By pusher
pusher@unforgettable.com

Rating - NC-17
Classification - C A
Spoilers - Grotesque
Keywords - XF/Hellraiser crossover
Summary - Mulder & Scully investigate several bizarre murders relating to a mysterious puzzle box.  Mulder
is offered his ultimate heart's desire, but the price expected from him is too much.
 
 

SYNAPSE
An X-Files/Hellraiser Crossover

by Pusher <pusher@unforgettable.com>

DISCLAIMER
Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, et al are properties of Chris Carter & Co. & Fox Network.  Hellraiser, Julia & the
Cenobites are properties of Clive Barker.  In short, I don't own anybody here, I'm just borrowing 'em for my
evil purposes.

SPOILERS
Third Season, any time after "Grotesque."

RATING
NC-17.  Blood.  Gore.  Ooze.  Sex.  Torture.  Mutilation.  Bondage.  Very disturbing imagery.  Oh, and a
few expletives.

NOTES
A crossover!  Run away, run away!  Actually, you don't have to have seen the movies to be able to
understand this (hopefully), but it would help.

I've fudged around with certain aspects of "Hellraiser" simply because the movies are a bit sketchy on
continuity.

A final note: If you're squeamish, easily offended, under 18, have a heart condition, or are fussy about such
things like proper sentence structure, DON'T READ THIS.  This is a nasty, visceral piece, still a little rough,
and will probably piss you off.
 

* * * * *
Synapse, Chapter 1
* * * * *
 

A Synapse.  A junction between two neurons.  The brief gap between ganglions where one impulse jumps
from the end to the other.  The place where it is decided, in one short microsecond burst, whether the signal
is to be transmitted or inhibited, and classifies them into different stages, different steps of intensity.

Many psychiatric disorders result from a disruption of synaptic communication, learning is related to
synapses, homeostasis is dependent on synapses.  But at the most basic, cellular level, it is stopgate for the
transmission of sensation.

Of pleasure.

Or pain.
 
 

Fox Mulder's Office
FBI Headquarters
 

Dark, light.  Dark, light. The clicks of the advancing slides play a rhythmic pattern of dim illumnation off
Special Agent Fox Mulder, a steady repeat of momentary darkness shattered by glinting light and a healthy
snap of the next slide dropping into place.  Fifty pictures pass in rapid succession, a steady unrelenting pulse
that only pauses as the door to the office opens, letting in a bright stream of hallway light.

"Hope you haven't had breakfast yet," his voice drifts out to the shadowy figure of his partner entering the
darkened room, as the carousel resets to the beginning.

"Oh?"  Dana Scully steps forward, vaguely lit by whatever spillage of 300 watt bulb allows in her direction.
"What other nest-building, poetry-spewing, century-old, fluke-spawning, body-part snacking genetic mutant
were you planning to have us chase now?"

"No mutants this time.  Tell me what this looks like to you."

She squints, perusing the slightly out-of-focus picture on the wall.

"It looks like blood and...semen.  Quite a lot of both I'd say."

"Guess you could say this guy came and went."

"That's bad, Mulder.  Even for you."

"Thank you.  But our onanistic victim here is not the only one who has left behind the marks of his passage--
"

Click.

"--a highly wealthy politician in Argentina--"

Click.

"--a stockbroker in London--"

Click.

"--and even a woman, a housewife, in New Jersey.

"And these were just the higher profile cases.  All of them," he finishes, "Disappeared under the same
mysterious circumstances, leaving behind only blood and bodily emissions."

"So we have a stalker who travels a lot and escalates into killing.  One who evidently highly disapproves of
masturbation."

"Enough to hideously kill and basically annhilate all these people?"

Scully shrugs.

"We have religious fanatics burning down abortion clinics here.  These people don't believe they're
committing a sin if their actions are being targeted at what they perceive to be evil.  Now what does this
have to do with us?"

Another picture pops up on the wall.

"Care to venture a guess at what this is?"

Scully walks up to the slide hovering on the wall, tilting her head slightly to the right, staring at a beautiful
black box with intricate, gold symbolic carvings and ridges on its faces, before turning back to her partner.

"It looks like a Chinese puzzle-box."

"It does, doesn't it?  It's called a lament configuration.  Legend has it that this particular one was made in the
eighteenth century by a French architect named Philip LeMarchand."

"You still haven't answered my question."

"Well, it so happens that certain noblity and important people were vanishing, many of whom had in their
possession one of LeMarchand's boxes.  This one was found at each of the crime scenes, doing the same
thing two hundred years later."

She looks at him, a frown tugging at her face.  He would have been nearly invisible, hovering there in the
recesses, except the faint light reflecting off the edges of his glasses give his presence away.

"You're not suggesting the box killed these people?  I mean, you know about this legend, it stands to reason
other people would as well.  This could be just a simple fantasy taken to extremes by a delusional psychotic.
The killer could simply be leaving these boxes behind to mark his conquests or to further the legend."

"Scully," he pauses, a small smile playing across his features,  "This _is_ the same box.  Both victims'
fingerprints showed up on it, as well as partials of a number of others.  LeMarchand was a genius.  A mad,
cracked genius who maybe, just maybe, managed to create boxes that were much more than just intricate
puzzles."

"Well, whatever it is, it's now in police custody, which makes it a moot point."

"Was."

"What happened to it?"

"For some odd reason, it's disappeared.  Walked off on its own."

"Mulder..."

"Two hundred years, Scully, and it's still happening today."

Mulder watches the outline of her silhouette as she turns back to the slide, imagining the details her reactive
expression: incredulousness reflected in a half-blink folowed by a mixture of slightly upturned corner of left
lip and a dash of raised right eyebrow, all coming into play as she makes her next statment--

"But Mulder, even if it were true, and that is an enormous 'if,' I hardly think anyone would volunteer to have
their bodily fluids spilled all over the place."

"Unless..."

"Unless what?"

"Unless these people thought they would be getting something else instead."

"Like what?"

He shrugs.

"Whatever their hearts desire?"

She turns to him, and in the dim light, he silently tallies up a perfect score in his mental sketchbook.

* * * * *

Bob Chagret had been waiting for years for the box to fall into his hands.  It had been whispered about
underground, an object would give the one who divined it's secrets the ultimate pleasure, everything he ever
wanted, but it came with a heavy price.  He scoffed.  Then searched some more.  It took him to six
continents, forty countries, hundreds of back alleys, illegal curio shops, night markets and toothless peddlers.
He bribed countless guides, informants, smugglers and swindlers, begged, threatened, seduced, extorted.

And then he finally found him.  An old man.  A beggar with a dirty long beard and mismatched unfocused
eyes.  The man asked no payment, took no reward, only introduced himself as the Engineer, and then left the
box, uttering one phrase in his strange, arabic accent--

"What is your pleasure?"

With sweating palms, Bob traced the contours of the box, feeling its crackling energy, the power held within
the four inch by four inch confiness.  He knew the pattern, memories of hundreds of sketches and
descriptions etched in his head as his fingers methodically, purposefully, conjoined the jagged lines into
finality.

The last turn.  The star.

And then the gates opened.  And then they came.

He expected the ultimate pleasure, he expected every wet, sighing fantasy fulfilled.  And they were fulfilled.
Hundreds of women, falling, caressing, stroking him, the overpowering musk of sweat and fluids, mingling,
cock and pussy, open, inviting, welcoming, demanding

everywhere

touching, licking, biting, sucking, plunging, and the moans, grunts, cries, and nails scraping, drawing blood,
juices, fingers, wet, so wet, oh yeah, oh yeah, more, more, ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck, the sensations so
strong, so overpowerring, demanding more, oh more, screaming, scintaillating, constant whispers, fuck me,
fuck me, an orgy of every pleasure ever imaginable, came and came and came and came

spent

and he screams now, too much, too much, raw, sore, every nerve firing, all synapses flooded, and it is
unbearable, agony, painful pleasure, but it won't stop, no it keeps going, every ganglion on skin afire, feels
everything, too much, to acutely, he is one giant cock, hair, eyelashes, nails, sensations, everything, pain,
pleasure, pain, pleasure, the roar and the quivering at every touch caress, sore, tingling, too much, firing,
nerves, firing, firing, firing

Noo... his head screams, filled, pounded, can't take it, can't, stop make it stop, hoarse, orgasmic, twitching,
make it stop make it stop

please

(firing)

please

(firing)
 

Then the hooks.

Driving, piercing, hundreds flying everywhere into his body tugging, tiny razor teeth, sawing, pulling, tearing
a feast of flesh and bubbling crimson, shick shick shick shick echoiing a thousand times, burrowing, clawing,
clinging harpy claws.

He screams, a wail, hoarse, piercing, agony shudderingly pure of ecstasy removed, and nerves, still firing,
still firing, unable to stop, no terminal threshold able to be reached, can't, can't--

The screams die suddenly, as the hooks fly apart tearing him into a thousand pieces.
 
 

9:07 AM
 

Simply put, it's everywhere--staining the walls, the floor, legs of chairs, dripping off the ceiling fan, hanging
from lamps, smearing the window, and splattering curtains.  But it's not just blood.  Gobbets of flesh and
muscle, chunks all about the size of quarters float around in pools of red in the scene of utter carnage.

"I'd hate to see the size of the mosquito that got squashed,"  Mulder drawls as he and Scully bend to put on
galoshes and raincoats before entering the room.  Thick, congealing blood sticks to the bottom of their soles
like taffy, clutching on to their boots, slurp-slurping as the wet sounds of their movements dance around the
room.

"The average human body holds five liters of blood.  This," Scully looks around critically.  "This is more
than two bodies can produce."

"Well maybe..."  Mulder glances down reading from the folder in his hands.  "Bob Chagret had a
companion."

"Or several,"  She stoops to scrape a chunk of unidentifiable part into an evidence bag."

"Bet you the guy who sells these doesn't get any repeat customers."

Scully looks up to see her partner picking up that box.  The same box pictured in the slide.  The same box
that holds him in magnetic fascination, as he turns it over and over in his hands, like a fortune teller handling
a crystal ball.

A spark suddenly jumps from somewhere inside, shooting up his arm, and he nearly drops it in surprise.

"Mulder, are you okay?"  She slogs towards him.

"I--yeah, I just--"  He chews on his lip, contemplating, then eyes light up.  "I'll be right back."

The agent runs back through the muck at an excited pace, nearly losing his wading boots in the process, but
somehow manages to make it to the door.  A few minutes later he returns, holding a piece of machinery
Scully hasn't seen since they last pursued a semi across the continent.

"You know," she scrapes up another chunk into the bag.  "It's strange that there aren't any bones or bone
fragments around.  No internal organs either.  Just bits of flesh and muscle."

Mulder hasn't heard her, busy waving his electrostatic meter over the object, then breaking into a grin at the
rattling sounds as he passes it back and forth.

"Tell me, Scully when has this sort of energy ever occured in the air before?"

A corner of her lip curls up, revealing slightly open teeth.

"You're not saying this man was abducted are you?  I thought it was only clothing that was supposed to be
returned mismatched and inside out."

He walks about the room waving his handset, accompanied only by the relative silence of the subdued meter.

"You might be right.  This box seems to be the only thing giving off such a strong signal."

"There's probably a electromagnet inside of it.  Or a unit sending off microwave signals."

"An eighteenth century microwave?  And I thought I made some pretty big leaps."

"You did say the maker was a genius."

"Yeah, but I can't seem to find the button that says 'defrost' anywhere on this.  You know," he taps his toes,
squishing them rhythmically on the ground.  "Maybe...maybe this thing is some sort of signal device to call
somethings or someones.  Perhaps it might even somehow open up a gateway, a portal for them."  A pause.
"What?"

She blinks.

"I didn't say anything."

"You have that look on your face."

"What look on my face?"

"The look on your face that's about to tell me I'm nuts."

"I guess I don't have to say it then.  What are you doing?"

"I'm, ah, making sure this piece of evidence doesn't walk away again."

He shuffles the box around, moving it from pocket to pocket, but the object constantly ends up protruding
out at an awkward angle.  Finally, giving up on trying to discreetly manage the cube, he stuffs it in his coat.

Stepping in beside her partner as they exit, Scully looks down, her mouth hitching in an involuntary smirk at
the pocket bulging out in front of him. Following the direction of her eyes, he looks down, then smiles
wickedly.

"Aren't you going to ask if that's a portal in my pocket or if I'm just glad to see you?"
 
 

Fox Mulder's Apartment
Alexandria, VA
 

He can't stop staring at it.  Its every line, every crevice, every feature a maddening maze of twists and turns,
of labyrinthian alleyways that lead to nowhere.  The Lament Configuration.

He hadn't told Scully the whole story.  If he had, she would never have let him keep the box, skepticism or
not.  Because of what it represents, its allure, its danger, and its need to feed on those who needed to
believe.  Because of its nature, a nature that offers generousness and cruelty with one breath.  To solve it
correctly would grant your ultimate desire, absolutely anything you wanted, to fail, eternal damnation.  The
ultimate gamble.  No refunds, no return, do not pass go, do not collect $200, go straight to hell, sir.  Fuck
up, and you're fucked up.

An acceptable risk.

When that Rubik's cube craze hit the streets in the mid-80's Mulder was one of the first to snatch it off the
shelves.  He'd never bothered to read the solution books, learn the technique, the tricks and calculations to
solving the puzzle.  Like with most things he did, he merely felt it.  A twist here, a turn there, and magically
before his eyes, the colors would unify on their six respective sides.  He didn't know whether it was instinct
or an unknown logical process, but he had always managed to solve them without the effort of mental
calculation.

So he lets his instinct take over this time as well, hands wandering over the odd, intricate lines and
dimensions of the puzzle, fathoming its secrets, feeling the hypnotic trance overtake him, the the twitch in
his fingers instructing him to turn here--

Broken by the ringing of the phone.

Breathe.  Breathe, Mulder.

"Yeah," he mutters, cradling the headset on his right shoulder to leave hands free to play with the cube.

"Mulder it's me."

"What's up Scully?"

Turning it over and over.  Twist a corner.

"I'm at the lab right now.  I think I found something."

"What did you find?"

"Well, there were some strange anomalies with the blood and some of the tissue samples taken this
morning."

Cracks.  Fissures.  Irregularities in the carving.  Another twist.

"Such as?"

"The tissue has pH of 8.  That's severe alkalosis, which, in itself is quite amazing, but I also discovered close
to four hundred times the amount of normal acetylcholine produced in the entire human body in the muscle
fibers plus a noticeable absence of cholinesterase."

"Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter, right?"

"Right.  It basically conducts the impulse from a nerve to muscle tissue.  Cholinesterase inactivates
acetylcholine by breaking it down into its acetate and choline components, otherwise your nerves and
muscles become indefinitely stimulated."

Running a finger under a ridge, he strokes the edge, feeling its grooves and valleys against his forefinger.
Closes his eyes.  Twist.

"So you're saying maybe Bob Chagret couldn't stop, um..."

"That is a possibility.  But neural anomalies or not, they still can't explain how he spontaneously exploded.
Don't even think about responding to that Mulder," her slightly embarrased voice warns upon hearing his
choked cough.  "By all indications, he was probably ripped apart.  Or at least his skin & muscles were."

Traces the outline of the circle sitting within a crown of rays.  Then he finds it.  A lever or switch.

"By what?  Or whom?"

"That, is what we don't know.  Remember what I said about no human being able to produce the amount of
blood we saw today?"

Breath, shorter, harder, panting.

"Yeah."

"Well, it was tested and--"

"And--?"

"It belonged to Chagret.  All of it.  Mulder, I don't know how to explain this."

As if yanked out by some invisible force, the cube flies out of his hands to tumble onto the floor, the
whirring gears of tiny moving machinery coming to life.  The etchings rise up, a cut-out shape of a sun and
blazing rays climbing, climbing until it hovers out right at the apex of the gutted cube.

"Scully, I'll talk to you later."

He clicks off the phone and watches in mute transfixing as the jagged piece makes a small turn to the right,
locking into place with another click, then whirrs back down into a star formation.

And all hell breaks loose.

* * * * *

Pain.

The first thing that registers into his head.  Pain in his hands, his arms, his legs, his feet, his head.

Cold.

The next.

Opening his eyes, though they feel like they've been stitched shut, he looks around hazily, letting the
surroundings hover into watery focus.

His apartment, but not his apartment.  Everything is there, the couch, the TV, even the fishtank, but the
room has expanded, darkened, transformed into a huge mausoleum or beef factory complete with meathooks
& chains.  Letting the atmosphere sink into his bones like the chill on his body, he feels a sharp surge of pain
shooting through his hands and legs as he shifts, unable to move his extremities.  Mulder looks down.

Naked, facing out, arms wrapped around behind what feels like a tree or a big, cylindrical piece of wood.

Well, that explains it.

And something that feels like a long, thick metal object spiked through both crisscrossed wrists and into the
wood holds his quickly numb hands in place, as a pair of what appears to be the same spikes driven through
his insteps attach both feet to the floor.  Nailed to a stake like Joan-of-fucking-Arc waiting for the flames to
start.  Shit.  Fire.  Fucking fire.  Goddamned fucking fire.

Of all the ways he thought he would die, he's never imagined a crucifixion.  At least not literally.

(Guess you fucked up, Mulder.)

"You're awake."

Four creatures hover into view, dressed in slick black armor, covered by gowns and cloaks, a contingency of
pale, bloodless freaks, deformed, disfigured, decaying, approaching nearer

reeking of death,

(nearer)

of despair,

(nearer)

of millions and millions of shrieking, wailing souls.

He shivers as he sees the first one, a male, an odd creature utterly devoid of hair, spikes jammed every which
way into his skull in an even square pattern.

The second one has a head that looks like a giant fucking dick.  A dick with big, wide chattering teeth, face
utterly devoid of any other features, unseeing, unresponsive, uncommunicative except for the constant
clackety-clack that sets Mulder's own teeth on edge.

The third one, a cross between Jabba the Hutt and the Pillsbury Dough boy.  Fat, congested, bloated, pale
blob of porcine shit and cellulite.  Sunglasses stitched to eye sockets, mouth sewn shut, ears as well, every
orifice tightly bound by black, thick thread.

And the last one.  A woman.  Or at least that's what it used to be when she had hair.  And internal organs.
Open gaping wounds her throat, spikes in her neck, a large festering gash that runs from her solar plexus
down all the way to her vagina.

But the first one, the pinhead, the inhuman pincushion with pitch black eyes, one with cane knives dangling
from the front of his gown and hooks protruding out from the tips of his fingers, he is their leader, their
commander.  The one that spoke.

"I should introduce you to this guy who can hammer a nail up his nose," Mulder manages to get out without
gagging too badly.  "I bet you'd have a lot to talk about."

"Silence!" the pinhead roars, bloodless lips pursing like malformed grey putty.  "You are here because--"

"I kind of figured out why I'm here."

A hook shoots out from the pinhead's hand burying itself into his left nipple.  Mulder bites his lip hard,
tasting warm, salty blood where his teeth meet in a sudden automatic response, an agonizing effort to keep a
scream from leaving its guttural stage deep within the bowels of his soul.

"I said silence!  You have been the first in a long, long while who has managed to successfully solve the
puzzle."

"Then I'd hate to see the asshole who messed up."

Another hook shooting out, ripping into his right knee.  His face contorts, teeth baring, blooded over
shredded lips as he fights the second scream, letting out only several barely audible raspy grunts.

"You already have."

A slow, festering realization seeps slowly into Mulder, the churning like effects of arsenic slowy gnawing
away at his innards.

"This is all one giant assfuck isn't it?  It doesn't matter if you solve the puzzle, you get reamed either way."

(Christ Mulder, can't you just shut the fuck up?)  He snaps his eyes shut, clamping down on his throat,
steeling himself for the next hook to come flying into his bare genitals, hoping that he passes out soon.  Or
dies.  Whichever comes first.

If he had opened them, he would have seen Pinhead only give him a cruel smile in return.

"It is Leviathan's way.  But you are wrong.  Everyone does get their wish.  Even you.  Your can have your
heart's desire.  But only one.  Which shall it be?"

Mulder lifts his head, eyes opening up at him dumbly, confused.  Then he sees her.  A little girl to his right,
holding on to the Pinhead's hand.  His heart races.  His Samantha.  His little sister, the little girl that he last
saw the night she was taken away.  His heart's desire.  His only heart's desire.  He doesn't see how he could
mean another, until he sees to the right--

She appears before him.  Naked.  Glistening.  Dim light dancing off pale fiery tresses of her hair.  Scully
down to every imaginable detail.  Or at least every detail he's ever imagined.

"Anything you want," she says in that cool, familiar voice, as she walks up to him, blue eyes blazing, smolder
with the heat of internal fire.  Eyes that want him, eyes that desire, that hunger for him.  For him.

Not her.  Not her, his mind repeats through the reeling, sluggish stupor.  He tries to turn his head, to look
away, but remains frozen, staring, unable to react, to act.  Except for one part he is painfully aware of.

Oh God, and with Samantha watching too.

"N...n..." he tries to say, but his jaw, his throat, tongue won't work properly.

Nearer, until she's right in front of him.

Jesus, it even smells like her.  Her perfume, her musk, her sex, trembling intoxication, assails his nose,
shutting off all responses in his brain except for his aching, stiff need pressing against her belly, feeling her
skin against him, setting every neuron firing, muscles contracting, ganglia over and over and over again.
What did she say?  Excessive amounts of neurotransmitters?  The chemical.  Acetylcholine.
Overstimulation.

Not her.  Not her.

"Just say it, say yes, and this can be yours for eternity," she breathes hotly into his ear, tongue tracing the
ridge along the top of the lobe.

Not in front of his sister.  Not in front of Samantha.

"N....n...."

"You want to say "no," but you can't do that either, can you?"

Her fingers scrape his cock, gripping it lightly.  He closes his eyes letting out an involutary moan, legs
buckling, a deep growl in his throat as her mouth closes over his, her tongue tracing the open nerves on his
bloody lips, drawing him into her, to a place without pain, without thought, without anything but their two
converging forms.

falling

falling

"You want me?" she whispers to his lips.  "You want to feel yourself in me, to thrust in me, to spill yourself
in me?"

Yes.  Oh, yes.

"Y...y..." panting, thoughts rapidly emptying out of his brain, except for one burning need.

Then she steps back, and he is left with nothing but her scent in the embracing air.

"Then come to me."

He hurls himself forward, wildly pitching about, howling, shaking like an animal caught in a bear trap, blind
to the pain in his wrists, in his feet, yanking, pulling, tearing, adrenaline desperately coursing through him,
unheeding of the sudden SNAP in his wrists as the blunted head rips through the tiny bones, spitting out
sinew, veins, and blood, followed by the SNAP SNAP in his insteps of metal tearing through his feet, madly
oblivious to broken metatarsals and more blood splattering, spilling, dropping.

Falling to his face, he crawls towards her, flopping on elbows and knees, ignoring useless hands and feet.
He would have chewed off his fucking arms to get to her.  Nearing, nearing, until he has her.

She embraces him as his blood splatters on her, running down in rivulets between her breasts, and she lifts
him, lowering herself on him.  So hot.  So wet.  He trembles at the tightness of her as she engulfs him,
feeling like he has plunged into a furnace, moving at a frenzied animalistic pace, grunting, biting back a
shuddering moan.  So close, so close.

The sensations nearly unbearable, undercurrent pulling him down, down, plunging into the abcesses, into a
vague, floating, higher state of awareness.

Remembering.

Mulder's eyes snap open.  He sees her.  Watching him.

Samantha.

Stop it-- stop now--

"Oh God!" he grits.

Too late.  His body jerks, every axon, nerve spasming, as he comes hard and fast.  Scully disappears with
laughter, fading out half a second before his release and he trembles, dimly aware through his spasms, of the
sound of his ejaculate hitting the ground.

(Samantha...oh, God....I'm so sorry...)

"God?"  Pinhead sneers.  "God's arm doesn't reach down here."

Hundreds of barbed hooks fly out of nowhere, embedding in his skin, clawing in his chest, buttocks, groin,
back, pulling in every direction, a million lines suspending him upright in midair, ready to pull him apart with
one more milllimeter or a slight breath.

A steady drip of blood oozing, running in multiple crisscrossing streams out from every pore, collects at the
bottom of Mulder's feet, bulging, jiggling from its obese weight, then slowly drips down onto the floor.

Drip-drip, under his left heel.

Drip-drip, under his right.

Blood.  So much blood.  He foggily wonders how he can still be alive.  Yes, but Scully said there was a lot
of blood.  Scully.  Not Scully.  Not--

The chains tighten a fraction more, spreading him further apart with trembling tautnesss.  Tensed, strung to
his very tether, feeling every nerve in his body charged, screaming out in horror, he wrenches down the
shriek tearing at his throat, focusing, somehow, on only one name, on the sorrow, the guilt, the betrayal of
her again.

"Sa....Sa...man...tha..." he hoarsely moans.

(I'm sorry...I'm so sorry...I'm...)

"Ah, such determination,"  The pinheaded one grimaces, nails quivering in his face.  "Such an abundance of
lovely, beautiful guilt.  You want your sister that badly, you shall have her back."

He lets go of the little girl's hand and she walks slowly to her brother, observing him with a curious
detachment.  She reaches out a finger to touch his wounds.

"No...get...'way...Sam...run..." he grunts out through immobile lips.

The hooks in his chest yank apart, ripping open the cavity with a wet sucking sound, and the little girl climbs
up on him, wrapping her arms about the profusely bleeding flesh, as if trying to crawl into him.  Her left arm
disappears into the cavity, plunging inside up to her shoulder.  Then she leans her head against his chest
melting against his flesh as the gaping wound slowly closes up around the left side of her face.

"Foxxx..."  Samantha purrs, her lips rumbling against his pectorals.

"There," the Pinhead says triumphantly.  "Now you'll always be together."

He flicks his hands up and the chains hoist him higher.  Two tubes snake their way out of the ether and
imbed themselves into his neck, left one into the carotid artery, right one into the jugular.  Life red flows out
of the right, the vein pumping steadily out with every failing heartbeat, booming, shaking, slowing.

Stopped.

Burning blue fluid gurgles into the other tube, running up into his artery, kickstarting his brain, his heart afire
with ravenous intensity, gnawing through every cell, destroying, killing, mortifying inch by inch, nerve by
nerve, the fire suddenly turning to cold, freezing ice as the last of the life essence flows out of his cyanotic
body.

But he never screams.

He buckles, body undergoing the paroxisyms of death, mortis passing through him.  Still, unmoving in the
clinking of chains rubbing against each other.  Then, two pairs of eyes open slowly, looking up with new
clarity, new vision, black, lifeless orbs peering brightly out from sickly grey flesh.

Control.  Reason.  Sanity.

Snapped.

His mind so deliciously stained with the evils of mankind--pedophile, rapist, killer, necrophiliac, fetishist,
cannibal, every perversion, every vice that was ever locked in the head of a hundred criminals suddenly let
loose, all stopgates opened and flooded with desire and urges, a mind who knows pain, death, hate, desire,
frustration, corruption, weakness and fallacy with intimate detail.

A mind that will not be difficult to train.

"It is done," the pinhead announces.

The fourth cenobite, one that could have been called a woman at one time in her life, strokes his face,
speaking for the first time in a lilting voice hampered only by the hiss of the gaping slit in her throat--

"You have such potential."

The monstrosity that used to be Fox Mulder only smiles hideously as the gates of Leviathan close behind
them.
 

* * * * *
Synapse, Chapter 2: Stasis
* * * * *
 

Fox Mulder's Office
FBI Headquarters
 

It might have been the scene she visited yesterday or any of the slides flashed on the wall days before, but
Dana Scully never, ever wanted to imagine it would happen there.

Blood and semen.

All that that remained.  Two puddles of sticky red, both twelve inches in diameter, approximately a foot-
and-a-half apart on his living room floor.  In between the spots, about four feet away, a thin line of his
emission stained the carpet.

The bloodwork and laboratory tests had confirmed that both indeed belonged to Fox Mulder.

The latter piece of evidence she would hardly be surprised about considering his prediliction for porn, except
that his television was turned on to the Learning Channel and there hadn't even been a tape in the VCR.
Everything else was in place; nothing seemed to have been taken--not his wallet, his stereo equipment, not
his computer.  Nothing bearing the signs of anything amiss.

No drag marks, no scuffling or signs of struggle, no evidence of a break-in or a burglary gone bad.  Just
gone.  Disappeared.  Like the others.

Status, unexplained.

No, she clamps down on that thought, refusing to consider that course of action.  Mulder had torn up half
the state of Virginia looking for her when she had gone missing, and there is no way in hell she would let
him be permanently relegated to a file in dusty cabinet of other unsolved mysteries.

Besides, his case had not been like the others.  The others had been torn into bits.  This one had not nearly as
much blood or any pieces of her partner at all.

Which meant that maybe he was still alive.  Somewhere.

Maybe.

Otherwise all she has left of him are these three little stains and something she'd found buried in the corner of
the leather sofa, hidden behind the cushions along with $1.83 in spare change and a moldy pizza crust--a
piece of the puzzle-box, one oddly-shaped fragment with no spring mechanisms or other metal devices
attached to it, just a piece of cut wood and gold foil with one bluish thumbprint on it.

His.

Plus it's not as if he's never come back from the dead, either.  As a matter of fact he could traipse in the door
this very second, acting as if nothing has happened, sit down behind his desk and bury himself in another
paranormal folder, all with his usual impeccable timing.  And then she would slug him.  Yell at him.  Tell him
off for being such a world-class insensitive jerk-off, an asshole, a lout, a selfish, thoughtless creep who
couldn't even phone or write or send a kiss-o-gram to let her know he wasn't actually permanently
decorating the floor of his apartment in Alexandria.

She sighs, dropping the bagged bit of puzzle back into the file labeled #XF9122243.  Right now, she'd give
anything to see that jerk-off, that asshole, that selfish, thoughtless creep's face again.

Placing the folder with freshly typed out name "Mulder, Fox William" on the tab back into the filing cabinet,
Scully slams the drawer shut.
 
 

Cell #K-25
Minneapolis State Correctional Facility
 

Donnie Pfaster dreams of women.   He dreams of their pretty hair and fingernails.  He dreams of plucking
them, taking his souveniers, he dreams of their laughter, their screams of ecstasy, their screams of horror.
He dreams of them dead, and of fucking their cold, unresponsive bodies, bodies that don't reject him, bodies
that let him do whatever he wants to them.  These perfect women.

Then he dreams of her, the one that got away.  The one with the last name of that baseball announcer.  He
dreams of touching, of taking several locks of that beautiful red hair, letting it curl over and under his fingers
like fine silk.  Smelling it.  Cutting it.  Feeling it everywhere on him.  And those nails.  Short, half a
centimeter over the tips of her delicate fingers, cut straight across the top, covered in a simple clear coat.
Professional, practical, darling.  Absolutely darling.  He always hated those claw-like, narrow pointed ovals
dipped in gaudy red-with-glitter paint.  They were so gauche, so utterly tacky.

The dream shifts suddenly, becoming cold, dark, dank, the very air about him chilling him, permeating
through the blanket, through his prison clothes, seeping into his skin, a chill that drives him out of blissful
slumber into the horrors of the real world, shaking, stirring, jerking upright in his cot in a pale sweat.

He looks around.  His cell has grown in size, no longer the ten by ten cage of steel and concrete.  Hooks and
chains and the smell of death.  Frightening, yet somehow exciting.  Enticing.

And sees him.  It.  The thing.  Abominable.

Vaguely man-like with another creature sprouting from its chest like it's giving birth to a half-grown girl.
Deformed, hideous.  Silent except for the tinkling of chains against an oddly suffused light, its black suit
melding into the unlit areas of the tomb.

Another dream.

"Not quite, Pfaster," the beast finally speaks, metal rattling in synchronous accompaniment as it steps
forward.

How does it know his name?

"You see, in dreams, even in nightmares, you don't feel this--"

In a blinding move, it takes the larger man's right hand in its own and crushes the fingers ever so slowly,
hearing the small bones, phalanges, metacarpals, carpals crumble and snap beneath his touch.  Blood spurts
out from the jagged edges breaking out of the back of his hand.

Naturally, the necrophiliac screams.  And screams.  And screams.  Screams until his voice dies into hoarse,
grating rattle and he drops, trying to cower into a little ball, like he always does, when a big, aggressive man
bullies him.  Like the other prisoners.  Like the guards.  Like his father.

Tries to curl up but can't because the beast is still holding him up by his hand, grinding the remains into a
pulp of red and fragmented white.

Such amazing strength from a creature with holes in its wrists the size of quarters.

"You like to hurt them, don't you?  It makes you feel good."

The girl sticking out of the beast smiles, reaching for a curl of Pfaster's hair and yanks a chunk out.  He
whimpers.

"You like to hear them scream.  You like to take from them, what was it, hair and nails?"

It yanks up on the stump of arm, jerking Donnie to a standing position, then, in another blur of movement
picks up the left hand and drops him.  He cringes awaiting another crushing action, but instead feels the
hands prying his fist open, uncurling the index finger, and wiggling it like it's about to say "this little pig went
to..."

"Have you ever played Mora?  It's an old Italian game, a game of guessing the number of fingers extended in
a quick movement of
the hand, but I've changed the rules a little bit.  You see, I ask you a question and--"

Pop! goes the finger off at the first joint, the beast smiling at the twisted, contorted agony of his subject.

"I think you understand.  First question.  Which one was it Donnie?  Which sister hit you for trying to kiss
her while she was sleeping?"

"N--no..."

The second joint pops off.  Another scream.

"You know, for such a big guy, you scream an awful lot like a girl.  Don't worry Donnie, no one will be able
to hear you.  Scream to your heart's content.  Or to mine."

"P-please," he begs, sobbing.

"Was it the oldest?  She always thought you were creepy and she didn't like you much.  Was it her?"

He nods his head, babbling incoherent cries as the remaining joint comes off.  He feels the second finger, the
middle one forcibly unfurled and wiggled, testing.

"I bet she kicked your ass really good, didn't she?  And then she told your father, and he beat you with that
leather belt until you couldn't sit down, right?"

Pop

"But you grew big, right?  You grew bigger than them, and you weren't bullied by them anymore, except for
her right?  You were bigger than her and she still bullied you, so when she was sleeping, you tried to rape
her."

Pop

"It felt so good, so good, and maybe you were going to get away with it, but she screamed and screamed
and she wouldn't shut up."

Pop

His hand, slimy with blood of two stumps, slicks over and down his palm as the ring finger is casually pried
open.

"And they woke up, and they came and they held you down and beat you again, even your mother beat you
and cursed and the day you were born, and after they beat you, they threw you out and told you to never
come back because you were sick, a freak.  A monster"

Pfaster's entire body shakes, as he cries openly, wailing, sobbing, clutching his mangled right hand against his
midsection, against the verbal and physical assault.

"I've got lots of other questions, Donnie.  One for each joint.  One for each hair."

It smiles.  A cruel, delicious, grin, as the girl freak reaches for his head again.

"It's going to be a long night."
 
 

Fox Mulder's Office
FBI Headquarters
 

In the darkness she flashes through them, almost seventy slides, sixty-eight to be precise, twenty-six from
different crime scenes, the remaining forty-two most of the cube.  The Goddamned cube.  Shots of it in
different places, different configurations, different angles.  All different but the same.

Scully, behind the projector, seated in the same position her partner had been in when she came traipsing in
only four days ago, advances the control button, watching the pictures shift by on the wall over and over
again, studying the facets, the ridges and intricate weaving designs, piecing together the box in her head,
attempting to comprehend the processes behind how one little innocent-seeming toy can cause so much
damage.

In the absence of Mulder, who was usually the one to relate a particular situation of theirs to his own
personal internal faults, she has taken it upon herself to accept the blame for the circumstances in this case--

Because she had found a staggering amount of sodium in his blood, possibly as a result of overwork in the
nerves' sodium-potassium pump.

Because she had refused to believe him when he postulated that the puzzle-box might be responsible for the
various disappearances.

Because she had let him take that very piece of evidence home, knowing full well the personal danger having
such an item in possession might entail.

And because his little disappearing act was the final nail in the nagging thought that he might actually be
right after all.

Guilt, she discovers, comes surprisingly easy.

The phone rings, dissipating her thoughts.

"Scully," she answers on the third ring.

"I need to speak to Agent Mulder," comes a thick Minnesotan accent from the other side.  Minnesota?  The
last time they had been there...

"Agent Mulder...isn't here.  I'm his partner.  Perhaps I can assist you."

"Um, yeah.  I'm calling from the Minneapolis Correctional Facility.  Agent Mulder asked to be informed
when Donald Pfaster's status changes.  Well, I'm informing him."

That was when they'd been there.  The sickening, revolting, grate of "Girly-girl, where are you, girly-girl?"
dropping from Pfaster's raspy lips, replays itself in her head, a memory that acts like liquid nitrogen to the
blood in her veins as she tries to get out the next words without stammering.

"What status would that be?  Has his sentence been reduced?  Are they releasing him?"

Lord, a first-degree murder charge, attempted murder of a Federal Agent, and the sick bastard still gets out
after serving almost no time.

A snort comes through from the other end.

"Not quite.  You see, he's dead."

The drumming in her heart slows down, and she breathes out, long, deep, feeling the mounting tension
slowly creep out of her body.

"How did that happen?"

"Well, we're still trying to figure that out, but I'll tell ya, it's pretty revolting with all the blood and shit, um,
sorry ma'am, all the blood and...stuff.  Like someone stuck a piece of dynamite up his ass and lit it."

As the corrections officer good-naturedly yammers on in relatively  detailed, if crude, specifics of the case,
Scully tunes out, feeling a throb build in her head as the realization seeps through.  Another one.  Another
mystery splatter case.

And it couldn't have happened to a more deserving creep.

The idea, however, is simply impossible.  The cube was somehow supposedly related to the very nature of
the case, though specifically, she didn't know what.  The problem is, a piece of that very cube was sitting in
Mulder's file in the cabinet.

But there was also something else, she frowns recalling bits and fragments, lines of dialogue in the memory
of their discussion--Mulder's theory, his little historical blurb, and then mentioning something about evidence
disappearing...

Hanging up the phone, she runs to the file cabinet, throws the drawer open and shuffles through the sets of
folders until she finds the one with his name on it, searching, digging until she pulls up the evidence bag.

There.  It's still there.  He was wrong.  Mulder was wrong.  It isn't the puzzle after all.  Then comes the
question on the heels of that:

So what is it then?
 
 

Cell Block K
Minneapolis State Correctional Facility
 

"Do you think he was killed by the other prisoners?" Scully questions the forty-ish guard by the name of
Whitman, a big, beefy, slightly balding man who might have passed for Skinner in another incarnation,
determined to ignore the hoots and hollers and obscene names tossed in her direction by glaze-eyed
prisoners who banged on the bars and stuck their arms out to reach for her, even though some were a floor
above and over a hundred feet away.

"Ma'am,"  Whitman shrugs, "I've been in the penal system for nearly ten years, and believe me, I've seen
some nasty sh-stuff.  But never anything like this."

Reaching the twenty-fifth cell, Whitman stops to open the steel door and grate.  Peering inside the relative
darkness, the agent raises her right eyebrow at the carnage before her, moments before the left one follows
suit.

"And no one heard what happened?  No one witnessed this?"

Pfaster had died hideously.  Painfully.  There was no doubt about it.  As much as the bastard deserved it,
what had happened here, this, was truly sickening.  He had been taken apart.  Literally.  Pieces and chunks
ripped from his body by that appeared to be torn out by hand.

"No one could, ma'am.  Pfaster was put into three day solitary for, ah, causing trouble with the other
prisoners.  Pretty much left alone."

Scully steps in, the oil-resistant soles of her industrial boots squishing on the floor, as she draws out two
pairs of latex gloves from her pockets.

"You seem prepared for this," the guard notices.

"I've seen worse," she murmurs, eliciting a blanch from her companion.

Blood, check.  Body bits, check.  No semen, however.  Two out of three.  Mulder managed two out of
three.

Most of the corpological pieces of Pfaster remain, nearly all of it, she mentally assays, as she attempts to
piece together the bits and pieces strewn about the room, putting together the entire body, as the snippets of
a song play a warped little tune her head, one that she used to sing as a kid-- "leg bone's connected to the
knee bone, knee bone's connected to the thigh bone...dem bones, dem bones..."

Counting individual joints from fingers lying around, careless tossed, then the forearms, the upper arms,
toes, metatarsals, heels, ankles, teeth, and on and on and on, she pieces together the entire appendicular
skeleton, then begins on the axial, meticulously putting together meaty sections of sacral, lumbar, thoracic
and brachial vertebrae, working until she at last reaches Pfaster's head.

Hair had been ripped out in tufts and chunks until there was nothing left but bloody bone on the back, in an
inelegant scalping.  Turning the head over, Doctor Scully inspects the contorted face, a grimace of agony
permanently frozen into twisted features.

In a mouth devoid of any teeth, she finds the second piece of the puzzle.

* * * * *

Stasis.
 
The link between a second and eternity, floating, free falling, hovering out of synchronicity, of time standing
still, a slackening or arrest of the blood current in the body's vessels, stagnation, halting of the gentle flow of
fluids.

Time flows through the mortal world like plasma in extracorporeal veins, feeding, nourishing, eventually
destroying the cells it delivers its nutrients to.  Birth, aging, death, the cycle of life, the bane of those who
watch its creeping seconds in the agony of anticipation.

Time, however, means little to one who can not age and nothing to one who can not die.  A cenobite lives in
stasis, awaiting only the next gate to open, a creature whose only definition of existence is regulated by the
ones foolish and desperate enough to wish to step into their world.

Past, present, future all become irrelevant in this realm.  Only eternity, everything and nothing, exists in
stasis.
 
In this darkness, this utter stillness, Mulder shifts, awaiting the next memory to resurface, the next mortal
call.  Because stasis plays tricks on memory as much as time does.

Floating in his somnolence, he isn't aware of the tall, thin figure of a dark-haired woman watching him from
a distance.

* * * * *

Whoever this killer was, he moved fast.  More of the torture, dismemberments and deaths sprouted up all
over the country.  This mysterious sadist always targeted violent offenders, many serving multiple life
sentences, most, naturally, in maximum security prisons, others in mental wards across the country.

One occurred at Black Hills Sanitarium at 6 AM on Monday, another at Sing-Sing, 11:30 the same morning,
and then nothing for almost forty-eight hours.  Another one happened at Rikers at nearly midnight on
Wednesday, as Monty Props found himself cut up into little pieces with both ulnas sharpened and screwed
into empty sockets as makeshift horns.  Tests showed that he was still alive and possibly conscious
throughout that much of it.

At last count, thirteen bodies, or rather, parts of them had been found, in their rooms or cells, no witnesses,
no clues as to how anyone got in, and each time, another piece of the puzzle was discovered, all of them
carrying the same trademark blue Mulder fingerprint.

The most recent victim number fifteen was Gerry Cider, found in his home in Hartford, the first seemingly
innocent victim in this string of killings.

A number of Cider's remains were missing--nearly all of his extremities.  His head was neatly severed from
his torso and a grossly distended gut.

She had discovered why his internals were so bloated upon opening the stomach.  The rest of his missing
parts were in there.  His penis, testicles, fingers and eyes, left whole, were found in a mashed pile of muscle,
blood and bone bits--as if they'd been put through some industrial blender.  And lodged in the esophagus,
where Cider had slowly choked to death, unable to vomit or swallow any more parts, sat the fifteenth piece.
And that same blue print.

The blue, Doctor Scully found out, was the result of blood, plasma and erythrocytes with a conspicuous
absence of hemoglobin but an enormous amount of carbonic acid and electrolytes.  Blood cells that should
have died long ago from cyanosis, but were somehow, some way, still thriving in its stagnant plasmotic
state, something she would have said was medically impossible.

Until now.

Now there are variables, inconsistencies in the MO; the killer had always previously gone after hardened
criminals in lock-ups.

Now she isn't sure whether Mulder is still alive, still responsible for those fingerprints; the weird, anomalous
blood was still active, wildly throwing off any sort of attempt at a dating process.

All she had was an innocent victim of this twisted little spree sitting in the morgue.

Until she decided to run a background check on Gerald Cider.
 
 

FBI Field Office
Hartford, CT
 

It didn't take long to find out just how innocent Gerald Cider was.

"Acquitted serial sex offender and murderer," a local agent by the name of Loomass offers up as Scully
scribbles in her notepad.  "You know what they called him?  Chef Boys-are-dee.  He likes, or rather, liked
little boys.  Especially with a little Hollandaise sauce.  Eleven all gone missing, until Violent Crimes pointed
him out."

"You said he was acquitted?"

"Yeah," he snorts.  "Between a million-dollar hotshot lawyer and badly mishandled evidence, the case got
thrown out at the hearing."

"Do you know who the arresting officers were in this case?"

"That was a while back.  Lamana was one, I knew him from Quantico.  The other, I think had an odd name.
Some sort of animal.  I remember Jerry calling him 'Casper' or something like that."

"Spooky?  Fox Mulder?"

"Yeah," Loomass scratches his neck.  "I think that's what it was."

Pfaster.  Props.  Cider.  All three had been investigated by Mulder.  And those are the ones she knows
about.  A nagging suspicion tugs in her head that somehow, if she cross-checked the rest of the names, there
would be no doubt that they would also be shown to be related to her partner somehow.

Now if she could just figure out why someone would abduct (because there is no proof of his demise)
Mulder and then go around slaughtering all the criminals he profiled.  And if she could catch the killer in
action it might lead to an answer about him after all.  She would know either way.
 
 

National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime
Quantico, VA
 

When Scully had requested the backgrounds of all the cases Mulder had worked on, she had no idea of the
amount of work he'd done prior to the X-Files.

In four years with Behavioral Sciences, he had profiled seventy two violent criminals, he had actually been
involved in the arrests of forty-three of them.

Settling in for a long night of reading profiles and case reports, she works meticulously, tirelessly crossing
names out, one by one, deleting names of those who had been executed, those who died of other causes,
those who died at the hands of the killer, crossing out more and more names, until only one remains at the
end.

Mulder's last profile case.

She blinks, reading the name over and over again, feeling a strange jump, a tugging in her gut at the sound
of three little seemingly harmless syllables.

Patterson.
 
* * * * * *
Synapse, Chapter 3: Memory
* * * * * *

The last one.

Fifteen parts of the puzzle recovered.  Only one more piece still remaining missing, and the final recipient
would be Patterson.
 
Bill Patterson.  Mulder's former instructor.  The criminal psychology instructor-cum-wacko who had tried to
suck Mulder into his games of darkness, the sonofabitch who had tried to drive her partner crazy, the
bastard who would be the next lucky recipient in line for a long, painful dismemberment.

It would be so easy to let it happen.

To sit back, not do anything, and hope that the killing and final placement of the piece would end the spree.
Scully could find hundreds of excuses for delaying, becoming sidetracked, somehow not be able to reach
him.  Traffic.  Car problems.  Clearance hassles.

It would be so easy.
 
 

D.C. Correctional Complex
Lorton, Virginia
 

The monster stopped screaming a long while ago.  It made no sense when there wasn't an audience to hear.
Solitary confinement makes the hours between human contact even less so.  But it likes it that way.  It likes
to be alone, to think, to talk to the different people who traipse in and out of its head daily.  Such fascinating
conversation, such evil in the characters popping out of the various profiles in the mind.  It loves to get into
their brains, wallow in their dark thoughts, feel what they do, the esctasy of misery, the power, the passion,
the feel, the groin-tingling, double-dipper, rollercoaster thrill of death.  Destruction, chaos, despair, oh my...

Yesterday it spoke to an arsonist.  Today would be one of the Hillside Stranglers.  Perhaps Bianchi.  He was
the smart one.

Footsteps and the heavy clanking of keys on a ring shuts him up.  The monster may be insane, but it certainly
isn't stupid.

Ready?

Yes.

"I'm innocent!" Patterson screams, reviving the old script lodged in a corner of the head, a continual,
monotonous repitition.  "It's not me!"

"Aaah.  I love the smell of fresh lies in the morning."

The voice.  Too familiar.  He stops, words hovering in his esophagus.

Then the door swings open and Patterson comes face to face with, well, he doesn't know what it is.  Mulder.
A girl.  Both.  A freak.  A twisted caricature of the agent who put him away.

Delicious.

Patterson back in control here.  The master.  The teacher.  Patterson, who constantly smacked poor little
Mulder upside the head with strings of derision and ugly jeering.  And the boy had done nothing.  Patterson,
who used most of the sap's profile reports to write his book.  And the boy had said nothing.  Patterson who
almost had him as his next creation.  And the boy shot him.  But that was okay, because he obviously didn't
have the balls to kill him.  After all he'd done to the boy, after all the abuse, he was still a pussy to the core.

Deformed, disgusting monster or not.  All illusion, regardless.

"Well, boy or whatever the hell you are.  I'm flattered you'd come by and visit me.  You see I don't get very
many of the human ones around much, but then again you aren't quite human are you?  Must be hard to find
a date in that condition."

The Mulder beast blinks, then cocks its head slightly.

"Oh, I'll admit my love life isn't quite as active as yours, but then again, I have a gender preference.  I hear
you're quite popular around these parts.  Nothing as therapeutic as taking out frustration on a father figure
for those who have a longstanding grudge against their dads."

"I suppose you would like to beat me too," comes the silky response, goading him on.  "I bet you would,
wouldn't you.  I know your dad do it to you quite often.  I know he's dead, but I'm still here.  Strike me,
come on, I dare you.  Do it, you faggot."

The creature only raises a lazy eyebrow before drawling--

"I'd rather not.  There's not much satisfaction to be gained in torturing a harmless, doddering old fool."

"I wasn't so harmless when I cut you up," the older man hisses at the strike.

"Of course you were.  You couldn't do the job when I was conscious.  You had to sneak in when I was
asleep.  When I woke, you ran.  Too bad, really, when you lost your mind, you became stupid."

"I certainly became stupid enough for even you to catch."

Something passes across the beast's features, something that stabs him with unbearable hatred.  Amusement?
Incredulity covers Patterson's features.  Pity?  Unbearable.

"You don't understand, do you?  You're a monster in your head.  I'm the real thing.  And I didn't have to
lose my mind in the process."  He smiles, a cold, dead, knowing smirk.  "After all is said and done, I'm still a
much better anything than you could ever be.  It still burns you that it's never been an effort for me the way
it's always been for you, doesn't it?  Now, it seems I've one upped you.  Again."  Ending it with a "tsk."

"At least I don't have to look like a freak," Patterson sneers, losing equilibrium.  "You're no better than me.
You never will be.  And you know, we'll both still end up in the same place."

Bored with the game, Mulder presses the older man to his knees, flattens the the hair against his crown and
lays both hands on his head like a priest blessing an altar boy.

"Of course we will.  The difference is, I'll be one of the few running the joint.  Now hold still."

Then in a swift movement, cuts a deep line down the middle of his scalp with a fingernail, drawing the flesh
apart at both sides until bone peers out throught the matted blood.  Patterson screams.  A lovely, endearing
shriek.  Shrieking but unable to break the paralysis that binds him.

"Your death comes with the knowledge that I've always beaten you.  Sir."  The last word, the final insult
before something bursts from Patterson's head, a quicksilver haze splitting his skull, escaping, darting
towards the ceiling.

Twisting, turning, hooks fly into the nimbus, latching in, dragging it screaming, fighting back down, and
Mulder binds more chains to it, drawing the struggling matter towards him.

"Come on home, Bill."  He opens his mouth, lazily swallowing the twitching ethereal mass, inch by inch.

"Put your hands in the air, you bastard!" a voice rings into the room.

With a deep inhaling sound, he sucks in the remaining haze, as the voice yells something he doesn't hear,
before finally turning, nonplused and somewhat annoyed at the interruption, towards the new presence in the
room.  Then freezes.

Her.

* * * * *

She had come in time.  Breaking away from her escort, running down the hall past the other puzzled guards,
when she'd heard the shriek.  Strange, though, that such a cataclysmic wail of horror didn't seem to reach
any other ears.

And then the room.  Stretching out to eternity.  Chains dangling out of ether, hooks lashing everywhere, the
smell of putrefecation, terror, decay.

And then...It.

Standing over Patterson, who had his brainpan split open vertically down the middle, twitching, flailing,
barely alive, while that creature held some sort of nimbus in stasis, tiny hooks and chains wrapping it in
metal captivity.

She'd shouted something to it, something she couldn't remember.  Too stunned to remember, as the monster
ignored her, swallowing that odd haze whole, hooks and all, like some sort of mid-morning snack.

"I said, put your hands in the air, you Goddamn freak!"  she yells, cocking back the hammer with a loud
ratch.

It sighs ('monsters sigh?' runs the fleeting thought through her head) then turns to her, sickly pale, rent flesh,
streaked and marbled with blue, the black gown and cloak swirling in the cold air, pinned down only by long
metallic objects exuding from it.  But that face, those features.  Recognition churns her gut like a hot, slow
knife.  It opens its lips, a hoarse, voice, purring her name through a twisted, broken smile--

"Scully."

"Oh God, OH GOD, Mulder!" she screams, stumbling back from him, her finger tight on the trigger of the
Sig raised at the horrific mutation of her partner.

Or some beast that looks like him, hundreds of hooks snagging, tearing flesh, almost completely disfiguring
his body, and that thing, the thing that looks like a little girl, fused to his chest, her entire right half
protruding obscenely from his body like a freak siamese twin.  Chains, dragging along behind, him a wedding
train of metal.

"Foxxx," it slurs out, tugging at a chain, the hook it's attached to puckering a gap in his shoulder.  "Foxxx.
Wanna go..."

The Mulder half of the freak looks down at the little tugging figure, nods, giving a chaste little kiss to the
top of its sister's head.  And then it disappears into the shadows.  Mulder.  The girl.  The room.  All gone.
Except for the chamber of solitary confinement and the dead body of Patterson, eyes rolled up in sockets
revealing only white, blood and grey matter slowly seeping from his head into the concrete.

The final piece lies on the floor, the spot where the freak, the monster, Mulder stood.

Feeling her legs give way under her, Scully crumples to the ground, the automatic dangling from numb
fingers.

* * * * *

The comforting darkness of dank misery welcomes him home, the moans and screams of those being
tortured a warming presence.  It is through their suffering that Mulder can forget about her again.

Odd how the memories, the details of hundreds of murderers live fresh in his head, and yet she had been
forgotten, as if the very thought of her had been burned out of his brain, unmissed.  Until now.

Scully:  Like some old faded dream weaving back into consciousness.

Scully:  The image that brings forth such strange feelings.

Scully:  Screaming in horror.  At him.

Scully:  And he can still the echoes of her screams bouncing against the walls of his region of hell.

Which still puzzles him since she should have not been able to enter the room he created.  She should not
have been able to see him.  To hear him.  Know him.

"Foxxx..."  Samantha slurs, touching his face, stirring him from his thoughts.

"Forgive me my manners," a dulcet British accent calls from the recesses.  "It's been busy and I haven't had
time to welcome the new bretherin.  No, no, don't get down for me."

A tall, beautiful woman with short, dark hair walks up to the form suspended in midair, chains streaked
every which way out of his open, splayed body like a spiked sea urchin caught in a metal cobweb.

"I don't usually receive guests," Mulder drawls.  "Forgive the unwelcoming accomodations."

She laughs, a hollow, mirthless tone.

"Oh, a sense of humor.  We haven't had one of those in a long while."

"I don't imagine there's much use for a stand-up comedian in these regions.  How can I help you?"

Reaching to him, she strokes his face, purring--

"I just wanted to welcome you in my own manner."

Samantha hisses and a hook snakes out, plunging into the woman's hand, yanking it away from him.

"Save it for the next freshman, Julia," the disinterested voice returns.

She twists her hand, a wet grinding noise sounding as she yanks out the hook from her palm.

"So you do know who I am."

"Let's just say I've heard about you."

"And you still spurn me?"  Julia tilts her head slightly to the left, curling her lip.  "Or is what you want more
in the lines of this?"

The creature that is Mulder watches in mild fascination as the figure nest to him steps back, then twists and
contorts, pulling her hair, her skin out in large bloody chunks, moving muscle, bone, fascia beneath her slick
fingers, reshaping, remolding, and then, regrowing--new hair, new color in her irises, new skin sprouting,
drawing down like a curtain over her face and body, until she stands before him, a sight burning into the very
core of his brain.

"I was watching when you were initiated,"  She speaks in that oh-so-familiar voice, all traces of any accent
gone.  "I know what you desire.  I know what you can do.  And I can be anything, anbody you want."

With a swift jerk of his body, Mulder pulls himself together into a ball, the chains snapping loose from the
ether holds, and then drops to the ground in front of her, eyes dark unreflecting pools, hungrily absorbing
every piece of light bouncing from the figure into the storming vortex of his pupils.

"Dana," he whispers the first name like a prayer.

She smiles triumphantly as the chains wrap around her, pulling her to him.

* * * * *
 
The guards found Scully unexplainably inside the cell with the dead body of Bill Patterson.  Unexplainable
because it was still locked and she had no way to access it.  After determining she had nothing to do with the
inmate's demise, she was escorted out, partially from embarassment over apparently lax security measures.

As she passed the main clock in the lobby, she noticed it was past nine, with the large hand inching towards
the three.  Looking down at her watch, it read 9:22.  Not exactly a missing nine minutes, but close.  Perhaps
her watch was fast.  Perhaps the magnetic field sped up the gear mechanisms.

She asked the guard what time it was.  She stopped listening to his ramblings after '9:15.'

"I don't know what happened," muttered the guard behind her as she left.  "She broke away, and the next
thing I know she's inside..."

At home, her microwave was seven minutes slow.  Her alarm clock.  The VCR.  Well, not the VCR.  The
VCR always blinked 12:00.  But her other watches had the same nonexistent minutes.

Patterson's body was delivered to Quantico--her fifteenth autopsy in two weeks, already knowing what she'd
find: Acetylcholine in rigid, spastic muscles.  Alkaline tissue.  Sodium in the blood.  And Mulder's latent
fingerprints on his scalp.

Same-old, same-old.  Except now she knows who had been doing the killings.

And the question remains: how do you put an APB out on a man who is, but isn't your partner, is but isn't
quite himself, and who blatantly thumbs his nose at the laws of physics?  It would be like Mulder to make
things difficult.

Mulder.  Or least it used to be Mulder.  But it couldn't be Mulder.  It had to be some freak who had the face
of Mulder.  Some freak who looked like the end result of Chernobyl mixed with radical quack surgery.
Some freak who recognized her.  Who knew her name.

And that girl.

She visualizes the child, the horrific little demon sticking out of his chest like a grossly mutated Chang or
Eng.  Visualizes the oversized appendage with the face that decorated the small picture frame on her
partner's desk from day one.

Samantha.

Well, it looks like Mulder got his wish after all.  His heart's desire.

A twisted, sick version of it.
 
 

1717 Madison Wy.
Syracuse, NY
 

Scully presses the doorbell button for the third time, holding it down for close to five seconds, as she taps
her foot impatiently on the brown woven welcome mat.  She knows someone is inside, having caught the
shadow of movement moments before she reached the doorstep, and if she's lucky, that someone is Paul
Kinsey.
 

She had reviewed the slides again, all sixty-eight of them.  All different but the same, gleaning no more
answers from the pictures than the last time she ran them through the projector.  She'd gone through
Mulder's field notes, pictures, evidence samples.  Still nothing.

Finally, out of desperation, she raided his apartment, his mailbox, overflowing with leaflets, bills, junk mail
and the newest issue of something in a brown paper wrapper.  Tearing open his phone bill, she scanned the
long distance charge list, searching for a clue, and hoping, just hoping that his sources were out of area calls-
-two made to his mother, five to a 1-900 number, seventeen to her, four to the office, and then four more to
a P. Kinsey.  When she'd tried to call that number, he hung up on her before the words "Lament
Configuration" could finish exiting her mouth.  Perfect.
 

The door opens just as Scully raises her finger to press the button again, and a thin, sallow man peers out
with hostile eyes.

"I'm Agent Scully with the Federal Bureau of Investigation."  She raises her badge.  "Are you Paul Kinsey?"

"Why do you want to know?"  His eyes flicker up and down nervously over her.

"Has a Fox Mulder ever spoken to you about a puzzle box and a Philip LeMarchand?"

"No."

He hastily withdraws, attempting to close the door on her, but she places her foot in doorway, pressing
inwards.

"Please, sir," she pleade, wedging the door open, "I need to speak to you.  I saw one of these creatures.  I
need to find out what they are."

A pause.  He doesn't budge, but at least he isn't trying to crush her foot with the heavy wood either.

"You saw a cenobite without summoning it?"

This time he opens the door.

* * * * *

Scully would have probably been a little more at ease with herself had the Kinsey residence looked a bit
more...indimidating.  Somehow, in the worst stereotypical way, she'd expected a dungeon of sorts--dark,
dank dimly lit, a big library of dusty tomes, archaic symbols and miscellaneous torture devices, a creepy,
morose four-room coffin with Anne Rice and Alesteir Crowley overthemes.  Or at least a goat's head and
"Guernica" in the front entryway.  Or maybe even a skull with candles dripping down into a pool on its
occipital lobe.

Sitting back on a perfectly ordinary couch he finds the complete and utter normality of the interior of the
house deeply unsettling, feeling it emit an exuberant cheerfulness that recalls Seurat more than Salvador
Dali.  Bright in earthy woodtones and white with tastefully furnished interiors, the atmosphere clashes
terribly with the subject matter Kinsey cheerfully prattles on about as he pours her a cup of coffee.

"You could say I'm a dabbler of sorts.  Alchemy, Kemeticism, Wicca, Voodoo, a little bit of everything
really."  He looks at her quizzicly as the furrow in the agent's brow deepens upon further inspection of the
living room.  "Is there something wrong?"

"It's just--this place looks..."  She shrugs.

"Normal?"  A slightly amused look crosses his bony face.  "Were you perhaps expecting a goat's head in the
front hallway or big dusty books or even medieval torture devices?"

Scully reddens slightly, picking up her cup of coffee.

"No.  Not exactly.  Well, sort of."

"Agent Scully, your professional background is in...?"

"Medicine."

"Does your home look like a hospital?"

She smiles, sipping.

"Touche."

Kinsey seats himself across from her, pouring himself a cup.

"Your reaction isn't uncommon.  Sometimes I think that's why I deliberately decorate it like this.  Now, tell
me exactly, what happened to Agent Mulder."

Putting down her cup and opening her briefcase, she pulls out pictures she had made from the slides.

"What do you know about this cube?"

"It's a puzzle.  If you solve it correctly, your final product is called a Lament Configuration, the
configuration that opens up the gates of Leviathan."

"Leviathan?  The Old Testament serpent monster of the sea?"

"A great whale in Milton's work.  Do you know the tale of Jonah?"

"He was swallowed up by a giant fish in a storm at sea.  He lived in it for three days and three nights before
it vomited him up on shore."

"Think of Leviathan that way.  A fish.  A place, a dimension and yet a sentient, living creature."

"I don't subscribe to that kind of belief."

"Just because you don't believe in it doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

She pauses, looking at the photos, then plunges on.

"So what does the cube have to do with Leviathan?"

"The correct combination of movements creates an opening into fourth dimension."

The agent frowns.

"But the fourth dimension is time."

"Not strictly so.  Perhaps I can explain it in other terms.  The third dimension is made up of planes, made up
of layers of the second dimension, right?"

"Categorically speaking, yes."

"Then why can't the fourth dimension be made up of infinite layers of the third dimension?  A three
dimensional object moving through a plane would be viewable to the flatlanders as only a bisected area of
the whole.  It stands to reason that the third dimension, the world we live in, would only capture bits and
pieces, fragments of the fourth as well."

He holds up the picture of LeMarchand's box to Scully.

"This box is the link.  Solving this puzzle opens up the third dimension into the fourth.  However it is
severely limited."

"How so?"

"Let's take flatland again.  A sphere passes through.  Someone in flatland has an object much like your
puzzle box that allows them to see the sphere as an entity, but it is tuned only to the sphere.  Other three
dimensional beings, cubes, pyramids, cylinders would be invisible, or at least unviewable as a whole because
this flatlander's object is tuned only to the sphere."

"So you're saying LeMarchand's puzzle box can only open up to Leviathan."

"This particular configuration, the Lament configuration.  Yes."  He notes the dubious look on her face.
"You certainly are skeptical."

"I'm sorry, that's a reflex.  You mentioned that these creatures of Leviathan were cenobites?  What is a
cenobite?"

Kinsey lifts his hands up in supplication.

"Beats me.  Some say they're soldiers of hell sent to carry out the duties of punishment of damned souls.
Some say they're just damned souls themselves, eternally enslaved in their duties of collecting more of their
ranks.  I've never met anyone who has ever encountered a cenobite and was still around afterwards.  Then
again, I've never heard of anyone encountering one without deliberately calling it either."

"Would destroying the cube or breaking it into pieces have something to do with it?"

"I'm not sure it can be destroyed, but I suppose it might.  Though it still doesn't explain why the cenobite left
you alone.  They're usually quite...single minded about things like that."

Scully watches the cream coagulate at the top of her coffee as it slowly goes cold.

"So you're saying they're not particularly choosy about whom they take."

"Not choosy at all, from what I gather.  Unless perhaps there was a connection of some sort.  Mental,
spiritual, who knows?  Something that could anchor or draw him back."

Mulder collecting the men he profiled, the ones whose minds, spirits he entered but somehow never left.
Tethered to this dimension only by the delusions of madmen.  Except now all the takings were done.  All the
pieces finished.

It was too late for Mulder.

"Have you ever...seen the cube yourself?"

"Me?  Never.  Though I admit, I'm not disappointed."  He lifts a long, thin index finger in reaction to her
lifted brows.  "You see, I am a bit of a coward, and I don't know if I could resist not playing with it."

"Even at the expense of your life?  Your soul?"

He shrugs.

"Sometimes curiosity just gets the better of some people.  Besides, if there was even the slightest remote
possibility of having your most fervent wish granted, wouldn't you be tempted?"

"In considering the relative cases which Agent Mulder and I have been investigating, which seems to support
a virtual one-hundred percent losing prospect, I'd have to say no."

"What about Agent Mulder?"

Mulder.  Mulder had known about the cube beforehand.  Researched it.  Obviously knew enough to
understand its dangers.  And just as obviously
blindly disregarded them.

Jerk-off.  Asshole.  Selfish, thoughtless creep.

Hearing no answer from her, he peers at the agent, speculating.

"You...wouldn't happen to have the box, would you?"

Scully pauses, deliberating, then--

"No."

lies.

She isn't about to give up the cube, her last link to Mulder.  Turning thoughts over and over in her head, she
reconsiders Kinsey's question

'If offered the remotest, slightest possibility...'

And then asks herself, how far would she go to find him?

She turns that question over and over in her head on the flight back.
 

* * * * *
Synapse, Chapter 4: Thrombus
* * * * *

Dana Scully's Apartment
Annapolis, MD
 

Sixteen pieces.  Sixteen pieces standing between her and Mulder's hell.

She looks at the pieces of wood on the table, each bagged and labeled with the name and date of each
victim.  There are no grooves or etches for gears or moving parts, just sixteen solid bits.  Incredibly odd how
the puzzle even managed to work in the first place.

It was ludicrous.  It was stupid.

Which meant that it was probably true.

Puzzles have never been particularly difficult for Dana Scully.  Through careful analysis and planning, a
mapped out strategy and course of action, luck becomes an unnecessary variable.  Of course the Rubik's
cube became dreadfully dull after she managed to figure out the basic concept of its sequences and variables.
Charlie would struggle for hours with that six-sided monster, trying to reorganize the little colored squares
into their neat little pattern.  He would come close, but always stood at an impasse when two corners and an
edge would invariable fail to sit in the right place.  Then he would bring it to her to solve, and just as quickly
as she would correct the patterns, Melissa would somehow get a hold of it and gleefully twist the colors
back into a jumble again.

Reassembly.  Order out of chaos.  Except this time the stakes are much higher, which is why a well thought
out plan, executed and resolved properly leaves no room for error.  She had the parts mapped out, every
variable position worked until it came to light that the only configuration that could be viably made out of
the piecs resulted in a star formation.

Releasing the little wooden parts from their bags, she picks up each piece, placing it in her mind, analyzing
each rotation, where the edges and grooves fit against each other, slowly building as the bottom layer snaps
together in a three-dimensional puzzle.  Next come the sides.  Slow.  Methodical.  No need for any rush, no
mistakes need to be made in building up the final assembled product.

As the last piece snaps into place, a foreign, chilling wind whips throughout the room, carrying with it, the
clanking of far-off chains.

Looking up, she sees her room, the room, gone.  Replaced by concrete and steel walls.  The furniture is still
there, but the set has changed, as the box plummets her full force into the next dimension.

A mechanical whirring draws her attention back down as the upper right corner of the star makes a turn,
moving by itself.  Then, a door opens out of nowhere.

Something that looks like rottweiler turned inside-out flies towards her.  Snapping, drooling, ready to tear
her apart with metal slavering jaws.  Teeth clatter as it plunges towards her

"Christ!"

She stumbles back, clutching the cube with the left and reaching behind for the holstered Sig situated over
her lower back with the right, as the monstrosity of a dog lands on the table with a heavy thud, spilling the
little plastic evidence bags everywhere.

...unsnap, out

Whipping its head towards her it takes a step back.

...safety off

Crouches.

...cock the hammer

Springs like a jackrabbit, careening towards her.

Four and a half pounds of instant trigger pull throws the nine millimeter slug out of the barrel with a
thunderous roar and drives it into the head of the creature.

Two more bullets drop it to the floor.  Another three turn it into twitching, splattered mass, gurgling bluish
fluid from its cavities.

Breathing hard, Scully scrambles to her feet, the automatic still pointed at the corpse, not entirely sure it
might not get up again.

"Welcome," a light, English voice rings out, as Scully swerves to center her pistol on the approaching figure.

"Stop right there.  Who, what are you?"

A woman in her late thirties, with high cheekbones and dark hair casually steps towards the agent.

"If you have to ask..." she pauses, eyeing her up and down. "...Dana, you're definitely in the wrong place."

"How do you know my name?"  The barrel of her weapon lowers slightly as she carefully studies the
stranger, the most normal looking one yet.

"Let's just say I've walked a mile in your skin.  I bet you're looking for your lover."

"Mulder's not--"

Scully stops at the nonplused look on the stranger's face.

"Well, well, well.  That is surprising.  Do you realize what great talent you're wasting?  And quite an
imagination too."

"What are you talking about?"

The woman's face twists in a look that Scully can see is quite foreign to her.  Pity, maybe.

"You really don't belong here, Dana. I suggest you go back and forget all about this place.  It's too late for
him."

"No."  She shakes her head, holstering her weapon.  "I'm not leaving without Mulder.  Tell me where he is."

"Then I'm afraid you're not leaving, period."  She extends her hand out in a simple gesture, as the agent
looks warily at the offering.  "I don't bite."  A pause.  "Unless you want me to."

Her flesh feels squishy, moveable, as if not sitting on her on quite well.  Scully wrenches her hand back,
disgusted, after that initial contact with skin the consistency of wet toilet paper.

"My name is Julia," says the woman.  "Welcome to hell."

* * * * *
Pinhead stirs among the confines, waking from his stasis, feeling the tingle of something different in the air.

Like a thrombus, a mortal has invaded the passages, creating a clot in the labyrinthial veins of Leviathan.
Not a gross threat, but simply a minor annoyance to the otherwise smooth flowing lines of hell.

Lifting his nose into the air, he sniffs once, picking up on the delectable scent.

Fresh meat.  He always did have a sensitive nose.

* * * * *
The surface of Leviathan is strange.  The atmosphere has a musty, heavy scent, like that of a major
thunderstorm brewing or heavy air of an impending tornado.  The expanse of the exterior contrasts the
claustrophobic corridors and narrow walkways, an open, immensely vast turbulent cloudiness, surrounding
the ridges of an enticing, dizzying freefall into eternity.

Scully's hand unconsciously fingers the little gold cross at her neck as she looks around, closely following
the woman in front of her.

Looking back, Julia raises both eyebrows, openly amused.

"Charming little appellation.  Unfortunately it won't be of any use here."

After moving through a number of odd, twisting, straight and curved corridors, Scully pieces together the
picture in her head and  recognizes the pattern.  Turning the puzzle around, she looks at the design.

"This--where we are; we're walking on the face."

"Yes, that's exactly where we are,"  Julia comments, strolling down the corridor with the ease of familiarity.

"Where is Mulder on this?"

The woman takes Scully's hand, turning the star over so it faces the opposite side.

"I suppose you could have popped in her from further away, but somehow I don't think that's a possibility."

They turn another corner, to the edge of the face, before plunging back down into the dark bowels of the
puzzle.

"Excuse me for saying so, but you don't seem very much like one of the others.  A cenobite."

"That's because I'm not.  I'm more...transient.  I can move around a lot more easily because I'm not
specifically bound to Leviathan."

"Are you the only one?"

"Unfortunately, no.  There is--"

"Julia, what have you done?"  A voice thunders out from the abyss.

They both freeze as a solitary figure walks into view, heavy, ominous footsteps nearing, and Scully's
stomach churns at the sight of the approaching figure.  Oh, God.  A man or what used to be one, his head a
veritable pincushion, walking towards her alone.  Wait.  She hears more footsteps approaching in a
discordant following rhythm.  Not alone.  Three more come up behind the first, in that same black armor, all
freaks of their own unique nature.

Winding her arm back behind her again, she raises her Sig, pointing it at the one that appears to be the
leader, the one in front.  Pinhead.  Nine rounds.  Nine rounds left in this clip.  Fifteen in the spare.

"Mortal weapons are of no use in this realm."

"Tell that to your pet."

A chained hook spins out of the shadows and lashes out against the back of her left hand, grazing but not
driving into the flesh.  Scully twitches with an audible gasp and drops the puzzle-box, sending it skittering on
the floor towards Julia.

Gritting her teeth, she points the Sig at pinhead's face.

An anther hook, one she can see, but unable to evade comes flying towards her face, screaming with a
metallic fury--

Just something shoots out to intercept it, drawing sickening bluish bile from the point of impact.

She blinks at the blur of movement before her before hazily registering the presence of that barrier.  An arm.
A familiar arm.  The arm that comforted her after Melissa's death, the arm attached to the shoulder she put
her head on on during long stakeouts, the arm attached to the hand that invariably found its way to the lower
part of her back every time they went through doors.  Looking up the arm, her eyes trace the line that lead
to his face, those familiar features starkly pale and drawn, leeched of hemoglobin and sunlight.

"Mulder," she whispers.

"No," he snarls at the pinheaded one who yanks back the chain, gouging out a chunk of flesh.  The Mulder
freak then turns to her with a horrible smile, and she sees eyes completely devoid of their normal hazel hue.
Obsidian black.  Or the black of enormously dilated pupils.  "She's mine."

A movement catches Scully's eyes and they draw down to the little girl in his chest, the grotesque Samantha,
the demonic brat who has turned to face her with a look of utter and unmitigated hatred.

"Yeah, well the feeling's the same, you talking appendage."  The agent hisses, sotto.

"Arrogant fool." the pinhead roars at Mulder, evidently having forgotten about her.  "You dare to steal from
me?"

Suddenly, dozens of hooks on chains fly from out of nowhere to imbed in whatever still untouched flesh lay
in the monstrosity of her partner, drawing him up into the air, splaying him in all directions.

The images play in Scully's head, the aftermath of the murder sites, the blood, the bits and pieces of flesh.
This is what caused it.  She imagines the same thing happenening to Bob Chagret, to the hundreds of other
hapless victims that fell victim to the box.  The box.  She snaps her head in the direction of where she'd
dropped it, looking around desperately for the star configuration, the ground where it fell.  Not there.  Gone.
As well as Julia.  Bitch.

"Stupid.  Pathetic.  Asshole."  Mulder sneers, staggering only slightly under all the weight, until he wrenches
his body around, snapping the unseen holds at the end of the chains.  More for his collection.  Pinhead steps
back, thrown slightly off balance by this defiance.

"You don't know the first thing about pain,"  The corner of Mulder's mouth turns up sardonically.  "You still
haven't figured out that the physical is nothing compared to tortures of the mind."

As the final word exits his blue lips, he opens his arms releasing the souls of the muderers he had collected.
Dozens of images, ghosts fly from the body of her partner, some she fleetingly recognizes--
Patterson...Pfaster...Cider--twisting, turning, writhing with screeching intensity, swooping into the pinhead,
driving themselves into his body with horrific fury.

The cenobite jerks, staggering back as the screaming apparitions invade him, leaping hungrily into his body
like a pack of rabid dogs or pirhana, gnawing, biting, finding any way to enter another victim, wasp grubs
boring into the tender flesh of a paralyzed prey.  Slowly, as if someone has stuck a pump into him, the
pinhead begins to bloat.  Screaming, moaning, he clutches his face as it bubbles in and out with fingers
swelling and receding, hands, arms, chest, legs, an expanding and contracting, pulsating form.

Casually yanking out a hook from his forearm, the Mulder monstrosity waits, then shoots it at the obscenely
distended figure.  The pinhead tosses his head back in a roar of pure agony as the hook hits, then he
explodes, splattering viscera, nails, and chunks of rotting flesh everywhere, as the ghosts fly out of the
decompressed mass, sated and bloody, back into the torn and ragged body of their master.

"Looks like disco inferno's under new management," Mulder drones, sucking in the last bit of quicksilver
haze.  Such a familiar deadpan, Scully notes.  She would probably be laughing hysterically under different
circumstances.

The other cenobites make no move to engage the new alpha-male to a territorial dispute.  Withdrawing, they
disappear back where they came from, into the lazy, quiet darkness and terror.

"Foxxx."  Samantha reaches out for Scully's hair, even as the agent recoils back, instantly placing four feet of
distance between her and Mulder.

And she realizes the reason he killed them.  It was so he could have her to himself.  For his own tortures.

"I'm...sorry," he apologizes unapologetically.  "Samantha insists."  He lifts a hook, taking a step towards her.

Gun.  The Sig.  In her right hand.  She'd forgotten all about it.  How many times has she pointed it at
Mulder?

"She's not Samantha, Mulder," her voice shakes with the effort of keeping it even, as she takes another step
back.   "That....that thing is not your sister!"

"Not...Samantha..." he echoes slurringly.  Dimly puzzled.  Then angry.  "You're lying."

"Foxxxx..." the misshapen lips buzz against his chest with a slight lisp.  "Foxxx...."

Raises the gun, cocking the hammer.  One more step back.

"Listen to me, Mulder!"  Scully's voice cranks up another notch.  "It's been twenty four years.  Your sister
would be an adult, not a child."

"Twenty-four years," he echoes again, memories slowy seeping, filtering back.

The girl hisses as one hook goes flying out of Scully, and sinks into her left shoulder, cutting off her retreat.

"Foxxx..."

"Samantha would be thirty-two, Mulder."  Another notch, a whisper beneath a scream.

Another hook flies out.  Right shoulder.  The weapon droops in her hand, but she raises the Sig back up,
ignoring the roaring pain in her shoulder, aiming for the deformed brat.  Still, hesitation prevents her from
adding the last pound of effort into the trigger.  What if she hits Mulder?  Would killing the Samantha part
kill him as well?

"This...thing can't be your sister!"  she screams.  "Your sister isn't a little girl anymore!  You've always
believed me, Mulder.  Believe me now."

The girl yanks out another hook.

"Stop it, Samantha,"  Mulder's voice admonishes gently.

She only giggles, before sending it off.

It pierces the left ankle.  With a cry, Scully drops to her knees.

"I said stop it!"  he snaps.

"Mulder," Scully pleads, gasping.

"Make meeee...buttmunshhh..." the smaller one slurs.

"This child, this thing,"  the agent, weaker.  "It's not your sister.  It's not Samantha.  "

He intercepts the next hook as it lashes out towards her.

"Not Samantha," he whispers.

Then, he places his hands around the head of the girl.  Looking at her contorted caricature of a grin, he
chokes back a sob, his arms slowly pulling up, wrenching her out of his very being.  She screams as he
slowly tears her out, snarling,

(out)

biting his fingers,

(out)

flailing with arm and legs, scoring deep marks in him, drawing more bluish blood from each wound.

(out)

He doesn't stop, only reactions displayed in the tears streaming down his face, silent, wordless wracking
pain, but not of the physical.

Scully watches in horror as his chest opens up, a sick, wet, tearing sound, as the submerged parts of her,
come up, slimy with opaque viscera, drawing further and further out, until he finally, they are separate.  He
drops her on the ground and staggers, clutching at the gaping wound in his chest.

And the girl now giggles, her left hand, the one formerly inside the chest of her bigger half, clutches a small,
bluish organ squirting out copious amounts of the foul bilinous stuff.  His heart.  She laughs harder, a high-
pitched maniacal guffaw, squeezing the organ until it bursts.

With all the hate she can muster, a not so difficult task, the agent cocks her pistol and then fires into the girl.
Once.  Twice.  Three times.  Her head bursts like an overripe watermelon, spewing brain matter in that same
bluish color and goo intensity, the disgusting fluid splattering over him and her.

Still holding the open wound in his chest, Mulder wobbles at the weight of sudden separation.  He looks at
her, the headless, splattered form convulsing on the ground, then turns to his partner with that same
expression--a jumbled mix of pain, loss, deprivation, love, bewilderment and betrayal, as the tears streak
down unmitigated over his cheeks and face.  With a last sighing breath, he topples over facedown, lifeless.

* * * * *

The child had dissolved, almost like her adult clone did over a year ago, except where the big Samantha
worked through the gurney in the ambulance with the voracity of sulfuric acid, this one simply bubbled and
melted into more of that slippery, gooey blue stuff that reeked of bile.  Infinitely more than the time Mulder
came crawling full speed out of Eugene Tooms' nest covered with the stuff.  The place smelled like a men's
locker room after football practice.  Overpowering to the innocent bypasser, but once assimilated, the stench
becomes barely noticeable.

Mulder.  With that fused twin gone, he almost looked again like her partner.  Except for the hooks in his
flesh and the large, gaping wound running from shoulder to groin.  It had taken hours, or maybe it just felt
that way, to remove all the hooks from his body.  There were hundreds of them, some barbed, others
serrated, different sizes from the tiny curls of fishing hooks to the huge fire-poker gnarls.  At least the hooks
the Samantha freak had tossed at her were, to her luck, relatively small and easy to remove.

When Scully was done unlinking him, she dragged him away from the metal apparati, away from the hooks
and chains, as far away from the disgusting, reeking mess as possible, despite the screaming in both her
deltoids and collarbone, because the last thing she could give him, all she can give him now, is his dignity in
death.  If they ever manage to get out of this damned hellhole.  A literal damned hellhole.  No puzzle box, no
exit.  It would be funny, if...she gives a weak snort, feeling herself dance precariously close to the edge of
snapping.
 

She gently wipes the salt crusting on his face, interrupted only by a lone figure stepping out of the black,
footsteps approaching them.

"Stop right there," Scully shouts lifting her goop covered Sig.  "I've got six more bullets plus a spare clip,
and don't think that I can't take you down from here."

"How touching,"  Julia murmurs stepping forward, looking curiously at the agent sitting back against the
wall with her partner's head in her lap.  "Put the gun away, Dana.  I only came to help."

"Well, you're a little too goddamn late!" She screams, weapon still pointed unwaveringly at the woman.
"You abandoned me back there."

"It was nothing personal.  Pinhead and I don't get along very well.  To be quite honest, I didn't think either
of you could get past him.  I'm impressed."

"Yeah, well thanks for nothing."

"Touchy, touchy," she clucks.  "I really can assist in returning your partner to you."

"How?"  Then, more suspiciously.  "Why?"

"Let's just say, while this realm has its fair share of misery and darkness, it is an organized misery and
darkness.  However--" she raises her hands gesturing vaguely at the mess around them.

She looks at the woman uncomprehendingly for a few seconds.  Then it dawns on her.  Trust Mulder to be
able to piss off the denizens of hell.

"You only want Mulder alive so that neither of us returns."

"In a manner of speaking, yes.  You two have basically been a clot in the bloodstream.  The faster we get rid
of you, the better."

"All right." She lowers her gun, looking down at Mulder's ashen features, which hadn't gotten any paler, but
certainly less animated.  Then across at the puddle that used to be a hideous, deformed copy of his little
sister.  "What do I have to do?"

"Give him blood."

"Blood?"  Scully echoes dumbly.

"Lots of it.  Perhaps thirty liters.  Any kind."

Scully shakes her head, still reeling.

"The human body only holds five...and...and the wrong phenotype could result in hemolytic anemia."  Tired.
So tired.

"For god's sake, Dana, wake up!  Do you even think he's even human any more?"  Julia stamps frustratedly.
"Give me your hand.  Do it now!"  as Scully hesitates, then slowly reaches out.

Grabbing her hand, the English woman pulls a hook from floor and slices open her palm.

"Christ!"  Scully hisses, jerking into full consciousness as she snatches her hand back.

"Now look," Julia points down.

The agent watches, eyes incredulous, as the blood fallen from her sinks into his flesh, as if being absorbed
into her partner's body.  His chest moves, flesh, bones, and viscera slowly drawing back together.  With the
shallow jerking reflexes of his diaphragm, he begins breathing again.  Incredibly pale.  Anemic.  But alive.

Impossible.

The woman draws out the star, her mouth upturned in a cold, dead smile and resets the configuration back
to its normal cube shape.
 
The room dissolves back into familar apartment surroundings, the only sign of the other dimension, an
oddly-lighted door that wasn't there before.

Gently laying Mulder's head down on the ground, Scully picks up the phone and dials.
 
"This is Special Agent Dana Scully with the FBI, I need paramedics down at 2303 Beacon Avenue, number
five, stat.  Patient has suffered massive physical trauma and blood loss, requesting thirty pints of blood,
donor type AB."

"So much depravity," Julia sighs, moving towards the door.  "So few boxes."

"Something I have to know."  The woman pauses as Scully gestures vaguely at her partner.  "Will he, will
Mulder ever be...normal?"

"Physically?  He'll be human again.  Eventually.  Mentally, well, that all depends on him.  He does display
remarkable...skill.  A true knack for perversity."

"Mulder, he, he's not like that.  It's just, he is, was, a profiler.  One of the best.  His empathy, ability to get
into the minds of these men is remarkable.  He absorbed their personalities and couldn't get out."

Julia tilts her head, amused.

"It takes the mind of a murderer to fully understand one.  Like it or not, he is just as mad as the men he
catches.  Perhaps, in time, you may be able to help him forget.  But you won't be able to make him change."

Scully chews her lip, eyes darting towards him.

"What about those creatures?"

"The cenobites?  They'll still be around when Armageddon arrives, and even after then.  They'll always be
around."

"But Mulder, he killed one of them.  Would the rest...?"

"You can't destroy a cenobite.  Pinhead will come around sooner or later.  Pull himself back together, you
might say."  Her lips twitch at her own joke.  "I imagine by then he'll be quite happy to be rid of the threat to
his status.  Such little boys these creatures are sometimes.  As for the others, I doubt they'll bother,
especially since he's done a good job intimidating them."

As an afterthought, she steps back towards Mulder, stooping to drop a light kiss on his lips.

"Bye, lover," whispering in his ear.  "It's been a pleasure working with you,"

Then steps through the portal, twisting a corner, and the door drops, leaving nothing of the other world
behind in the apartment, silence only broken by the shrieks from an ambulance in the distance blaring
fractionally louder as it nears the apartment.

Reality has never been sweeter.
 
 

Epilogue:

Addendum to X-File #XF9122243

'It has been one month since Agent Mulder was discharged from the hospital under the supervisory care of
this agent, and two weeks since he has returned to active duty, a recommended course of action after an
intense medical and psychological evaluation.  Though the long-term after effects of the kidnapping and
exposure to severe torture on Agent Mulder is still undetermined, he still retains full functional capacity as a
field agent.

Searches for the offenders responsible for Agent Mulder's disappearance have been called off, as he and I
both feel that they will not return.

This case file is now officially closed.'
 

Clicking the "save" icon on the word processor, Dana Scully takes off her glasses and shuts down her
Powerbook.  She pauses for a moment, taking a deep breath, before snapping the living room lights off.

A moment later, the door to her bedroom opens, spilling light into the hallway, before shutting again.  Only
the crack of illumination seeping out from beneath the door reveal the light source within, and it remains on
through the rest of the night.
 

A breath, a heartbeat, a blink.  Every miniscule movement takes time.  Death takes time, life takes time,
constantly moving forward, seconds into minutes, minutes into hours, hours into days and so forth and so
forth.

Mulder doesn't sleep much anymore.  It is more of a respite for his tired eyes.  He shuts them in semblance
of sleep, but usually, he remains fully conscious, counting the seconds, the minutes passing by until she
arrives.  Occasionally, very occasionally, fatigue creeps up unexpectedly and he does drift, only to be sucked
back into the nightmares.

"Mulder."  The familiar, soothing voice whispers beside him as a hand drops to his forehead, another one to
his chest to ease the reflexive thrashing of his body.

"Scully," he sucks in a deep breath, awakening and cracking an eye open to look up in the light of the
bedside lamp, before clutching her to him.

One month, the thought runs through Scully's head.  One month now, and he is still unable to get through
the night.

During the daytime he is the old Special Agent Fox Mulder, wisecracking, cryptic, and charming--still
functional, still brilliant, still a pain in the ass to the Skinner and everybody else in the Bureau.  Simply
business as usual without a care in the world except for whatever beastie or foo-fighter they happen to be
chasing.

But at night, the nightmares begin, even without the aid of slumber, nightmares returning as bits and
fragments of various visions and dreams.  Dreams that tear him from sleep into a cold sweat, and a
sometimes screaming horror.

Which is why they both sleep with the lights on.  Waking from a nightmare is bad enough, waking into utter
darkness, unbearable.

Mulder's breathing steadies, settling into long, slightly-hiccuping breaths, and Scully lowers him back into
bed, settling in beside him, holding his still slightly shaking form, as he finally allows himself to relax with her
against his back.

She runs her finger down one of the many marks on his shoulder.  So many wounds, a nearly unbelievable
smattering of white raised scars covering the entirety of his body.  But they will fade in time, leaving no
marks of their passing.  It's just the non-physical ones that never heal quite properly.

"In time, you may be able to help him forget," Julia had said.  Forget, Scully muses, the thought tangled up
in bitter irony.

As a cenobite, he forgot his mortality, as a mortal, the inverse cruelly doesn't hold true.

Mulder has a photographic memory.

She shuts her eyes, letting the comfort of a familiar touch, a heartbeat will her into sleep, finally allowing her
mind drift behind the curtain of existence, a free-fall into another consciousness, to only be awaken by
another day.

The digital readout of the clock flickers from 1:59 to 2:00.

Time moves forward, no longer in stasis.

* * * *

END