapped on the name. They didn't want another SUV that would eat up gas, and a smaller car would look too much like a fleet sedan, an obvious choice for two former FBI agents. But a station wagon would be wonderfully inconspicuous, perfectly...suburban. The best disguise this odd-ball couple could possibly conceive of.

“Would you like the maroon or the black?" The dealer began filling in the make and model on the second piece of paper he had pulled from his desk. Mulder and Scully looked at each other, then back at the short man. “The maroon one has a CD player," he added with a smile.

Mulder's lip quirked up at the thought of picking up a few CDs on the way down the road. “We'll take it," he said, without a second glance to the woman beside him. Scully looked at him with an amused expression on her face, not having spoken a word since she had stepped out of the car.

"I'm assuming it runs well...," Mulder repeated the words the other man had so recently spoken.

The smile on José's face grew even broader. “Of course," he said. "Only twenty-three-thousand miles on the odometer. It has had a recent tune-up, and also a recent oil change. It will give you no problems." The salesman handed Mulder the blue ballpoint and turned the second paper to face him.

"Good," Mulder said, accepting the pen.

"I will just need your name and information here, please, with a signature at the bottom." José tapped the line he referred to then sat back again in his chair.

The sound of the ancient AC was the only noise in the room as Mulder and Scully made silent eye contact over the paper between them on the desk. Scully's look was cautionary; Mulder nodded and switched the pen into his left hand, carefully and slowly writing out a false name and false information. Scully sighed deeply, and whether it was from nervousness or relief, even she didn't know.

When he was done, José smiled even more brightly and led the two over to a locked cabinet which, when he opened the small padlock holding it together, revealed hundreds of tiny hooks filled with keys. He pulled off a pair with the number 37 taped above it and turned, dangling the small metal objects in front of the two well-dressed people. Mulder reached up and took them, offering the keys to the SUV in return. All three of them headed out to move Mulder and Scully's belongings from one car to the other. When they were done, the couple shook José's hand once again and said their goodbyes.

Before they left, however, Mulder added one last thing. "If anyone asks..." He looked at Scully in the passenger's side of the Outback, then back at Mr. Consuelinas. He left the words hanging, but other man nodded, as if the unspoken request was something he heard every day, which Mulder supposed it was.

"You, Mr. Carlson, are a delightful balding Italian man, and your wife... " he looked in on Scully, "…is a gorgeous blonde who is nearly taller than you."

Mulder grinned and shook the man's hand again. "Thank you."

"Any time," José said, then watched as the station wagon drove off, headed east.

University of Maryland

9:55 a.m.

“I guess this looks kinda insensitive, me meeting you in the Grill between classes like this,” Steve Griggs inquired as he played with the straw in his Coke. Doggett was aware of the looks he was getting from the passing throngs ­ the kids knew a narc when they saw one. “Guess you major in psych, you realize there’s no use making hollow gestures, stopping your life in midstream just because something traumatic happens.”

“Makes sense,” Doggett agreed. “Mr. Griggs, can I ask how close you were, you are, with Melinda Yoruba?”

“Steve, man. Isn’t that kinda personal? Not that I care, I guess.”

“Steve, I just want to get a line on how frequently you two communicate, if she confides in you, that sort of thing.”

“Mm.” More twiddling with the straw. The psych major finally noticed it, and stopped with a self-conscious grin. “We were kind of between the slept together and commitment stages, I guess. We did a lot of stuff together, so on a physical level, we were pretty connected. On any deeper level, she was like in California. Very detached, very moody sometimes. Every once in awhile, she’d just leave. Mentally, know what I mean?”

Doggett nodded and sipped his coffee.

“Probably the psychic shit,” Steve concluded, bringing Doggett’s head up with a snap. His grin grew. “Melinda was a true believer. Told me these spooky-shit stories about some kind of subconscious early warning system she had in her head. Said she wanted to learn how to ‘harness it,’ send direct messages instead of this psychic garble she said she transmits.”

“What do you make of that? Doggett asked after a group of giggling sorority types trampled past.

Steve looked incredulously at the FBI agent. “I make that Melinda’s folks never gave a shit about anything she did growing up, so she comes up with this crap about special powers. I mean, she believes it ­ makes her feel exceptional, connected with something bigger.”

“Your major’s showing,” Doggett smiled.

Steve rolled his eyes with a laugh. “Yeah, after a while, we all start psychobabbling like this. Anyway, I told her she oughtta see a counselor, but she just shook her head like I didn’t get it. Instead, she signed up for some research project with Gale Lower. He’s in social anthropology, but the last few years, he’s been into supernatural shit.”

“So you don’t think such things exist, huh?”

The boy shrugged.

“What do you think happened to Melinda?”

“She’ll probably pop up in a few days. She probably funked out, took her Toyota, and drove up the coast.” Steve did his best to look blasé, but after a second, he broke eye contact with Doggett. “I hope.”

**

“Agent Doggett!”

Doggett halted, and a pair of grunged-out students nearly rear-ended him. He glanced around the campus quad, and spotted a familiar face ­ bald, spectacled, eyes spread too wide apart, pleasantly homely. The man strode rapidly, seemingly ready to break into a jog but willing himself not to.

“Dr. Burks?” Doggett ventured.

“You remember,” Chuck Burks said, seemingly pleased.

“I don’t come across shapeshifting Indian holy men who disappear from locked interrogation rooms every day. Surprised you gave me the time of day ­ I believe I was pretty rough on you at the time.”

Burks waved it off. “Old news. Agent Scully was breaking you in at the time, and it all must’ve seemed pretty weird. How is our Scully, anyway?”

“Ah, she left the Bureau recently, her and Mulder,” Doggett said simply.

“I’d heard Mulder was alive again,” Burks said, as if Mulder had returned to the neighborhood bar after a long absence. “I hope everything’s all right with them. What about yourself, Agent? You visiting the groves of academe on an X-File?”

“ Sorta.” Doggett paused. Why not?, he thought ­ as long as I’m in Bizarro World. “Doc, what do you know about telepathy, psychic powers, that kind of thing? I mean, I know you’re in, what, digital imaging? Seeing stuff that isn’t there?”

“Close enough,” Burks chuckled. “Actually, it might be right up my alley. You have a few minutes?”

**

“There are at least three major scientific theories that might validate the existence of supernormal mental abilities,” the pudgy scientist began as Doggett gazed around his cluttered lab. On a nearby monitor, multi-colored blossoms seemingly exploded and faded as Doggett looked more intently at them. A pair of computers “chained” together displayed the same image ­ Adolf Hitler shouting and gesticulating to a crowd of loyal Germans. Except one monitor showed scratchy digitized file footage, while another displayed an odd aura floating about Der Fuhrer’s head. “Agent Doggett?”

“Uh, yeah. Sorry.”

“Anyway,” Burks continued, gesturing the agent to a deskless oak desk chair, “you familiar with the four basic dimensions? The various dimensions we see in space, and time. Well, one popular model postulates there may be eleven or 26 or even an infinite number of dimensions, one of those being human consciousness. What we view as psychic phenomena may actually be just an invisible area of that fifth dimension of consciousness, or even a separate dimension unto itself. Nobody’s been able to back that up with any physical evidence, but it would make a neat episode of Next Generation.

“Then there’s the quantum theory. Matter behaves differently than what we see at the subatomic level ­ if it even exists as matter. Say an electron and its antimatter analogue, a positron, collide. You know what those are?”

“Good Kirk and Bad Kirk,” Doggett offered drily.

Burks blinked, then smiled broadly. “Good, Agent Doggett. Very good. The electron and the positron collide, annihilating each other and sending two photons off into space. Scientific evidence indicates that Photon A would possess no physical qualities such as spin or speed until it’s observed by an outside party. At the moment the observer notes the direction in which Photon A is spinning, Photon B will acquire the opposite spin. In layman’s language--”

“Please.”

“In layman’s language, Photon B could be said to ‘know’ what Photon B is doing. We therefore could theorize that human consciousness may work the same way, and that’s how a person with supposed psychic abilities could instantaneously see a train wreck 500 miles away. The person and the event are connected at a subatomic level. The physics of it appeal to me, and the spiritualist would appreciate the idea that the universe is connected in some hidden way...”

“But?” Doggett’s temples were beginning to ache.

“But I tend to prescribe to a third theory. Maybe it’s because of my own particular fascination with sound and light and everything beyond them. You’ve heard of the electromagnetic spectrum? Well, we know that low-frequency waves such as radio signals exist at the low end of that spectrum, x-rays at the high end. Visible light and heat, which we can see, and ultraviolet and infrared light, which we can’t, are located somewhere in between.

“What if there are ‘psi’ waves ­ invisible, low frequency transmissions which can only be received by people with the right tuning equipment, i.e., psychic abilities?”

The agent frowned. “But if any of those theories is true, you still haven’t explained why only certain people are supposed to be able to read minds or move stuff with their brains.”

“Why can dogs hear sounds beyond our human range of hearing?” Burks posed. “In the words of Albert Einstein, it beats shit out of me.”

Outside Duncan, Oklahoma

1:12 a.m.

The man in the dark suit rode silently in the helicopter, listening to the navigator bark orders into the radio, demanding current locations and road names. The men inside the helicopter, along with several other similar teams, were searching nearly the entire southwestern United States for two people whose lives had become more valuable, and more dangerous, than anyone had ever expected. Their orders, once the missing persons were located, were simple, and did not include bringing anyone in for questioning.

The Suited Man reached into his pocket and drew out a silver dollar, which he flipped into the air and caught. He did it again and again, but never checked to see which side had landed face up. The metallic 'ping' of the flipping coin was lost in the sound of the helicopter's blades and engine, and eventually the man grew bored and dropped it back into his jacket pocket. He was older, perhaps in his early sixties and his face was marked with lines that spoke of his age, but his eyes... they were a staggering shade of blue that somehow made him look younger.

"We've found them, sir!" the man behind the radio called out. "Headed east into Duncan."

"Good," he said with a nod. He wanted this mission over as soon as possible. They had more important things to get back to.

**

The woman in the passenger seat had fallen asleep hours ago, hadn't even stirred since a few miles out of Eagle Pass. Their drive had been long and tedious since they left the small town on the Mexican border in their new car.

This one was more suited to them, they both agreed. Her partner was driving now, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to the sounds of classic rock coming from the radio.

Suddenly, a flash of light nearly blinded the man behind the wheel as a helicopter dropped down abruptly in front of their car. He slammed on his breaks.

"Shit!!" he yelled. "Wake up! They've found us!"

His partner jerked awake, both at the man's yelling, and at the bright light that burst through the windshield of the car. "Oh, God!" she screamed as the car came to a stop and men in black uniforms surrounded the car. Their doors were pulled open and the two people dragged out to be brought before an older man in a black suit. He had a coin in his hand which he was flipping casually as he waited for them to be brought closer. When they were finally within his view, his eyes immediately narrowed. He grabbed the woman's face, pulling it closer to him before shoving it away.

"It's not them," he said, anger apparent in his voice.

"But sir, the car! It's the same car!" One of the uniformed men, presumably the one who had spotted the couple initially, protested eagerly.

The dark suited man walked over to the car and peered into the back. Stuffed under the seat he saw bags of what he assumed to be cocaine, as well as a few stacks of bills. He backed away from the SUV quickly and walked back to the helicopter.

"What should we do, sir?" one of the men asked.

"Take them in and question them. Find out where they got the car." As he was climbing into the small seat behind the pilot, the man approached him again.

"What should we do once we find out what we need to know?" The young man held a large gun and wore a black helmet that matched his uniform.

"Get rid of them," the Suited Man said quietly as he slid back into the seat and locked his seatbelt around his waist. This had not gone well. His superiors would not be happy when the found out Mulder and Scully had successfully eluded them again. It would set them back a few days, locating their new destination and finding their new car. Still, the suited man was sure it would only be a matter of time before they were found...and killed.

J. Edgar Hoover Building

Washington, D.C.

1:23 p.m.

Doggett tried to clear his mind of its last germ of apprehension as he crossed the threshold of Deputy Director Kersh’s office. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

The director continued to scan a report on the blotter before him. “Please come in, John; have a seat.” Doggett took the chair to the left of Kersh’s center as the older man closed the folder. “You’re well aware of the Bureau’s reorganization in the wake of the whistleblower’s allegations.”

After a female agent came forward with charges indicating some sloppy Bureau handling of what appeared to be some rather crucial pre-Sept. 11 terrorist intelligence, the FBI brass had initiated a major facelift of the agency with an eye toward a high domestic security profile.

“Yeah, sure...”

Kersh smiled tightly in his approximation of warmth. “Well, John, you have an opportunity to come back out of the basement, maybe undo some of the damage these last two years have done to your reputation with the Bureau.”

“I wasn’t aware my work had been criticized.”

Kersh’s smile frosted slightly. “Not your work, John ­ just your focus. Now is the time to refocus. The Director is looking for someone to head up a new task force on terrorist profiling, and I recommended you.”

Doggett studied the man before him. A few months earlier, Kersh had confounded his perception of the deputy director by aiding in Mulder’s escape from a military facility, where the former head of the X-Files had been awaiting execution. Then, Mulder and Scully were ambushed by the military, or some shadow branch of it, at an Anasazi Indian village in the desert. They, Reyes, and Doggett had barely escaped following the bizarre death of Knowle Rohrer, apparently some kind of genetically engineered “ supersoldier.” The X-Files had been ransacked in the quest for any information that might lead to Mulder’s apprehension, and the parties conducting the search had been none too gentle. Files were confiscated, furnishings damaged, and even Mulder’s “I Want to Believe” poster had been ripped in half and thrown crumpled into a corner as a sign of the contempt.

And at the heart of it all, Doggett wondered if Kersh’s role in Mulder’s rescue had been some sort of ploy designed to shadow Mulder to the source, to whatever secret he and the government were holding.

“Well, John?” Kersh said. “Ready to come back to the world, quit chasing your tail, and do what you were trained to do? You were a top-notch agent, John. You have the opportunity to be one again. It’s your move.”

“Let me think about it,” Doggett murmured.

“I know where to find you,” Kersh said, calmly.

Pikeville, Kentucky

26 hours later

Scully had driven most of the day while Mulder napped, and now Mulder was behind the wheel. He was exhausted. It was after 3 a.m., and they had been driving for almost thirty six hours. Taking back roads had slowed them down, but it made both of them feel safer, especially since neither of them knew where the car they were driving around in had come from.

Now they needed sleep -- real sleep. They were almost into West Virginia, and they'd be in D.C. by tomorrow. Mulder spotted a sign for a Motel 6 and pulled in, yawning as he parked the car.

He leaned over to Scully, who was still sleeping beside him, and ran the back of his finger over her cheek. She stirred, but did not wake. "Scully," he whispered before placing a kiss against her forehead. Slowly, her eyes blinked open and she turned her head to see him.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"Still in Kentucky . Almost to West Virginia ."

She nodded and covered her mouth as she yawned. "Sleep?" She raised her eyebrows at him and Mulder smiled back.

"Come on," he said, "let's get some rest in a bed for a change." He unlocked their doors and climbed out of the station wagon.

**

Scully dropped her bag onto the floor of the motel and headed for the bathroom, toothbrush in hand. On her way there, she was startled by her own reflection in the mirror, and she paused to examine it further.

As she studied herself, she noticed Mulder walk out of the bathroom and spot her looking at herself. He came up behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders and squeezing gently. She watched his own reflection, noting how different he looked as well.

"I'm still not used to it," she said.

Mulder leaned down and placed a kiss on the top of her head. "I like yours. I'm not so sure about mine, though." He ran a hand through his now-blonde hair and Scully smiled. She had dyed her own red tresses brown, and wrinkled her nose at her reflection in the mirror every time she saw it. It didn't look right to her, but she understood why she had done it. Anything they could do to disguise themselves would be a help if they were being hunted.

Scully turned in her ex-partner's arms, still holding her toothbrush. He had changed for bed already and wore nothing but a pair of plaid pajama pants. She leaned her head against his bare chest. "Someday, I hope everything will go back to normal," she said with a sigh. "Well," she added, "normal for us."

Mulder chuckled and brought his arms around her, still watching the two of them in the mirror. "Me too." He gave her a squeeze. "Excluding the fact that the end of the world is only a few short years away and I still can't figure out which kind of cola is best, much less a plan to stop the coming apocalypse."

Scully leaned back and looked at him, raising one eyebrow in that way she so often did. "Mulder," she said, "you need sleep." She rose up onto her toes and placed a quick kiss on his lips before backing away and heading into the bathroom with her toothbrush. As she stood in front of the bathroom mirror, brushing her teeth and frowning at her own reflection, Scully thought about the risks they were taking in returning to Washington. They had to be crazy to do it, but considering that the life of their son was at stake, the risks were ones that needed to be taken.

Salt Harbor, Maryland

3:17 p.m.

Dr. Gale Lower’s den was a Mulderesque fever dream: Shelves upon shelves of books on psychic phenomena, mysticism, folklore, and sociology; ancient objects and figures from Native American, South American, Asian, and African cultures; a desk scattered with bizarre photos and arcane academic journals Doggett guessed would not be available at the local Barnes and Noble.

“Looks like a witch doctor’s garage sale, huh?” Lower mused, a dry smile forming under his brush mustache. Doggett was somewhat surprised ­ many of the people he’d dealt through the X-Files tolerated little or no humor about their paranormal beliefs and preoccupations.

Lower was on sabbatical from U of M, and the agent had had to drive out to Salt Harbor, a tree-lined haven for D.C. yuppies and academics. The professor’s house was at the dead end of a remote side street, a white frame cottage that would be ideal for a man who’d ruled out marriage as an option long ago.

“You’re an anthropologist, a scientist, right?” the agent inquired. “You don’t mind my asking, how’d you get involved in all this supernatural stuff?”

He turned and offered up two clay figures, both demonic creatures with wide eyes and sharp teeth. Though there were subtle differences in anatomy, in facial expression, they could have been born of the same satanic father. “Look at these two talismans, Agent. One from the Micronesian Islands, one from the Amazons. Would you chalk up the resemblance between these two little guys to the coincidental superstition or fears of two wholly disparate cultures. A good scientist is willing to trust the evidence of his own eyes, of his own experience. Well, maybe not trust it, but at least be open to it. In my studies of the world’s diverse cultures, I’ve surfaced hundreds of ‘coincidences’ like this. Someday, I’ll probably publish something ­ once my tenure sets in and I’m academically bulletproof.”

“So where did Melinda Yoruba fit into all of this?” Doggett asked.

Lower settled back in his leather wing chair with the grin of a man used to and now amused by skepticism and derision. “We tend to write off the beliefs and images of ancient civilizations ­ monsters and demons and such ­ to ignorance or fear of natural phenomena they were almost totally unable to control or even just the need to rationalize anything they couldn’t hold in their gnarled tool-making hands. But, Agent, what if in our supreme condescension, we’re totally barking up the wrong tree?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if, what if our low-tech forbearers knew something we don’t? Or maybe I should say, saw things we don’t. Or perhaps can’t? My grandfather was a wonderful carpenter, made half the furniture in my dad’s childhood home. My dad could dismantle a ’59 Buick engine at lunch and have it back together again in time for the six o’clock news, but if you’d’ve asked him to use a miter box, he’d have sawed off two or three fingers or maybe even his hand. Now, look at me. I can defrag my hard drive and cook up a fairly mean shrimp etouffe, but I can go down to the Super Walmart and buy a chair or have my car fixed. In a few generations of pampered Western existence, how many more skills and aptitudes will we lose as a species?

“I know ­ those are largely learned skills, not quite the same as genetic traits or human instincts. But what if we’ve lost more than merely a few manual skills ­ what if we’ve sloughed off a few chromosomal chains over the millennia? What if our honorable ancestors had the genetic ability to see what we no longer see? Genetic adaptability is based on survival of the species. Think about the perils primitive races faced on a daily basis. Perhaps, like a dog, they could smell danger in the air, sense a fruit or berry was poisonous, even see into other dimensions or planes of existence. As we adopted fundamental technology, learned to build walls to keep the beasts out, became cynical enough not to believe the evidence of our eyes, those genes atrophied like our appendix or tonsils.”

Doggett was silent as he mulled the professor’s theory. “So where did Melinda Yoruba fit into all of this?” he repeated.

Lower broke into a coughing fit of laughter. “God, I wish my students had your critical mind and persistence. All right, the upshot of all this is that I was looking for subjects ­ individuals with demonstrated psychic ability. Individuals who possibly have the genetic coding to see what most of us no longer see. Now that the human genome’s been fully mapped, we have a valid basis for comparison between conventional genetics and psychic genetics. If such a thing exists, of course.

“Melinda’s boyfriend, a former student of mine, shared some of her childhood and adolescent experiences. He knew about my work, and thought she’d make a good subject for my research. What’s wrong, Agent?”

“Ah, nothing,” Doggett murmured, recalling Steve Griggs’ skepticism toward the psychic world. “So you approached her?”

“I asked Steve to ask her, anticipating some reluctance on Melinda’s part. But she actually proved quite eager to participate. Apparently, she wanted to get to the truth about her abilities, even refine them.”

“Refine them?”

“Melinda told me she’d always felt her abilities were filtered, somehow, processed in a jumbled way, like a child with dyslexia processes words incorrectly. She hoped she could consciously control her premonitions, or whatever they were.”

“Was she the real thing?”

Lower clasped his hands behind his head and shrugged. “We haven’t had time to get into the really intensive tests, but I’d say probably. In some routine symbol identification tests ­ the flash card things Bill Murray used in Ghostbusters ­ Melinda scored extraordinarily high. And then...”

Doggett’s brow arched as Lower hesitated. “Doctor?”

“Well, this probably doesn’t sound very good coming from a professor, especially regarding a female student, but I had what you might call an erotic dream about Melinda.”

The agent smiled crookedly despite himself. “Doc, I don’t mean to sound cynical, but I’m sure that kinda thing is probably fairly common.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Lower said calmly. “It was an erotic dream, and it involved Melinda, but it didn’t represent any subconscious sexual desire of mine. It was almost like it was transmitted into my head, the way Melinda claimed her mother received her warnings of danger. In it, Melinda was having sexual relations with ­ don’t laugh ­ Bruce Springsteen.”

“Bruce Springsteen,” Doggett muttered. “Doctor Lower, I don’t want to question your sense of propriety, but Ms. Yoruba’s an attractive young woman, and everybody’s got their darker side. What makes you so sure maybe you weren’t fantasizing just a little bit?”

The pair were interrupted by the sound of the front door creaking open and paper bags rustling. Doggett turned as a sturdy young man in a U of M sweatshirt and jeans appeared in the doorway.

“Hey, Gale, let’s say we skip the movie tonight and stay in —” The young man stopped as he spotted the agent. Doggett looked to Lower, who was smiling enigmatically.

“Oh,” Doggett said.

Murdo, South Dakota

4 p.m.

The young woman was exquisitely sculpted, with striking, nearly crystalline eyes and a form that would have suited a model or actress. But the tall man in the lab coat was focused squarely on the boy on the reflective side of the five-inch-thick, one-way mirror, stealing not as much as an adolescent glance at the creature beside him.

“This is the one,” the scientist murmured. “I read the reports on the Syndicate’s earlier work with him. Clumsy -- they might as well have torn apart a butterfly to find where the batteries went.”

“The Syndicate was a collection of cowardly thugs, Nazis, and bureaucrats. Their approach to research and medicine was to dissect and asked questions afterwords.” The blonde spat the words, and the scientist immediately regretted his observation. The woman, after all, had been one more specimen manhandled by the Syndicate in their own ham-handed search for The Answer. They, in turn, had been incinerated for their folly, except of course for Spender. The cigarette-puffing ghoul had vanished more than two years ago, and from all accounts, cancer likely had claimed him by now.

“We’ll begin the inoculations tomorrow,” he hastily shifted. “Xiang has refined the strain, and we may see results within a day.”

The woman turned, and her light eyes burned into his. “Exercise extreme caution with him. He may be far more powerful than any of the others, and you’ll want to have plenty of manpower on hand.”

The scientist broke eye contact and glanced again into the room where the boy sat, staring straight ahead. He felt a slight chill at the woman’s stern words, and he started as the young man’s head turned. The new subject gazed dispassionately through thick lenses at his captor, neither hatred nor terror betrayed in his juvenile features, then returned to his seemingly oblivious meditations.

“Jesus,” the scientist breathed.

The blonde smiled. Her colleague was far too right-brained to grasp the irony of his blasphemy. Particularly considering the boy’s potential role in the future of humanity. The role they had blueprinted for her, at one point.

Marita turned on her heel and left the now-sweating virologist to his plans and fears.

**

A few minutes after the woman left, the scientist fled, as if he were afraid what currents of cowardice and sheer terror he felt in the presence of the facility’s guests. Gibson Praise laid back on his comfortable, if monastic bed. There was no prudent purpose in formulating escape plans, and so he decided to sleep for a while, at least until it was time for his “inoculation.”

Hello?

Gibson’s eyes popped open.

Hello? It was a female voice in his head, young but not his age.

Yes?, Gibson responded. Are you a ‘patient’?

I guess? If that’s what you’d call it. Who are these people?

They think we can save them.

From what?

Gibson hesitated. What’s your name? Mine’s Gibson .

Melinda. Did they kidnap you, too?

Yes. I think they might have murdered the people who were protecting me. My friends.

God. Who are they?

And Gibson began to explain.

Washington, D.C.

Four days later

11:22 a.m.

“Yes?” Monica called as the rapping continued at the door.

“FBI, ma’am,” a stern, gravelly voice announced. “I’ve been issued a hot pastrami sandwich, and I’m here to serve it.”

“John,” she grinned, and slid back the chain and bolt. Doggett stood beaming on the other side of the threshold, deli bag and a manila envelope in hand. Monica pulled him to her, wincing only slightly as she hugged him. What should have been a mortal wound was now a faintly throbbing annoyance, and Monica had grown in her conviction that Jeremiah Smith was involved in this miracle. When she returned to the office, she planned to fax Smith’s old Census Bureau I.D. photo to the Arizona State Police to show the desert store owner.

“You’re lookin’ good,” Doggett commented. Monica knew the truth was quite the opposite ­ she hadn’t changed out of the jersey and sweatpants that had been her uniform since flying back from Phoenix, and her hair was a tangle. But she smiled toothily and led her partner to the couch.

“How’s your case going?” she asked, rooting through the paper sack he’d delivered. Monica ripped the paper from her first sandwich, and her eyes rolled as she dug in.

“Not so great,” Doggett chuckled as he watched her tear into the food. “Melinda Yoruba had an off-campus apartment, and there appears to have been so much partying there that a platoon of Al Quaida terrorists could’ve stormed in with a tank and taken her, and nobody would’ve noticed. If she was snatched from her apartment, it was a quiet, pro job ­ nothing out of place. But no attempt to make it look like she’d packed up and left, either. All her clothes, books, belongings were still there.”

“No notification of the parents, no ransom?” Monica asked through a mouthful of pastrami.

Doggett shook his head. “None. Which worries me that this is random, just another coed wiped from the face of the earth by some psycho. Except...”

“Except for the message her mother got.”

“If it was a message,” Doggett cautioned. “A big field of yellow flowers, as far as the eye can see. People buried alive, trying to claw their way out. That’s not exactly what I’d called bankable evidence, Monica. All I’ve got are a bunch of people sharing their wacky dreams with me.”

“Who else?” Monica perked.

Doggett shrugged. “Her professor, some guy into ESP and crap. He told me about this dream he had where Yoruba was boinking , er, sleeping with Bruce Springsteen.”

“Bruce Springsteen?”

“Yup. The doc insists he didn’t have this dream of his own free will. That she put it in his head.”

Monica frowned. “What could it mean? Most elements in a dream are symbols or metaphors for something else. What’s Bruce Springsteen represent?”

“The Boss,” Doggett supplied. “Hey, New Yorker, remember? On the off-chance there was something to it, I checked with her uncle. After her problems at Harvard, Melinda’s folks decided it was better not to put any added pressure on her at school by making her get a job.”

“And why did she send the message to her professor?” Monica inquired. “Didn’t you say only her mother had gotten telepathic communications from her before?”

“I didn’t say ‘telepathic communications,’” Doggett corrected her drily . “But, yeah, her mother supposedly was the only one with the weird dreams. Maybe since she’s away from home, this Lower’s become like some kinda parental figure. Even though I figure he just caught a bad pepperoni that night after seeing Springsteen on Entertainment Tonight.”

Monica nodded, too tired to try to budge Doggett from his skeptical position. “What about Gibson? Any leads?”

“Zip. Like the guys that shot you and grabbed him just disappeared into the sky— Oops, scratch that thought.”

Monica finished her sandwich and wiped her hands on a paper napkin. “John? Have you stopped to wonder if, well, if there’s any connection between Gibson and your case? Given the psychic factor?”

To her surprise, Doggett looked away and was silent. Finally, he sighed loudly and laid back against the couch, resting his head. “Yeah, I guess I did. So I did some digging, searched VICAP at Quantico for any missing persons fitting Gibson and Melinda’s profile.”

“Any hits?”

“One missing person. An adult. Marlon Miller, 34, East St. Louis. He’s a grocery busboy, mildly retarded but normally dependable. When he didn’t show up for his job for two days and didn’t answer his phone, they called the cops. Same story as Yoruba. Nothing disturbed in his apartment, all his clothes and belongings intact.”

Monica tucked her left leg under her right. “And what’s the psychic connection?”

Doggett’s jaw tightened, then relaxed. “He’d had a couple run-ins with the local police. He’d tell people stuff about themselves, about their families, on the bus, while he was carrying their bags. Creeped out one or two, got assaulted once. Judge sent him to a counselor so he’d put away his crystal ball.”

“Any others?”

“None missing.” Doggett opened the flap of his envelope and slipped out a photo. He handed it to Monica.

She looked up in less than a second. “Dead?”

“Robbie Halverson, Rome, Wisconsin, 17,” Doggett retrieved the photo of the cyanotic teen. They found him two nights ago in a dumpster behind the town bowling alley, three weeks after he’d disappeared. Dropped off his date and then apparently dropped off the face of the earth. Single gunshot wound to the head, wallet and valuables stripped. Two problems, though.

“The county coroner is kind of an odd bird, sort of a conspiracy buff. Thinks the wound looked like it was tampered with. Like the original bullet was removed and another fired into his brain. Done with ‘surgical skill,’ he says, but the evidence is there.”

“As if the munitions were easily identifiable,” Monica reflected. “Like maybe military?”

Doggett frowned. “Whoa. One step at a time, Monica.”

“What was the other problem?”

“The other...? Oh, yeah, yeah. Kid was an honor student ­ 4.0, 4-Her, Eagle Scout eve, if you can believe. But his name came up in three separate arson investigations in Rome. No charges filed, but apparently there was some reason they talked to him.”

Monica grinned, not at the tragedy in black and white before them, but at her partner. “ Pyrokinesis. A psychic firestarter . I said you were getting the hang of this job.”

“Don’t get all worked up yet,” Doggett sighed, obviously embarrassed. “I ain’t saying this kid’s Carrie or something. I’m just looking into any connections that might help me find this girl. And Gibson, I hope.”

Doggett had scarcely known Gibson Praise. But he had a deep affinity for missing children and their families. His own young son, Luke, had been murdered years ago, as it turned out, the victim of a stupid twist of fate. Monica had investigated the case, and Doggett had seen his son’s killer shot down in the street, the victim of a similar twist. Her partner had received the closure he’d needed, however shocking it had been, but Luke’s death had left a mark on his soul and his psyche.

“So what do we do?”

Doggett looked down at Monica sternly. “I’m heading out to Rome, Wis., in about two hours. You are gonna make some tea, watch Oprah, and recuperate.”

“Oprah?” Monica posed in mock indignation.

“You know what I mean. You took a bullet should’ve killed you, and I don’t care if you had the best doctor in the universe, you gotta heal.”

“John,” she said, turning quietly serious. “I don’t think a plane trip and a visit to some quaint Wisconsin town is going to affect my recovery. You just have to promise you won’t let me get shot again.”

Doggett sighed and smiled despite his chagrin. “Guess I’ll have to, huh?”

Warrenton, Virginia
2:55 p.m.

Mulder and Scully were less than an hour outside of Washington D.C. , preparing for the last leg of their journey at a small local library where they tried not to look suspicious.

Scully was huddled in front of a computer, typing away at an e-mail from an address they had just created while Mulder paced the floor behind her, offering suggestions and occasionally leaning down to read over her shoulder. The e-mail was to Sandra Bateman, the woman who had arranged the anonymous adoption of William just two and a half months earlier. Scully was trying to explain what had happened without sounding crazy; Mulder's suggestions weren't helping much.

"When you say ‘abducted,' Scully, how come you put quotes around it?" He was leaning over her shoulder, breathing too close to her face. She shooed him away and continued typing. The fact that Mulder had not signed any of the adoption papers would make this easier, but it was still going to be very difficult to get any information about the case; these things were supposed to be sealed. But hopefully, with the strangeness of the situation and the fact that the life of the child is in danger, they would be able to find out what they needed to know.

Scully typed half a sentence, then paused, pulling back from the keyboard. "Where should we meet?" she asked.

Mulder thought for a moment. "At the reflecting pool, the northeast corner." Scully looked up at him and smiled wistfully for a moment before turning back to the computer screen and typing the information into the e-mail. Mulder resumed his pacing. "What if she doesn't show?" He was chewing on his thumbnail, watching Scully as she typed.

"Then we bust down the doors of the adoption agency and hold everyone at gunpoint until they tell us what we want to know?" Scully smirked, raising one eyebrow as she spoke.

"Tempting, but I don't think that's exactly 'low profile' behavior." Mulder ran a hand through his unnaturally blonde hair.

Scully smiled sadly. "I don't know, but we'll figure something out." She read over the e-mail once, making sure there were no typos, that everything sounded relatively believable, then clicked “send.”

Mulder sighed. "Do you think maybe we should have picked a more creative sounding e-mail address than 'FWMDKS'?" He picked up the piece of paper with the e-mail address on it and tucked it into his back pocket.

Sliding back the chair and standing up, Scully turned to face him, half a smile playing across her lips. "What, like 'MRandMRSSpooky'?" She picked up her purse off the table and walked toward the exit with Mulder trailing behind her.

"You know, Scully, that's got kind of a ring to it." When she shot him “the look,” he only smiled and moved to open the door for her. They were enjoying the lighthearted mood while it lasted; once they got into D.C., they were sure everything was going to change.

Rome, Wis.
6:12 p.m.

“I believe Robbie Halverson was the subject of a secret government experiment gone woefully wrong,” Medical Examiner Carter Pike stated.

“Carter!” Sheriff James Brock snapped with mingled exasperation and resignation. The sheriff was a weathered, middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and mustache and intelligent eyes and manner. He’d been cordially wary when Doggett had called the night before, but fully cooperative after the agents drove in from Green Bay. Rome, Wis., had been the center of far too much media attention over the past decade, and Brock had been at the center of it.

“C’mon, Jimmy,” the owlish pathologist whined. “You said you’d keep an open mind.”

“Carter, let’s just crank it down a notch, OK?” Brock implored.

“The truth is out there,” Pike mumbled, then fell silent under the sheriff’s glare.

Doggett shifted in his uncomfortable county-issue chair as he glanced out into Brock’s squadroom. “And how do you come up with that theory, Doc? The genetic engineering thing?”

Carter raised his brows with a mixture of triumph and astonishment at being asked to elaborate on one of his frequent hypotheses. “Well. OK.” He passed Doggett and Reyes the Halverson autopsy file. “Look at the victim’s body. I took shots from every angle. What do you see that’s unusual?”

Monica scanned the morbid montage, then looked up quizzically. “He’s got a lot of zits...”

“Not zits,” Carter crowed. “The photo quality’s not that great. I’ve asked the town council for a high-res digital camera for years, but...”

“Carter?” Brock breathed. “Tonight, Carter, please?”

“Warts,” the M.E. announced. “Robbie Halverson’s body was literally covered with warts. Jill ­ Jimmy’s wife ­ was his doctor, and she said he never had any problem with warts.” Pike scooted his chair closer to the feds with a teeth-numbing screech. “Do you know what causes warts, Agents?”

“Frogs?” Doggett deadpanned. “Sorry.”

Pike’s rhythm was broken, but he quickly mustered his composure. “A virus. Specifically Verruca. A relatively benign virus, even though it is remotely related ­ if a virus can be related ­ to the virus that causes herpes. And do you know what a virus is?”

“Why don’t you tell us, Carter?” Brock murmured as he rubbed his chin.

“Genetic material. A virus is believed to be the bridge between living and non-living material. It’s almost pure DNA ­ no bodily systems, no familiar animal or plant activity. You ever hear of lupus, Agents?”

“A nervous disease, right?” Monica ventured.

“Yes, yes,” Pike nodded, looking at Monica with what Doggett interpreted as a sort of scientific lust. “I mean, yes. Scientists believe many viral diseases like lupus actually alter the genetic makeup of their victims. The virus theoretically can either add or subtract genetic material from human chromosomes, even fill in missing DNA chains. I believe Robbie Halverson was inoculated with some form of modified viral strain.”

“Why?” Doggett asked bluntly.

Pike looked flustered.

“Ah, I don’t know. I just set ‘em up; you have to knock ‘ em down. But I did send tissue samples from the victim to the CDC, for analysis.”

The agents glanced with surprise to Brock. The sheriff sighed audibly and waved it off.

“There was something else,” Pike offered meekly. The unauthorized communication with the federal Centers for Communicable Disease had sparked a severe scolding from the sheriff. “The victim was extremely clean.”

“Clean?” Monica took her turn.

“He was unusually free of the usual trace evidence you or I would accumulate in our everyday activities. Clothing was possibly vacuumed, nails cleaned. I think he was killed somewhere else and brought back here so it would look like a local murder.”

“Carter, you have no basis—” Brock began.

“Wait, Jimmy,” Pike begged. “After our initial ‘discussion,’ I took lung, nasal, even rectal samples...”

“Jesus.”

“...and I found something. Pollen particles ­ a large concentration in the nasal cilia. I sent those to the plant sciences lab at the University of Wisconsin for analysis.”

Brock eyed his medical examiner. “Not wanting to bother me for an authorization, of course.”

“Routine procedure,” Pike responded defensively. “We ought to get the results in a day or two. Of course, if you guys put the heat on them...”

“Thank you, Carter,” Sheriff Brock interrupted, cheerfully. “Sorry to keep you past supper.”

Pike blinked, nodded, and rose. “I looked for implants, too, but...”

“’Night, Carter,” Brock waggled his fingers. He watched the medical examiner leave. “He’s very, ah, dedicated to his job.”

“Yeah,” Doggett said. “But it does sound a little hinky, doesn’t it? The warts and the cleanup of the body?”

Brock put his feet up on a desk drawer and regarded the agents. “OK, it isn’t strictly kosher. But you don’t think some secret conspiracy went to the trouble of abducting, experimenting on, and murdering last year’s state 4-H Swine Champion?”

Doggett bypassed any observation he might now make. “Sheriff, Halverson was questioned in some arson cases a few years back. What’s the story there.”

Jimmy Brock removed his feet from the drawer, fumbled for a nearby cup of cold coffee, and grimaced as he sipped the sludge. “When he was a freshman at the high school, Robbie got into it with the baseball coach over getting cut. They’d had a very public argument over a call or something. Anyway, the home dugout burned down that night. We investigated, given Robbie’s possible motivation ­ he was a good kid, but he had a temper ­ but the fire chief determined the cause must’ve been the wiring to the dugout light, even though he couldn’t find any clear damage or tampering in the system.

“The second fire was when Robbie was a junior. He was a very intelligent boy ­ had a perfect grade point average. Until his algebra teacher gave him a B. I guess he threw a fit after school, several witnesses, and that night, the math classroom caught fire. We talked to Robbie again, but it turned out to be a short, no, wait, an electrical surge, the fire chief thought.”

“A surge?” Doggett inquired, looking to Monica. “It happen again?”

“Two months ago,” Brock reported, flatly. “Local car dealer. Gas tank explosion. No sign of any fuse or accelerant, and the gas cap cover was still locked when they found the rear driver’s panel.”

“Let me guess,” Monica said. “Halverson had a beef with the dealer.”

“ Robbie’d bought a used Honda from Gary ­ the dealer ­ a few days before, and the transmission promptly fell out. Gary wouldn’t cover the repair, and it got kind of loud before Gary called Kenny ­ my deputy ­ to get Robbie to leave. Robbie had an airtight alibi for the explosion, and the best the fire chief could come up with was some sort of static charge sparking off trapped gas vapors.”

“What do you think, Sheriff Brock?” Monica encouraged.

Brock leaned back in his chair, looking very much like he’d rather be home for supper. “You know, it’s interesting. No offense, but I’ve found that most of you FBI types are fairly, uh, structured in your thinking. But a few years ago, we had one of your guys through here investigating cattle mutilations, and he made Carter sound like a conservative Sunday school teacher. Muller, Miller, oh hell.”

Doggett and Monica exchanged an amused look.

“Now, I’m getting the sense you two are thinking Robbie Halverson started those fires, even though that’s impossible. You know, the ex-mayor, several years ago, died under some very mysterious circumstances. He spontaneously combusted.”

“I’ve heard of that,” Doggett said, immediately regretting it.

Eagle Pass, Texas/Mexico Border

3:27 a.m.

Just as the man in the dark suit had suspected, José Consuelinas was holed up in the back of his dealership long into the night. The smell that assaulted his nose as he stepped into the warehouse was strong, but he didn't so much as flinch.

The men behind him, however, covered their noses and made disgusted noises as they entered. The Suited Man held up a hand as a signal for them to be silent. He wanted this operation done as quickly and as quietly as possible, and the less warning Consuelinas had, the better.

They moved soundlessly toward the back of the warehouse, the men holding guns and wearing Kevlar leading the way. When they reached the back room, the Suited Man signaled for the first of the men to knock down the door. With a startling crash, the wood broke free from the frame and crashed to the floor in front of a terrified José Consuelinas , who was sitting behind his desk counting stacks of money. His arms flew up into the air as soon as he saw the men with guns. The Suited Man stepped forward from behind his team and moved to stand in front of the desk.

"I don't know anything about anyone," José stated immediately, his Spanish accent growing thicker as a result of his fear.

The older man smiled an eerie humorless smile. "I think you might," he said. "I think you might know about a couple of people who came in here and traded their automobile for one of your rust buckets out front." He pulled his dollar coin from his front pocket and began flipping it again. Such a casual move seemed to frighten José even more.

"I sell a lot of cars to a lot of couples," José stammered. "You can't expect me to remember every one." He was sweating now and his eyes flicked over the Suited Man constantly, always returning to that coin that went up into the air and then came back down with a plop onto the man's palm.

"This was a Ford Explorer. New. You traded it away yesterday afternoon to a tall emaciated woman and a man with no neck. You remember them, no?" He directed his eyes directly at José, flipped his coin with a “ping” and caught the cool metal on its way down.

"Yes, I remember." His fingers were twitching, aching to grab for something. A gun? The Suited Man watched carefully as his hands moved ever so slowly toward the edge of his desk. He nodded at two of the men behind him and they were on either side of José immediately, pulling his arms back away from the underside of the desk.

The Suited Man reached around, below the top of the desk to just above the sweating man's knees. He pulled out a large revolver that was tucked into a holster strapped to the bottom of the center drawer. He spun it around on his finger.

"Clever," he said. "But do you really think you would have gotten a chance to pull the trigger?" He leaned forward and rubbed José's cheek with the front end of the barrel, smiling, an expression that looked more like a grimace on his leathery face. "The SUV, José. Where did it come from? Who traded it to you?"

José was shaking terribly now and his words were stuttered, barely understandable. "It was a tall woman -- a blonde. Her husband was tall also, with black hair and a mustache." The shorter man flinched and turned his head, his eyes tightly closed, as the Suited Man leaned in once again to place the barrel of the revolver against his face.

"Are you telling me the truth?" The cold metal of the gun pressed firmly into the sweating flesh of the man's cheek.

"Yes."

"Where did they go?" The barrel slid up to José's temple, pushing forcefully against the tender spot. He tried to jerk away, but the uniformed men who held him were much too strong.

"Mexico," he said softly.

The man in the dark suit let the revolver slip away from the side of José's head only long enough to ask him another question. "What kind of car did they take? And if you lie to me, I'll know. You won't live to see another pile of crap dragged out of here and stuffed with dope."

"A station wagon," José admitted. "Blue." It was a lie, but a convincing one.

The Suited Man removed the gun from the Hispanic man's temple. "Thank you, José," he said, opening the revolver and dropping the bullets out into his hand. He let them fall into his pocket before placing the empty pistol onto the desk and sauntering slowly out of the room.

He didn't even flinch as he heard the sound of a high powered rifle ring out through the wide open space of the warehouse. Soon after, the men of his team followed him back onto the two helicopters they'd brought into Eagle Pass.

East St. Louis, Illinois
10:20 a.m.

“People would say he was some kind of curse, my cross to bear, they’d say,” LaVerne Miller explained, shaking her graying head of hair at the folly of the human race. “But Marlon, he was my blessing from sweet Jesus himself, my baby. It’s just he was different, kinda slow. But what God takes away from us, he balances out. An’ with Marlon, it was his heart and his sight.”

First period lunch was a good hour away, so Mrs. Miller took Doggett and Reyes to a table in the far corner of the cafeteria of the high school where she daily cleaned floors and mopped up student messes. She was 47, but the years in one of the poorest neighborhoods over the bridge from the Arch, the job, the mission of watching over her man-sized “child” had added 10 years to her deeply lined features.

“When did you realize your son had psychic abilities?” Monica inquired.

Mrs. Miller regarded her wearily. “Marlon never knew what he told folks wasn’t what other people would say. Marlon was 12, Mr. Miller, my husband, went up on the roof to get the antenna straight ­ picture on the set was always fuzzing up. Well, while Mr. Miller was putting on his heavy coat and boots, Marlon kept calling out, ‘Watch your step, Daddy; watch the nails.’ Over and over. An’ telling his not to wear his muffler out. Mr. Miller, he never had much patience for the boy, he told him to keep his peace or he’d whup him good. Well, I start fixing supper, and the next thing you know, I hear this terrible thump up top and Mr. Miller screamin’ his head. I know something just awful’s happened, and I look around the house for my husband, see if he’s hurt, hoping he ain’t broke his neck.

“Well, he’s nowhere to be seen, and I all of a sudden get this feeling. Sure enough, I look up and there’s Mr. Miller, hanging from the storm gutter. By that long muffler he always wore when it was cold out. Neck was broke, and the muffler was caught on a nail he’d use to fix the gutter spring before. And I knew my Marlon had something special ­ his payment from the Lord for being simple.”

Doggett watched the cafeteria workers set out pies and jello and tuna salad sandwiches. “Mrs. Miller, how did your son get along with the other people in the neighborhood. Kids can be pretty cruel to a guy who...with Marlon’s condition.”

“Boy was retarded, you can say it,” Mrs. Miller said, low and cool and calm. “You asking, do I think he was running with the gangs or up to some kind of mischief, then you’d best pack up your badge and head back up I-55. Marlon had to have me read him the Sunday comics, when we could afford the Sunday Post-Dispatch, but he knew his scriptures, Old and New Testament. Saw to that. Cops, if you talk to ‘em, will tell you he riled up a few customers from time to time with his sight, but everybody worked with my Marlon loved him and knew he had nothing but love in his heart.”

“Any strangers around his neighborhood, his work he might have mentioned?” Doggett asked.

“Only the man from the university. Funny little white man named Caswell wanted to take a look inside my Marlon’s head, find out what makes him see things. Said he’d pay us $1,000 just to do some tests. Told him real polite to find himself another laboratory rat.”

Doggett and Monica exchanged looks. “How long ago was this, Mrs. Miller.”

“Two, maybe, three months back.” Her face hardened. “You think this man had something to do with my baby disappearing? What’s this all about, anyway? Why all of a sudden have I got two big federal agents asking me 20 questions about my son? You gonna tell me Uncle Sam cares what happens to a big, mentally retarded, black stockboy ? Tell me another one.”

Doggett leaned forward silently, retrieving his wallet from his back pocket. He opened it as Monica and Mrs. Miller looked on curiously, and slipped a photo from its plastic sleeve. He set the snapshot gently on the table before Mrs. Miller, and Monica felt a pang in her chest.

“Mrs. Miller,” Doggett murmured, quiet but somehow rising above the din of clashing trays and silverware. “This is my son, Luke. He was taken from me ­ his mother and me ­ a few years back, and he didn’t come back alive. The man who took him, I guess you’d say he had evil in his heart. The man who murdered my boy...” He stopped for a half-beat, swallowing. “The man who murdered my Luke had no heart, no soul. I asked for a reason, some logic, some sign from God to tell me why this had to be.

“All I ever came up with was that I won’t ever know the answer, that there are some things we won’t ever get a good answer for. All I can do is what I can do, ask the questions I know can get answered, and leave the rest to God or fate or whatever.”

Mrs. Miller examined Doggett for a moment, then handed him Luke’s photo. The agent silently replaced it, replaced his wallet, and looked off toward the cafeteria kitchen.

Mrs. Miller rose, her chair scraping but not screeching. “I got to get back to work now. Agent Doggett, you call me the second you find my boy. The second, you understand?”

Doggett, pale, nodded numbly.

**

“John, are you all right?” Monica asked as the waitress departed.

“Oh, yeah,” Doggett responded with a sheepish smile. “Guess I kinda faded out there.”

On the recommendation of the East St. Louis P.D. lieutenant, the agents had driven across the Mississippi River bridge and sought out Charlie Gitto’s Italian restaurant. During the drive, Doggett had remained calm but uncommunicative.

“If he and the others can be found, we’ll find them, John,” Monica said.

“Monica. How long have you and I been running on this hamster wheel, chasing our asses and coming up with air? You think we’re gonna give that woman back her child, or the Yorubas their daughter?” He splayed his fingers, and began to tick off points. “East St. Louis. Wisconsin. Maryland. Arizona. This is big, Monica. Big and shapeless and it smells like our old ‘friends.’ What do you think we’re gonna do against that?”

Monica’s eyes flared. “This isn’t you, John. You bang your head against the wall, and always come back asking for a harder wall. We have to stay with this. We have to believe.”

“Fox Mulder’s war cry,” Doggett laughed bitterly. “Well, case you haven’t noticed, I ain’t Fox Mulder . I can’t believe. Monica, I don’t wanna believe. Let’s just order, OK?”

They remained silent until the food arrived.

**

The St. Louis campus was bustling with mid-afternoon activity, and it took Doggett and Reyes nearly a half-hour after finding an open parking space to locate Ostling Hall and Dr. Albert Caswell’s office.

“I have a very busy afternoon ahead,” the diminutive professor informed the agents coolly. “Can we expedite this, please?”

Doggett’s lip twitched in a predatory smile. “Marlon Miller. What was your interest in him?”

Caswell blinked. “I know no such individual.”

“That isn’t what his mother said,” the agent pursued. “She says you visited them, offered her money.”

“I don’t even venture into that neighborhood in the day—” Caswell’s mouth clapped shut, and he closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them, Doggett and Reyes were still there, Doggett wearing a satisfied smirk. “All right, all right. I guess I just wasn’t proud of chasing down to the ghetto to find interesting subjects. A colleague told me of a student who’d been the recipient of Mr. Miller’s reportedly remarkable gift, and I wanted to investigate for myself.”

“Pardon me, Dr. Caswell, but aren’t you a geneticist?” Monica asked, waving a hand toward a chart of the recently completed human genome map.

Caswell blinked again. “The paranormal’s a hobby for me, an avocation. I don’t let it get around a lot ­ not too great for the perception of academic credibility, especially when you’re trying to scare up grant money.”

“But you had $1,000 to spend to satisfy your avocational curiosity?” Doggett murmured.

“I have colleagues who spend twice that on a good wine, 100 times that on a classic car,” the professor said, now playing with his tie. “I don’t understand what business this is of the FBI’s, my hobby, that is.”

“Marlon Miller’s missing. You know that?”

“I don’t want to sound politically incorrect, but in that part of town, I’m not necessarily surprised. I’m sorry to hear about the young man, of course, but my contact with his mother was brief and futile. Why would you assume I would know anything?”

Doggett examined the spines of the books in the case beside Caswell’s desk. “We’re just investigating every lead, Dr. Caswell. See, there’s been a rash of disappearances across the country, all folks with supposed psychic abilities. You think of any explanation for something like that?”

Caswell lowered himself in behind his desk. “Agent Doggett, I’m relatively certain that if you took a few hundred random casefiles from throughout the U.S. and pored through them, at least a dozen ‘patterns’ would emerge that likely would have no true connection. Unfortunately, I would presume Mr. Miller met with urban misfortune. Any further questions? Good; I have a faculty meeting at three. Good day.”

Back out on the quad, Doggett scouted out a spot under a tree. “C’mon,” he told Monica, grabbing her arm. “Let’s reconnoiter.”

Monica grinned at her partner’s sudden attack of capriciousness, relieved his stormy mood at lunch had faded. They sat under the elm, watching students mill past, laughing and bitching and listening lost in their Walkmen .

“OK, what’ve we got?” Doggett asked at last. “We got four kids, loosely defining Marlon Miller. Two of whom caught the interest of the scientific community, three if you count Gibson Praise’s previous ‘surgery.’ I think Gibson might be what connects all this up. Whoever cut into that poor kid found something that led them to grab the others. Maybe Melinda, Marlon, and the Wisconsin kid--”

“Rob.”

“—were taken to compare with Gibson. To see what they have in common. What makes them tick that we don’t have. If that’s true, then there’s a possibility Caswell and Gale Lower at U of M are involved somehow. An anthropologist and a genetics expert, both with an interest in psychic phenomena. What’s that tell us?”
Monica frowned as she considered. “Well, you said Lower had a theory...”

“Cockamamie theory,” Doggett corrected.

She smiled broadly. “...a cockamamie theory that somehow prehistoric man had the ability to perceive things we no longer can see. Or that maybe only psychics can see. That’s where Lower comes in. He finds the historical grounding for the theory. Then Caswell investigates a possible genetic basis for this ancient clairvoyance. Maybe as man became more sophisticated, a more dominant member of his ecosystem, more protected from the dangers of nature, part of his genetic makeup began to deteriorate ­ the part that allowed him to foresee risks, maybe even to see other places and things around him that are invisible to us.”

Doggett blinked.

“What, John?”

The agent held up a finger to delay further queries and pulled out his cell phone. He rapped out a number and impatiently waited for a connection. “Yeah, Atlanta, Georgia. The Centers for Communicable Diseases...Thanks. Yeah, sure.” As the operator connected him for an additional fee, he turned to Monica. “What that coroner said up in Wisconsin, about the warts. About the viruses, what they do? Oh, hey, this is Special Agent John Doggett, Federal Bureau of Investigation.” He read his ID number, and endured three transfers before he located his party.

“Guy in Rome, Wisconsin, the M.E., sent you some tissue samples. Some material from a wart? Yeah, fine.” Doggett looked back up. “Pike said some viruses can transfer genetic material into an animal, right? What if these guys are trying to find out what material the missing kids have, and then transfer it to others?”

Monica shook her head. “But Rob Halverson had psychic abilities himself. Why would they put a virus in--?”

“Yeah, right here,” Doggett snapped into the phone. “What? Really? Is it dangerous? Good. Listen, can you think of a way that could’ve happened naturally? Marker what? OK, OK. Can you Fed Ex me a copy of that report at the Washington Bureau ? I dunno; I’ll let you know when I find out.”

He ended the call after supplying his address, then leaned back against the trunk of the elm. “I guess every paranoid has his day. Pike was right ­ the wart virus the Halverson kid had appeared to be a mutant strain, possibly genetically engineered. Absolutely harmless; the guy couldn’t figure why anybody would bother to manufacture something like it. Somebody planted it in the boy, probably figured when we found the body, we’d figure it was adolescent hormones run amok.”

“John,” Monica said. “John.”

Doggett looked at his partner.

“If Halverson already had psychic abilities ­ the psychic gene, if that’s what we’re talking about, then why put that virus in him?” she murmured. “I can think of two reasons. One, the virus was put there to collect the genetic material Halverson has that we don’t, so it could be transferred to somebody else.

“Or think about this, John. Halverson seemed unable to control his pyrokinetic powers ­ they came out when he lost his temper. Marlon Miller didn’t have the mental ability to clearly communicate his premonitions, and Melinda Yoruba’s messages always got garbled into dreamlike gobbledygook. What if the virus was put into Rob Halverson to fill in the genetic gaps? What if he had vestigial, leftover genes that gave him partial psychic ability, but the chromosomal chains that would give him full power with control were incomplete? The virus was a genetic carrier, and that’s why they picked a relatively harmless one.”

Doggett’s brow furrowed. “But why kidnap these people just for some weird science experiment?”

“John,” Monica said with such gravity that Doggett sat up stock straight. “Why would anyone want to genetically create perfect psychic minds, persons with advanced psychic ability? Why did your friend Rohrer and his cohorts want to breed a race of genetically superior supersoldiers? Maybe they discovered physical strength wasn’t the key to protecting mankind from the aliens.”

“C’mon, Monica,” Doggett rasped.

“Maybe,” she said, emphatically, “maybe they decided mental superiority, psychic control was the answer. And Gibson, Melinda, all of them, hold the key.”

“Why kill Halverson?”

“My guess is his pyrokinetic power got out of control ­ remember, he was being held against his will, and he was probably angry and confused. They had no choice but to kill him. Or maybe with an infusion of new ‘junk’ DNA, he became too powerful to control.”

Doggett looked grim. “You seen Gibson at work. You remember what Mulder told us about the kid. What happens when they tune him up a little?”

Murdo, South Dakota
2:07 p.m.

The tall scientist smiled slightly as he inoculated Marlon Miller, as if he were the family pediatrician giving the hulking, heavy-browed young man a flu shot. In actuality, he was terrified of the large man, some six-foot-four and 246 pounds. The scientist was concerned about what kind of violence might lie beneath the developmentally challenged man’s sweet and friendly demeanor.

Truth be told, he was terrified of all the subjects they’d gathered here, the ones ‘recruited’ by Lower and Caswell and the other academics. Halverson had proven uncontrollable ­ he shuddered at the memory of the two techs and a guard who’d been incinerated before his eyes before a second guard disconnected Halverson’s brain forever. The girl they’d brought in after him was more mouth and threats than any real menace ­ her activity was more precognitive than physical. And Praise, who’d already been a guinea pig at the hands of others ­ the hands of the appeasers, Covarubias had called them ­ was too composed and inscrutable, as if something were brewing in that very unusual head of his.

And the other one... The tall scientist shook off the thought, and swabbed and bandaged the inspection site.

“I’d like to see my mama, please,” Marlon rumbled politely.

“Not just yet,” the scientist responded pleasantly. “We don’t want her to catch anything from you and get sick, do we?”

“I spose not,” Marlon smiled wistfully. “What we gonna have for supper tonight? I liked that butterscotch pudding we had night ‘fore last.”

“I’ll see if the cook’ll make up a batch for you, all right.”

Marlon looked delighted. Just the way the scientist wanted him to remain. Then the young man’s face clouded. He grasped the scientist’s arm, almost giving him an infarction. He as quickly released the doctor, who reeled back, his face an ashen gray.

“Marlon, what’s the matter? What happened?”

Marlon shook his head vigorously. “No. They told me not to talk about it.”

“Who? Talk about what?”

“The folks down to the store. Mr. Theobald, specially. People don’t want to know, something bad gonna happen.”

The scientist stepped cautiously forward. “And is something bad going to happen, Marlon.”

The huge head shook more violently, and he began thumping his fists on the edge of his mattress. Tears began to stream down his cheeks. “No. No. NO!

“Why don’t you take a nap, Marlon?” the tall scientist urged, ready to wet his pants. Though Covarubbias would be furious if she knew he’d withheld information from her, Marlon was right -- he didn’t want to know what was going to happen. The scientist timidly patted Marlon on his shoulder; it felt like a side of beef. He fled.

Marlon breathed deeply, as his mother and the lady at the school had taught him, and his tears began to dry. He laid down, eyes open, and thought about getting well enough to go back home, even though he felt just fine.

Hello?

“Who’s that?” Marlon called, sitting up.

Talk with your mind. Think instead of saying it.

“Who—” Marlon clamped his lips shut, remembering his instructions. Who’s there? Why can’t I see you?

I’m not there. I’m sending my thoughts to you, like a telephone call. The voice was young, white.

Marlon giggled; it worked. You sick, too?

Sick?

Yeah. They said I got to take some shots ‘fore I can go home.

What’s your name?

Marlon Miller. What’s yours’?

Gibson. Marlon, how old are you?

I’m 26 next March. My mama says I’m big for my age. It’s a joke cause a lot of kids in my school was littler than me.

Where’s your mom? Where do you live?

East St. Louis, Missouri. I sure miss my mama. I hope they’ll let me go soon.

Marlon, I want you to listen to me. I have to tell you some things.

The boy’s voice was calm, like the man down to “Social Services” who’d got him the nice job at the store with Mr. Theobald . He’d listened to what Gibson had to say, and if he thought it was all right, he’d tell him what he hadn’t told the doctor.

Maybe Gibson could figure out what to do about the Bad Man.

Washington D.C.
8:17 p.m.

"She's late," Scully said, checking her watch for the twelfth time in the past fifteen minutes.

"I know." Mulder sighed and leaned back against the bench. It was so dangerous for them to be here, to be out in the open like this, but they needed to meet with Ms. Bateman in the open or else the risks went up even higher.

They were in disguise, at least, and their hair color was probably helping, though not by much. Scully shifted uncomfortably on the bench and tugged at the itchy, not to mention ugly, sweater she was wearing.

At that moment, Mulder noticed someone headed toward them. "Scully," he said, "there's someone coming."

Scully looked up at the approaching woman; she wore a scarf over her hair and dark sunglasses, despite the the fact that the sun was almost entirely hidden behind the trees. "Inconspicuous," Scully muttered.

Mulder nudged her with his elbow. As the woman neared, Scully noticed that something was wrong. " Mulder..." she gripped his arm firmly, "that's not her." Scully had met the woman once, the day she'd finally decided togo through with the adoption. She'd been in tears for nearly the whole visit, but she had still been aware enough to remember the face and figure of the woman she'd met with. Both Mulder and Scully stood now, wary, and unwilling to step any further into danger.

"Let's go, Scully." Mulder took her by the hand and began pulling her away from the bench, in the opposite direction of the forthcoming figure. But as soon as the disguised woman spotted them moving away, she sped up.

"No, wait! Please!" She held up her hands in surrender; Mulder and Scully looked at each other for a moment. "I'm here to help, I promise."

"Keep your hands where we can see them," Scully ordered. The woman nodded and took a few steps forward. "Where's Sandra Bateman?"

The woman sighed heavily and removed her eyewear. "She's dead," she said, looking Scully directly in the eye. "They killed her... to get to William."

Washington
11:30 p.m.

Monica plopped her suitcase on the living room floor. Their flight from Lambert Airport had been delayed for two hours, and between the terminal food that now rested heavily on her stomach and the post-9/11 security procedures that had further delayed her return home, she was ready to unpack it all tomorrow and pack it in tonight.

She and John had reviewed as much of the case as they could amid a planeful of civilians, as well as Kersh’s offer of a job on the anti-terrorist task force. John was certain he could get them both relocated on the task force, particularly if he were insistent.

The truth was, where her partner felt out of his depth in this strange new world into which they’d been plunged, Monica wanted to know more. She’d been raised in an atmosphere of strong faith, but had learned over the last year or so to look beyond the scriptures she’d memorized in Summer Bible School. John wanted to return to a world of comforting familiarity; Monica wanted to believe in something larger.

But neither did she wish to be separated from John. They had developed a deep rapport of friendship, and, Monica was certain, John felt the same way bout her that she was too timid to express to him. She smiled as she kicked off her pumps and tossed her jacket onto an armchair.

As soon as she shed her blouse and slacks, the agent flopped onto her bed. Then she moaned. The answering machine. Monica could see the red light blinking past the doorway. She trudged back into the living room.

And froze.

Agent Reyes?

It was Gibson Praise, or at least a faint, wavering image of him. And while that image flickered in front on Monica’s couch, the voice materialized in her head.

“Gibson?” she whispered.

**

It was late, and he didn’t want to bother his neighbors, so Doggett manually locked his car instead of electronically securing it and trudged wearily up his front steps. It wasn’t until he reached the door that it registered.

The lights, wired into a motion detection system, were blazing into the yard. Doggett walked calmly back to the car, opened the glove compartment, retrieved his revolver, and plucked his jacket from the passenger’s seat.

It was a skillful job of burglary, he reflected as he noted a few telltale pick scratches on the storm door lock. Doggett turned the key in the main lock, lifted his knee, and kicked the door inward. He tossed his jacket inside, and a flash and a small pop erupted from the darkness near his TV.

Doggett dived inside, rolling to the left. He heard a bullet plunk into the flooring about four feet away. He fired toward the source of the shot, heard an alarmed cry, and then saw a shadow dart past him into the yard.

“Dr. Lower!” Doggett shouted as the security lights defined the intruder. The scientist turned, panic on his face, and Lower raised his weapon. Doggett caught him in the upper right arm; his .38 flew into the grass and Lower crumpled to his knees.

“Stay right there!” Doggett yelled. He ran to where Lower knelt. “You tryin ’ to kill me, Doc? We getting’ too close to what you’re up to?”

“You don’t understand,” Lower snapped, wincing in pain as blood oozed through the finger’s squeezing his shoulder. Doggett punched 911 into his cell phone and called for the cops and an ambulance.

“Where you got her, Melinda Yoruba?” Doggett demanded. “They got Marlon Miller and Gibson Praise, too?”

“You couldn’t begin to get it,” Lower snarled. “You’re dooming mankind. We’re the salvation. For everyone.”

“Kidnapping children? Experimentin’ on them? You got a funny concept of heroism, Doc. Where are they?”

“My lawyer,” Lower groaned. “I’ll wait for my lawyer.”

Doggett dug his gun under the professor’s beard. “Where are the kids, you son of a bitch?”

“What are you doing?” Doggett whirled at the alarmed voice. A tall man emerged from the dark sidewalk. “What are you doing to him?”

Doggett dug out his wallet, flipped it open. “I’m an FBI agent. I live he—”

The agent halted, dumbfounded. He’d only met Jeremiah Smith once, when the abductees started showing up in droves. The alien, if that’s what he was, was assisting in an effort to heal the damage his colleagues had done to the missing people in the course of their tests and probings.

“Please, Agent Doggett, let me see what I can do here.” Pushing the agent gently aside, Smith knelt beside the wounded anthropologist. Lower looked up in terror as Jeremiah placed his fingers on his shattered shoulder.

And squeezed. Lower shrieked, and Doggett brought up his gun. Smith’s benign features morphed into a far more threatening, vaguely monstrous countenance, the figure rose several inches beyond Smith’s height, and he backhanded the agent across the face. Doggett fell, dazed, to the dew-soaked grass, struggling for consciousness.

As he lost the battle, he saw something gleaming and metallic flash in the stranger’s huge hand and descend toward Lower’s neck...

**

We’re all being held someplace. I don’t know where.

Monica, hands trembling, stumbled toward a chair. “Who’s with you, Gibson?”

I’ve connected with five others so far. Their names are Melinda Yoruba, Marlon Miller, Brian Yuan, Iris Petrie, and Jon Petrovsky . We tried to pool our energy to send this message to you. I was afraid you were dead.

“Do you have any idea where you are?”

No. But someone’s been here. A lot. The woman.

“What woman?”

The one at Agent Mulder’s trial. The frightened one. I never met her, but I was nearby when she testified.

Monica searched her memory. There was only woman who testified at the military tribunal against Fox Mulder. Marita Covarubias. She’d been some kind of official with the United Nations World Health Organization before she’d taken up with Alex Krycek, who from all indications had betrayed the Syndicate Scully had mentioned and worked with others to perfect a cure for some alien virus. Covarubias had been the subject of tests to isolate that cure.

Yes. She’s the one , Gibson answered Monica’s thoughts, startling her. She thinks she has a way to stop the—

Gibson’s head turned slightly, and as it did, his image began to fade.

“Gibson!” Monica called.

Something’s happening. Gibson’s image flickered, then disappeared. Monica remembered to exhale, but gasped as another image flickered on abruptly. The face was rough leather over hard planes, the eyes nearly opaque.

“Who are you?” Monica rasped.

A heavy brow rose, and it grinned, horribly. Monica believed in innate evil, had met it face-to-face, and this was it.

And with that thought, the man disappeared.

**

Deputy Director Kersh nodded solemnly as Doggett concluded his carefully edited and abbreviated version of the past week’s events. The DCPD M.E. had concluded his initial examination of the late Gale Lower ­ single puncture wound to the spinal cord at the base of the skull, clean and instant death.

“And you believe that this man had something to do with the abduction of Gibson Praise and these other people, and that he intended to kill you, is that right, John?” Kersh asked as a paramedic flashed a pen light into Doggett’s eyes. The agent waived the EMT away.

“He thought I was close to figuring out his role in this thing,” Doggett guessed. “I think his colleague in St. Louis, Caswell, called him after Agent Reyes and I dropped in on him, and he decided to take me, maybe her out as well. You did get somebody over there, right?”

“I sent someone right after the DCPD called. You were rather vague about why a man of Lower’s academic credentials would be involved in childnapping and attempted murder. Would you care to elaborate?”

Doggett looked at his superior, bathed in a mock-patriotic red, white, and blue succession of light. “I haven’t yet ascertained the precise nature of Lower’s activities.”
“And the man who murdered Lower. You have no idea who he is?”

“None,” Doggett said truthfully, omitting the killer’s transition from the form of Jeremiah Smith.

“Well, it’s been quite a harrowing evening, John. If the locals are done, I’d suggest you get a good night’s sleep.” Kersh stiffened slightly, looking over Doggett’s shoulder. The agent turned to see Skinner in jeans and sweatshirt, flashing ID at the DCPD detectives.

“You all right, Agent?” the assistant director inquired.

“Yeah,” Doggett nodded. “Just rattled my brains a little, but they don’t think there’s any concussion.”

“Assistant Director Skinner,” Kersh interjected. “I thought you were taking a week or so off to recuperate. You’ve had a major trauma.”

Skinner glanced at the deputy director. “I was just getting some files at the office to take home and review when I heard what happened.”

Kersh regarded the pair for a moment. “I think you both would benefit from some rest. And, John? Have you thought any more about our discussion the other day?”

Doggett looked up. “Ah, still mulling it over, sir.”

“Yes. On, and by the way, John, offer my regards to Secretary Yoruba the next time you see him.” Kersh strode back past the police cars and into the night, leaving Doggett open-jawed.

“What do you think happened, John?” Skinner asked quietly.

“Lower knew we were onto him. He and, I think, a bunch of other scientists have kidnapped Praise and Melinda Yoruba and some others for some kind of research or something. Maybe has to do with the aliens.”

“The man who killed him,” Skinner frowned. “You think you could work up a sketch if I rousted Mannheim out of bed?”

“I dunno, maybe,” Doggett said. He jumped as his cell phone chirped. He fished it out of his pants pocket. “Yeah?”

“I have a collect call for a Special Agent John Doggett,” an officious feminine voice informed him.

“Collect? Uh, sure. Hello?”

“Agent Doggett, this is LaVerne Miller,” the woman’s flat, no-nonsense voice crackled over the line. “I’m sorry I called you collect, but I can’t afford--”

“That’s all right, Mrs. Miller,” Doggett drawled, baffled and slightly irritated. “What can I do for you?”

“It’s what I can do for you, is what it is,” Mrs. Miller said. “My boy. I just talked to him.”

Doggett straightened. Skinner cocked his head. “You mean, he called you?”

“Not like you mean, not on the phone,” she explained. “I seen him, in my kitchen. He’s with some others, someplace he don’t know. And, Agent Doggett?

“Yes, ma’am?” a bewildered Doggett murmured.

“He says we best find him quick, cause something’s going to happen. You don’t find those children, everybody’s gonna die.”

To be continued…