"The Five," Book 1 (Part 1 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. Summary: A haunting childhood memory, Krycek's return from the missile silo and a Japanese astronomer's discovery provide Mulder and Scully with the clues they need to begin unraveling the mystery of Samantha's disappearance. Disclaimer: All the truly interesting characters herein--the Mulder family, Dana Scully, Walter Skinner, the consortium members, Alex Krycek and the morphing alien--are the invention and intellectual property of Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen and Fox Broadcasting, as is the whole concept of the X Files. I swear I don't have any money, and I'm not making any money off this, so there's really not much point in suing me over it. Feedback sent to will be forwarded to the author. *********************************************************************** The wise man says, "I am looking for the truth," and the fool, "I have found the truth." - Russian proverb April 27, 1995 Washington, D.C. The omni-morph approached the power plant, then waited, hovered, watching. Despite the late hour, there were humans in the plant; the omni-morph could smell them, their coppery blood and sour sweat. It would have preferred to remain invisible to them, but it couldn't get through the electrified fence in its invisible form. And it was just possible one of the humans might catch a glimpse of its energy field distorting the light, though the omni-morph had never known humans to be particularly observant. No, better to take a human form. It waited. It wanted just the right one, and it could afford to wait. Dawn began to slip over the horizon, and then more humans arrived. Some, too, were leaving. Still dark enough, just barely. The omni-morph hovered into the parking lot, searching for the right one. Then it found what it wanted, and touched the human to stun her. It was careful not to kill--it could have killed her, but it was a planner, not one of the warrior circle, and it only killed in self-defense. Instead, it took her security guard's uniform and her shape, and walked into the power plant in her place. The mission was not difficult. The omni-morph quickly found what it needed--a diagram of the plant's circuitry. It imprinted the information and left. **** May 5, 1995 West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard The wind off Rhode Island Sound had a damp, raw bite, and despite his long coat Fox Mulder shivered as he unlocked the door to his father's house. Of course, that might have had as much to do with his chilly mood as with anything meteorological. Even if it hadn't been a cold, foggy night, this house might have seemed ghostly even to a man with a lot less imagination--and a lot fewer haunting memories--than Fox Mulder. The house had seen more misery and mayhem than any structure ought to and still remain standing, and it didn't take much for Mulder to visualize distress wafting up off the floors. *Get a grip, will you? It's just dark and empty, that's all.* While he punched buttons to disarm the alarm system, he distracted himself by wondering who did actually own the place now. He presumed it belonged to his mother, willed to her after Bill Mulder's death. On the other hand, it was just barely conceivable Bill would have left it to his son. *Nah. He'd never trust me with it.* Mulder hadn't inquired as to the terms of the will, and the only thing his mother had said was that she wouldn't take anything inside the house until he'd had a chance to collect whatever he wanted. Mulder didn't want anything out of the place, nothing personal, anyway. And he didn't feel up to combing through for evidence of his father's involvement in...whatever those files had been at the mine in West Virginia. Ultimately that would have to be done, but not now, not yet. He had felt awkward about bringing any of that up with his mom, so he had figured he'd just let the matter ride for a month or so and see how he felt then. Of course, that was before he'd thought about poor old Ditzo, abandoned up here. He shut the front door. It was after midnight, and pitch dark in the house. Mulder suddenly realized that in his rush to rescue Ditzo, he hadn't given any thought to how he would go about locating his father's fat, raggedy old tomcat. Especially at night. Surely he wouldn't find him in the house. Hell, if he'd been shut up in the house, likely he'd be dead by now. Outside, at least, the cat could've foraged for food and water. No dead animal smell hung in the air; Mulder took that for a good sign. He left the lights off, trusting to his all-too-accurate memory to take him past the stairs to the kitchen and out to the detached garage. The garage had a pet door, a vestige of another lifetime, when the Mulders had been a family and had owned a dog. Ditzo might have taken shelter there. Mulder fumbled around for the string that switched on the light. He felt a pang at the sight of his father's car, sitting in the garage with a thin coat of dust on its slick, black finish. In a sudden burst of old-man-trying-to-recapture-his-youth, Bill Mulder had bought a brand-new Mitsubishi 3000 GT about three months before his death. Five-speed, turbo engine, all-wheel drive, compact disc player, gold pinstripes. An adolescent fantasy in the hands of a man who'd never owned a car with fewer than four doors. Mulder doubted the old man had ever had it going over sixty. His father had been so damned proud of that car. Like Ditzo, it was abandoned now. Mulder fought off an impulse to back the car out and rinse the dust off. It was what his father would have done. But he hadn't come up here to brood over what couldn't be changed. Of all the things about his father's death that troubled his heart and his conscience, there was only one he could do something about, and that was to adopt the cat. "Ditzo," he called into the garage. Silence. "Shit," he muttered. "Little fucker." Truth be told, it was himself he was cursing. It was his own fault he'd had to race up here on a Friday night--he'd forgotten about the damned cat. If he'd had his head on straight, he'd have thought of it long before this--his father had been dead nearly three weeks. But how the hell did anybody whose father had been murdered recently get his head on straight? He wondered how long a cat could live without shelter or care. What if animal control had picked him up? "Shit," Mulder said again. *Okay, genius, think--if you were a cat, where would you go?* Trash cans, he realized. Ditzo had a habit of raiding the trash, up and down the alley. Mulder fished his flashlight out of his coat pocket and left the garage, locking the door behind him, went out through the back gate into the alley. He found nothing around the ancient, empty, dented Mulder family garbage cans. The alley was so quiet--living in Washington he had forgotten how dark and silent a small town became, late at night. He supposed that had once seemed normal to him. Now he found it unsettling. He headed down the alley, shined the flashlight around, calling softly for the cat, hoping he wouldn't wake anybody up. He had a moment of triumph when the flashlight picked up two glowing green points in the weeds behind the Brenner house. But when he got closer, he discovered that was Ruth Willingham's calico cat from the next block over. When he approached, the calico yowled in annoyance and leaped away, tipping one of the steel cans. Mulder tried to catch the can before it fell, but he was too far away. It hit the ground with a loud, grating thud. "Dammit," Mulder whispered. From behind him a voice called, "You! Get away from there! I've got a gun!" And if it was who Mulder thought it was, she did, too--a rusty old shotgun that probably would blow up in her face if she ever tried to fire it. "Mrs. Brenner?" Mulder said. "It's me, Fox." "Fox? My land, what are you doing out here in the middle of the night?" Slowly, he turned. He could barely see her face in the darkness, but in the glare off her back porch light he made out her thin, stooped form and the shotgun's wicked silhouette. "I'm sorry I woke you," he said. "I'm looking for my dad's cat. You haven't seen him, have you?" She chuckled. "Yeah, I've seen him." She let the barrel of the gun tilt to point at the ground. Mulder released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "Come on inside," she said. He followed her through her garden, row upon row of rose bushes just beginning to leaf out. "He came over here when his bowl got empty, I guess," Mrs. Brenner said. She'd been a widow for as long as Mulder had known her, and he'd known her a long time--she'd been the principal at West Tisbury Elementary School when he had entered kindergarten. Mulder figured there was dirt on Martha's Vineyard younger than Mrs. Brenner. "You know how cats are," she went on. "Yes, ma'am," Mulder said. "Your mom said she'd come pick him up, but I guess she forgot." *Like hell,* Mulder thought. *She always hated that cat.* "She had a lot on her mind," he said. Mrs. Brenner nodded, the bun into which she had gathered her thin, white hair bobbing with the motion. "My Herbert's been gone a long time," she said, "but I remember what it was like to lose him." They went inside, and right away Mulder saw the fat orange tabby sprawled in an armchair, lying on his back with his paws sticking up. Mulder chuckled. "If you look up 'smug' in the dictionary, there'll be a picture of this cat," he said. Mrs. Brenner laughed, deepening the heavy lines in her face. "You'll be staying the night next door, I guess?" she said. A grim thought. Spend the night in that house, from which his sister had disappeared and where his father'd had the back of his head blown off? No, not bloody likely. He shook his head and picked up the cat. "I'm heading on home to D.C.," he said. "At one in the morning?" "Uh, yeah. I've got a lot of stuff to get done. But I really appreciate your taking care of Ditzo. He kind of, well, I guess we kind of overlooked him in the midst of..." He gave up trying to explain and shrugged. "He was no trouble. But, look, you'd better let me make you some coffee, if you're driving back so late." "That's okay. I'll get some at--" "No, no, I've already got the water hot." She was headed for the kitchen. The unexpected kindness made him feel squishy inside--he tended to think of West Tisbury as a painful place. Often he looked straight past the inherent civility of the people in this neighborhood where he'd grown up. Some of them refused to lock their doors even now. Most had stopped being so trusting after Samantha's disappearance. *As if Samantha's abductors would've been stopped by a dead bolt.* "Besides," Mrs. Brenner called, "I've got that package for you that the lawyer brought. I told him I'd keep it for you." "What lawyer?" "You know--Brian Gilhooly. Your dad's lawyer. Must've handled the will. Look on top of the television. I think that's where I left it." A brown legal-size envelope lay on top of the television console. Mulder put the cat back in the armchair and crossed the living room, opened the envelope. It contained a copy of his father's will, and a key ring with one key on it. Mulder ignored the will--he didn't want to read it, not here, not now. He pulled the key out. A long key, with a heavy black rubber head on it, and a plastic clicker on the same ring. He didn't have to read the raised letters on the rubber head to know they spelled out Mitsubishi. His throat constricted painfully. He heard Mrs. Brenner pour water into her old tin drip coffee pot. *Get it together, neurosis-boy.* He shoved the key ring in his pocket, drew a long breath to calm himself. He went to the kitchen. "Listen, I'm going to run next door and get Ditzo's carrying cage," he said. "I'll be right back." "All right, dear," she said. He returned to his father's house and retrieved the cat carrier from the front hall closet. But as he turned to leave, he glanced into the living room. The floor lamp in the corner by the couch was on. A bottle of Scotch sat on the coffee table, with a glass and a newspaper beside it. He had his hand on the doorknob to go, then froze. He hadn't turned on that lamp. He set the cage down and looked again. There were ice cubes in the glass. Someone had been in the house, and not long ago. Maybe still there. Continued in Part 2. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 2 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of the self. - Cyril Connolly. May 5, 1995 West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard *Hell's bells,* Mulder thought. Like a damned fool, he had left the back door unlocked when he went out looking for the cat. Anybody could have come in and helped himself to the contents of the bar. He pulled his gun. "Hello," he called. "Anybody here?" Silence. He eased his way around the door frame into the living room. Nothing. Just that crystal glass, sitting there sweating on the coffee table before the brown leather sofa and the soft pool of yellow-white light cast on the couch itself and the rag rug covering the wood floor. He noticed idly that someone--probably his mother--had tried to scrub the bloodstains off the switch where he had turned off the overhead light the night his father had died. Well, there was no help for it but to search the house. He returned to the front door and armed the burglar alarm. Anybody who opened a door or window now would set it off. He got his flashlight out again, but left it turned off for the moment--there was no sense in advertising his position any more than necessary. Then he set himself grimly to the task and went from room to room, checking the closets, making sure everything was locked behind him. It took a hellish effort to force himself into the bathroom where he had found his father's blood-smeared body weeks ago. The white rug was gone, but underneath where it had lain, the grout in the green tile was stained brown. He pressed on through the house. But he didn't find anybody, and nothing seemed to be missing. He supposed he must have scared off whoever it was when he returned. He went back to the living room. No, he hadn't imagined it. The crystal glass on the coffee table had his father's initials etched in its sweating surface, and three half-melted ice cubes floated in the amber liquid. Mulder reached toward the glass, then stopped himself. *Could be prints on it.* Oh, yeah, like he wanted to call the police. Like he wanted to wait around for West Tisbury's finest to tell him the culprit probably had been a neighborhood teen-ager, sneaking in for a snort of Scotch. They'd write up a report, and it would sit in a file drawer. What was the point? No harm had been done. This old place had been full of ghosts for years, and he had no desire to hang around. He picked up the newspaper lying beside the glass. Today's Washington Sentinel, folded back to reveal a headline that read, "Amateur astronomer claims Skylab debris still in space." A neighborhood teen-age break-in artist with a scientific bent. Mulder read on. "Tashiri Ono, an amateur astronomer working in Tokyo, says he has photographs proving that part of a U.S. orbital laboratory remains in space despite NASA's claim that Skylab crashed to Earth in the mid-1980s. "Ono warns that parts of Australia again are threatened if the orbit of this additional portion of the station should destabilize. "NASA officials say the majority of Skylab burned up on re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere and the remainder landed in an unpopulated region of Australia. 'We believe Mr. Ono has misidentified a communications satellite,' said NASA spokeswoman Jean Jones. "'How would they know that?' Ono said at a press conference Thursday at the Japanese Institute for Amateur Astronomy. 'They haven't seen my photos.'" Mulder dropped the newspaper back on the table. Interesting, but he had a cat to rescue and a long drive back to D.C. ahead of him. He debated what to do with his father's ever-so-racy car, now left in his hands. Fact was, he had never had a sports car, either. Had thought he hadn't really wanted one. But the idea of driving the Mitsubishi was seductive. It was fast; it was cool; it was *free*. Well, except for the increase in his insurance rates. Aw, what the hell. He had a cousin who was just turning driving age--he decided he'd make her a present of his Buick. He got the cat's carrying cage, disarmed and then re-armed the burglar alarm, and went to the garage. Unlike the house, he had left it locked, and he didn't see any sign that anything had been touched. The Mitsubishi's alarm system chirped twice, cheerily, when he punched the button on the clicker. Mulder suppressed a shudder. Another ghost, speaking from the machine. *** Washington, D.C. Ditzo hadn't liked traveling, and he had let Mulder know it by yowling constantly the whole way. Mulder'd had no recourse but to crank up the Mitsubishi's stereo and drown the cat out. By the time he got home, he was exhausted and his ears hurt. He popped open a beer and turned on the television while Ditzo explored his new surroundings. The old tomcat carefully inspected a brown leather armchair, hopped up to sniff intently at the computer and the globe near the windows, peered through the blinds at the street below. He gave the fish in Mulder's aquarium a crafty look--eyes narrowed, tail twitching--then pretended to ignore them. "Don't even think about it," Mulder ordered, but he doubted that would stop Ditzo while there was no one around to supervise him. Nevertheless, after he got the cat's food and water bowls set up in the kitchen and the sandbox stuffed under the bathroom sink, Mulder felt restless, sleepless. He knew what it was: unfinished business. He watched the cat poke around for a few minutes, then sighed. He pulled his father's will out of the envelope. There was only one surprise in it. Bill had left the house to his daughter Samantha, Mulder's sister, who had vanished in 1973. Apparently Bill had still had some hope she'd come back one day, and had wanted, in the end, to leave her a place to come home to. Mulder wondered what his mother would do about that. Did she still have enough hope left to avoid doing the sane thing--having Samantha finally, legally declared dead so the house could be sold? And if not, did he have enough hope left to fight her? **** April 16, 1996 Seven miles southwest of Kyle, Texas Dana Scully wondered if today was the day. The day when Fox Mulder finally would just go too far, come up with a theory that was just too absurd. They were standing in the blistering Texas sun, in a brightly green spring pasture dotted with white boulders and prickly pear cactus--what would have been a pleasantly bucolic environment were it not for the rotting body parts of three mutilated Santa Gertrudis steers, their reddish-brown abdomens swollen in the heat. And the noxious flies, maggots and pillbugs that always attended such carcasses. One of the distended bellies had broken open, spilling white guts and gelled blood and the brown, rotting remains of what the steer had been grazing on before it was killed. The bugs and worms were having a feast. This was the fourth in a series of cattle mutilations that had started in Oklahoma and headed south over a period of several days. Scully knew Mulder didn't think much of cattle mutilation cases. The last one they'd worked, he'd hardly even looked at the scene. But he had hunkered down to study this one, with that laser intensity only Mulder could turn on a crime scene. To quiet her worry, she pointed out to the Hays County sheriff's deputy the scrape marks on a bone. "What do you think?" the deputy asked. "Some kind of cult?" "Satanists rarely take just the parts that are good for steaks," Mulder pronounced. Scully released a sigh of relief. He was working out something, all right, but apparently it had nothing to do with devil-worship, telepathy, mutants or extraterrestrials. He stood, then climbed up in the bed of the deputy's pickup truck, shading his eyes and frowning down at one of the steers. Each had a shiny substance smeared on its swollen flanks. "Rho Rho Chi," Mulder said. "Beg pardon?" the deputy asked. "They've written it on the cows," Mulder said. "Rho Rho Chi. A fraternity that has a charter at the University of Oklahoma in Norman." "I'll be damned," the deputy said. Mulder hopped down from the truck bed. "It's spring break," he said, carefully separating a burr from his trouser leg. "They're probably headed for Padre Island." Scully took a sample of the shiny substance. "What do you think it is?" the sheriff had asked. "Hair gel of some kind," Scully guessed. As soon as she'd said it, she knew what was coming--one of Mulder's wry, gallows remarks. But his heart wasn't in it. "Dippity-Doo-dah-day," he murmured. And that had wrapped that up. Half an hour later, he and Scully were on their way back to the airport in Austin. Today was not the day. **** Austin, Texas Scully stepped up to the counter at the Starbuck's coffee at the airport. It was her turn to buy. "A small regular blend," she said, "and whatever he wants." Then she glanced over her shoulder and noticed that *he* wasn't there. She craned her neck and looked around, then saw him standing in one of the departure lounges, a tall, lean man in a black coat with the strap on his computer case slung over his shoulder. Her partner was frowning intently up at the television hung from the ceiling. Scully shrugged at the clerk behind the counter. "Make it two," she said, and turned back to see what it was that had Mulder so enthralled. She saw the CNN logo down in the corner of the picture. "File tape," it read. She couldn't make out the spoken words, but on the screen she could see Skylab floating in orbit, against the glittering blue-and-white Earth. Then the scene cut to a congressional hearing room, with a sixtyish, graying man in an air force uniform sitting at a table speaking into a microphone. Oh, yeah, the whole Artemis thing. A secret, military-controlled annex to Skylab, detached and left in space when the laboratory's orbit had started to decay. A Japanese astronomer had gotten pictures of it in his telescope while looking for comets. NASA and the air force were trying to explain that without saying much, and without saying anything at all, publicly, about what Artemis' purpose had been. Scully had thought Mulder would find those revelations fascinating, given his bent for anything that had to do with space and/or a government conspiracy. But this was the first time she had seen him show any interest in the Artemis news. What a warped, mercurial character he was, in his own oddly endearing way. Scully paid for the coffees and carried them over to where he stood by the television. "Here," she said, holding one out to him. He was still staring up at the screen. Stock market report now--she knew he wasn't interested in that. He was processing--that was her word for it--rummaging around in that photographic memory of his, searching for something, like a computer with its screen momentarily frozen while it accessed its hard disk. Only she didn't think she'd ever seen him have to work at it this hard, or this long, before. Usually, he found whatever he wanted to retrieve and snapped out of it almost immediately. "Mulder," she said. He rounded on her, startled, dark hazel eyes wide. Mulder's train of thought was an intercontinental express--it didn't stop for anything or anybody--but this time she had derailed it. For a second he looked as if he didn't recognize her, as if he hadn't quite come back from wherever he'd been. Then he blinked. "Oh," he said. "You okay?" she asked. "Yeah," he glanced away, embarrassed, and took the coffee. "What time's the flight?" "We've got forty-five minutes. What's the news on Artemis?" He shrugged. "I only heard a couple seconds of it." Scully resisted the temptation to ask, "Then where were you?" He sat down to wait, blowing on his coffee. Ever-so-subtly, he was avoiding her eyes, and he practically radiated tension. Something had rattled him. She gave him a couple of minutes to settle himself. When he didn't, she turned to him and said, "What?" She had his number, and he sighed to show he knew it. "Probably nothing," he said. "Just something I hadn't thought about for a long time. Eidetic memory's a weird thing to live with--things suddenly come back to you at the oddest moments." It was all right with Scully if he didn't want to tell her, and she decided not to push it anymore. She knew very well that Mulder had a fair number of memories that might discomfit him. If he had any horror stories she hadn't already heard, she didn't want to know. Instead she changed the subject. "My theory is that Skinner sends us out on these cattle mutilation things to give himself a sort of mini-vacation." Mulder nodded. "It gets me off his back for a couple of days, and he knows even I'm not going to fall for any 'aliens killed my cows' bullshit. So there won't be any trouble." "Well, this one won't do our closure rate any harm." Mulder shrugged again. Scully knew he didn't care much about closure rates, although occasionally the number of cases they solved had been the only thing standing between Mulder and dismissal from the bureau. And while Mulder might find cattle mutilations dull and phony, the truth was, he was as much in his element there as when chasing UFOs. Hell, he had literally written the book on occult-based criminal activity. He could pick out a real thing or a hoax from a mile away, almost as if by smell. And he hated the frauds--would track them as ruthlessly and single-mindedly as a cheetah went after a kill. It was impressive, too. Like this one today. Ten minutes of good, old-fashioned crime scene work and they had turned it back over to the locals. Nothing left but to go home and write the report. When Mulder was hot, he was amazing. Now, however, he stared fixedly out the window as their jet pulled up to the gate, wrapped in his own thoughts. He seemed calmer now than he had been a few minutes ago, but Scully would have bet her teeth he wasn't seeing the 727 at all. She resigned herself to a quiet flight. **** Washington, D.C. Mulder was still thinking about Skylab as he unlocked the door to his apartment. Or rather, he was thinking about why he was still thinking about it. And he didn't know why. He had seen that particular view of Skylab before--it was NASA file tape that the news dragged out periodically and that showed up occasionally on documentaries about the space program. The problem was, it triggered something in him, and he had never been able to pin down just what that something was. And it always left him with a kind of free-floating anxiety, a vague, queasy tightening in his chest that seemed to have no source. Mulder knew he was paranoid--paranoia was an old friend--but there were reasons for that. But he could usually trace those fears to a source. Except this one. Worse yet, whatever this fear was, it didn't *feel* unsourced. It felt like a recollection, like the kind of old image he routinely dredged up, dusted off, used and then refiled in the Chinese puzzle box that was his eidetic memory. Except that he could search those out and knew where to refile them. The looking-at-Skylab memory, if it really was a memory, was information he knew he had, but he had no idea where it had come from or what it meant. He knew his memory wasn't perfect; it had failed him badly once before, when he had forgotten or repressed what had happened to his sister, Samantha. And the way it worked always had been a little quirky anyway--it trashed information he hadn't regarded as important at the time, haphazardly kept or discarded things he hadn't been paying attention to. He could visualize a page out of a book he had read twenty-five years ago and quote from it verbatim, but have no idea what page number it was. Still, it disturbed him when the damned memory quirked up on him. He relied on it for so much. Ditzo wandered out from the bedroom, slinking against the doorframe looking contented. Mulder checked the food and water bowls. Both full. He had arranged with a neighbor to come in and take care of the cat while he was out of town. There were seven calls on his answering machine, all from someone who had hung up without saying anything, all dated today. Who the hell would call him that many times and not leave a message? Mulder shrugged. What the hell--anybody who wanted to talk to him that badly would call again. The phone rang. Mulder jerked his tie off and picked it up. "Yeah, Mulder," he said. A moment of hesitant silence, in which Mulder heard highway traffic in the background. Then the caller said softly, "So, Mulder, you want another shot at me?" Krycek. Mulder drew a long breath. *Stay cool.* "Where are you?" "I want to come in," Krycek said. "There's a lot I can tell you, *partner*." Mulder heard the sneer in his tone. Rotten son of a bitch. He bit down hard on his anger. "In exchange for what?" "Protection. Things are a little hot out here." "My heart's bleeding. Do you still have the tape?" "Bad news," Krycek said. "Bateman's got the tape." "Bateman?" "Shelby Bateman. Ugly old dude. Smokes a lot. Remember him?" *Cancerman has a name. People with names can be tracked.* "I remember," Mulder said carefully. "Like I said, I can tell you a lot. All you have to do is keep me alive long enough." Continued in part 3. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 3 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ It is your enemies who keep you straight. For real use one active, sneering enemy is worth two ordinary friends. - Edgar Watson Howe April 16, 1996 Arlington, Va. Mulder seethed as he raced out the Columbia Pike toward Annandale. Krycek had holed up in a tourist trap motel just outside the Beltway, near Lake Accotink. "Bring some extra ammo," he had said. "They're right on my ass." *Yeah, I've got plenty of bullets. Don't you worry about that.* Krycek was the last person Mulder wanted to protect. In fact, what Mulder really wanted was to empty a whole magazine right between Krycek's beady blue eyes. The motherfucker had killed Mulder's father. He had a connection to Scully's abduction, and while he might not have been the trigger man when Scully's sister had been killed, he had damned well been in on it. And now he had the balls to insist that Mulder should babysit him. Goddamn, but Mulder hoped Krycek would try to escape, pull a gun, take a swing at him, *anything* to give him the least excuse! He had thought about calling Scully, both for backup and because he figured she had a right to be in on the collar. But even in his black, frantic eagerness to get his hands on Krycek, the possibility that the double agent's reappearance was a trap hadn't entirely escaped Mulder. If so, he and Scully'd both be better off if she didn't get snared along with him. And trap or not, he couldn't ignore it--Krycek was a murder suspect and a material witness. All his personal issues aside, bringing the evil little rat in was Mulder's job and his duty. A pleasure, too, but that was beside the point. The RoadRest motel had a garish, flashing sign. Mulder didn't like the place. Too well-lighted, too near the highway, too populous. Too accessible to the seats of power. And the U-shaped building had only one exit from the parking lot, a driveway over a culvert in a deep drainage ditch. Not good for someone who needed an alternate escape route. Mulder found a parking slot near the road, in an effort to make sure he wouldn't get blocked in. The Mitsubishi had keyless entry--the clicker would unlock the doors and start the engine from twenty-five feet away at the touch of the button. Mulder set it, unsnapped the flap on his holster and went to the room Krycek had specified, moving quietly, casually. He positioned himself between the doorframe and the window and reached to rap on the door. The door eased open a crack. "That you, Foxy?" Krycek whispered. Mulder ground his teeth. "Yeah, it's me. Let's go." "Give me a second. I gotta get my stuff." A short silence, then, "Are you going to just stand out there? Somebody'll see you." "I get alone in the dark with you, ratfucker, and I'm likely to blow your ass to hell. Get your shit and come on." Krycek came out, carrying a backpack. New, from the sharp dye smell of it. Mulder caught him by the shoulder and spun him around, forced him up against the side of the building. Frisked him, checked the bag. Nothing. Mulder turned him face-forward again and tossed the bag at him. "A little testy this evening," Krycek said. "Did we not have our nap?" "Don't fuck with me, Krycek." Mulder inclined his head toward the car. "Black Mitsubishi. Move." Krycek started across the parking lot. "Very nice," he said, looking at the car. "You rob a bank?" "I inherited it," Mulder said coldly. "My dad left it to me after you blew his brains all over his bathroom." They walked a couple of steps in silence, then Krycek said, "You're going to kill me, aren't you?" "Your odds are just about fifty-fifty. Don't push it." "Look, I didn't kill him. I swear--" "And you'd never lie to me, would you, Alex? Especially not if your life depended on it." He shoved Krycek toward the Mitsubishi. "Get in the fucking car. You drive. Head for the Hoover Building. I'm sure you know the way." He hit the button on the clicker. The Mitsubishi chirped twice, taillights blinking, and rumbled to life. Krycek seemed to have recovered his sense of humor. "Jesus," he said softly. "To the bat cave." Just then a helicopter roared up from behind the building, its searchlights dazzling. "Go!" Mulder yelled, but Krycek had already leaped for the car, running all-out like a panicked deer. They were both good sprinters, but government-issue fleet sedans charged in from the highway before Krycek could get the Mitsubishi backed out and turned around. Four cars, fanned out to form a semicircle in the driveway, completely blocking the road. Krycek hit the brakes and stopped. The 3000 GT was no all-terrain vehicle; it wasn't going to make it across that ditch. "Shit," Krycek said helplessly. Mulder just sighed. He wasn't even surprised. "Fuck!" Krycek yelled. Men-In-Black, guns drawn, advancing from the front; troops with M-16s advancing from the rear. "Mulder, you've got to help me! They get me, and I'll be floating down the Potomac in ten minutes!" Mulder figured this was the first piece of truth Krycek had uttered in years. "Okay," he said wearily. "Lock the door." He pulled his badge, opened the passenger-side door and held the badge up, slowly got out of the car, hands in the air. "Federal agent!" he yelled over the chop of the helicopter's blades. "I've got a suspect in custody." He couldn't see their faces, silhouetted against the headlights. One of the MIBs flipped him around and shoved him up against the car. "Yeah, I know who you are, Agent Mulder," he said. "And just who the hell are you?" Mulder asked, as the MIB took his gun. "NSA." He flashed a badge in front of Mulder's face. Mulder didn't get a good look at it, but he caught the surname--Jones. "Oh, bullshit," Mulder said. "Look, this man's wanted for questioning in connection with two murders. His ass is mine, and you can't legally interfere without--" "Shut up, Mulder," the MIB said. "I've got orders of my own. File a fucking complaint." One of the other MIBs, this one a blond with fat cheeks, was trying to get Krycek out of the car, under the watchful eye of two of the troops. "The door's locked," the blond said. The MIB holding Mulder thrust one hand into the pocket of Mulder's jeans, got his keys and tossed them over the car at the blond. "Ow!" Mulder yelled. "Hey, I was a virgin! You're goddamned right I'm going to file a complaint!" The MIB grabbed his shoulder and turned him around. "Look, Mulder," he said. "No, *you* look, asshole." He couldn't see it, but he could hear them dragging Krycek out of the driver's seat, could feel the struggle through the movement of the car at his back. "You tell me what you're doing walking off with my suspect, and where you're taking him. This is obstruction of justice." "Mulder!" Krycek yelled. He sounded desperate, terrified. "And don't give me any bullshit about being with the NSA," Mulder pressed, "because you and I both know that's crap. Who do you really work for? MJ-12? Falcon? Garnet?" "I'm going to give you to a count of five," the MIB said. He started walking away, backward, toward his own car. "And when I hit five, you'd better be--" "What's your real name, 'Jones?'" Mulder yelled. "Do you report to Bateman?" And then everything went black. Continued in Part 4. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 4 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ Problems are only opportunities in work clothes. - Henry Kaiser April 17, 1996 Washington, D.C. Mulder woke on the couch in his apartment, with a nasty, dry taste in his mouth, a real screamer of a headache and Ditzo curled up on his chest. Car parked out in his usual space, as if nothing had happened. Not a surprise--the MIBs would want to make the incident last night look like just another of "Spooky" Mulder's little fantasies. He expected they had done their usual thorough job of it. Not even a shower and coffee made him feel any better. His head and his back hurt like hell, and his brain didn't seem to be working at its usual speed. He dressed and went to work anyway. *File a complaint,* he thought bitterly. *You bet your sweet ass, I will.* Fifteen minutes after he logged in the paperwork, Scully rushed into the office. "Skinner wants to see us," she said. "Wow, that was fast," Mulder said. Scully gave him that look--one hand on her hip, mouth pursed, head slightly inclined, the young-man-you-are-simply-incorrigible look. Had she learned that from one of those ruler-wielding nuns in some Catholic school? "Mulder, what have you done now?" she asked. "My job," Mulder said irritably. "Or tried to, at any rate. Don't worry, Scully, all will become clear in a few minutes. And this time, goddammit, it's not my fault." She softened. "You look terrible," she said. "Didn't you sleep well?" "Oh, yeah. I always sleep very soundly after being cracked in the back of the head with a rifle butt. It's the waking up that doesn't go well." "What?" He headed down the hall toward the assistant director's office. "Sorry, Scully, but I just plain hurt too bad to explain this twice." **** "Backup," Skinner said coldly. "Are you familiar with the concept, Agent Mulder? You call, assistance arrives. It was covered in your course at Quantico, was it not?" *Yeah,* Mulder thought. *You'd have authorized that, wouldn't you? Sure, Mulder, no problem, we'll send you a dozen agents. Choppers. Uzis. Yeah, right.* He bit it back. "Yes, sir. But by the time it became clear it was needed, I could've called out the National Guard and it wouldn't have been enough." "It might've been enough to keep you from getting your head bashed in," Skinner said. *Oh, now it's me he's worried about.* Mulder's head felt like it was about to crack open. "Yes, sir," he said. "I'm sorry, sir." The assistant director sighed heavily and leaned back in his chair, his fingers steepled, his eyes masked behind the glare off his glasses. Mulder couldn't tell how angry Skinner really was, and he didn't care. "Look, Mulder, I have some issues I'd like to take up with Krycek, too," Skinner said. "But that's not going to happen unless we actually get him in here." "I'm painfully aware of that, sir." "With all due respect, sir," Scully said, "we've been denied backup in the past." "Just about everybody has been, at one time or another," Skinner shot back, in his ex-Marine, drill sergeant voice. The hard tones felt like hammers banging against the inside of Mulder's skull. "But if either of you feel that you can't rely on this division to provide you with support for legitimate purposes, maybe you ought to consider reassignment to a division you *can* rely on." Carefully, Scully said, "It's been my experience, sir, that it depends heavily on who's defining 'legitimate.'" Skinner held her look for a long moment, then let it drop. Score one for Scully. Skinner picked up the complaint form Mulder had filled out. He gave Mulder a baleful look. "Should I infer anything from this nearly-unprecedented effort to proceed through channels?" "Just that I haven't got a better idea, sir," Mulder said. "Frankly, I'm not optimistic that this grievance against Agent... 'Jones' will do any good." "No, sir," Mulder said. "But it's the only shot we've got, at this point." "All right," the assistant director said. "I'll put it through. I wouldn't want the NSA to think it's entirely above sanction." *It is,* Mulder thought, *but what the hell.* Skinner glared at Mulder. "If Krycek should call you again--" "He won't," Mulder said. "He's dead." Skinner nodded, dismissing them. Mulder and Scully headed back to their basement office. "He went pretty light on me," Mulder said. "Anything else would have been a little like clubbing a kitten," she murmured, stepping into the elevator. "What's that supposed to mean?" "Mulder, you're just barely on your feet." "I'm okay." She sighed and punched "L" instead of "B." "I'm taking you home," she said. "I got here on my own; I can get home on my own. Besides, I'm all right." Actually, he wasn't so sure he was. His head throbbed, and he wanted desperately to lie down. She shook her head. "Look, your eyelids are at half-mast. Come on." She took his arm, and he let her tow him. **** Scully knew Mulder really had to be hurting to let her put him to bed with so little fight. He headed for the couch, but she insisted he should get in bed, and then she moved the remote control for the television out of his easy reach. She wanted him to sleep, not spend the afternoon watching old movies on cable. He hardly even protested, just kicked off his shoes, laid down on top of the covers and started handing her the stuff in his pockets--keys, gun, cell phone. They'd been over this ground before. He pulled off his tie and dropped it on the floor. She picked it up, draped it over a chair. She sat down beside him on the bed. "Let me look at your eyes," she said. She checked his pupils; they looked okay. "How long were you out?" "I don't know," he said wearily. "It's bound to have been lengthened by whatever they shot me full of to make sure I'd stay out while they got me home." "How do you know they gave you a shot?" "Because I've got a bruise on my butt where they stuck me." "Where on your head did they hit you?" He shifted so she could look at the back of his head. Under the thick brown hair she felt a lump about the diameter of a golf ball. The blow hadn't broken the skin. Very professional, she thought. They hit him just hard enough to put his lights out, not hard enough to do any permanent damage. "Ow," he muttered, when she touched it. "I think you're going to live," Scully said. "Just get some rest, and I'll look in on you again after work. You want me to stay a little while?" "No, I'm okay." His voice sounded muffled, groggy. "I'm sorry I lost him again," he said, miserably. "It wasn't your fault." "Skinner's right--I should've called you." "Even if I'd been there, there's nothing I could've done that you didn't do." "Maybe." He didn't sound convinced. "We've got to try to find him again, if he's still alive. He knows who ordered the hit on your sister. I'm sure of it." "We'll find him," she said, with more conviction than she felt. She stroked his back, just between his shoulder blades. He stretched a little, like a cat, then lay still. She petted him again and felt him begin to relax under her touch. "I'll just stay 'til you're asleep," she said. She knew him so well--how many times had she sat beside him, in a car, on a plane, while he drifted off to sleep? She kept on caressing his back, waiting for the long, deep sigh she knew would mean he had finally gone under. It took about ten minutes. Quietly, she got up and folded the blanket over him. He shifted and sighed again. Scully paused, looking at him as he slept. She sometimes thought, when he was sleeping, all the muscles of his face relaxed and innocent, that he was handsome--with his sweet, soft mouth and fine, strong jawline. Of course, his eyes were closed, and they were his best feature, dark and soulful or vibrantly green, depending on the light. She liked watching him when he didn't know she was looking. When he was unconscious and it wasn't likely he might suddenly do something annoying. Some days she wasn't even sure she liked him, but he certainly brought out all her nurturing instincts, there was no denying that. *Too bad he's such a pain in the ass when he's awake,* she thought, and left. **** Shelby Bateman was not a happy man. He didn't like having to deal with uppity subordinates, and Walter Skinner had developed a decidedly uppity streak of late. Skinner was supposed to be one of Bateman's lackeys, and at first he had performed in a quite suitably obedient manner. But he seemed to have gotten the idea that it was up to him to decide when he should follow or ignore orders. That annoyed the hell out of Bateman. After their last encounter, Bateman would have preferred not to deal with Skinner at all. Bateman knew he was a poor loser--he had enough covert power that he could afford to be. But this business of raising a protocol complaint with the NSA... Skinner could not be allowed to get away with it, and it was up to Bateman to put a stop to it. Worse yet, if what Skinner's complaint alleged was true, Alex Krycek was loose. How the hell that weasel could've gotten out of the missile silo in North Dakota, Bateman couldn't imagine. And there were some ops units out there, the bozos supposedly guarding the silo and its precious contents, who were about to feel Bateman's wrath if Krycek really had managed to escape. First, however, he had to threaten or cajole Skinner into getting off his back. Now, Bateman stood in Skinner's wood-paneled office, with its shiny brass accents, and tapped a Morley out of the pack and lit it, knowing full well it would aggravate the assistant director to have the room fill up with cigarette smoke. "I don't know where Krycek is," Bateman said frostily. "He disappeared months ago. If he's half as smart as he thinks he is, he's left the country and won't be back." "He's been back," Skinner said. "Agent Mulder escorted him from Hong Kong to Washington a couple of months ago, but Krycek got away in a car crash." "Agent Mulder is prone to such fantasies," Bateman said. He blew a plume of smoke toward Skinner and watched the assistant director almost keep his lip from curling in distaste. "Besides, it's not my problem if Mulder can't hold on to a suspect." "Mulder didn't lose Krycek, this time. Your people came and took him. And I want him back. I want him *now*." "You're suggesting that 'my people' took that action without my knowledge, and let me assure you--" "No, I'm *suggesting* that you're lying," Skinner shot back. "I don't believe for a minute that you don't know where Krycek is. You've got him, and I'm *suggesting* that you'd better produce him before an interagency squabble gets leaked to the press." "I would advise you not to do that," Bateman said. A cold anger gathered along his spine. "Or what?" Skinner demanded. "You'll have Krycek or one of his buddies kill me? That's been tried before, you know." Bateman advanced on Skinner's desk, intruding into his space. "Just who the hell do you think you are?" he asked quietly. "Do you imagine for a moment that killing you is the worst damage I could do? I have the power to reduce this entire bureau to an historical curiosity. Take care what you do and what you say and to whom, Mr. Skinner--take care. I've gone through bigger obstacles than you." "I'm not afraid of you," Skinner said. Bateman flicked an ash onto the middle of Skinner's desktop. "You should be," he said. He headed for the door. "If I hear anything about Agent Krycek's whereabouts, we'll talk again. Until then, you do nothing--don't even think about doing anything." **** th Street New York City The Consortium's board of directors gathered, one by one, in the New York Colony Club's sub-basement, a dim, cold concrete labyrinth shot through with steam and water pipes, and electrical conduit, and its ceiling dotted with bare, caged light bulbs. Normally they met in more congenial surroundings, in the clubroom three floors up, but this was an emergency meeting requiring the utmost secrecy and security. Especially security. Roy Higginbotham, the elder statesman of the group, surveyed them as they came in. They'd been twelve once, but now were reduced, through death or retirement, to seven. And only four tonight. Three of their members hadn't been invited. This was among the European members, leaving the Americans and the Japanese out. Higginbotham hoped tonight, at last, it would become clear whether the rest of them could still trust the Americans and the Japanese. The group had split into factions over the years, and Higginbotham had lost track of who had changed sides on which occasions, but generally there were two philosophies among the members on the question of how to cope with the aliens. Rather fancifully, Higginbotham thought of them as hawks and doves--those who wanted to do all-out battle, and those who thought the better course was negotiation, or even outright appeasement. And of course, there'd been the occasional turncoat along the path, like that morph who had called himself "Jeremiah Smith." In the process of cataloging humans, he had grown fond of them. And then there'd been Dr. Berube, who had developed a sympathy with the grays and decided to try to help them win their freedom from the morphs. The morphs'd had no sense of humor at all about Berube's experiments. Higginbotham himself had always been a dove. The aliens were coming, like it or not, he reasoned, and the only realistic approach was to deal. The only realistic way to save part of the human race. In the beginning, they'd been lucky enough to have something to bargain with--the hostages from the Roswell crash. And of course, even the hawks had known they had to *pretend* to deal, and keep up the charade long enough to make the necessary preparations for the war they wanted. But now it looked as if the hawk faction had done something rash. It looked as if they hadn't returned all the hostages as they had promised. As it had ever been, the group had more Americans than representatives from any other single nation: two. Higginbotham ran through the list: Bateman and Tom Corvin, U.S., and Ishimoto, Japan; the missing members. Himself, representing Great Britain. Duval, France. Semarone, Italy, arriving a minute or two late, as always. Gerhard, Germany. All graying, faces lined with the weight of what they'd done, what they'd known, over the years. Semarone, who had once been thin, now was nearly as broad as he was tall, and seemed expressionless because his jowls absorbed all facial subtlety. My God, Higginbotham thought. How old we've all become in the service of our masters. The group complete, they started down a musty, dank corridor toward the cell where Alex Krycek was being held. "When did you take him?" Gerhard asked. "Last night," Higginbotham said. "How did you find him?" "We had some assistance from Special Agent Mulder." Semarone gave a little snort of disgust. "What a nuisance he is." Higginbotham shrugged. "But often more help than he is harm. We might never have found Agent Krycek without him." In truth, Higginbotham rather liked what he knew of Fox Mulder. A man of intellect and determination, and seemingly bottomless courage. An endless capacity for moral outrage. Bill Mulder's *enfant terrible* was a Sherlockian figure, brilliant, daring and eccentric. He reminded Higginbotham of himself, thirty years ago. None of which would have stopped Higginbotham from feeding Mulder into a wood-chipping machine if it had ever become necessary. *And we are Moriarty to his Holmes.* Higginbotham wondered if it was an even contest--Mulder's quick wit and youthful physical endurance against their collective experience, power and cunning, honed over more than four decades. He decided it was weighted in favor of the Consortium. They had been able to see Mulder coming before he could marshal his forces or discover his strengths. They had set traps for the hunter before he had even known he had prey to seek. And he was handicapped by an emotional trauma *they* had created for him. But then, of course, there was Agent Scully to consider, too--Mulder's Dr. Watson--and it was possible she might tip the balance considerably. There was something about her that centered him, counteracted his almost suicidal tendency to recklessness. She had imposed on him a higher standard, and in trying to meet it, he was coming ever closer to the truth he so desperately wanted to find. Alone, he was nearly as dangerous to himself as to the Consortium. Together, he and Scully were a potential threat. They reached Krycek's cell. A guard with a patch that read "Majestic" punched a code into a keypad. His pasty white face reflected that he rarely spent time above ground. The Consortium members entered and stood silently, looking at the cell's occupant. He had dark hair and blue eyes, and was tall, well-built and lithe. He looked the Consortium members over, one by one. And then he said softly, "Who among you knows where are The Five?" Higginbotham went cold. *Not Krycek. My God, it's an omni-morph.* Continued in Part 5. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 5 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ Dreaming men are haunted men. - Stephen Vincent Benet April 17, 1996 New York City Duval and Semarone bolted the room; Gerhard charged the dark-haired figure. Higginbotham simply froze while what they had thought was Krycek snapped Gerhard's neck with a quick chop just under the jaw. The German representative's head lolled, his body twitching uncontrollably, then he fell in a heap, still convulsing, eyes and mouth open and empty. His sphincters let go, the smell of shit and urine suddenly sharp in the air. Then "Krycek" began his change, to a taller, heavier, creature, with light brown hair and pale blue eyes--a human face, but one so brutal and crude it seemed human in shape only. It turned a cold, baleful look on Higginbotham, and despite himself, the old man shrank against the wall, mortally afraid. "We will have The Five," the omni-morph said. "Your time is up." It didn't run, just walked past Higginbotham and out the open door. "Don't shoot it!" Higginbotham shouted. "Let it go!" If its skin were punctured, the fumes coming off its green blood would kill them all. In horror, Higginbotham watched it go, unimpeded, the humans in the building seeming to melt away out of its path. Dear Lord, it was true. The Americans had kept The Five for themselves. God help the human race. **** Washington, D.C. Scully returned to Mulder's apartment just after sundown to find the place dark and silent. Amazing--maybe the king of the insomniacs had actually slept all afternoon. She had brought him Chinese food, egg rolls and hot-and-sour soup, figuring he wouldn't have eaten anything. She set the box down on the tiny kitchen counter. She flipped on the kitchen light. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of two glittering green eyes and whirled around, startled and reaching for her gun, then realized they were cat's eyes. A plump, self-satisfied orange tabby sat on top of the refrigerator, staring down at her curiously. When the hell had Mulder acquired a cat? She heard a low moan from the bedroom and frowned. "Mulder?" she called softly. Silence. She headed toward the bedroom, then heard something else, a gasp or a sob; she couldn't quite make it out. In the glow cast by the kitchen light, she could just see that he was curled up in a ball in the middle of the bed. She went to him. "Mulder?" she said again. "Are you all right?" Another shuddering sob. He was dreaming. She knew he had hellish nightmares--sometimes when they were on the road she heard him cry out from the hotel room next door. Once she had telephoned him late at night and had wrenched him out of one, his breathing harsh, his voice trembling with it. But she had never actually had to confront him face-to-face while in the throes of one. She sat on the bed so she could reach him and gently put a hand on his shoulder. He came out of it suddenly, flinging himself up and toward her. The next thing she knew, he had her pinned to the mattress by the shoulders. She yelped--more in surprise than in fear or pain. He froze at the sound and seemed to get hold of himself. "Scully," he whispered. He was panting, trembling, and she saw tears sliding down his cheek. "Oh, God," he said, and let go of her, let himself roll backward onto the bed and then over so that he faced away from her, toward the wall. "Are you all right?" she asked. "Leave me alone." He was crying. "Mulder--" "Just go away!" This came out in a wail. *No way, mister,* Scully thought. *That'd violate my Hippocratic Oath.* She slid across the bed until she could sit on the edge of it, then lifted his head onto her lap. "Don't," he said thickly. But he didn't try to pull away from her, and Scully wasn't letting go. "Hush," she whispered. She stroked his hair with one hand and rubbed his chest with the other, like she would have done to quiet a tired, cranky child. "Tell me what you dreamed," she said. "That doesn't help," he said. "Tell me anyway." He was trembling. She felt a tear wet her right pants leg. "Tell me," she pressed. "It's dark," he said. "Some dark place, like all the light in the universe has gone out. I can't see anything but blackness. And it's cold." He shuddered, remembering. "And then I can hear somebody crying and screaming in pain, and I want to go and help, but it's too dark. I can't see, and I can't find her. And then suddenly I realize the person who's crying is me..." He trailed off, and Scully felt another tear, hot where it soaked through the fabric. *My God, no wonder these dreams make a mess of him.* "This is a recurring nightmare, isn't it?" she asked. She felt him stop for a moment. "How'd you know that?" he asked. "You're describing it in the present tense." He thought about that for a moment. "Damn, you're good," he said. "Ever think about switching over and becoming a shrink?" "No. I wouldn't enjoy it." But she sensed that somehow she had calmed him, either by making him tell her the dream or by causing him to think about it in a more professional sense, in a way he could deal with it. The worst had passed. He lifted his head and rolled onto his back. Scully let him go. "I've had that dream in bouts, every two or three years, ever since..." He hesitated. "Since Samantha," Scully put in. "Yeah. I'll dream that every night for a couple of weeks, and then it just goes away for another few years." "Is there any pattern to it? Any way to know what's triggering it?" "Skylab," he said. Scully blinked in surprise. "Skylab?" "Or in this case, Artemis." He shook his head, slowly. "I have no idea why, but when I see or hear something about Skylab, I get a sort of anxiety attack, and then I have that particular nightmare, like I said, over and over again for a couple of weeks." *That explains why he hasn't been hanging all over the news--he's been trying to *avoid* the news.* "Interesting," she said, not knowing what else to say. He groaned. "That sounds like the kind of 'interesting' that doctors use when they're thinking, 'for God's sake, get a straitjacket in here now.'" "I'm thinking no such thing--after all, if you've been having this dream since 1973, it's clear you've developed some means of coping with it, even if only as simple as gutting it out for a couple of weeks." "I think that's what they said about Ted Bundy, too." "Don't be ridiculous, Mulder. You're no Ted Bundy." "Scully, if I did my own profile, I'd go get the straitjacket myself. It's part of the reason I'm good at profiling--I don't have wild urges to hack people up, but I do have an uncanny knack for knowing how people like the Unabomber think. I know how they *feel*, because I have some of the same kinds of traumatic emotional shit in my own background. So why don't I feel compelled to mail-bomb the Pentagon? I don't know." "I know," Scully said. "Because you never really bought it that you're inherently evil and worthless and deserved to be traumatized. And consequently, you identify at least as much with victims of crime as with criminals. You have moments when you doubt yourself, but you don't ever sign the check." He didn't respond to that. Instead, he said, "I didn't hurt you, did I?" "I'm fine, but you gave me a helluva start. How's your head?" "It's a little better. Have you been here all day?" "No. I brought you something to eat." "Oh. Uh, at the risk of seeming ungrateful, I'm really not feeling very hungry." "It's just egg rolls and some soup. I want you to try to eat a little of it, okay?" He sighed. "Yes, doctor." He climbed out of bed, heading for the bathroom. "I'll meet you in the kitchen in a couple of minutes." "Okay. Uh, Mulder?" "Yeah?" "Did you know there's a cat on your refrigerator?" He nodded. "As long as he's not *in* the refrigerator, we're okay." **** An omni-morph sat beside a young man's dead body in an apartment directly across the street from Fox Mulder's building, watching intently. It had hoped there'd be no need to kill the tenant who had occupied the lookout it needed, not because it had any feelings about killing a human--it was of the warrior circle and unsentimental about its function. But it didn't know how long it'd have to wait and watch, and it knew that eventually the human's body would smell even worse than it already did. That might attract attention the omni-morph wished to avoid. Perhaps it would be able to dispose of the corpse at some point before a problem arose. A red-haired woman entered Mulder's building at around six-thirty, carrying a box. The omni-morph didn't want her. She didn't know where The Five were being kept. Mulder didn't know either, and even if he had, the omni-morph couldn't touch him. The Third Circle had taken the unprecedented--and very controversial--step of declaring Fox Mulder an Inquestor, despite his being a human. According to the Premises, any harm done to an Inquestor was punishable by the last of the deaths. The omni-morph had had one death, and it had not found it pleasant. It did not wish to have eleven more on account of a human, even if the human was an Inquestor. When the other humans had come at the hotel and had struck Mulder, the omni-morph had stretched its hearing to the limit until it had heard Mulder's breath move--and that breath had been the only reason the remaining humans still lived. One could hide things from an Inquestor, one could thwart an Inquestor's search, but dealing him a death was not permitted. The omni-morph didn't want Mulder. It wanted Krycek, who would lead it to the Responsibles--those humans who had taken The Five and held them hostage for so long. It had not succeeded in reaching the Responsibles by posing as Krycek; it needed the man himself. So the omni-morph watched Mulder because it knew that eventually Krycek would come to the human Inquestor. Krycek had nowhere else to go. **** April 18, 1996 Scully was ready to call it a day when the fax machine rang. "Are you limping?" Scully asked, as Mulder shuffled over to the machine. "Yeah. I think I strained something in my back the other night, while I was out trying to save Krycek's ass. I'm okay." She saw him frown at the fax. "What is it?" "Uh... Holy shit." She got up crossed to stand beside him as he looked down at the sheet of paper that had scrolled out of the machine. "Oh, my God," she said. The picture on the sheet was the face of a man she had last seen falling off a bridge. "Mulder, this is the man who took me hostage in exchange for that woman who claimed to be your sister." She didn't say that she also had seen him morph--from a flawless impersonation of Fox Mulder, he had changed his body into the one shown on the fax. She still wasn't sure that had really happened; after all, she had banged her head up against a wall moments before seeing it, so why give Mulder ideas? "As far as we know, this guy's dead, right?" she said. "So why would somebody send us a picture of him?" "No," Mulder said grimly. "He's not dead. Or at any rate, the last time I saw him, he was quite thoroughly kicking my ass." "I'll run the phone number on the fax machine." "Okay. You're going to find it doesn't exist, but it's got to be tried. I'm going to try something else. I'll call you if I get anything; otherwise I'll see you in the morning." **** When Mulder got home, he headed straight for the roll of masking tape on his desk. Before he got there, he sensed a presence and spun around, gun drawn. Krycek, half-ducking behind the kitchen counter. Or was it the alien? Continued in Part 6. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 6 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ Everything is a dangerous drug except reality, which is unendurable. - Cyril Connolly April 18, 1996 Washington, D.C. "Don't shoot me, okay?" Krycek said. "Look, Mulder, I know what you think, but you've got to listen to me." Mulder had no intention of shooting him. If he turned out to be the alien, toxic fumes would escape from the wound. Mulder had been exposed to the retrovirus in those fumes once, and had no wish to repeat the experience. But he kept the Smith trained on Krycek...or whatever. "How'd you get away from the NSA?" he asked Krycek. "NSA, my ass. Those guys are no more NSA than you are." "That doesn't answer my question." "The alien got one of the guards, and then it fried the rest of them. Look, Mulder, you mind if I get a drink of water or something? I was stuck in that goddamned missile silo for a month, and I've been on the run ever since, trying to get back from North Dakota. You ever try to go four thousand miles with no money, no credit cards? I've been sleeping in ditches and eating garbage. I had a bath in a thunderstorm three days ago, but I don't think it helped much." *What the hell's he talking about?* "Where were you night before last?" Mulder asked. "Philadelphia. I hopped an eastbound freight train yesterday--I just got back into D.C. last night." "Shit," Mulder said. Either he was lying, or the "Krycek" he had met at the hotel hadn't been Krycek at all. How the hell would he find out which? He gestured with the gun. "Get your drink," he said, to give himself stall space in which to think. **** The omni-morph had been following Mulder all day, waiting with the patience of a creature who had eleven more lives to spend in achieving its objective. It couldn't see the other man in Mulder's apartment, but it stretched its hearing until it heard him speak. And then it knew. The wait was over. **** "All I know is, besides the one that took me over in Hong Kong, there are five more of them," Krycek said. "And the aliens want them back, and Bateman doesn't want to give them up." "That doesn't explain why they were keeping you in the silo," Mulder said. He had let Krycek sit down--the double agent had looked like he was about to fall down. And this time he had called Scully. She was on her way over. Mulder still had his gun in his hand, but he had stopped pointing it at Krycek. In the meantime, he was trying to get some answers out of the double agent while he could. "I don't know. They didn't tell me that. It wouldn't trouble Bateman's conscience any just to put a slug through my brain--he already tried to off me once--so you know they have to have been saving me for something. Otherwise, why bother to shove in food and water twice a day?" "Why would Bateman want to kill you? You're on his side." Krycek gave a hollow, bitter chuckle. "Nobody's on Bateman's side. He uses people up and gets rid of them like the rest of us throw away paper towels. He was done with me. And he was sure you'd never stop looking for me, not after I killed your father." Mulder heard the words numbly, his anger cold and hard. He said nothing. Nothing he could've said would have been adequate. Krycek stared at the floor. "Look, Mulder, all he had to do was keep his mouth shut. He knew that. Nobody wanted him dead, but he didn't leave us any choice." "You babyfucking son of a bitch," Mulder growled. His hand tightened on the gun. Krycek looked up, his eyes dull and exhausted. "Go ahead and kill me," he said. "I know you want to. What the fuck--I'm a dead man anyway, one way or the other. But what's that going to do for you? I was just the trigger man--you want the guy who ordered the hit." He shook his head. "I can't help you get him if I'm dead." "That assumes that you actually have any intention--" Mulder broke off as he heard footsteps in the hall. The tread was far too heavy for Scully. The steps stopped at Mulder's door. Mulder motioned Krycek toward the bedroom, then stood up and held his gun behind his back. Krycek didn't quite make it out of sight before the door came crashing in. The morphing alien came right behind it. **** The omni-morph reached for Krycek. Mulder lunged forward, thrust himself between them, brandishing the gun. "Back off!" he yelled. "You can't have him!" The alien hesitated, puzzled, out of program. Surely Mulder knew he couldn't shoot without endangering himself and Krycek. And the omni-morph couldn't do permanent harm to Mulder--the Premises forbade that. It reached to the other side, but Mulder moved with it, keeping himself in the way. It tried again, reaching to one side, then the other, and back again. It saw Mulder watching it, saw something dawn in the hazel eyes. "Alex, stay behind me!" Mulder yelled. "Just get behind me and stay there!" *Circles condemn these humans,* the omni-morph thought in frustration. The brave ones were dangerous, the smart ones infuriating, the strong ones nearly as hardy as one among the warrior circles. This Mulder was both brave and smart; Krycek was neither of those, but he was strong. The two of them, joining forces, would be formidable. It had to do something, and do it now. **** Mulder couldn't imagine why the alien didn't seem to want to touch him, but he wasn't above using the advantage it gave him. Keeping the gun in the alien's face, he reached with his left hand for his cuffs. Krycek got it; he cuffed himself to Mulder. The alien roared in frustration. Mulder recoiled backward, startled. It left him off-balance. The alien got the Smith by the barrel and simply twisted it out of Mulder's hand, tossing it across the room. Then, with its other hand, it grabbed the chain connecting the handcuffs and dragged Mulder and Krycek forward toward the kitchen. Krycek fell sideways, slamming into the broken jamb of what had been Mulder's front door. Mulder stumbled, but the alien caught him before he went down on top of Krycek, and pulled him back to his feet. Mulder stared at it. The last time he had encountered this thing, it hadn't had any compunctions about beating the shit out of him and exposing him to the retrovirus. Why was it handling him with kid gloves now? He would have liked to test how far the alien would let him go, but he was afraid to--Krycek might suffer for it, and Mulder could not afford to lose him. The alien held him at arm's length with a grip that felt like steel and, with its other hand, simply pulled the handcuff chain apart. It hauled Krycek up by the collar, then shoved Mulder away hard. It had the strength of a rhinoceros--Mulder went flying and landed on the couch. The already-strained muscles in his back locked up, sending a lightning-hot pain lancing from his back down his left thigh. Mulder groaned and struggled to his feet, but Krycek and the alien were already gone down the hall. He stumbled after them. He heard Krycek scream his name. **** Scully's hand hurt from pounding on the steering wheel of her car. She'd been stuck in traffic for twenty minutes before finally finding a place where she could bail off the freeway and race on to Mulder's apartment. Just as she arrived and started looking for a parking space, Mulder's black Mitsubishi burst out of an alley directly in front of her. Scully slammed on the brakes, just missing the sleek sports car. "Dammit, Mulder," she yelled. She hesitated in confusion, then noticed another car roaring off ahead of Mulder. She hit the gas and followed, realizing what must have happened--Krycek must've gotten away, and Mulder was chasing him. She floored her Nova as Mulder took off south on State 120. But he quickly, steadily pulled away from her. She reached for her cell phone and prayed he had his with him--her car couldn't pace that hot rod he was driving. But then, he never had his damned phone when he really needed it. When she needed him to have it. She couldn't believe it when he answered. "Scully, is that you? I'm--" "I know; I'm right behind you. But I can't keep up. You'd better--" "He's headed for Lake Accotink Park." "Mulder, are you sure? How do you know?" "I'm sure. And if I told you, you'd never believe it. Just trust me and head out the Columbia Pike to Annandale, then turn south on 617. I'm going to follow him out around the Beltway and let him get a little ahead of me, let him think he's lost me. Scully, he's with that...guy. The one in the fax." Scully felt her jaw tighten in resolve. Like Mulder, she had a score to settle with both of them. "Lock and load, partner," she said. "Damned straight." The phone beeped off. For a few minutes she could still see him far ahead, the Mitsubishi's red taillights gleaming like a distant beacon. But he turned off on the Pike, and a truck pulled between them. She didn't see him anymore after that. **** Alex Krycek had never been so scared in all his life. He knew little about the creature beside him in the car, but he knew it had absorbed the oil-based alien in missile silo. And the oil-based alien had a single-mindedness beyond anything Krycek could imagine. It didn't sympathize, and it didn't even understand the concept of mercy. It needed...something. And it needed it bad and wouldn't think twice about crushing Krycek like a bug. He knew it was holding a thing like an ice pick at the base of his skull while he drove where it told him. He knew if he gave it the least excuse it would shove that ice pick into his brain. He knew that much. "Look," he said, as he drove, "just tell me what you want. I can be cooperative. Maybe I can help you." "Tell me where are The Five," the omni-morph said, in its flat, dead voice. "What five? I don't know what you mean." The ice pick jabbed into his scalp. Krycek jerked, starting at the pain. "The Five you kept," it said coldly. "We will have them." Ah, so that was it. The five aliens that were still alive. Survivors from Roswell that hadn't been destroyed. Trouble was, Krycek didn't know where they were. He said so, and got another jab for his trouble. "I'm telling the truth," Krycek said. "They wouldn't tell me something like that. I'm just an errand boy, just a drone." There was a short silence. Then the alien said, "The Third Circle will find out what you know. And then they will make use of you, if enough of you remains." Jesus, Krycek thought. He searched the rear-view mirror in desperation. *Mulder, where the fuck are you?* **** Scully drove and drove, out into the countryside, where the road got darker and darker. Finally she saw the entrance to the park and turned in. Her phone trilled. "Mulder, where are you?" "In the park." He was whispering, and she could visualize him stopped in the night, holding his hand over the lighted buttons on the phone to keep from giving himself away. "How far away are you?" "I just went past the boat ramp." "Veer to the right toward the soccer fields when you hit the turnoff, then cut your lights. He's left his lights on, so you should be able to see him." The connection broke. Scully followed his directions. She eased the car to a stop after she turned off the headlights, waiting for her night vision to cut in. She could just see the other car through the brush, lights casting a beam out across an open field. Soccer field, Mulder had said. She idled her Nova forward a few hundred yards, keeping one eye on the other car. As she watched, she saw Krycek stumble out into the light. He had his hands up, backing away, as if pleading with someone she couldn't see. She stopped the car and got out, drawing her gun, and moved carefully toward the car, sticking near the brush so as not to give herself away. She felt, more than saw, Mulder approaching from the other side, like a moving shadow, a dark wraith. Then she saw the man with Krycek, a tall hulk with light-brown hair and a hard, savage face. He stepped forward and grasped Krycek's arm. Krycek yelped in pain, and his knees seemed to go out from under him. The other man just stood there, holding Krycek's arm. And stared up at the sky. Scully took her chance at it, a crouching run to the back of the car. The brown-haired man, if he heard or saw anything, gave no sign. The car's lights flickered and went off. Scully just stopped herself from gasping in surprise. She had lost her fix on Mulder's position. There was a little faint moonlight; she looked around and saw him holding himself flat against a soccer goal. The moonlight glinted dully off his Smith as he trained it toward Krycek and the other man. Scully motioned at him, but he didn't respond. Instead, he straightened, standing upright. And stared up at the sky. What the hell? Scully thought. She looked up. This time she couldn't stop herself from gasping. Something huge and black hovered overhead. About the size of a 747, triangular in shape, seeming not to move but to grow larger. Then it blocked out the Moon. Stunned, Scully realized it was descending straight toward the car. Suddenly everything was bathed in a brilliant, blinding blue-white light. Scully knew she couldn't remain hidden, not in that glare. She whipped up and around, swinging her gun to point at the brown-haired, hard-faced man. And froze there, paralyzed, staring while Krycek scrambled under the car. She knew what she should do, what she should say. The words screamed in her head. *Federal agent! Don't move--you're under arrest!* She couldn't get her mouth open, couldn't get her body to obey her commands. Everything turned blue. She found her feet coming off the ground. An eerie blue light bathed her, seemed to dance along her skin. Impossibly, she was floating slowly up toward the black thing in the sky. Continued in Part 7. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 7 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ Those that fly may fight again, Which he can never do that's slain. Hence timely running's no mean part Of conduct, in the martial art. - Samuel Butler April 18, 1996 Lake Accotink Park, near Springfield, Va. *This can't be happening,* Scully thought. *I'm dreaming this.* She tried to order herself to grab the car, hold onto it to stop herself from rising any farther. But she couldn't move, couldn't stop herself from floating up. She felt herself turning, so that she faced upward, moving just outside of the harsh, brilliant beam, and above her, inside the dark hovering object, she saw someone--something?--short, pale, painfully thin, with enormous black eyes. She was too stunned to think. She sensed motion off to her left but couldn't turn her head to see. Then a voice--strange and familiar at once--a shriek of infinite, unendurable outrage that seemed to cut through the paralysis she felt. *"YOU LEAVE HER ALONE!"* Something large and heavy crashed into her, and she fell, hit the ground hard. The heavy thing fell on top of her. Then the moonlight was back, just for a second, before she lost consciousness. **** The warrior omni-morph snarled and screeched at the planner who had picked him up. But it was no use to get angry with one of the planner circle--his kind knew nothing of the passion of war. They knew timetables and inventories. Logistics. Not battle-heat. *You have interfered with my mission,* the warrior raged. *I had the man. Why have you left him behind?* *We no longer need him,* the planner said. *And he smells bad.* *He can lead us to the Responsible Ones!* *He has neither the intelligence nor the honor. We will deal with the Inquestor, or we will not deal at all.* No, there was no point arguing with a planner. **** Scully woke and realized the thing that had fallen on her was a body. Mulder's body, to be precise. And he had wrapped himself around her like an octopus, clinging desperately to her, his face buried against her shoulder. He was panting, shivering convulsively. She reached up with one hand and stroked the back of his head. He shuddered at the touch. "Mulder," she said softly. "I'm okay. It's okay; it's gone." He didn't react for a moment, and she had a flash of worry that it might take a lot more than a pat on the head to bring him out of whatever state her near-abduction might have induced. Then he drew a long, jerky breath and murmured, "Are you sure?" "It's okay," she said again. "It's over." He began, awkwardly, to disentangle himself from her. He sat up, still breathing hard, still trembling. His eyes were haunted--dark, panicky holes in his pale face. Scully sat up, too. A realization of what she owed him rolled over her like a wave. She laid one hand along his cheek. "Are you all right?" she asked. "I...I think so. I just need a minute...to regroup. Or something." He drew another long breath. "Jesus." Sheepishly, she said, "I think I owe you one helluvan apology." He laughed. It was hysterical laughter, too hard and too loud. She let him laugh for a minute, let him take that release, then swept him into a bear hug, knowing he needed softer comfort. She had thought he might cry, had half-hoped he would let go some of his fear and anger and pain. But he didn't. After a moment he pulled away from her. And then Krycek crawled out from under the car. "This is all very sweet," he said. "But can we get the fuck out of here now?" "Yes," Scully said. "I think that's exactly what we should do." "Yeah," Mulder agreed. "I just, uh... Dammit, I've dropped my keys somewhere." *Naturally*, Scully thought. "Where's your gun?" she asked dryly. "Right here, and I don't think you're the least bit funny." Scully sighed and leaned forward to fold her arms across her knees, waiting for him to search out his key ring. As he retraced his steps she noticed he was limping again--if anything, more so than he had been before. Poor guy, she thought. He really looked like he was in pain, and she figured launching himself at her to save her from...whatever probably hadn't helped. She shifted her foot and heard something make a "clink" sound. She looked down--the key ring. "Mulder," she called, "I got 'em." Just as he turned back to her, she heard a helicopter. She looked and saw it, off to the right, approaching from the other side of the car, its searchlight raking through the trees. "Mulder!" Scully yelled. "Come on!" He hesitated, watching the chopper fly toward them. He shook his head. "Take my car and go," he called. "I can't run; I'll never make it. I'll try to draw them off." "No! Come on, we'll help you! Mulder!" The searchlight caught him, wavered off, then came back. He turned and jogged awkwardly away from where Scully and Krycek hid by the car. The chopper moved slowly off, following him, keeping him in the searchlight. "Only thing we can do for him now is give it some meaning," Krycek said. Scully hated it, but he was right; there was nothing for it but to do as Mulder had asked. She grabbed Krycek's arm and ran hard for Mulder's car. As she pulled open the driver's side door, she glanced back. The helicopter had come down to within a few feet of the ground. Two black-uniformed soldiers jumped out--they had no trouble catching up with Mulder. He tried to twist away from them, but one of the MIBs thumped the butt of his rifle into Mulder's ribs, and he went down. Scully felt her chest constrict with fear for him. "They're coming," Krycek said. She saw shadows move behind her and got in the car. **** Mulder hit the ground trying to reassure himself--these guys had taken him down before, and they'd never left him with anything worse than bruises and stiff muscles. They probably wouldn't kill him. But then one of them put a knee in his back to hold him down, and his breath whooshed painfully out of his lungs, and he wasn't so sure. And then there was a needle, and blackness. **** I-395, just west of the Potomac River Scully was passing the Pentagon complex as she drew near the cutoff for the U.S. 1 exit when she saw them coming up fast behind her, a big gray sedan with only its parking lights on. "Shit," Krycek said. The sedan started to cut over. Scully downshifted and floored the Mitsubishi--it leaped forward like a startled cat, the engine responding in an open-throated snarl. There was something reassuring about the sound; it sounded ferocious. She glanced at the speedometer. It read just over a hundred. Thankfully, the hour was late; only one other car loomed ahead of her. She focused on the road as the car zoomed toward the Williams Memorial Bridge. She slowed a little to take the cutoff, and the sedan came up on her. She accelerated again and hoped the 3000GT would take the long curve on the exit ramp at this speed. It drifted a little, and she felt the strain in her back and shoulders as centripetal force pulled on her. But the car held, and as she hit the flat, straight main lanes of the bridge, she pushed it even harder. As the speedometer went above one-thirty, she saw the sedan pulling up again, heard the roar of its engine. She floored the Mitsubishi and maneuvered around an eighteen-wheeler. The car ran as if it were on rails, and she blessed its stability. She was going one-fifty now. Krycek clung tightly to the dashboard with one hand. Scully turned off again, forced to slow as she headed up toward the Mall. She half-hoped the D.C. police would stop her for speeding--a little local assistance wouldn't have been at all unwelcome. But there were no local police to be seen. They flashed over the Washington Canal, past the dome of the Jefferson Memorial, so fast she hardly registered it. But as the highway gave way to downtown 14th Street, she knew she couldn't stay ahead of the sedan by speed alone. Time for a little cunning. She roared past the Holocaust Memorial Museum doing about sixty, weaving from lane to lane to try to prevent the sedan from coming up beside her on the wide boulevard. "Watch them," she said to Krycek. "Don't let them sneak up on me." "I'm watching," he said. "They're dead on us--cut right!" She pulled the wheel over, the tires squealing in protest. Scully felt as if her vision had tunneled--nothing remained but the road before her. The Mall went by in a blur of open, dark space. Then, on the left, she saw the Commerce Department and braced herself for the turn onto Pennsylvania Avenue. In the rear-view mirror she saw the sedan take a right. "They're going to try to go around D Street, cut us off," Krycek said grimly. "I know." She let the Mitsubishi skid, swinging through the turn. Then she jammed the shifter into third and floored it. The sedan was nowhere in sight. Maybe she'd get past the intersection and stay ahead of them. She thought she'd made it, but then the sedan leaped out at them from the intersection and slammed into the Mitsubishi's right rear quarter. The smaller car lurched sideways, but Scully caught it and fishtailed it back onto a straight course. She could tell something wasn't right--the car accelerated obediently, but the back end shuddered as it went. The avenue curved southeast, and Scully tried to swerve to keep the sedan from coming up on their right, but the Mitsubishi's rear end wobbled ominously, and she was afraid to push it too hard. She could see the concrete-stucco facade of the Hoover building, and she realized suddenly that she hadn't begun to think through what to do when they stopped. The building came up so fast she didn't have time. Flying on impulse, she swung the wheel left, jumped the curb and roared up onto the sidewalk. "What the fuck!" Krycek yelled. Scully ignored him and steered the car through the pedestrian plaza and up onto the steps, then stomped hard on the brake. The Mitsubishi screeched to a stop inches from the windows. That ought to get somebody's attention, Scully thought. Before she could unhook her seat belt and get out, she heard the sedan stop behind her. Krycek dived out. "This side!" he yelled. Scully scrambled to climb over the gear shift, trying to stay down. She saw three security guards charging toward them from the lobby, and a couple of agents behind them coming, too. From the street, the MIBs in the sedan came jogging up, guns drawn. The moment the building security officers came through the door, she shoved Krycek onto the ground and shouted, "Officer down!" **** 1:32 a.m., April 19, 1996 Somewhere over the East Coast Mulder woke with blood in his mouth, the coppery taste curling his face into a grimace. The grimace felt like someone had sliced open his cheek with a meat cleaver. It was too much. He tried to roll over, retching, then whatever he was lying on came up underneath him and he dropped what seemed like ten feet to the floor. He vomited helplessly, face down on the floor, unconscious of anything but misery. Then he felt a little better, except that the left side of his head insisted on exploding. He didn't remember having gotten hit in the head, but clearly something had cracked him one after he'd gone out. And his arms weren't working. After a couple of minutes of concentrated study on this problem, it occurred to him that his hands had been tied or cuffed behind his back. He managed to turn his head to look at his surroundings, but his left eye wouldn't open, and all the right eye showed was a blurry, grimy darkness. *Who the hell belted me? Where am I?* The floor pitched and rolled beneath him, and it wasn't long before he was sick again. Airplane, he realized, when he could think. He tried to study the cabin, but he saw two of them and after a while he gave up trying to separate the two. A man he didn't know picked him up and put him back on the bunk he had fallen out of. Then another needle, and darkness again. Continued in Part 8. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 8 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ If you are afraid of being grabbed by God, don't look at a wall. Definitely don't sit still. - Jiyu Kennett April 19, 1996 46th Street, New York City Two very large, human-shaped shadows stood over Mulder when he woke again. They lifted him by the arms. Mulder was too limp, too groggy to fight them. His knees buckled, and he would have fallen if the shadowy men hadn't held him. The two men exchanged a couple of unintelligible words. Mulder tried to make his brain work. German, maybe, he decided, finally. One of the big men holding him shifted his grip, one arm coming tightly around Mulder's throat. With his other hand, he got hold of Mulder's cuffed hands and shoved forward at the small of his back. It bent Mulder's spine into a painful arch, stiff muscles protesting at the awkward position. The other man held some kind of hard plastic bat. Mulder looked at him in the dim light. Big ugly guy, lots of muscle under his suit jacket. When this sedative wears off, Mulder thought, that bat's going to hurt like hell. His vision cleared a little, and he noticed that a dignified old man he had last met in Central Park sat on a stool just beyond the man with the bat. "Good to see you again, Mr. Mulder," the old man said. Mulder debated answering him. His mouth hurt, and he really couldn't think of anything to say. The old man walked over to stand just inches from him. "I regret the necessity of doing this the old-fashioned way," he said. "But your records indicate that you don't respond well to the usual drugs." *What records?* Mulder wondered. As far as he knew, he'd never been given any kind of "truth serum"--how would the old man know whether he'd respond to it or not? "Not that I really care how much you suffer," the old man went on. "There is too much at stake for too many for me to spare any moral queasiness on you. And anyway, the extent to which you suffer now is a matter of your own choice. It's just that drugs are usually faster and less expensive." "I wouldn't want to put you to any trouble," Mulder said. "You have already put me to a great deal of trouble." The old man shrugged. "No matter. The adversary quality of our relationship is about to end. You're going to learn to appreciate my kindness. Oh, it may take some time. But I'm a patient man, and a forgiving one. To prove it, I'll offer you one chance, now, to yield to the inevitable before I inflict any pain." "Oh, yeah, you've always been a real sweetheart to me." "I know the omni-morph came after you and Krycek. And I know why. I want to know what you told him--I want to know where The Five are being held." "I didn't tell him anything." "Oh, but I'm afraid you did. He would not have left without you if you had not given him what he wanted. Just name the place where you last saw The Five, and no further harm will come to you." "Right," Mulder said. He tried to laugh, but it died as soon as it started. His face had begun to hurt in earnest. Whatever drug they had given him, it was wearing off quickly. "What makes you think it wasn't Krycek who knew what the alien wanted?" "I have it from a credible source that Mr. Krycek never knew where The Five were held. While you, on the other hand, actually have been there, seen them." Mulder had no idea what he was talking about, and he realized suddenly that it was a dangerous ignorance. If the old man was willing to have himself identified with ordering two goons to beat Mulder up, he probably had no intention of letting Mulder walk out the door to tell tales. *If he starts thinking I don't know anything, he won't have any reason to keep me alive.* "Thirty seconds, Mr. Mulder. Use it to think about your youth. Did I tell you I once had the dubious honor of hearing your father tearfully and drunkenly confess the way he used to beat you as a teen-ager? I gather you didn't enjoy it." *The ratfucking son of a bitch *would* tell someone, wouldn't he? Tune it out--he's just trying to get to you. Stay cool.* "He told me you got down on your knees and begged him to kill you, rather than hit you again." "That was Scotch talking," Mulder said, between his teeth. "He took a pop at me now and then, but I was tougher than he thought." It had been the summer before he turned fourteen. His dad had been drinking like a fish all summer, drinking all afternoon and beating his son all night. And a night had come when Mulder hadn't been able to take any more. With eidetic clarity, the image came to him--his father's drunken, swollen features looming over him, the belt in his hand, ready to swing, his own hoarse screams--"Just kill me! Just go ahead!" The old man crooked an ice-white eyebrow at him. "Perhaps. I don't have quite the time-frame he did, and I don't suffer from the necessity to spare you any scars. But I believe I have enough time that I can, if need be, kill you one nerve at a time. Under those circumstances, I promise you, five weeks will seem like five times eternity." *Don't let him get to you.* But it was too late. After five weeks of that belt, Mulder had desperately wanted to die. "Ten seconds," the old man said. The arm around Mulder's neck tightened, throwing his head back. Christ, it hurt. "My father never beat me," Mulder said. "Don't lie to me, Mr. Mulder. I don't like it." The plastic bat stabbed into his gut, just above belt level. Mulder hadn't seen it coming in time to brace for it, and he hated the sound of his yelp as it echoed back at him off the walls. God knew his father had taught him not to yell. *If I screamed, he thought he was getting to me, and he just hit harder.* He fought nausea. The old man waited until his eyes focused again. "Last chance," the old man said quietly. Mulder closed his eyes. "For what?" he sighed. "Persuade him that we are serious," the old man said. **** Washington, D.C. Scully found she actually liked that flinty look Skinner had, when it was directed at someone else. For several hours now that look had been aimed at the four MIBs from the sedan; now he was targeting Krycek. The MIBs were under arrest. And she and Krycek were in Skinner's office, Krycek cuffed and under guard. "These bozos claim they're NSA," Skinner said, "but the NSA's not claiming them. And they say they don't know anything about what happened to Mulder." "They probably don't," Krycek said. He sounded exhausted. Scully would've suggested letting him rest, but for the fact that Mulder's life might depend on what Krycek could tell them. "The whole operation's tightly compartmentalized. Left hand never knows what the right's doing, intentionally. They want us to think we're going to find him in the Tidal Basin with a bullet in his head, but that's bullshit. They're not going to kill him until they find out what he knows." "Where do you think they would've taken him?" Scully asked. "I don't know. There's a million holes they could stuff him in." "What does he know, that they want so bad?" Skinner asked. "How the hell should I know?" Krycek said. "Look, I was only with him about twenty minutes, and I was doing all the talking, trying to keep him from blowing my head off." He looked at Scully. "Are you going to tell him?" he asked. "Because he's not going to believe it if I tell him, and none of it's going to make any sense if he doesn't know." The flinty look fell on Scully. "Tell me what?" Skinner asked. "The...man Mulder and I were chasing, who tried to grab Krycek--" "He's not a man," Krycek said irritably. Skinner's eyebrows lifted. Scully drew a long breath and blurted it all out--morphing alien, black triangle in the sky, blue-glowing levitation beam and all. She suddenly had a new appreciation for the raw balls Mulder needed to state such things, knowing no one was going to take them seriously. But then, nobody had ever suspected Mulder of lacking balls. "I see," Skinner said heavily, when she had finished. "I...uh, I can't explain it, sir. But that's what I saw." "I can explain it," Krycek said. "You ever watch *Star Trek: The Next Generation*? You know the episodes where the evil aliens called the Borg are trying to take over the Earth? Prepare to be assimilated, folks." "I see," Skinner said again. "And I'll tell you something else weird. The alien? It was like he couldn't touch Mulder. Like he was afraid to hurt him--almost like he was trying to protect him. I don't know why. Who the hell knows why they do the stuff they do." Krycek shook his head. "Yeah, I know," he said. "You don't believe it. But you're going to believe it, and I think it's going to be soon. Old morphman was plenty pissed off. I think they've about run out of patience with us. They want their people back, and they want them now." "What people?" Scully asked. "The hostages. The survivors from Roswell that we've been holding. They call them 'The Five.'" "Why?" Skinner asked. "What's so important about them?" "Fuck, I don't know. But that's what they wanted me for, to find out where The Five are." "And you don't know where they are?" "Clueless. But I'd bet my ass Bateman knows--maybe the alien thought he could use me to get to Bateman." "Bateman?" "The Cancer Man. That's his name, or the one he uses when he needs a name, anyway. Beats the hell out of me whether it's his real name." "How can we get to him?" Scully asked Skinner. The assistant director sighed. "I don't know. There was a time when I could've contacted him, but not any more." A heavy silence fell. Finally, Krycek spoke again. "I know how you contact him," he said wearily. "Let him know you've got me." Scully stared at him. In a million years, she'd never have expected Krycek to stick his neck out for Mulder. As if he had guessed her thought, he shrugged. "They're going to find out eventually anyway. Besides, I owe the skinny sumbitch. He went down to keep my ass alive, even if only long enough to go to trial." "I'll take it under advisement," Skinner said. "Meanwhile, I want the two of you to get some rest." Krycek got up, and his guards escorted him out. Scully hung back a little--she had something she wanted to say to Skinner that she didn't want Krycek to hear. "I may know another way to contact him," she said, when Krycek had gone. **** Skinner wouldn't let Scully go to Mulder's apartment to put the masking tape X on the window. It wasn't safe, he had told her. He had gone himself. They got Krycek's arrest on the noon news. But two days passed, and nothing happened. **** April 21, 1996 Nine miles west of Fork Union, Va. The old fishing cabin sat way back from the gravel road, in among Virginia pines growing so thickly sun only penetrated in long, pale beams. Bateman picked his way down a narrow footpath, around rocks and stumps. He could hear the creek bubbling below him, but he couldn't see it. Then he came around a bend. Tom Corvin perched on a boulder, an old, white-haired angler in a plaid shirt and a tan hat. He cast a red and white lure into the clear, rippling water. Corvin had been Secretary of Defense back in the '70s, and he was a tough, prickly customer, a hands-on manager who wanted to know exactly what was going on at all times. Bateman had learned long ago not to wait until a problem got out of hand before he took it to Corvin. Unfortunately, the problem he was bringing today had gotten out of hand so fast it was probably too late to evade Corvin's wrath. As Bateman approached, Corvin stared out into the creek. "Whatever it is," Corvin said, "it'd better not be your fault this time." "Not this time," Bateman said. He started in: Krycek in the FBI's hands, Skinner unlikely to be anything but obstinate, the omni-morph searching for The Five, and the thorniest part of all--Higginbotham had gotten his claws on Mulder. "Damn," Corvin said. "I'm tempted to let the old fart have him. Skinny little bastard's always been more trouble than he was worth." "Don't I know it," Bateman agreed. "Do you think Mulder remembers?" "The Five? No. He'd go after them himself if he knew where to look. But it's always a possibility. Even Dr. Curtis said it was dangerous to assume he'd never remember what happened. She couldn't predict the outcome of her treatment with certainty, given his youth and the exceptional nature of his memory. I think he must remember something--that's what all this chasing after us has been about, the last few years." Corvin nodded. He reeled in his line and cast again. "Well, we can't kill him, either." "No. Especially not now, with the project at such a delicate stage. A federal officer's death would raise a helluva stink." "We'll have to make a deal, then. What does Krycek know that can hurt us?" "He knows about the craft in North Dakota. And its occupant." Corvin snorted. "Tabloid headlines. Nobody's going to believe that story--if Krycek's smart, he won't even bring it up." "Mulder will believe it." "Nobody believes him, either--just the usual kooks who think Elvis was a Martian." Bateman shrugged. "I'd prefer to have Krycek in our control." "Huh. You'd like to have everybody in our control. Let's worry about Mulder first--if he gives Higginbotham what he needs to make a separate bargain with the morphs, it's all over. Will Skinner deal, if the deal is sweet enough?" "He has before." "Give him Mulder, then, assuming he wants the son of a bitch back. As long as he's willing to make the grab quietly, we'll run interference." "I'll see to it." Corvin sighed and reeled in the line again. "I'll be in D.C. if you need me," he said. "What the hell--these fucking trout aren't biting this week anyway." **** 46th Street, New York City Cold. Mulder sat naked in a corner of the cell, huddled into himself. The cell was four feet square--too small for him to lie down--and solid concrete except for the heavy steel door. The only light came from a small porthole in the door, thick glass with steel wires running through it. There was a ventilation grate about the size of one of his hands set into the ceiling and a drain about three inches in diameter in the floor. So they can hose my blood off the walls, he thought, dully. He shivered, stared off into space. All very scientific. They kept the cell cold to drain his strength. Force him to use a lot of energy just to maintain his body temperature. The old man had said they knew exactly how much food, water, heat and sleep any given individual needed to stay alive, calculated by his weight, age and physical condition. Mulder believed it. They would give him just what they had to. Not one drop or degree more. He could feel his resolve, his stamina, seep out through every pore. He didn't know how long he'd been there. Long enough to get hungry and thirsty and tired. And cold. God, he was so cold. When they left him alone, he could tune out the pain. Concentrate on other things. But the chill and the thirst were constant. He didn't know how much sleep they had let him get, but he knew it wasn't enough. It was hard to sleep anyway--from somewhere above and outside his cell there was a constant banging and scraping. Furniture moving, he thought. They were moving a lot of stuff out of this building. And when he could sleep, they'd let him drift off for a little while, then the two bonecrushers would wake him with a solid thump to the ribs or a bucket of ice-cold water. He named them Boris and Igor. Boris's rock-solid fists put the lie to a flabby beer belly. He wore heavy work shoes with what felt like steel toes. Igor was a sneaky son-of-a-bitch who liked to come up from behind and add surprise to pain. He had the build and the strength of a professional hockey player, and he preferred bending Mulder's arms, legs, neck and back into impossible agonizing positions to simple, mindless pounding. Sort of like yoga with a vengeance. Mulder laughed silently when that image came to mind. There were times when it seemed idiotically funny, in some perverted sense--these people devoting such time and energy to trying to get him to tell them something he didn't know. But then, his father had beaten him, trying to get him to say where Samantha was, which he hadn't known, and that had never seemed funny. Mulder suspected his amusement wasn't healthy. Insanity lay among the bushes of that briar patch. He had changed his mind about his jaw--it wasn't broken. Cracked, maybe, and it still hurt like hell. He thought he might have a couple of cracked ribs, too, courtesy of those steel-toed shoes of Boris's. The third finger of his left hand, that was broken. He was trying to keep them from noticing, for fear they'd take advantage of a weakness that wouldn't kill him. He doubted he could keep it hidden for long. Slowly but surely, they were finding all the places to hit that really hurt him. He knew better than to think they couldn't break him. His father had broken him, and he had not forgotten. When they broke him, he would talk, and they would kill him. Something in the back of his mind gnawed at him--his screwball memory scrabbling around back there, looking for something. It yielded up his father's voice on a bad night, a night of terror and torture, when his father had held him bent over the edge of his bed, holding him by the hair and swinging that godawful belt endlessly. He hadn't asked Mulder where Samantha was that night. He had asked about "The Five." And just like now, with the old man, Mulder hadn't known the answer. Continued in Part 9. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 9 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ A man's worst enemy can't wish him what he thinks up for himself. - Yiddish proverb April 22, 1996 46th Street, New York City Higginbotham watched irritably as Semarone paced back and forth in agitation. In the club room at the New York Colony Club, most of the furniture had been removed. And the kitchen wasn't serving anymore, which really had annoyed the Italian. "What if Mulder doesn't talk?" Semarone asked for the third time. He paced toward the windows. "He will talk," Higginbotham said. "It's only a matter of time." "It's been three days," Semarone said. He turned and paced the other way. "God knows whether we have any time left," Duval said. "For all we know, Krycek is telling Skinner everything he knows." Patiently, Higginbotham said, "If Krycek were telling Skinner everything he knows, Skinner would have been here by now." "But how long will the omni-morph wait?" "As long as he has to, to complete his mission." Semarone stopped pacing. "Perhaps Krycek would be willing to talk to us," he said, thinking out loud. "We can give him guarantees of safety that the FBI cannot, and he knows it." "We don't need Krycek," Higginbotham said. "We have Mulder, and in time, he will tell us what we want to know." "Perhaps, if we had Krycek, we wouldn't need Mulder--and we wouldn't have to wait for what we want." "What are you thinking?" Duval asked. "I'm thinking of a trade." "It's too late for that," Higginbotham said. "We can't let Mulder go--he's seen us." "He's seen *you*," Duval pointed out. "Besides, he doesn't know who you are, and there's no reason he has to be traded alive." "No," Higginbotham said. "There is no guarantee that Krycek knows the location of The Five. But Mulder...Mulder has been there. He's seen them. He's the one we need." "But what if he doesn't remember? Dr. Curtis--" "He remembers," Higginbotham said, between his teeth. "Or he can be made to." **** Boris found Mulder's broken finger, and when he did, he put it up against the wall and pounded it twice with his fist. Mulder screamed for the first time--he couldn't stop himself; it felt as if his hand had exploded. He fell, and instinctively put his hands out to break his fall. When the injured hand hit the floor, it was worse than if Boris had hit him a third time. He screamed again. He stayed there, on all fours, while his vision went gray. The old man knelt beside him, one hand lightly on Mulder's shoulder. "Listen to me," he said, his voice gentle, soothing. "I don't enjoy seeing you reduced to this. But you really haven't left me much choice." Mulder shivered. God, it's cold, he thought. The old man lifted his chin and held a mug up to his lips. Mulder closed his eyes and kept his mouth shut. "Go on," the old man said. "It's coffee and a little brandy. It won't hurt you." It smelled like coffee and brandy. Mulder drank. The warmth of it was like heaven; it held the seductive siren call of a relief from agony. He wished he had spit it in the old man's face. "Where are The Five, Mulder?" "Why do you want to know?" "What difference does it make to you? Whatever my reasons are, I must know, and you must tell me." Mulder shook his head. Boris' fooot slammed into his back. Mulder fell flat on his face and found himself staring at the old man's shoes. "Who are you protecting with this silence?" the old man asked. "Your friends Scully and Krycek? Why aren't they beating at the walls of this place, trying to save you? I don't think they're coming, do you?" A crucial part of brainwashing, Mulder remembered from school, is to persuade the subject he is beyond rescue. "Krycek's not my friend," he said. "He's betrayed you, and not for the first time. Poor boy, even your parents have betrayed you. What is the point of your suffering for all these people who are so willing to give you up?" "Is that how you got my father to work for you? Did you tell him you were his only friend?" "My dear boy, your father was an eager volunteer. No one recruited him--he came to us." "Yeah, right," Mulder sighed. The room above him seemd to waver, blur. He tried to make his eyes focus. They wouldn't, but his memory did--on a time when he had tried to explain things to his father, hoping against hope that if he tried again, Bill Mulder finally might understand. "Listen, Dad, I don't know who took Samantha," he said. He heard himself speaking aloud in a cold, dark place, to someone who was not his father. He knew he had lost it, but he didn't care how crazy it made him seem--maybe he really had gone crazy at last, but what difference did it make now? "I don't know where they took her. I know you don't believe me, but I don't remember. It's funny, you know? I remember everything, but not that. That I don't remember it; don't you think that's funny?" He laughed. It hurt, but he couldn't stop it. "I'm not telling you shit, Dad. You didn't believe me." Igor put his foot on Mulder's back. Mulder kept right on laughing, helplessly, conscious that he had lost it, gone hysterical, but unable to stop himself. Oh, what the hell--just as useful to be hysterical as to do anything else. Igor bore down with his foot. When it became difficult to breathe, Mulder stopped laughing. "I could make this easier for you," the old man said. "Give me some sign, will you? Some cooperation. Did you tell the omni-morph about The Five? Just tell me that." Mulder heard himself groan under the pressure of Igor's foot. It didn't sound like his own voice, but he knew it was. "Yes or no? That's all you have to say. Did you tell the omni-morph where they are?" The room went dark. He let them think he couldn't answer. The pressure let off, and he gasped air. "Did you tell it about The Five, Mulder? Let me help you. Answer me, and this will stop." "Fuck you," Mulder whispered. Igor got him by the hair and bent his neck back while Boris pounded his legs with that hard plastic bat. They beat on him until he blacked out. **** Washington, D.C. Skinner smelled the Cancer Man before he saw him, the cigarette stench wafting out of his office before he even went through the door. He went for his gun, pointing it at the older man's chest. "You son of a bitch," he said. "I ought to--" "That's a helluva way to greet a man who can give you what you want," Bateman said, smiling coolly. "What are you talking about?" "Why, Agent Mulder, of course. I was led to believe you were interested in having him back." Skinner kept the gun on him, but he closed the door, quietly. "I'm listening." Bateman stabbed out his Morley and lit another. "I have something you want. You have something I want." "Krycek," Skinner guessed. "Mr. Krycek and I have some unfinished business to conclude." Skinner nodded. "You have a bullet to deliver into his skull." "Nothing quite so crude, though I will endeavor to explain to him the error of his ways. And at the moment, Agent Mulder is neither any threat to me nor any use to me. Let's make a deal." "I thought you didn't deal." Bateman smiled again. "I do when the advantage is all on my side. Krycek for Mulder--quietly. No media, no charges. Take it or leave it." Too good to be true, Skinner thought. There had to be some catch to it--the Cancer Man didn't give things up without guarantees, insurance. Skinner didn't plan to proceed without some insurance, either. "I want to see Mulder first," he said. "Alive." "Oh, he's alive." Bateman took a drag on his smoke, studied the length of the cigarette. "I can't promise he's undamaged, but he is alive." "I want to see him," Skinner pressed. "That can be arranged." Bateman retrieved a business card from a pocket and laid it on Skinner's conference table. "Meet me at this address in New York City, at noon. I'll get you in." **** "I don't think you should trust him, sir," Scully said. Skinner shrugged out of his shirt and reached for a Kevlar vest. "What makes you think I do?" Agent Pendrell came in, holding up a tiny screw. "Here you go, sir," he said. Skinner handed him his glasses. "What's that?" Scully asked. "Newest thing in homing devices," Pendrell said, excited as a new puppy. He removed one of the screws in the temple of Skinner's glasses and replaced it with the screw he had brought. "Isn't miniaturization soemthing these days? It works off navigational satellite transmissions." "What if the transmissions out of the homer are detected?" Scully asked. "That's the beauty of it," Pendrell said, handing the glasses back to Skinner. "It doesn't transmit. It just receives and triangulates. Then when he gets back, we calculate where he's been." "*If* he gets back," Scully said. Skinner was re-knotting his tie. "Jesus, Scully, you sound like my mother," he said gently. The assistant director inclined his head toward a tall, burly agent with wavy, sandy hair. "Your squads ready to move, Westin?" Westin nodded. "The minute you give the word, sir." Skinner replaced his jacket. "What about Krycek?" Scully asked. "Krycek stays right where he is until after I've seen Mulder," Skinner said. He checked the magazine in his Smith. "Then we'll decide whether there's any deal to be made." **** Roy Higginbotham didn't like being summoned. Especially when he was in the middle of something. And he had been quite occupied with his interrogation of Fox Mulder. Nevertheless, Corvin had summoned, and not to go would have required an explanation that Higginbotham hadn't wanted to have to cobble up on short notice. So he had gone to Washington, D.C., to meet with Corvin and the other Consortium members. If his plane had landed ten minutes earlier, he might have passed Walter Skinner at Washington National Airport, on *his* way to New York. Sitting in a comfortable chair at the Washington Colony Club, Higginbotham glanced around. "Where is Mr. Bateman?" he asked, turning a baleful gaze on Corvin. "I've asked him to go to North Dakota and provide me with an explanation of what happened," Corvin said coolly. "I want to know how the hell Alex Krycek got out of that silo." Ah, good, Higginbotham thought. That should keep Bateman out of my hair for a few days. In New York, Bateman had only needed Higginbotham out of his hair for a couple of hours. **** New York City The address was on 46th Street. Bateman was waiting for Skinner just inside the door of the old building. The place was eerily almost empty of furnishings; dust hung in the air and made Skinner's nose itch. Bateman said nothing. He just lit another Morley and led Skinner down a dim stairway. Skinner's senses went into overdrive--this was a good place for an ambush, and he found himself tensed for it. But nobody leaped out at him. At the bottom of the stairs, a uniformed guard with an M-16 on his shoulder nodded at Bateman and gave Skinner a curious look before letting them pass through a heavy, unmarked steel door. There was another guard post on the other side. Bateman stopped there, which put Skinner on alert again. Bateman said to the guard, "He's a visitor. Take him to the occupied cell." Skinner followed the guard down a long, dim corridor. He waited, fidgeting, while the guard opened the cell door. And then he saw Mulder. Skinner thought Mulder was asleep. He had curled himself tightly into the corner of the empty cell, his eyes closed, his head leaning against the concrete. He looked like hell--pale, three days' beard stubble blue on his jaw, hard gray circles under his eyes, his feet bare. Rainbow bruises all over his body. Even through Skinner's heavy trench coat, the cell was cold. An old Soviet interrogation technique--force the subject's body to use up a lot of its energy just keeping warm. It left less energy to resist the questions. "Mulder," he said quietly. No response. Skinner stepped nearer and realized he was more than asleep, and shivering continuously. Worried, he hunkered down beside Mulder and spoke his name again. Closer, he noticed bruises on the younger man's face and one finger bent at an impossible angle. His dark hair was damp. Clearly, Mulder was in no shape to assist in his own escape. *Bastards,* Skinner thought. He'd often thought he'd like to kick Mulder's ass, but he was damned if he'd let someone else get away with it. Skinner shrugged out of his coat, pulled Mulder over to lean against his chest, then wrapped the coat around his back. The young agent groaned through his teeth, shuddered hard and made a feeble effort to push himself away. "Easy," Skinner said, and hung on. "I'm not going to hurt you." **** The sudden warmth was a shock, so stunning it was almost painful. Mulder had no idea whose arms were wrapped around him, and he didn't give a damn. He only knew the body next to him was radiating heat he needed desperately. Could have been Lucifer--so what if it was? He flattened himself against that broad chest and tried to soak up all he could. **** After a few minutes, Skinner felt Mulder begin to unclench, the shivering slow from a continuous tremor to occasional, convulsive spasms. *Attaboy. Come on back to me, just a little.* "Mulder," he said softly. "Can you hear me?" "Uh," Mulder got out. "Yeah." "It's me, Skinner." "Take me out of here." Half whisper, half whimper. "Please..." "I will," Skinner murmured, into his ear. *Have to be careful what you say--this place has got to be bugged.* "Soon. Real soon. I came to find you--I had to make sure you were really here." Was he conscious enough to understand? "As soon as you tell them what they want to know, I'll be able to get you out of here." "I can't. I don't--" Skinner heard desperation in his tone and shushed him. Christ, he didn't know the answer to whatever their question was. "Listen to me, Mulder. If you tell them what they want to know, they won't need you anymore." *Understand me, kid? You talk, and they'll kill you in a heartbeat.* "I know." This came out as a sob. "I know they're hurting you; I know you don't have much left. You have to trust me, Mulder. You just cooperate, okay?" He lowered his voice a few decibels. "Just tell them something. Anything." *Just enough to make them keep you alive for a couple hours.* He drew a long, shuddering breath. It sounded like agony. "Okay," he breathed. "I'll be good." Skinner withdrew from him, and Mulder shivered hard. "God, I'm so cold." "I know, son. I know." Skinner closed the coat around him and lowered him gently to the floor. "Try to rest a little. Just rest. It'll be over soon." He got up, wishing he didn't have to leave, wishing he could do more. But he had to leave to do more. At the security checkpoint, someone called his name, and he turned. A young, earnest-looking man wearing a white lab jacket approached. "You left your coat behind, sir," he said. "Oh," Skinner said. What the hell else could he say? "Thanks." He had wanted at least to leave Mulder that much comfort. *Bastards. Fucking bastards.* Continued in Part 10. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 10 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ Abuse a man unjustly, and you will make friends for him. - Edgar Watson Howe April 22, 1996 46th Street, New York City "I am losing patience with you, Mr. Mulder," the old man said. Mulder said nothing. He didn't think he had the breath or strength left to say anything anyway. After Skinner had left, Boris and Igor had come back and chained him to the ventilation grille in the ceiling, his wrists shackled so high over his head that he had to stand on his toes to keep the weight off his shoulders. If he hung from his arms, he wouldn't be able to breathe. *Crucified for my sins.* The thought struck him as intensely, insanely funny, and he laughed until Igor grabbed his hair and pulled him off balance, so that for a moment he was hanging by his arms, feeling as if his shoulders were coming out of the sockets, all the muscles in his chest and back suddenly burning. "Perhaps you won't find what follows quite so amusing," the old man said, his voice grating. "Where are The Five, Mr. Mulder?" Mulder was too busy trying to get up on his toes again. "You have cost me valuable time," the old man said. "There is not much time left. I'll count to ten. One." Mulder tried to force the voice out of his mind. "Six..." Closing his eyes made him dizzy. He opened them, then wished he hadn't. Nothing wrong with being dizzy. With any luck, he might be unconscious before they started. "Eight..." *Get it over with, will you? Just kill me. Just go ahead.* "Ten." Igor reached up and unlocked his arms. Mulder fell, gasping in a deep breath for the first time in hours. Boris got one arm around his chest and dragged him out of the cell, down a dim corridor. *Oh, God. Oh, God, what now?* Boris had him out in a larger room, now, empty but for a big metal tub filled with an orange liquid. Boris dropped him right beside the tub. The smell of the liquid was vaguely familiar; his memory went to work, unbidden, which Mulder regarded as an exercise in futility on its part--it didn't matter what the orange substance was, really. All that mattered was that the three evil sons of bitches around him were going to use it for something unpleasant. Medicine, the memory relayed. Some kind of medicine he had been given once before, when he was very young. The nurse in the hospital hadn't told him what it was, or what it was for. She had just said it was medicine. Igor had him by the hair again. He just had time to draw a breath before his head went under the surface of the orange liquid. He tried to struggle, but Igor had a good hold. *They won't drown you. They can't. They want you to think they will, but they won't. Just hang in.* His chest jerked inward reflexively, as if it were trying to breathe without him. *They won't drown me,* he thought, over and over again, like a prayer. It didn't help. He hadn't been afraid before--he had been beaten and survived, and while the idea hadn't been pleasant, it hadn't really frightened him. Now, faced with something out of his previous experience, panic radiated from somewhere down in his guts, and he couldn't stop it. Finally, he felt his head jerked up. He had time for only half a breath, and some of the orange stuff got sucked into his mouth when he did. It had a viscous, sticky texture and a bittersweet taste, like a tangerine that had started to go bad, get moldy. Then his head went under again. He struggled involuntarily, tried to get out of Igor's grip. What little sanity remained advised that fighting them would only use up oxygen faster. He fought anyway. When they pulled him out, he coughed until he nearly choked himself. His cracked ribs felt like razors slashing into his flesh as he coughed. "Would you like to be able to breathe?" the old man asked. Mulder couldn't answer him. Igor shoved his head into the liquid again. Mulder lost track of when he was out of the liquid and when he was in it, except that sometimes he could hear the old man, and sometimes he couldn't. The words repeated, over and over again. "You may not breathe without my permission. Do you understand? I will not give my permission if you don't answer me." Then the liquid again. Finally he managed to gasp out a "yes" before the old man finished. "Yes, what?" "Yes, I understand." "There, now. What was so difficult about that? Where are The Five?" He wanted desperately to say he didn't know, to get it over with. *Just kill me. Just go ahead.* Igor shoved his head into the liquid. *I don't know where they are! I don't know! Just kill me, I don't care!* It hurt. His lungs were on fire, burning for breath. Every muscle he moved trying to fight them screamed in agony. Igor pulled him out, and that hurt, too. Mulder gasped, swallowed some more of the liquid. *"I DON'T KNOW!"* Mulder screamed. "Just kill me--I don't know where they are!" But for his ragged, desperate breathing, there was a silence. Then the old man got hold of his chin and looked him in the eyes. "Oh, Mr. Mulder," he said, sounding regretful. "Surely, you don't think I'm foolish enough to believe that?" The old man let go. "It's the truth!" Mulder yelled, just as Igor pushed him under again. This time he had blown all his breath out in his shout and hadn't had time to suck any air in before he went into the liquid. He couldn't stop himself from breathing the stuff. *Oh, God, just let me die. Please, God, let it be over...* **** Skinner tried to keep himself between Scully and whatever there was to see when he kicked in the door. But they all had heard the screams, and as he went through, he knew Scully was hard behind him, all flaming Irish redhead fury. "Federal agents!" he yelled. "Nobody move!" But then, when he saw what they were doing to Mulder--the battered, bruised body writhing as the two big men held his head in the tub--Skinner stepped aside and let Scully go. She lunged at them, leading with her gun. *"GET AWAY FROM HIM, YOU BASTARDS!"* she shrieked. The two big men scuttled away, leaving Mulder with his head still in the orange liquid. She went for the fat one, and he shrank away from her, eyes wide, hands up. Skinner went behind her and pulled Mulder out. He curled up in a little ball on the concrete floor, coughing convulsively, dripping the orange gook they'd had his head in. Scully glanced around, noticed that the other agents in Westin's lead squad had taken up positions covering the three suspects. She knelt beside Mulder. "Who are you?" the older of the three asked Skinner icily. "Just what is it you think you're doing here?" Skinner held up his badge. "Walter Skinner, FBI," he said. "And what I'm doing here, sir, is placing you and your companions under arrest for assault on a federal official." "Oh, rubbish," the old man said. "On your feet," Skinner said harshly. "Get your hands up where I can see them." On the floor beside him, he heard Scully mutter, "What is this stuff?" She got up, gun thrust at the old man. "What is this stuff?" she yelled. "Tell me!" Slowly, the old man got up and raised his hands. But he didn't say anything. Skinner reached out and gently pushed Scully's gun aside. "We'll get a sample of it," he said. "Somehow I'm more inclined to believe Pendrell's analysis anyway. Scully, Murray and Osborne. Get Mulder to a hospital." He turned back to the three men he had just arrested, who now were standing up against the wall, being frisked. *Fucking bastards,* he thought again. He said, "You have the right to remain silent..." **** Scully had never known Mulder to be a good patient, but he wasn't usually this bad. The EMTs were trying to get an IV into him--just Ringer's lactate because he was dehydrated--but he was trying to fight them off, shoving them away with one hand and moaning the words "no" and "don't" over and over again. She got hold of his hand and pushed his head back down on the gurney. "It's okay," she said softly. "I'm not going to let anybody hurt you." She noticed the broken finger and thought she knew why he was fighting them. "Give him a local for that," she said. "I already did," one of the EMTs said. "Don't," Mulder moaned. His eyes were wild, frightened. "Mulder, it's okay. We're just trying to get some fluids into your system. You're okay; you're going to be fine." "No! Don't let them stick any tubes in me!" "Hush. Nobody's going to hurt you." She turned his head so he couldn't see while the EMT got the needle in. To distract him, she said, "Do you know what that orange stuff was? Did they say anything about what it was or what it's supposed to do?" "It's...medicine," he said weakly. "You mean some kind of drug? Do you know what kind?" She knew he had swallowed some of it. He had been spitting it up when Skinner pulled him out. "No. It's...the same stuff they gave me in the hospital. When I was a kid." "Are you sure it's the same thing?" "Nothing else could taste that shitty." *This could lead somewhere.* If she could figure out what he was being treated for back then, that might yield a clue about what the drug was. "What were you in the hospital for?" "I was sick." *Or not*--he was so out of it, his brows knit in pain, the hand she was holding twisting back and forth at the wrist, restlessly. "Sick in what way?" she asked. "What was wrong?" "There was...something wrong with my kidneys." She blinked in surprise. "When was this? How old were you?" "Four... No...Mom was pregnant with Samantha then. Uh, must've been three." She sensed that his breathing was growing more rapid, and she glanced at the heart monitor. His pulse, slowly but surely, had begun to accelerate. "Don't leave me alone, okay?" he whispered. "I'm not going anywhere," Scully said. *I left you at that park, and look what's happened to you*. "Do you remember what they called it? The name of the disease." "I was real little, Scully--I don't think I asked any questions about it." "Was it cystitis? Nephritis?" "No." She saw him processing, staring toward the ambulance roof intently for a moment while he accessed some back corner of his memory. "It was glow...something. Sounded like glow-worm-something." "Glomerular disease?" "Uh...yeah, that could be it." *Or not,* she thought again. He sounded so doubtful. *God, glomerular disease could have meant dialysis, at three years old--no wonder he didn't want to have any tubes stuck in him.* She couldn't think of anything that might be used to treat the glomerular diseases that might have looked like that orange fluid, nothing they would have given him by mouth in that form, so that he would know what it tasted like. They had arrived at the hospital. "Please don't leave me alone with them," Mulder said. His face had contorted in terror, the skin stretched tightly across his cheekbones. Was the drug doing that? "I'm not going to leave you alone," Scully said. She squeezed his hand. "See, I'm right here. Don't worry; nobody's going to hurt you. I won't let them." Ten minutes later, she had decided it was definitely the drug, whatever it was--and the stuff was making him climb the walls. His blood pressure was sky high, and not only did he not want to have any tubes stuck in him, but he didn't want any needles, either, not for pain or a blood test or any purpose. He even fought them over taping his cracked ribs. Scully was trying hard to calm him--she figured they'd strap him down if he didn't cool off, and that wasn't likely to go over well at all. "Look, it's just adhesive tape, Mulder." She held it up so he could see it. "It's just tape." The attending physician shot her a meaningful look. "Just lie still for a minute," she said to Mulder. "I'm going to talk to the doctor over here." "Don't leave," he said. "Promise you won't leave." "I'll be right over there. Hush. Just lie still." She went over to the other doctor. In a low voice, he said, "We're going to have to rinse that stuff out of him." She drew a long breath. "I know." More tubes. "You think you can talk him into cooperating? I don't want to have to restrain him unless I absolutely have to, and if he fights us it's just going be even more traumatic." "Okay, I'll give it a try." She went back to the bedside. He was perceptive even when he was wacko. "It's bad, isn't it?" he said when she came back. "Listen to me," she said quietly. "I want to you try to calm down, and think rationally for a minute. Whatever that orange fluid is, it's making you crazy. You know I'm right, don't you?" "What are they going to do to me?" "They're going to rinse that orange stuff out." For a moment he didn't react. Then he tried to sit up, grimacing in pain at the movement. "I want to go home now," he said. "Mulder--" "You can't make me stay here!" he yelled. "I'm going home." Continued in Part 11. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 11 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to un-know. - Sir Richard Francis Burton April 22, 1996 Bellevue Hospital Center, New York City Scully caught Mulder's shoulders as he tried to struggle up out of bed. Despite running a lot of adrenaline, he was weak as a kitten. She pushed him back down. "Mulder, you're hurt, and we're trying to help you. You're not going anywhere." "Let go of me!" he yelled. She could see on the monitor that his heart was racing. "Stop it!" she yelled back at him. That froze him for a moment, his eyes wide. "That liquid you swallowed is doing you damage, Mulder." "I had it before, and it didn't kill me then." "Well, I don't think those guys in the basement gave it to you to make you feel better, do you?" He closed his eyes and let his head fall back on the gurney. For a moment she thought he was crying, but when he opened his eyes, there were no tears. "You're going to make me do it, aren't you?" he said. She wanted to say yes. "I'm not going to make you do anything," she lied. "But I'm afraid of what that drug is doing to you." He closed his eyes again. "Will you read to me?" he whispered. She blinked in surprise. "Sure," she said. "What do you want me to read?" "Anything. I don't care. I just need something else to think about." "Okay," she murmured. "It's going to be okay." **** Central Park, New York City Bateman waited twenty minutes, but he knew Skinner wasn't going to show with Krycek. He'd never thought Skinner would go through with the trade, but then Bateman didn't really care. Let the FBI deal with Krycek, the lying little turncoat. He'd spend the rest of his life in a federal prison, spinning tales about aliens and missile silos that nobody would believe. The important thing was, Bateman and Corvin still had control of The Five. Bateman lit another Morley and smiled and called it a day. **** Bellevue Hospital Center, New York City Skinner found Scully a magazine about tropical fish. She read aloud about the breeding and care of swordtails and other livebearing fish while a nurse prepped Mulder. He was lying on his side, facing away from Scully. He began trembling uncontrollably when he saw the naso-gastric tube, but he didn't move, didn't say anything. Scully put one hand on his shoulder to reassure him. The nurse put one hand over his eyes for a moment. "Why don't you just close your eyes, hon," she said said. "You don't have to watch, if you don't want to." He closed his eyes, but he didn't stop trembling. Scully read that late-developing male swordtails sometimes were mistaken for females and that the females could store sperm and produce young even when there was no male in the tank with them. The nurse inserted the tube in Mulder's nose. Out the corner of her eye, Scully saw his left hand clench into a hard fist, the knuckles white. While the nurse fed the tube down his throat, Scully read that swordtail eggs take four to six weeks to mature from fertilization to birth. The nurse was checking now to make the sure the tube was in his stomach. Then she let what was in his stomach drain out before putting the irrigation fluid in. "You want me to give you a minute to rest?" she asked. "No," Mulder said harshly. "For God's sake, get it done." "Okay," she said. "This won't hurt, but it might feel kind of weird. I want you wave at me if you feel like you're going to throw up." "All right." Scully kept reading while the gastric lavage went on. Baby swordtails could eat finely crumbled commercial flake foods or special commercial foods designed for fry right after they were born. The orange fluid had been viscous. Scully feared it would take a while to dilute it enough to rinse it all out. She went on to the next article in the magazine, on aquarium test kits. Mulder lay quietly, his eyes tightly shut, still trembling. His hand occasionally opened, then clenched again. Most test kits worked by adding a reagent to a small amount of aquarium water in a vial. Next article: how to measure the liner for an outdoor fish pond. Mulder had broken out in a cold sweat. Scully had just finished the fish pond article and started one on algae in saltwater tanks when the nurse finally got ready to remove the tube. Scully looked up and noticed that Mulder's face had a gray, deathly pallor. "You're doing just great, hon," the nurse said, slowly withdrawing the tube. He didn't look so great to Scully, but she held her silence. She didn't want to delay the removal, especially not in the process, but she figured her partner was about to lose it. He did, too, the second the tube came completely out, violently retching up what little of the saline solution remained in his stomach. Then dry heaves, painful and convulsive. Scully held his forehead while the nurse held the basin. Then finally, she felt him relax, breathing hard, but calming. "Done?" the nurse asked him. "Yeah, I'm okay," Mulder said weakly. The two of them laid him down, then the nurse produced a paper cup of lemon water. "Don't swallow this; just swish it around in your mouth a little bit then spit it back in the cup. That'll get that nasty taste out of your mouth." He did as he was told. The nurse patted his shoulder. "Doctor Willford will be in to see in you in just a minute." She left. Scully sat quietly beside him, watching. He seemed calmer, though whether that was because he wasn't getting any more of the drug in his system or the result of simple emotional exhaustion, she couldn't tell. After a moment, she said, "Do you want to hear any more about algae?" "No, it's okay," he whispered. She thought she might have seen the pale ghost of a smile brush across his lips. He turned his head to look at her, his eyes dull, glazed. "Krycek?" "We got him," she said. *And I guess Skinner's let him go, but I don't think you need to know that right now.* "Then it was worth it." *He did this for me*, she thought. *To make sure somebody would pay for Melissa. It wasn't about his father--if it had been that, he would've just killed Krycek. That was what he wanted to do.* "This may not be the best time to tell you this," she said, "but I'm afraid your car's a little the worse for it." She told him about the sedan running into the Mitsubishi. "Bent rear axle, I'm afraid." "It's not your fault." "Well, I damned sure wouldn't have gotten away from them in that Nova of mine." He studied her for a moment, then said, "How fast did you have it going?" She felt her face go warm. "About one-fifty," she said. Now there was no doubt about the smile--weak, washed-out, but it was there. "Cool," he said. **** He was finally sleeping. Scully went out into the hallway, intending to find some coffee and replace the aquarium magazine, and found Skinner waiting for her. "How's he doing?" Skinner asked. She was tired, unwilling to expend much energy on explanations. "He'll be okay," she said. She ran through the list quickly: cracked ribs, cracked jaw, broken finger. Dehydrated, exhausted, badly bruised all over. *Traumatized*, she thought, but she didn't say so. She figured Skinner could work that one out for himself. She shrugged. "Whoever they are, they're pros--they knew how to inflict maximum pain with minimal permanent damage." "Well, they're going to get to spend some time expounding on that to a judge," Skinner said. "Are they? I thought the deal was for no charges." "Yeah. It was." His turn to shrug. "Scully, I've got ten eyewitnesses to that scene in the basement. And I've got Mulder *and* Krycek. And so when I started to think about it, I thought, 'Aw, fuck it.'" She stared at him. "You didn't give them Krycek?" "No. Hell, why should I?" Scully laughed. "That's good," she said. "No, that's great." He smiled and shrugged again. Then he put one hand on her shoulder and said, "Why don't you go get some rest?" She shook her head. "No, I'm going to stay with him. I don't want to leave him alone." "He's not alone. I'm here, and Westin and a whole crowd of us." *But you're guards, not friends. If he wakes up, he may need a friend--one who's not afraid to give him a hug.* She looked at the floor and drew a long, shaky breath. "I left him in the park," she said. For a moment, Skinner held his silence. Then he said, "Look, Scully, I know how you feel. But he told you to go--" She started to argue this, but he stopped her with a look. "And he was right," Skinner said. "If you had stayed, they'd have gotten all three of you, and you wouldn't have spared him anything. What he did was right and brave. Don't dishonor it by beating yourself up over it." She closed her eyes and gave him a wry smile. "Do they teach that bedside manner in the Marines?" "Yeah, but they don't call it that. Listen, I'd like to get him back to D.C. as soon as possible--it'll be easier to look after him there." Scully nodded. "In the morning," she said. "There's really no medical reason why we couldn't move him right now, but I hesitate to disturb him tonight--he needs the rest." She remembered suddenly. "Did Pendrell come up with anything on that orange liquid?" "Yes." Skinner dug in a pocket and retrieved a notebook. "It's a synthetic neuro-transmitter," he read from his notes. "Being used experimentally to enhance memory in Alzheimer's patients. Similar to epi..." He frowned, trying to work out the pronunciation. "Epinephrine?" Scully asked, surprised. The last thing Mulder needed was memory enhancement. "Yeah. What does it mean?" "I don't know. It doesn't make sense." She thought for a moment. "Can you have somebody pull Mulder's medical records out of our files for me?" "Sure, but what for?" "Because all of a sudden I'm intensely curious about why anyone would try to drown a man in a neuro-transmitter." *And even more than that, why anyone would give it to a three-year-old boy with a kidney disease.* **** Alexandria, Va. "The deal was for no charges," Corvin said acidly. "I thought you were going to make that clear to Mr. Skinner." Bateman shrugged and took a drag off his Morley. "There'll be no charges," he said. "We will provide diplomatic immunity for the entire staff. It'll be false, of course, but by the time anyone realizes it's a fake, they'll have been released." "Higginbotham's going to be one son of a bitch to deal with, after this." "We're beyond needing him," Bateman said, unruffled. "What can he do to stop us? Go public? He'd implicate himself." "He could make another try for Mulder. Or tell the morphs what Mulder knows." "Mulder only knows what he can remember. If he'd remembered, he'd have told Higginbotham what he wanted to know. And Higginbotham's not going to tell the morphs anything unless he can get maximum mileage out of it. He doesn't want to give them Mulder; he wants to give them The Five." Corvin paced across his living room, his footsteps silent on a thick Oriental rug. "Huh. Yeah, you're probably right. Have you taken care of the Artemis business?" "The usual, yes. The NSA will release documents we provided to them--4,922 pages to each person or organization who asks for them. Primarily crew logs that speak eloquently of the fact that traveling into space is a lonely business. There'll be nothing to connect any of us with the station. The stuff is so boring, I doubt but a few hardy souls will even bother, and of those that do, there'll be nothing to find." "Make sure of it," Corvin said. "The final tests begin next week. I want no screwups, Shelby. We don't have time for them. When the date comes, we can't lose a single city. We take them all, or sooner or later we lose them all to the fucking morphs." "I'm well aware of it," Bateman said. "Be aware of this, my friend," Corvin said. There was bile in his tone. "It's not going to happen. The human race is not going to be assimilated. Not on my watch." **** April 23, 1996 Bellevue Hospital Center, New York City Insomniac that he was, Mulder usually functioned on about four hours of sleep a night. He'd go like that for months and then the day would come when he'd have exhausted himself--he'd lie down and crash into a near-comatose state, sometimes for as long as twelve hours. Scully had seen him sleep through a 6.2 earthquake in California once. She had pulled the car off the road and sat there terrified until it subsided; Mulder, his head rattling against the car door, had never even twitched an eyelash. He slept through the move to D.C. the same way. One of the nurses had half-joked that they ought to do an EEG to make sure he wasn't brain dead. Scully knew he wasn't--he was just dead out--and to some extent, she was glad for it. He still had tubes, the IV and a catheter, and she figured it was just as well for him to miss that. Scully thought that deathlike sleep was his way of coping with difficult chains of events: Pound his way through with all his strength, and when it was over, just shut down. When they arrived in Washington, she found Westin with Mulder's clothes and personal effects from the building in New York. Like everyone else, he wanted to know how Mulder was; she assured him Mulder was battered but unbroken, despite the fact that she wasn't sure the statement was true. "Glad to hear it," Westin said. He ducked his head, a little embarrassed. Scully gave him a curious look. "Well, I'm not exactly Spooky's No. 1 fan," he explained. "But Jesus." She nodded. Behind him, she saw Pendrell headed toward her. "Excuse me," she said. "You wanted Mulder's medical file," Pendrell said, a little breathless, as if he had run all the way from the Hoover building. "Yes, thanks." She flipped through it quickly, then frowned. It stopped at mid-1980 and made no mention of any kidney disorder. "Where's the rest of it?" she asked. "Huh? That's all there was." She shook her head. "This only goes back to about 1980," she said. "I need the earlier history." "I guess we haven't got anything earlier, then," Pendrell said, his reddish brows puckering. "Damn," Scully said, and then wished she hadn't--it produced a look on Pendrell's face like that of a puppy who'd been swatted with a newspaper. "It's not your fault," she said quickly. She resisted the temptation to pat his head and croon, "Good boy." "I'll arrange to get the rest of it," he said. "Weird, isn't it, that it wouldn't all be there?" "Yeah," Scully said thoughtfully. But in truth she wasn't all that sure it *was* weird--or maybe she had just encountered so much weirdness in relation to Mulder that the weird had begun to seem normal. When she returned to Mulder's room, she found him awake, or at least with his eyes open. "What time is it?" he asked dully, his voice sounding rusted over. "About two in the afternoon." "What day?" "Wednesday." "Shit. I don't suppose you taped the Knicks game for me on Sunday?" "No. But I bet we can find somebody who has a tape." "Okay. Just don't tell me the score." "I couldn't tell you who won if I wanted to." "Good." He was drifting off again. "How're you feeling?" "Like I got dragged by a freight train." "Apt enough. Did you know the bureau doesn't have your complete medical records?" "They're supposed to." "Yes, but they're not there." He sighed. "Will the waters of the Potomac rise up and smite us as a result?" Despite herself, she smiled at this. "Doubtful," she conceded. "Then I don't care." His eyes closed. Scully debated whether to push it or just let him sleep and take it up again later. Then he screwed one eye open again and said, "Presumably you wouldn't be annoying me with this petty procedural issue if there weren't some reason I *should* care." She smiled again. Under all the bruises and exhaustion and pain medication, that strange and marvelous brain still functioned. "I'm still trying to run down what that orange liquid was," she said. "I thought I might get a clue from the medical history, from when you were sick as a child." His frown was pure confusion. "Huh?" "Yesterday you said you'd had the same drug when you were three and in a hospital being treated for a kidney disorder." He processed for a moment, staring off at a point slightly to the left of her left shoulder. "I remember saying that, but I was never seriously ill as a child." "Then why did you tell me you were?" "I can't imagine. Maybe...maybe I was hallucinating or something. I don't think my head was very clear at the time." *Hard to argue with that one.* "Well, you don't mind if I pull the history and check it, do you?" "You're wasting your time, Scully," he said irritably. "Look, if I'd been seriously ill, I'd remember it, wouldn't I?" "One would assume so, yes." "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" *What was he getting so defensive about?* "It probably doesn't matter," she said soothingly. "But the bureau is supposed to have complete records, and if there's nothing there, what will it hurt?" "Scully, if I don't remember it, it didn't happen. Period." "I believe you." "The hell you do, but I don't care. I was *not* sick. If you don't believe me, that's your problem." He turned his face away from her. *Good Lord, he's really angry over this. Why would it upset him so?* "Mulder, I believe you. I do." She did, really, but she knew he wasn't going to accept that. Not now. "It doesn't make any difference what you believe," he said coldly. "It won't change what really happened, anyway." "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings." "I know," he whispered. He fell silent, and Scully let him be quiet for a minute. Then she asked, "Are you okay?" "Yeah," he said, his voice low. "I don't mind if you hurt me." She reached out to stroke his hair. "I don't want to hurt you." "I know, but it's okay." "No, it's not okay for anybody to hurt you. What made you say that?" "I don't know." His face had twisted in pain, and his eyes were dark, haunted. She petted him and sat quietly with him until he slept. She hoped it was just that he was still feeling the effects of his battering--she hoped he would get over whatever was gnawing at him. Continued in Part 12. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 12 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ Who would recognize the unhappy if grief had no language? - Publilius Syrus April 23, 1996 St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, D.C. Mulder didn't sleep again, not right away. Instead he lay feigning it until Scully curled up in a chair and drifted off. It had been a long time since he'd had to pretend to sleep. Once upon a time, he'd been good at it, back when he had used that technique to make his mother think he was just tired when he came back from those weekends and holidays with his father. When she started asking questions, Mulder would pretend to go to sleep, and that would shut her up. He didn't want to think about his childhood any more. He'd spent a good deal of his life not thinking about it, employing one of the few defense mechanisms against his own history that had actually worked--God knew therapy hadn't robbed it of its horror, despite the best efforts of those who had tried to help him break free of his past. And now he figured he'd done enough thinking about his childhood in the last few days, down in the basement with the old man throwing it in his face, rubbing his nose in it, to last him for a while. The old man had opened up the door and let the monsters out, and on the technicolor wide-screen of his eidetic memory, Mulder was watching them come out to play. There was the night his father had nearly choked him to death, hands around his throat, banging his head against the wall, screaming, "You're the lucky one!" The night he had gone into his sister's room to mourn for her, and his father had come in with a baseball bat, demolishing Samantha's things in a rage, while Mulder had ducked desperately this way and that to avoid getting hit. Finally he'd been too exhausted to move and had just put his arm up in defense--the crunch of bone had sounded deafening. Even now it was the sound he recalled clearly, more so than the pain; maybe he had tuned out the pain, even at the time. And then, he had just lain there on the floor, helpless and stunned, expecting at any moment that the bat would come down on his head and bring the end of everything. Wishing it would and terrified that it might, in equal parts at once. And now there was a new monster, one whose face he couldn't make out. What he had said in the ambulance, about being sick when he was small, that had been no hallucination. Like the nagging anxiety he felt when he remembered something that he couldn't remember while looking at Skylab, deep down inside, he knew his sudden terror of medical instruments meant something. That had not come out of the air he had breathed or the drug he had swallowed down in the old man's basement. It had a source, and Mulder could not see where that source was. He clearly remembered being healthy as a young boy--he also remembered a hospital and tubes and terrible sickness. The two could not be reconciled, and down along his spine, that generated a cold, awful panic Mulder couldn't justify, couldn't assign a face or event to. In New Mexico, a year ago--while in a state that had been a dream or an hallucination or a view into eternity--Mulder's father had said to him, *"You are the memory--it lives in you."* Mulder had never known what it meant, never known whether it was real or just something his own subconscious had dredged up out of its spacious monster closet. And either way, it was unfair. He had spent most of his life telling the truth and getting punished for it by people who spoke nothing but lies. His father, the arrogant shitheads up the line in the bureau, the old man. The deceitful had him outnumbered and outgunned, and they'd never stop shoving his head down and whipping him, just because they could. Lying in the hospital bed, now, Mulder tried to shake himself out of it. He reminded himself that his father was gone, that it was over. But down in his chest and his guts, he didn't believe that. The part of him that still was a frightened, battered adolescent had an irresistible power over him, and the old man had unleashed that power--Mulder just wanted to crawl under the bed and scream and scream and scream. But like the desperate, helpless boy he had been, he was too tired to hide, too defeated to scream. He didn't have the strength left for it. He needed to go someplace where it would all stop, and he didn't care how dark and cold and bottomless that abyss might be. And he wanted to go there alone, to make sure no one else plunged over the edge with him. That was the only way to ensure the pain really stopped. He glanced over at Scully, her face peaceful, her alabaster skin luminous in the semi-darkness, framed by that aurora of red hair. If it would keep her unharmed, he would hand himself over to the old man all over again, happily submit to the worst Boris and Igor could do. And in fact, he supposed, that was about what it would take to ensure she'd be safe. **** Mulder woke again several hours later to find the room dimly lit. There was a soft swishing sound somewhere. With effort, he focused his eyes and looked around. Skinner, sitting in a chair across the room, sorting through a sheaf of papers. "Scully give up on me?" Mulder asked. It came out in a croak; his mouth and throat felt dry as chalk. Skinner looked up. "I sent her home to get some rest," he said. He put the papers aside, got up and came over to the bed. "How're you feeling?" he asked. He poured water into a glass. "Why does everybody keep asking me that?" "Because you look like hell." Mulder would've preferred not to have Skinner feeding him the water through a straw, but his right hand had an IV needle in it and the left had two fingers lashed together in a metal splint. He yielded to the inevitable and let Skinner hold the glass for him. "Thanks," he said, when he'd had enough. "You feel up to answering some questions?" "Yeah, I guess so." "Do you have any idea why His Lordship Roy Aldridge-Laine Higginbotham would stuff you in a basement and try to beat information out of you?" Mulder stared at him. "Higginbotham, as in the Duke of Effington?" he said. "You know him?" "No. I know of him. He was knighted during World War II for arranging logistics in the European theater. I met him shortly after my Dad died, but at the time he wasn't handing out business cards." He sighed. "Let me guess--he's got diplomatic immunity." "Dripping out his ass." Mulder laughed, low in his throat. He couldn't help it; it was too perfect. Finally get something on one of the sons-of-bitches, and they couldn't use it. Of-fucking-course he had diplomatic immunity. The laughter made his ribs hurt, but he laughed anyway. When he sobered, Skinner said, "Any idea what he wanted with you?" Mulder shook his head slowly. "I really don't know," he said. "He kept asking me, 'where are The Five?'" "Five what?" "I think they're 'who,' not 'what,' but beyond that, I don't have a clue what he was talking about. Then, at one point, he said he just wanted to know whether I had told the guy who took Krycek where The Five are." "Uh, yeah. The morphing alien." Skinner crooked an eyebrow at him and waited. Mulder decided not to fall for it. He shrugged. Skinner said, "Krycek says he knows of five survivors from the Roswell incident, and that they're what the morphing alien wants." "Maybe I hit Krycek in the head too hard in Hong Kong," Mulder said. "I didn't see the guy morph or bleed green blood or anything." *Not this time.* "He was big and strong, and he just overpowered me, that's all. He didn't say what he wanted Krycek for. I figured he was NSA, like the other bunch." Skinner held his look, and Mulder figured his boss had a suspicion he was leaving something out. But Skinner didn't push it. Instead, he said, "We also picked up an Enrico Semarone, former Italian military intelligence, and a Phillippe Duval, formerly of Interpol. They were upstairs, just hanging out, and they claim they don't know anything about what was going on down in the basement." Mulder shrugged again. "If they did know, you couldn't prove it by me. I never saw anybody except Higginbotham and his two goons." "Well, I don't buy that they were standing around that empty building just for a smoke break." "It wasn't empty when I got there," Mulder said. "I heard them moving stuff out." Skinner nodded. "We'll check it again. If they took off in a hurry, they might've left something behind. Scully says she's met Semarone and Higginbotham, but they didn't tell her their names. She thinks they're somehow connected to those files in West Virginia." "I wouldn't be surprised." "But you don't know what those files were for?" "No. They were some kind of medical records, but I don't know what for." *Scully's looking for my medical records,* he remembered. *And I don't know what for.* Suddenly he felt very tired, as if weariness were an acid that had been eating at him for days and suddenly had broken through some membrane that had been separating him from its effects. *They'll get off and keep right on doing what they've been doing, and it's all been for nothing. And nobody believes me. They'll come for me again, or for Scully, or for someone else close to us.* Skinner was talking about starting paperwork to have Higginbotham, et al, deported. Mulder didn't want to hear it. *You've got them on the wrong charges,* he thought. *The hell with what they did to me--what did they do to Samantha? To Scully? To all those people in those files? They arranged to have Skinner shot, and he just blew it off. They murdered my father, but nobody cares about that.* He found himself wishing that Boris and Igor had put him out of his misery--the thought of going on under the threat that Higginbotham might get to him again, or to Scully or someone in his or her family, seemed unbearable. It was like slamming his head into a brick wall, over and over, and all of sudden the idea of stopping the pounding had wonderful appeal. After a few minutes, Skinner said gently, "You still with me?" "I'm tired," Mulder said, truthfully. "I'm just...really tired." "Go back to sleep," the A.D. said. "We'll finish later." "Take care of Scully, will you?" he said. "And Krycek, because she needs him, on account of her sister." Skinner studied him for a moment. "Nobody's going to get to Scully," he said quietly. "Or to Krycek, or to you. Anybody who tries is going to have to come through me and Westin and about six more like us. We'll see if diplomatic immunity can protect them from a bullet." *For all you know, they could have green, poisonous blood, and shooting them could kill us all. But if I told you that, you wouldn't believe me. Nobody believes me.* *It's never going to stop...* **** April 24 The next morning, when he had eaten a little something and proved he could sit up by himself, they removed the IV and the catheter and let him walk around a little. He was stiff and sore all over, but Scully pronounced that he was likely to live. "I'd like to go home now," he said. She gave him that ruler-wielding-nun look again. "Maybe tomorrow," she said, in a tone that told him she planned to keep him in a hospital bed for at least a week. "I'm just taking up space here, Scully. Everything I've got is stuff that will get better by itself, anyway." He knew this was true. He wasn't really all that badly hurt anyway. He had played basketball with worse after holiday weekends with his dad. "We'll see how you are tomorrow." "I'm going to take a shower," he said. "I feel sticky." She blinked in surprise. "Okay," she said. He went into the bathroom and turned on the shower but didn't get in. Instead, he waited for Scully to take advantage of the moment to step outside. Then he retrieved the package of clothes and personal effects Westin had dropped off. He dressed, slipped out into the hall and down the stairs. **** April 25, 1996 Philadelphia, Pa. Shelby Bateman stood at the bottom of a cellular phone tower and lit a cigarette, musing on the complexity of modern life. When the Project had first been conceived, back in the late '60s, nobody had thought they'd need to deal with cellular phones. Or satellite downlinks. Cable television had been for bumpkins so far out in the country they didn't matter. Nobody had begun to imagine anything remotely like home computers linked to what once had been a Defense Department data network. Back then, even to cut power and telephone lines, to drop broadcast stations off the air, had seemed a mammoth task. In retrospect, Bateman thought they hadn't known how good they had it. But much had changed, and so more tests were needed. They had a pretty good track record so far--blow out a section of tunnel near the Chicago River, and trade in the windy city screeched to a halt. Cut just the right junctions, and AT&T went dead in the water on the Eastern seaboard. And there was the first, spectacular test--the New York City blackout. Nobody'd ever guessed those events hadn't been accidents or the normal malfunctions to be expected as part of the price of a complex, modern society. Of course, the Project had had its failures, too. The cable television filters they had tried, for example, had had unforeseen side effects. They'd tried all kinds of things, some successful, some disastrous. They'd tried putting "purity control" in the water supply. They'd tried dangerous gases and extraterrestrial bugs. In the end, they'd concluded they had to go through with what the aliens wanted--the large-scale roundups of humans for testing, conversion, absorption. But if things went well, most of those humans wouldn't be absorbed by the aliens at all. They'd end up as their own warrior circle--hybrids who had the power to throw the aliens back off the planet. Bateman looked up at the cellular tower and felt confident. Tomorrow morning, a technician would flip a switch, and every cell phone in the Philadelphia metropolitan area would go dead. A fluke of complex technology, the media would say. And after a few hours, the technician would flip another switch, and the phones would resume their operation. Small potatoes, compared to what was waiting for the city of Boston a few days after that. In Boston, their first large-scale, all-out dress rehearsal, everything would go down, all at once. They'd leave it turned off for forty-eight hours, and see how many people they could drag out of their homes and businesses in search of water, gasoline, light, and when all was said and done, just to look at other human faces. How many people would come out where they could be seen? And touched? **** April 26, 1996 Washington, D.C. Mulder hadn't gone to his apartment, or to the office. He'd left his badge and his gun and a note addressed to Skinner. The Lone Gunmen hadn't seen him, or if they had, they weren't saying. He hadn't taken a flight, used his credit or ATM cards, couldn't have driven anywhere because his car wasn't driveable. His cell phone kept giving Scully a cheerily voiced message about how he was unavailable or had moved out of the service area. Westin discovered that Mulder had taken a bus from near the hospital to his bank, cashed a check for $1,500 and then disappeared. Thirty-six hours after he left the hospital, Scully resigned herself to the necessity of calling his mother in Connecticut and trying to avoid alarming her in the process. "I've got his car, and he's left town--I guess he's turned off his phone. You haven't heard from him, have you?" "Left town?" Laura Mulder said. Scully winced. *Yes, it sounded just as lame as I thought it would.* "No," Laura said. "I haven't heard from him. If he calls, should I give him a message?" "Yes, just ask him to call me, would you? I'd appreciate that very much." "I'll be happy to. This doesn't have anything to do with that man who called me about Fox's medical records, does it? He isn't sick, is he?" *Only at heart.* "No, he's okay. I think the medical records thing is just routine--they discovered what they had wasn't complete. I'm sure it's just a paperwork snafu." *Except that it upset the hell out of him, for no reason I can figure out.* "Oh," Laura said. She had the same tone in her voice Mulder got when he wasn't buying an argument. Perfectly civil, perfectly correct, and yet conveying unequivocably that he regarded what had just been said as perfect nonsense. Sometimes accompanied by an ever-so-subtle roll of the eyes. Scully wondered if Laura Mulder was rolling her eyes. "Well, all right," Laura said. "If he should call here, I'll ask him to get in touch with you." "Great, thanks." Scully hung up. She looked up at Skinner and shook her head. "You have no idea where he might hide out?" Skinner asked. Scully shook her head. "I've been wracking my brain, but I can't imagine. He doesn't have a favorite place, a hideout, that I know of." She thought for a moment. "He said he wanted to go home," she recalled. "But he didn't go home," Skinner said. "Maybe he did," she said, thinking out loud. She rummaged through the disk box on Mulder's desk until she found a CD-ROM containing a national phone directory--Mr. Eidetic never wrote down phone numbers. Skinner came to look over her shoulder. She found a listing for a William Mulder in West Tisbury, Massachusetts, but when she dialed it, it had been disconnected. "Damn," she said. "You want to go up there?" Skinner asked. "Unless somebody has a better idea, yes." Skinner nodded. "Okay. Before you go, you'd better know what was in that note." He handed her the envelope Mulder had left in the hospital room--it was a pay stub envelope, probably just what he'd had in his pocket that would serve the purpose. The note was written on a blank deposit slip out of his checkbook. It read, "I quit," and bore his signature, a scrawl rendered awkward by a hand sore from the IV. It wasn't a big surprise--after all, he had left his badge and his gun, too. But the words were a shock. "I haven't started any paperwork," Skinner said. "As far as I'm concerned, he's on sick leave. But I can't ignore it forever." Scully got up, headed for the door. "You won't have to," she said. Continued in Part 13. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 13 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ ...when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came--arising I know not whence--the current which I dare to call my life. - Teilhard de Chardin April 26, 1996 Interstate 95, eastbound near Stamford, Conn. Scully drove to Massachusetts, in large part just to give herself time to sort herself out. Mulder had enough on his mind; he didn't need her angst to add to his own misery. She knew Skinner had been right about the situation in Lake Accotink Park--Mulder had done the right thing by drawing the helicopter away, and she had done the right thing by rabbiting with Krycek. It was just too damned bad that had resulted in Mulder getting caught in Roy Higginbotham's grinder. Just one of those things. And just blind, dumb luck that it had happened in part because he had hurt or exhausted himself pulling her out of the path of some weird blue beam levitating her up toward a UFO. Was that part of what was eating at him? That he had been able to save her and not his sister? That he had suffered so much in that basement because he had rescued her from something she had refused to believe in? *It doesn't make any difference what you believe. It won't change what happened, anyway.* It was hard for her to blame herself for disbelieving in extra-terrestrials, even if she did now have to admit she'd been wrong. The evidence just hadn't been there, and even Mulder had conceded they needed evidence of a sort they could lead up or land on the courthouse steps. He had sometimes chafed, occasionally whined, about being held to her standards, but he had never seemed to resent it. Sometimes he had seemed to relish the challenge. No, it wasn't her disbelief in aliens that had hurt him, and even if it had been, that wasn't her fault. But she did blame herself for not doing more for him once he was safe again. His raw terror in the ambulance, at the hospital--granted, gastric lavage was no fun for anybody, but she'd never known Mulder to blow a fuse at the sight of an IV before. The defensiveness of his response to her question about the medical records. Even for Mulder, who had psychological sore spots all over, his reaction had been out of character. *I don't mind if you hurt me.* She'd known something was tearing at him, something with unbearably sharp claws, and she'd done far too little to find out what it was or what he needed to help defend himself against it. Now she just wanted to find the wound, bathe it in balm and bandage it up so it would heal cleanly. If she could. If it wasn't too late. She realized she wasn't doing the sorting out she had meant to; she was thinking about Mulder again. It seemed like that was all she had done for weeks. In some ways, she supposed thinking about Mulder was easier than what she really needed to do--re-order her own universe to factor in the presence on Earth of creatures from another planet. Not that she hadn't been steeled for that, of course. She had. The extraterrestrial DNA, "purity control," the non-human fetus that had gotten Deep Throat killed. The strange beings in the tunnel in West Virginia. Watching through a haze of semi-consciousness as that brown-haired man had completely altered his own appearance. At some level, Scully thought she was waiting for some shock to hit her. And it hadn't. Maybe it really was that easy. Maybe she could just say, "Okay, Mulder was right," and shrug it off. Aliens took his sister. The government had been using their technology to build weird aircraft or spacecraft, or whatever. Breeding hybrids. Doing bizarre genetic experiments. He was right. So okay. So what then? She didn't know. She had a vague sense that *something* ought to be done. Whoever was responsible for these things had hurt people, and it was her job to stop that, or exact retribution. Krycek must know who had ordered the hit on her that had resulted in her sister's death; if he could be made to tell it convincingly enough to sway a jury, Scully was resolved to make both he and his superior pay for that. But that was hardly enough, not for all the pain that had been inflicted, by aliens or humans or both. Not enough for those pilots at Ellens Air Force Base. Not for the sailors who had died aboard the *Zeus Faber*, not for the burned soldiers in Wisconsin or Max Fenig. Ruby Morris. Samantha Mulder. The MUFON women, with their implants and their cancers. God, the list of victims was long. And our list of suspects, she thought grimly, is much too short, and even if we had names, then what? Does a federal court have jurisdiction over morphing aliens from the planet Zenon? Can we deport them, jail them? What would constitute a lethal injection for a Klingon? Much remained to be unraveled before they could get to that point anyway--it wasn't enough just to go into court with an alien in handcuffs. They'd have to sort out the legalities, explain why the aliens were here, why the government had done those things as result of their presence, what anybody had hoped to gain. What an enormous task, yet Scully knew she had come too far, lost too much, to let it go and walk away. But she despaired of trying to do it on her own, without Mulder's relentless, inexhaustible energy dragging her forward. Or at least she had thought it was inexhaustible. Was it really possible those men in the basement had burned him out? As she crossed the Massachusetts state line, the news on the car radio told her there'd been some malfunction affecting cellular telephones in Phildadelphia and that the National Security Agency had decided to release its documentation on the Artemis space station module later in the week. **** West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard Scully arrived at the house in West Tisbury early in the evening. As she drove up and parked in front, she noticed an old woman in the yard next door, watering rose bushes with a hand-held spray gun. Scully went up and rang the bell, but there was no answer. No lights on inside, either. She walked around back, but the fence had a locked gate. The old woman had come up beside her. "If you're looking for Fox," she said, "you're likely to find him down by the pond." Scully looked and could just see the gleam off the water in the Great Tisbury Pond. "He's been going out there every evening," the old woman said. "Sitting there half the night." Damn, Scully thought. Every bit as bad as she'd expected. "Thank you," she said quietly. "You can cut through my yard, if you want," the old woman offered. She waved toward her own gate, and Scully backtracked, then went through. "I appreciate this very much," she said. "Not at all. I'm Joyce Brenner. I've been their neighbor ever since they moved here, before Fox was born." Mrs. Brenner extended a dry, withered hand. Scully shook it gently. "Dana Scully," she said. "I work with...Fox." Strange, to form that name in her mouth. Mrs. Brenner gestured toward the pond. "Go ahead," she said. "It'll be open later, if you need to come back through." Scully went out through the trees. The wind blew softly but steadily. It was cool, as the sun sank behind the horizon. Strange that Mulder, always so seasick on the water, would feel such an affinity for the shore. Was it just that it was home? She found him leaning up against a big pine tree. He didn't look up when she came over. Scully sat down beside him. The tree was rough against her back. He was silent a moment, then he said, "Did you ever stop to think about the tide? I mean, really think about it? Here's this gigantic ocean--so big you have to fly for hours at supersonic speed before you get to where you can even see land. And there's something out there in space that's even bigger. Big enough to move that huge ocean hard enough to erode away the land, little by little. If you back up from the edge to keep from getting washed away, you find the same force helping generate heat and pushing the land up from under your feet." "I keep forgetting what a wild-eyed romantic you can be," Scully said. "Don't confuse romance with depression. I was thinking that government is like that. It just goes on and on, and nothing can stop it. It doesn't care if it sweeps you out to sea or tears everything out from under you or brings your house down around your ears. No matter who it grinds up, it just keeps turning." "Mulder," she started. "Don't," he murmured. "Look, Scully, don't try to talk me out of it, okay? I'm not so crazy that I can't make a decision for myself--I know exactly what my resignation means. Let me walk away with that much dignity." "I didn't come up here to talk you into or out of anything. I suppose I just wanted to know you're going to be all right." "I'll be all right. Maybe not today, but I'll get over it." "You don't present the aspect of a man who's in the process of getting over it." He shrugged. "I've been through worse." "How does that guarantee you'll recover from this one?" "I'm a grownup, Scully. Believe it or not, I'm generally capable of feeding and dressing myself. You've done what you could; you checked on me. Go home. Resume your normal life." She sighed, fighting off exasperation. "You know better than that, Mulder. This is not just a courtesy call." "You mean Skinner didn't send you up here to talk me into cooperating with his effort to get Higginbotham and his pals deported?" "Well, yes, but--" "Go home, Scully. It's over." "Ten of us saw him try to drown you, Mulder. Why should we let that go?" "Because it's pointless. Higginbotham's never going to be touched, and you know it. They're going to get to the witnesses; they're going to corrupt the evidence; they're going to make a deal." "You don't know that." "Yes, I do." Finally he turned to look at her. Even in the fading light his eyes were dull, sunk into the sockets from fatigue, and the bruise on the left side of his face had gone lurid purple, with yellowish streaks extending down past his jaw. She couldn't help but flinch. "Yeah, you take a good look. Because if you pursue this, you're going to end up the same way." "That's just it, Mulder--it could have been any of us. And I'm well aware that you did it at least part to help me get Krycek for Melissa's death. I still want that, and I can't believe you don't want it, too. Otherwise, you wouldn't have risked so much." "If you need me to help make the case against Krycek, I'll come down. But not for Higginbotham." "We can make that case, Mulder. Krycek says he'll turn state's evidence against Higginbotham. He--" "At various times Krycek has also said he didn't kill my father. I may be every bit as paranoid and screwed-up as you think I am, but I'm not stupid enough to fall for that." "I don't think you're crazy, Mulder. I've never thought that. But I know you're in pain and--" "Stop it!" He jerked his head away. "Just stop it." He was trembling, breathing hard, the muscles along his jaw flexing. Between his teeth, he said, "I can't do it anymore, all right? I can't. I just want out." Her throat constricted. She reached to take his arm, wanting desperately to offer some comfort, but he shuddered out of her grip, as if even comfort hurt him. She waited, gave him a moment to focus himself. "Okay," she said carefully. "I'll go. I'll leave you alone." "Please do." Something in his voice told her the last thing he wanted was for her to go. She said, "But first I want to know what you're going to do." He sighed. "I know this is going to be hard for you to believe, Scully, but there actually was a time--a past life--when I had plans to do something else. Did you know I wasn't studying psychology my first two years at Oxford?" She blinked in surprise. "No." He nodded. "History. I was going to teach, maybe write some books." She'd read some of his stuff--he was a good writer. It was a perfectly reasonable plan, but of course, that was just what was wrong with it. Mulder didn't function well in perfectly reasonable situations. He got bored, went stir crazy. "I'm thinking," he went on, "about finding a job at some small New England college. Maybe when the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse ride through I'll be buried so deep they just won't notice me." She figured this last was a key feature of the plan. No one would notice him; everybody would leave him alone. No one would hurt him. He'd have nothing to lose. She felt her throat constrict. She swallowed, trying to ease it. "There's nothing wrong with that idea," she said. "Except it means you're just giving up on your dream of--" "It's not a dream, Scully. It's a nightmare. I gave it my best shot, and it wasn't good enough. I've got nothing left for it." She couldn't argue with this. Who was she to tell him what he could or couldn't stand? "Okay," she murmured. "You know where I am, if you--" "No. I told you--I'll be fine." He wouldn't. He might be functional, he might go on, but he would never be fine. Scully realized suddenly that there was one more thing left unsaid, one more debt to pay. "Thank you for Krycek," she whispered. She leaned over and kissed his cheek. He shuddered but didn't resist. Then he drew a sharp breath, and his hand came up to cover his eyes. "Don't cry," she said softly. As soon as she said it, she knew she had it wrong--if there was healing power in the release of tears, it was a release he needed desperately. And she needed it, too, just to wrap her arms around him and comfort him, to feel that she was not abandoning him again. To feel she could make him feel safe, if not make him safe. But as she reached out, he jerked up and away from her, scrambling to his feet. He turned his back on her, arms crossed over his chest. Scully had never imagined a rejection could hurt so much--she knew this one was purely defensive, but that didn't lessen the sting of it at all. She breathed hard a couple of times to steady herself. "Mulder," she said softly. "We both know that there've times when one of us has let the other down. We haven't always been there for each other the way we would've liked. But we've always tried, to whatever extent we were able at the moment." She knew he was crying now, because he wasn't speaking, wasn't moving, wasn't even breathing. "I don't know what to do for you," she went on. "I don't know if I should stay away or push to get in. I'm afraid to make it worse, and that's the last thing I want to do." Now she felt tears sliding down her own cheeks. "But I had to try, because you've always tried for me." There was a long silence. Scully had nothing else she could say, so she waited him out. She'd always appreciated that Mulder wasn't afraid of silence, didn't feel he had to fill it with idle chatter of some sort, but this one seemed to drag out forever, like torture. Finally he lifted his head a little and said, "There's fog coming in off the ocean." Scully just looked at him, standing there, arms still crossed. "You're not going to be able to get the ferry back to the mainland tonight," he went on. "You can stay up at the house, if you want." "Not if you don't want me to." Now he let go of his arms and turned to face her, but he didn't quite look at her. "It's all right," he said. "I don't mind." "You don't mind if I hurt you," she murmured. "You're not hurting me, Scully. Something is, but it's not you. You just make it harder for me to look away from it. And it's hard enough, because I don't really know what it is, so I don't know which way to look to get away from it." She nodded. Like much about Mulder, it made a warped kind of sense, a sense she could feel in her heart but not puzzle out in her mind. "It would make me feel better to know you're not alone," she said. "Okay." He held a hand out to her. She couldn't resist the opportunity to lighten the mood. She sensed they both needed it. She shook her head. "Mulder, you're the only man on the planet who, despite having two cracked ribs, would try to help a perfectly healthy woman stand up. At the risk of seeming unappreciative, my Hippocratic Oath simply will not permit it." She got to her feet without taking his hand. He caught her cue. "Oh, God," he said. "You're in doctor mode. Does this mean you're going to bitch at me for drinking a beer?" "Not if it's good beer and you're prepared to share." They walked up to the house. **** The warrior omni-morph was puzzled. It had not been able to stretch its hearing enough to hear what went on in the basement on 46th Street, and it didn't know what had passed between Mulder and the Responsible named Higginbotham. And now Mulder appeared to have ceased his investigation. *Circles condemn these humans,* it thought. How any creatures could be so unpredictable, could change their functions at a moment's notice in such a way, was beyond comprehension. The warrior wondered what the Circles wanted them for--humans were so contentious and confusing, and occasionally, when a morph took them over, it became more human than morph, as the cataloger named Jeremiah Smith had done. Something in the human whose shape Smith had taken had shaped Smith in return. The Circles were still considering that unforeseen, appalling event. Still, the fact remained that no morph inquestor had ever given up its search. To do so would have been unthinkable. This human inquestor, this Mulder, seemed to have abandoned his quest with little more than a shrug of his shoulders. So, the warrior could not depend on Mulder for its answers. But Mulder at least had pointed a finger at four of the Responsibles--the ones called Higginbotham, Bateman, Semarone and Duval. All had been at the 46th Street building. All knew something. All must be gathered. And perhaps Mulder still must be watched and heard, just in case. The omni-morph focused its energy and began to split itself into duplicates. Four duplicates would gather the Responsibles. Meanwhile, it would watch Mulder. **** Scully sat up and nursed a Samuel Adams lager for more than an hour. They sat out on the screen porch while the fog wafted in and didn't talk much. When they did talk, it was of unimportant things. How thick the fog looked. How long it had taken her to drive up. Who that old woman next door was. How far the house was from the beach, and that she had seen humpback whales on the ferry over. From somewhere he dredged up an old bathrobe that had belonged to his mother. He confessed he had not been able to bring himself to make up the bed in the master bedroom and took her upstairs to what had been his own room as a boy. Not much that was reminiscent of him remained--the little room had been made over into a guest room, tastefully appointed with hunter green wallpaper, ginger jar lamps and Shaker bed tables. Sterile, it might as well have been a hotel room. The sort of intense clutter Scully thought of as Mulder-mess would have been welcome. "The sheets are clean," he said. "I've been bunking on the couch." "I'll be fine," she said. "Okay. Bathroom's right next door. Just, uh...just call if you need anything. I'll probably up awhile." She suspected he'd be up all night. "I'll be fine," she said again. And then he was gone, and there was nothing to do but strip down to her underwear, wrap herself in the robe and lie down in the darkness. She lay awake for a long time, listening to the silence in the house. The bed was more comfortable than it looked, and after a while she realized that, under the strong perfume of fabric softener, the bed vaguely smelled of him--of the Jamaica bay rum after shave he used, of his own particular slightly musky scent. Maybe she was imagining it. No, it was there. Maybe not. She slept a little while, and dreamed of climbing an enormous, infinite stairway that had no bottom and no top that she could see. And then woke suddenly, feeling uneasy. She lifted her head, listening, wondering if Mulder were dreaming. Had she heard him cry out? Silence. Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. She got up, tied the robe tightly around her waist, retrieved her gun and padded down to the living room. He wasn't on the couch. Scully hesitated, not sure where to go in the unfamiliar surroundings. Then she heard a long, shaky sigh from somewhere off to her left and followed the sound. There was a low light coming from a room filled with floor-to-ceiling book shelves. Must have been his father's study. When she came around the edge of the door, she saw Mulder sitting at a massive oak desk, his face buried in his hands. She set the gun down on a table before she went in. "Mulder?" she said quietly. "Mulder, what is it? What's wrong?" He lifted his head. His look was sheer terror, eyes wide and dark, the facial muscles stretched nearly to breaking across his cheekbones. "I found it," he said. "Found what?" "My medical records. You were right--I was sick." She went to him, put one hand on his shoulder to steady him. He was trembling. "Well, you're all right now," she said. "It's all right. I'll take care of you." "Look," he said. He pointed at one of the pages. She looked. She couldn't help drawing a sharp breath. The signature over the words "attending physician" was clear. Victor Klemper, M.D. Continued in Part 14. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 14 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ When the source is deep, the stream is long. - Zen saying April 27, 1996 West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard Scully didn't care now whether Mulder wanted to be touched or not. Standing next to where he sat at the desk, she pulled his head against her chest and held him there, stroking his hair. "It's okay," she said. "You're okay now." He made no effort to pull away, as if he were willing at last to surrender to having her comfort him. He was trembling, breathing hard. Scully thought she would have done the same, if she had not been so focused on keeping him calm. "I've been meaning to go through my dad's stuff," he whispered. "And I...I couldn't bring myself to do it. Tonight, I just kept wandering in here, like I couldn't stay away from it, and I started looking through the file cabinet..." "It's okay," Scully said again, when he trailed off. *Talk to me*, she willed him. *Talk it out.* "Can you read this?" he asked harshly. "Can you tell what he did to me?" Ah. Vestiges of the old Mulder juggernaut surfacing at last. And ready to do, not talk. "I'll try," she said. "Tell you what--you think there's some coffee around here somewhere?" She hoped movement would settle him, ease him out of his shock. "Sure. Yeah, I can do that." "After that, go out to my car and get my laptop and cell phone, all right?" "Okay," he said. He left, pale, shaky, but moving. Scully went upstairs for her glasses. From downstairs she heard a coffee grinder. When she came back, she sat at the desk and hefted the medical file. It was an inch and a half thick--Scully knew of 80-year-old men who hadn't amassed the volume of medical records Mulder had piled up before he was fifteen. "Where do you want this?" Mulder asked, holding her laptop. "Wherever you're going to sit. I need you to do a Web search for me. See what you can find on a drug called Tacrine--" She spelled it for him. "--and something called nerve growth factor and the relationship between acetylcholine and beta amyloid protein in brain chemistry." "Okay. Is this remotely related, or are you just trying to keep me out of your hair? "Both. Now, this part's important, Mulder." He looked up. Despite seeming outwardly calm, his eyes were slightly dilated in suppressed anxiety. "Don't freak out," she said sternly. "But you'll want to start that search using keyword 'Alzheimer's.'" His eyes went even wider. He turned toward the kitchen. "Don't freak out," he muttered. "Jesus." He came back a moment later with coffee for both of them and started connecting her laptop to the cell phone. Scully flipped back to the earliest pages in the file. They were labeled "Boston University Hospital." She read the diagnosis and repressed a temptation to give a low whistle. As if he had read her thought, he said, "Can you at least tell me what idiopathic RPGD is? Is it...I don't know, common?" "I don't know that I'd call it rare, but it's not terribly common. Idiopathic just means--" "Nobody's sure what caused it." "Or at least that you didn't have any of the usual underlying diseases, like lupus or a strep infection. RPGD stands for rapidly progressive glomerular disease, the 'rapidly progressive' part meaning it usually...gets worse pretty quickly, and glomerular disease is-- Well, a glomerulus is a kind of a tuft of little blood vessels in the kidney, and when those vessels get clogged up, that can cause kidney failure." She didn't say that kidney failure could be fatal--he was perfectly capable of coming to that conclusion himself. "But I got over it?" he said, his tone more hopeful than certain. "Apparently, but that's a little unusual in itself, because even today idiopathic RPGD is not readily treatable except by dialysis and/or a transplant. And back in the 1960s," she went on, "your odds of surviving long enough to enter kindergarten would have been virtually nonexistent." "So I must've had some kind of spontaneous remission?" "According to these records, you had *four* of them. And that's...strange." Scully was reading the file. Dialysis. Heparin in full anticoagulant doses. Hemorrhagic complications. Steroids, immunosuppressants. He had definitely been one sick little boy. The attending physician, someone named Gorman, had suggested a transplant, but the hospital committee had overridden the recommendation. Mulder hadn't been a good candidate for a transplant--the disease tended to recur in the transplanted organs. What she didn't want to say, at least not without checking it further first, was that some of the symptoms of idiopathic RPGD loosely mimicked the symptoms Mulder'd had after encountering the retrovirus in the morphing alien's blood. Could Klemper, given his experience with the Jews during the war, have induced the illness for the purpose of trying to figure out how to cure it? Was even Klemper evil enough to deliberately expose a small child to a disease so dreadful? Scully heard the modem in her laptop beep and then sing and rasp. She turned pages. Just before his third birthday Mulder had been transferred to "twenty-four-hour attended care," under Klemper's supervision, at something called "MJ-HG." She didn't know what "MJ-HG" was, but she knew what the UFO conspiracy crowd thought MJ was--the arm of the government that covered up the Roswell incident, and perhaps miscellaneous others. Scully was slightly less inclined to dismiss that thought than she had been a few days ago, though not entirely ready to accept it either. There were three more admissions to "MJ-HG," when he was six, nine and twelve. But there was no reference to what drugs might have been administered. Mostly the symptoms were what she would have expected. Blood in the urine, et cetera. The date on the last admission was seven months after Samantha disappeared. And he had another new doctor then, Karen Curtis. Not a kidney specialist, a psychiatrist. Not that it was at all unbelievable that Mulder might have needed some counseling after Samantha vanished, but Scully made a note to try to find out who Karen Curtis was. Then she saw a notation that made her blood go chill. A citation under the admitting information read, "transfer patient from Artemis infirmary via USAF." And the admission in 1974 made a reference to symptoms of "long-term l-g exp." Long-term low-gravity exposure? She thought of Ruby Morris, who had reappeared after being missing for a month with the same symptoms astronauts acquired after they had been in space for a while. Artemis. She remembered asking Mulder what had sparked his nightmare--he had said it was seeing a picture of Skylab. Could he actually have been there somehow? Had whoever had taken Samantha taken her brother, too, then returned him to the Artemis module, attached to Skylab? If so, why? Why keep Samantha? Had Mulder gotten away somehow or outwitted them? If it had been aliens who had taken the two kids, the file implied that the government was abetting them. Or appeasing them. But God, what a horrifying thought! *Appeasing them by giving up our children? And then bringing them back and subjecting them to experimental therapies? My God.* She looked over at Mulder, frowning in concentration, the laptop's screen reflecting amber figures off the surface of his glasses. What had Klemper and Curtis done to turn the deathly ill, tortured child described in the medical file into a tall, fit, completely healthy 35-year-old man? She sighed. She wondered how much to tell him. *He's been tortured, and he knows he's not safe. He's not sleeping; he's spending his nights staring out at the Great Tisbury Pond.* "What've you got?" she asked him. "I hope you can make more sense out of this than I can," he said. He handed her the sheet of notes he had compiled. "This is about that orange medicine, isn't it?" "Yeah." She read. Beta amyloid proteins suppressed neuronal activity in brain cells that communicated via the neurotransmitter acetylcholine and were thought to play a role in Alzheimer's-induced memory loss. A drug called Tacrine and another substance called nerve growth factor were supposed to slow the breakdown of acetylcholine, thus preserving memory, at least to some extent. "What does it mean?" he asked. She shook her head. "I'm not sure. All these things--the monoamine oxidase inhibitors and whatnot--are psychostimulators. But I can't imagine what would have been the therapeutic benefit of administering any of them to someone with a kidney disorder. If anything, they would've made it worse." "Maybe it was the other way around. Maybe I had the kidney problem because of the drugs they were giving me." Scully shrugged. "It's not impossible. But it still doesn't explain why they'd give it to you in the first place." "Do you suppose that's how I got the memory I have?" "I doubt it. These things don't have that kind of long-term effect--they might have boosted your recall temporarily, but not over more than three decades. I think you were born with an eidetic memory. Which doesn't preclude the possibility that somebody tried to improve it still more." "Somebody, meaning Klemper." "Was Higginbotham trying to get you to remember something?" "He didn't say that. He wanted me to tell him where The Five are." He stared off across the room for a moment, processing. "Wait--he said I'd been there, that I'd seen them. So yeah, maybe he *was* trying to get me to remember something." "And you haven't seen them?" "I don't think so. But then, I'm not even sure I know what he meant by The Five. I could've seen them and just not known that's they were." He leaned his head back to stretch the tension out of his neck. "Hell, Scully, that file invalidates *everything* I remember." "Not everything," she soothed. At his look, she conceded, "A disturbingly large chunk of it. You really don't remember being sick?" He shook his head slowly. His eyes had gone dark with worry again. "It's weird, isn't it? I mean, I remember every word of picture books my mom read to me when I was one, but I don't remember being in the hospital for half the duration of my childhood." "It's hard to imagine anyone with anything approaching a normal memory not recalling dialysis." He shivered. "At some level, I guess I do remember something," he said. "That word makes chills run up my spine." She stroked his hair again. He looked up. "What now?" "I need to get back to D.C. to do much more than I have." "You. Not we?" "No." She held up a hand to stop him arguing the point. "Mulder, there've been times when you've ditched me in order to have the freedom of action you needed." "And now you're ditching me." "Well, that doesn't mean you're going to get out of having to do some work. First, I want you make about ten copies of this file and distribute them widely, just in case...you know, something should catch fire or get sucked up in a blue levitation beam." "Or accidentally fall into somebody's shredder. Gotcha." "Then I want to you to contact Byers or Frohike or whoever and see if they know anything about this 'MJ-HG.' And finish combing through whatever nook or cranny you found the file in." "Okay." "And then go down to Connecticut and talk to your mother." His expression was sheer dread. "Unless you want me to," she offered. "No, I'll do it." He stared down at the floor for a moment. She paused, looking at him. "Are you okay?" "Yeah," he said. He lifted his head, and she saw that his eyes had gone dark again. "I'm really scared," he admitted. "But I'm okay." **** April 27, 1996 Boston, Massachusetts Scully didn't go straight to Washington in the morning. Instead, she made a stop in Boston. She called Bellevue in New York and asked the lab staff there to run a DNA scan on the blood sample they had taken from Mulder when he was admitted. Then she found a telephone directory and looked up an old friend of Mulder's. Scully had never met Janine Larrimer, but she knew Mulder had grown up with "Jannie," as he called her. He'd occasionally hinted that there'd been more between them at some point long-past, but apparently they'd evolved beyond that. Judging from the one-sided conversations Scully had overheard when Mulder talked to Jannie on the phone, they had the kind of lifelong, comfortable friendship that allowed them to verbally abuse each other with impunity. She suspected that if anybody outside the Mulder family itself knew where there were skeletons buried, it would be Jannie Larrimer. She was easy to find; she had a neurology practice in Boston. Scully dialed, apologized for the short notice, shamelessly hinted that Fox Mulder's health and peace of mind really depended on Jannie's making time to meet with her, and asked if they might have lunch. "I could manage an early lunch, say eleven?" It was 10:13. "That'd be fine. I'll meet you there." They met at the South Station, an Amtrak terminus sporting a curving, Beaux Arts facade. The concourse had been attractively refurbished with marble floors, brass railings and colorful kiosks selling everything from frozen yogurt to stationery. Strange place for lunch, Scully had thought, but on arrival she noticed a smattering of office workers beginning to gather in the restaurants. "I like this little salad place," Jannie said. "Sound okay?" "Sure," Scully said. Appearing in the flesh in a turquoise suit with matching pumps, Jannie was not what Scully expected. The women who drew Mulder's glance tended to be tall, willowy, brunettes, perhaps a little on the buxom side. Phoebe. Bambi Berenbaum. Well, except for that detective in Comity, but Scully still thought her blonde had come out of a bottle. Jannie was the real thing, the all-American, Hyannis Port, blue-eyed beach blonde, not especially chesty, and less willowy than Amazonian in build. Scully figured Jannie was at least as tall as Fox Mulder and probably outweighed him by twenty pounds, all of it bone, muscle and sinew. Certainly attractive, but Scully wouldn't have thought she was Mulder's type. She was all business, too. "So," she said, without any preamble, "what's up with the Foxman?" Scully drew a breath. "He got a little banged up the other day, line of duty. It's not serious, but when we went looking for his medical records we discovered he'd had a childhood illness of which we weren't aware." "Yeah." Scully blinked. "You knew that?" "Sure. I'm not sure I ever knew what it was, but yeah. On and off, up until...oh, I guess he finally got over it when he was about thirteen. Why? "He doesn't remember it." Jannie stared at her. "Are you serious?" "He says he doesn't recall it, and I believe him." "Geez, that's weird, isn't it?" "Well, I thought so, yes. I was hoping you might recall something that could help us weed out what really happened." She shrugged. "I'll tell you whatever I can, but I'm not sure I know enough to be much help. Have you talked to his mom? She'd know more about it than I would." Scully stirred her coffee. Time for a little subterfuge. "Laura Mulder had a stroke recently. She survived it, but..." "I see," Jannie said. "Like I said, I'll tell you whatever I can." "Maybe you could just tell me what you remember, about what his health was like." Jannie took a bite of her salad. "Most of it must have been outpatient treatment. I don't remember him being out of school for long periods of time, or anything like that. And I don't know that I'd say he was...sickly. He was pretty active, most of the time. Maybe that was just trying to compensate for something. But he *was* sort of pale and awkward and skinny." She laughed suddenly. "Hell, when you get right down to it, he's *still* pale and skinny." Scully laughed, too. It was comforting to talk to this woman. Both of them knew Mulder intimately, but neither of them was a rival for his affections. Jannie sobered. "Look, the real problem is, there's something you should know about all this, but I don't really feel like it's my place to tell you. It seems like the kind of thing I ought to leave to Fox to decide whether he wants anybody to know or not. On the other hand, under the circumstances you described, it seems likely nobody else is going to say anything." Scully reached across the table to touch her hand. "Whatever you say is going to be held in the strictest confidence," she said. The blonde woman nodded. "I think Fox's dad was pretty rough on him," she said. "I never actually witnessed anything, and obviously it didn't leave any visible scars. But in hindsight the symptoms are pretty clear--if he were still eight years old, and he showed up in my office today, I'd be on the phone to the cops in two seconds." "Physical abuse?" "I think so, yes. And I've heard the abduction story about what happened to Samantha, but it seems to me there's a much more logical explanation." Jannie made a face, pulling her mouth sideways. "I think Bill Mulder discovered to his everlasting sorrow that his daughter couldn't take a beating as well as his son. I think he killed her and buried her in the salt grass on Chappaquiddick. And then he went right back to beating the hell out of his boy two or three times a week. I think the whole alien abduction scenario is a fantasy Fox concocted to help himself deal with the fact that the real villain was a lot closer to home, so close he couldn't get away from him." *Lord, let it be that simple, for Mulder's sake,* Scully thought. "I don't envy you," Jannie said, "trying to figure out what part of that medical record might really be some kind of illness and what part of it might be covering up the results of which beating." *Yeah, that could be a real problem, all right.* "Can you tell me about the night Samantha disappeared?" Jannie looked surprised. "Are you also investigating that?" "Not really--but his records show another hospital admission shortly afterward." "Oh, well, I wouldn't know about that. His folks shipped him off to stay with an aunt for a while. The story was that they were afraid whoever had taken Samantha would come back for him, or something. Then there were people who said the kidnappers had taken both of them, but that was just a rumor. I think he was gone for about seven or eight months. He ended up missing almost a whole year of school, which didn't hurt anything because he was about two years ahead of the rest of us anyway." "You didn't see him at all, before he left?" "No. Hell, it seemed like every cop car in the state was parked in their front yard. They wouldn't let anybody even get close." "Do you know if he had any...counseling afterward?" "I don't think so, although obviously he should have had. Of course, that might not have been that clear, back in the early '70s. I think his folks took the 'he's-young-he'll-get-over-it' line. Too bad he never did." "No," Scully said. "He never did. Was his memory always exceptional?" "Oh, yeah. Even when he was a little kid, he remembered everything. Like, once a bunch of us were playing Candyland, and we got called away for lunch or something. And before we got back, Joey Kincaid's dog ran in and upset the board so all the pieces were knocked off. And Fox came and just replaced them all where they'd been. Then one of us said no, that piece was over there, and we got a play-by-play of every move everybody had made. I guess he would've been five or six." She shrugged, then said, "If you don't mind my asking, what *was* the diagnosis?" Scully told her. "You're kidding." "No." "And lived to tell about it? Jesus. How was it treated?" Scully shook her head. "I'll be damned if I know." Continued in Part 15. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 15 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ A page from a journal of modern experimental physics will be as mysterious to the uninitiated as a Tibetan mandala. Both are records of inquiries into the nature of the universe. - Fritjof Capra April 27, 1996 Washington, D.C. Scully's next stop was Washington, to make whatever story, lie or plea it took to get Skinner to let her go and look at whatever the NSA was willing to let her see related to the Artemis space module. As she drove into the parking garage at the Hoover building, she settled on telling him the butt-naked truth: the medical records, the connection to Artemis, all of it. But when she arrived, Skinner's secretary told her the assistant director had gone out of town and wasn't expected back until late afternoon. That suited Scully just fine. She headed for the NSA. On the way, she thought of something one of her father's military friends had said once: "It's almost always easier to get forgiveness than permission." **** 46th Street, New York City Walter Skinner stood in what had been the kitchen of the New York Colony Club, hands on his hips, wondering what he expected to find in the empty place. He'd walked three stories of the building and, so far, had seen little more than dust, and the scrapes in the walls and floors where furniture once had sat. Skinner was a man with a problem. He was responsible, among other things, for the morale of hundreds of FBI agents. Word had gotten around with lightning speed about the assaults on Mulder. Skinner's people assumed the bureau would vigorously pursue anyone who harmed one of their own, that the bureau would never let such an attack go unanswered. When he'd had to let Higginbotham go because of his diplomatic immunity, Skinner'd heard the rumble of muttering in the bullpen, the awkward silence when he passed in the hallways. People who a week ago wouldn't have given Fox Mulder the time of day now seemed to care deeply about his well-being, because what became of his attackers now might portend something for their own futures. Skinner knew he had to make at least an apparent effort to bring Higginbotham and his goons to account. Or he'd have much to answer for among his troops. And the powers upstairs, for the moment, seemed unwilling to get involved either way, which left Skinner on his own, to deal with the situation as it suited him. What suited him was to get something on Roy Higginbotham, the supposed Duke of Effington, and drag his noble ass into a federal cell if he could. The building had been more revealing than he expected. They'd found evidence of computers--a lot of electrical outlets, paper dust from printers and/or shredders. Pendrell had located the vestiges of network switching equipment, a now-disconnected suite of fiber-optic cables for voice and data transmission. Pretty high-tech for a gentlemen's reading room. Best of all, there was a satellite dish on the roof of the building, and some sloppy technician had left coordinates taped to the frame supporting the dish. From that Pendrell had deduced that the dish had been aimed at a Pentagon comm bird offering the most secure transmission possible. That had been the first solid clue that Higginbotham wasn't what he claimed--either the whole building had been home to an espionage operation siphoning information from the Department of Defense, or Higginbotham was not nearly as bloody British as he pretended. Skinner would have been satisfied either way--either would give him reason to hunt down Higginbotham and re-arrest him. But given a choice, Skinner would rather find Higginbotham was actually an American. That would make him prosecutable in a federal court. Much more appealing than simply deporting him. He went back down into the basement. *Looking for what?* he asked himself again. He didn't know. But he felt bound to look anyway. It had been a good call on Mulder's part, the business about his captors moving stuff out of the building. Mulder was a loony, all right, but he had all the right instincts in all the right places--if he hadn't said anything about that, they might've assumed the satellite dish was just so the New York Colony Club's members could have good reception for the Super Bowl. Skinner prowled the basement of the building, coming at last to an employee locker room. The search team had pried open all the lockers, had probed the drains in the sinks and showers. And found nothing. Skinner walked down the line of lockers. Empty. Dusty, like all the rest. Except one, in which a dirty white jumpsuit hung. Skinner shined his flashlight in, then turned away. Then a metallic flash caught his attention, and he looked again. *Probably just a zipper.* No, not a zipper. He reached in, and got his hand on a thin, silver chain on which hung an ID badge. "Majestic 12," the badge read. Well, well, well. He tucked the badge in his pocket and headed up to the street. **** NSA Headquarters Langley, Va. There wasn't much in the Artemis documentation. According to the documents the module had been a laboratory for growing germanium crystals for electronic equipment in low-gravity. Three compartments and a couple of cargo bays. The germanium experiment hadn't borne fruit, and the project had been abandoned--the module closed up and shut down. The crew logs for November 1973 made no mention of a 12-year-old boy, or anything else unusual, for that matter. Scully had begun to think collecting the documents had been a waste of time--nothing in the Artemis operation seemed remotely related to Project Majestic. Then she noticed a photo of the infirmary that had been built into the Artemis module. For a crew of seven, it had twelve beds. She tried to remember whether Mulder had ever told her anything about the hospital where he had awakened after Samantha's disappearance. *Transfer patient from Artemis infirmary via USAF.* How in the hell had he gotten there? If aliens had taken he and Samantha, why would they have dropped him off there? Just to save fuel? She dug deeper into the stack of papers and came up with the crew roster. Three of them had been medical personnel, three out of the seven. Then she saw a name she recognized--Valerie Clendenning, who had been the first space-medicine specialist actually to go into space. As a student at Maryland, Scully had heard her do a guest lecture. Perhaps it was time to pay a visit to an old acquaintance. **** Washington, D.C. "Wait a minute," Skinner said. "I thought it was supposed to be the sister who was abducted by aliens." "Yes, sir, that's the way I've always heard the story." Scully looked uneasy, and Skinner wondered if it were uncomfortable for her to eat crow, in effect, about the existence of extraterrestrials. He himself had not yet made up his mind whether there were little green men out there somewhere or it was just a ruse to cover up some government project. Or projects. Scully went on, "But I don't know how else to explain this entry about Artemis in the medical file. Artemis' existence was highly classified. If somehow--nevermind how--he did end up there as a child, that could explain why this Higginbotham was so anxious to find out what he knew." "Yeah," Skinner said thoughtfully. "It just might at that. This was found in the building." He showed her the ID badge, now properly bagged as evidence. "You know what Majestic 12 is?" he asked. "According to the UFO conspiracy literature, it was a group of 12 experts brought together during the Truman administration to study the wreckage and corpses left after an alien spacecraft crashed in New Mexico." "You've got everything right but the verb tense, Agent Scully," Skinner said. "Is, not was." Scully stared at him. "It still exists?" "Yes." He shrugged. "You know exactly as much as I do about it, then, except that I also know our cigarette-smoking friend works for Majestic 12." "But he's the one who led us to Mulder," Scully objected. "Why would he do that if he's one of them?" "I don't know. But it's enough of a connection that I intend to find the man, get him in here and ask him." "How do we do that?" "Oh, I think if we just keep asking uncomfortable questions, he'll come to us, sooner or later." Scully nodded. "He always has before, in one form or another." "I don't believe Higginbotham's really British. I'm running some records cross-checking at the State Department to try to find out. Between that and our looking into Artemis, that might be enough to attract his attention. Scully, I think you ought to put this on the front burner," Skinner said. "Higginbotham and his friends may still want to know what Mulder's got locked up in his head, and he's pretty exposed out there on the Vineyard. I sent one of Westin's teams up to keep an eye on him, but Mulder ran them off. Short of jailing him as a material witness, there's not much more I can do." "I understand, sir," Scully said. **** Arlington, Va. She heard from Mulder that evening. He sounded dull, dispirited. "I didn't uncover anything else here at the house," he said. "And I couldn't find out *what* 'MJ-HG' was, but I did find out *where* it was--in the old Newton hospital, which Bostonians commonly refer to as 'bedlam.'" *Ouch,* Scully thought. "Why bedlam?" she asked. "Back in the '60s, they supposedly did some treatment for psycho-trauma at this facility, which is scary enough, considering the medieval crap that passed for psycho-trauma therapy in those days. But apparently there was some experimental stuff, too. Very hush-hush. Nobody's owning up to knowing what it was." "Hmm," Scully said. It seemed neutral enough a comment. She heard a sound like an airplane's engine running up in the background. "Mulder, where are you?" "The Leesworth Pub. The phone's not working at the house. And yes, I've had a beer. I'm planning on having several. Try and stop me." "Not very practical," Scully conceded. She supposed several beers wouldn't kill him, though it wouldn't have been her prescription for what was ailing him. "Dr. Karen Curtis," he went on, "in case you were curious, did a fair amount of work with returning POWs from the Korean War, trying to de-brainwash them." "You've been busy," she said. "It was better than yielding to lunacy, though not by much." "Want a couple of pieces of good news?" "Desperately." "Your car's fixed. I'll drive it up to you when I'm done here." "Oh. Okay, thanks." She figured the other one would go over better. "And I took the liberty of running DNA scans on that blood test we did in New York." "This is good news?" "Yes, because it reveals that you are a grade-A, certified, one-hundred-percent Earthling." "There's nothing unusual?" "No. Of course, if there's a particular gene for eidetic memory, nobody's isolated it yet." "That we know of," he said softly. Scully squelched her disappointment--she'd been hoping this would lighten him a little, and it didn't seem to be working. Then he said, "Did you look for the gene that regulates sprouting purple antennae out of the ears late in mid-life?" She smiled. "Not out of the ears." He actually chuckled. "Ouch," he said. "Well, I'll look forward to *that*." "Get some rest, Mulder." "Scully, wait--what have you found out?" "Not much that I want to say over the phone." "Scully, you may be the most transparent liar on Earth." "Let me know what your mother says, after you talk to her." That chased him off the subject. "Hell, Scully, I don't even know what to ask her." "Yes, you do." He sighed again. "Yeah," he said. "I guess I do." Continued in Part 16. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 18 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ The very act of observing disturbs the system. - Werner Heisenberg April 28, 1996 Greenwich, Connecticut "I don't know where The Five are," Laura said. "If I understood it right, somehow they were locked in gray form." "Locked in what?" Mulder asked. "They can change shape. They can even be invisible; in fact, I always thought that was their natural state. They're very dangerous when they're invisible. They can give off terrible radiation that can kill a man within days. But these five, after the crash, couldn't change anymore. They'd taken the form of the grays and couldn't get out of it. That's how they were captured--as grays they were much less formidable." He thought of the French sailors from the Piper Maru, of the soldiers in Townsend, Wisconsin. Savagely burned. Mulder's head had begun to hurt. He felt hot, as if his brain were a circuit board starting to overheat. "The aliens want them back," his mother said. "They've always wanted them back. It's what's made them stand off, leave us alone so long, rather than go ahead with their plans. They're afraid that if they come for us, we'll kill The Five." "But now the date's been set, hasn't it? They're coming anyway, aren't they?" Her dark eyes were wide, frightened. "Yes, I think it must be soon. Maybe they think The Five are dead." She looked away, out the window. "Maybe they are dead." "Higginbotham said I'd been there," Mulder said. "He said I'd seen them. Dad thought so, too--he asked me about them once." She seemed startled. "Why would he think that?" "I don't know." Laura shook her head. "No, I don't think it's possible. In fact, it's ridiculous. How could you have seen them?" "I don't know," he repeated. "Look, when Bateman met you at the house in Quonochontaug, what did he want?" He gestured at the alien weapon. "Was he looking for this?" "No. He wanted me to remember what Bill had done to try to find Samantha." In the hospital in Rhode Island, Bateman had said he thought he had a lead on where Samantha was. Suddenly, it snapped into place in Mulder's mind. "God, the aliens took Samantha hoping to exchange her for The Five, didn't they?" "No, Fox, that doesn't make sense. Your father and I never knew where The Five were. Only two or three people in the whole organization ever knew that, and we weren't among them. No amount of pressure the aliens put on the two of us could have forced us to tell them. We didn't know." "Maybe they thought Dad could find out." Her look was sad now, guilty. "I've always thought Shelby took her," she said. "Why would he do that?" "To get back at your father and I for..." She closed her eyes. "For what?" "Because I left him for Bill." Mulder stared at her. She gave a bitter chuckle. "Do you know I don't even remember why?" she said. "We had a terrible fight, and I left him. But I don't recall what the fight was about." Mulder felt his guts twist in revulsion. His mother and Bateman. *God almighty.* "I don't want to think about this," he said, his mouth dry. "He's an evil, twisted man now," she said, "but there was a time when he was a real patriot, every bit as fiercely idealistic as you are." Mulder sighed. "I'm no idealist." "You are when it comes to the truth. To justice." "'Justice is not a mincing-machine but a compromise,'" Mulder quoted bitterly. "Oliver Wendell Holmes?" she guessed. It was an old game between them; he'd quote, she'd guess the source. "Frederick Durrenmatt." "That's cheating, Fox. I've never even heard of him, and you know it." He gave her a wry smile and looked out the window, toward the trees. There was a silence then, deep and sad. A bird hovered on the wind for a moment, then turned, side-slipping out of his view. His mother said, "You see, I knew it wouldn't help for you to know. I knew it wouldn't make anything better for you." He looked at her. "I feel better about you," he said. She shook her head. "I don't deserve it." He reached across and took her hand. It was cold. "I have to go," he said. She held on. "Fox," she said, her voice suddenly crackling with intensity. "Promise me something." "If I can." "Promise me you won't go back to Washington. When they come, they'll start there." He stared at her. "When were you going to tell me?" "I had a plan. That's why I wanted you to have the weapon--when I had the stroke, suddenly I was afraid I might not live long enough to carry out my plan." She let go of his hand, picked up the alien weapon and pushed the switch to retract the needle-like point. "Take it," she said. "Keep it with you." "No, you keep it. There's another one in the house in West Tisbury, isn't there?" She drew a long breath, then nodded. "In the base of the toilet in your father's bathroom." He nodded, then bent to kiss the top of her head. "Take care, Mom," he said, and left. Halfway back to his father's house, he realized he hadn't made the promise she had asked for. And then he realized why. He would go back to Washington. He'd have to. For Scully. **** Boston, Mass. "Calm yourself, Karen," Shelby Bateman said into his telephone. "You bastard," Dr. Karen Casper said, "you people swore this was all *secure*. You said you had it locked down, that my name would never come up. That Scully woman was in my office this afternoon--she damned near arrested my secretary. She *knows* about Mulder and Artemis, Shelby. She said he remembers me. She said she could prove that I suppressed his memory; she threatened to bring back a subpoena!" "If true, that's very unfortunate--for her. Don't worry, it'll be taken care of." "It had better be," Casper seethed. "I've got a new family and a new life outside the Project. Don't you let anybody fuck it up for me." "Nothing's going to happen to disturb your precious new life, Karen." "You'd better see to it, Shelby. If I have to go down, by God, I won't go alone--I'll drag the lot of you in with me." "Don't threaten me," Bateman said, lighting a Morley. "You're in no position to make good on it. Besides, we've always taken care of you, haven't we?" "Like you took care of Bill? I heard Roy Higginbotham was arrested." "Roy overstepped his authority. He had to be taught a lesson. You be calm and behave yourself, and everything will be fine." "It better be," Casper said. "It just better be." "Relax," Bateman said, blowing a plume of smoke across his darkened office. "I'll see to it personally." **** Washington, D.C. Scully pulled into the parking lot at the Hoover building and got out of the car, only to come face-to-face with a tall, handsome black man with a mustache. Instinctively, she went for her gun, but he held his hands up in a pacifying gesture. He had file folders in one hand, and a film canister in the other. Ever-so-slightly, Scully let herself relax. "What do you want?" she asked him. "*You* called *me*, remember?" he said. *Typical. The bastard always uses a question to answer a question*. "False alarm," Scully said, through her teeth. "I got what I was looking for." "I know." He stepped toward her, and Scully put her hand on her Smith again, the cold weight of it reassuring to her touch. The black man shrugged. He set the file folders and film canister on the trunk of her car. "What is that?" Scully asked. "A gift," he said. "For a mutual friend. Agent Mulder has placed himself in a very exposed position. And now a great deal more than just his fate hangs on what he knows. Or can deduce." "What does he know?" "Even I can only interfere with events so much, Agent Scully. It's up to Mulder now. And to you. I caution you--there's not much time. Not for any of us." He turned on his heel and walked rapidly away. Scully eased forward to get the folders. There were two of them--even from a distance, she recognized the format of them. They were X Files. When she looked up again, the black man was gone. She looked at the name on the top folder and nearly gasped. "Missing persons," the file cover read. "Mulder, Samantha A., November 1973-." The other file had a missing persons header, too, but it was labeled, "Mulder, Fox W., November 1973-May 1974." And in lurid red ink, it was stamped, "Closed." **** The end of the film ran through the projector and rattled as the reel continued turning. In the sudden silence, Scully wiped tears from her eyes with a trembling hand. "You all right?" Skinner asked. "Yes, sir." It was a lie, of course. She'd just watched Karen Curtis interview a panic-stricken 12-year-old who'd had to be placed in deep hypnosis before he could even speak. A handsome boy with dark hair and big, beautiful hazel eyes. When Curtis had broken him out of his shell he'd begun to shiver and scream and sob in terror. He hadn't told her much--he'd obviously been too traumatized to grasp what had been done to him. And she'd watched Karen Curtis strap him down, give him a shot, hypnotize him and tell him he must never, ever remember any of it. Then, in the final sequence of the film, she'd seen the tearful reunion between Fox Mulder and his father. The 12-year-old Mulder's first words had been, "Please don't hurt me." The assistant director sighed heavily and flipped through the files. Scully had already read them. "You knew about this, didn't you?" she asked. He shrugged. "I knew these files existed, but I've never seen them." Neither file said anything about Artemis, so Scully didn't believe a word in them. Fox Mulder's file indicated Massachusetts state troopers had found him wandering about on Cape Cod in a state of shock four days after he and Samantha had disappeared from their home on Martha's Vineyard. It offered no explanation for how he could have gotten from the island to the peninsula. Likewise it offered no explanation of why no one from the bureau had bothered to interview him until seven months later, despite the fact that the bureau at least nominally had been investigating the disappearances from the beginning. And that was not the end of the date discrepancies. The file contained a copy of the police report from West Tisbury in '73 that said the local cops had interviewed Fox Mulder in the hospital *two* days after the incident. They had waited because his doctor had told them he'd been in shock--selectively mute, unresponsive, virtually catatonic. If the cops were waiting to talk to him, that suggested they actually had known where he was, so why call in the bureau to investigate a missing person who wasn't missing? Skinner stared at the files, his look grim, then lifted his head to hold her gaze for a moment. "Tell me honestly, Scully--what do you think happened?" "Honestly? I have no idea. But Higginbotham was trying to get him to remember something, and he can't remember what happened to Samantha. Or even to himself." "This doesn't really tell us that, though, does it?" She shrugged. "It gets us a little closer, but it doesn't really prove anything." "How do you want to proceed?" "I want to go back to Massachusetts and see if Mulder himself can put any of this together, along with whatever he's found out," she said. The A.D. nodded. "Your Mr. X was right--Mulder's alone up there. He hasn't even got his gun. If what he remembers really can unlock this puzzle, we'd better make sure he lives long enough to make use of it. While you do that, I'm going to take this film to the lab and see if they can enhance the ID badges those people were wearing," he said. "If we can get names on them, we can bring them in." *For what?* Nothing on the film pointed directly at any criminal activity. "Yes, sir." She got up, headed for the door. "Scully," Skinner said. She stopped, with her hand on the knob. "There's something you need to know--his father's alive." Scully stared at him, stunned. "I wanted to tell him. But you know Mulder--he would've moved heaven and Earth to get to him. To talk to him. And that would've led the Cancer Man and his friends right to Bill. He's agreed to tell what he knows, on the condition that we try everything we can to find The Five. He won't say why he's imposed that condition, but there it is." Scully didn't know what to say. She tried to think how she would feel, if suddenly her own father was back, alive--if the knowledge that he was alive had been withheld from her. It was too big a thought to get a ready grip on. Skinner just held her look, gave her a moment to try to sort out what was swirling around in her head. Then he said, "If you want to talk to him before you go, I can arrange it." She hesitated. It wasn't really her interview to do. But Mulder couldn't do it, not now. "Yes," she said. "I think that might be a good idea." **** Chestnut Hills, Md. Feeling slightly claustrophobic, Scully entered the safe house compound where Bill Mulder and Alex Krycek were being held. From the outside, there was little to indicate that there was anything special about this old farmhouse set back from the highway and tucked between two parts of the National Agricultural Resarch Center. Inside, the guard posts were subtle--no flashy submachine guns or uniforms. She couldn't see any cameras or microphones or heat sensors, but she could feel them, somehow, in a prickly sensation along her nerves. But then, there were some witnesses who rated the treatment, who couldn't be replaced, and Scully supposed both Alex Krycek and Bill Mulder belonged in that category. She was directed to a room that probably had been the farmhouse's parlor at one time. It was comfortably furnished with country-style accents--the ubiquitous floral print pillows, corny Holstein cow bric-a-brac, and a rag rug on the floor. The view through the windows was unnaturally green, and after a moment Scully realized that was because the glass was so thick. Bulletproof, no doubt. Scully adopted an armchair in one corner as her territory and waited. She had never met Bill Mulder, and had pictured him an older version of his son. Despite the fact that he actually turned out not to look much like Fox Mulder after all, she recognized Bill instantly. In the height, something about the movement, the manner, the voice. Like his son, he had big hands and feet. But he was darker, hair and eyes deep brown, and his skin had none of the delicate translucence of his son's. She figured Bill for a good inch taller than his son, and considerably bulkier, bigger-boned. When he came in, his look was pained, guilty, a pale shadow of Mulder's soulful, hurt-puppy look. Perhaps Mulder had only had more occasion to practice it. "How is Fox?" he asked, and perched nervously on the edge of the couch. *He's in pain and scared shitless, but that's just his normal state, as you know, so why make a big deal of it?* "He's been better," Scully said. She told him she had seen the files and the film, that she had talked to Valerie Clendenning. When she told him Mulder didn't remember Artemis or his childhood illness, Bill's look was skeptical, but he said nothing, and Scully continued her tale. "And now," Bill said quietly, "what is it you want from me?" The voice--low, softly dusty--sent a little shiver up her spine. Like having a friend speak out of a stranger's mouth. A stranger who'd had a hand in terrible crimes. "Do you know what Dr. Klemper did to your son? How his illness was treated?" "Not the technical details," Bill said. "I know that in the guise of curing him, Victor made him sicker for purposes of seeing if his experimental ideas would work. He was torturing Fox--making him worse just so he could test the cure. I didn't know that at first, of course, but when it became clear, I put a stop to it." He closed his eyes briefly. "I accused Victor of putting Fox's life at risk. He just laughed and said, 'well, I saved his life, so it was mine to risk.'" *It's a good thing the bastard's already dead*, Scully thought. Otherwise, she might have been unable to resist killing Klemper herself. The evil son of a bitch. "I know what you're thinking," Bill said. "Why not just take the boy to a good hospital, a specialist? You have to understand, we did take him to specialists. They were torturing him, too. Biopsies, dialysis, all those needles and knives. He was in such terrible pain, and all the doctors did was hurt him more. We were watching him die by inches. Victor said he could save him when the specialists couldn't do anything more useful than estimate his life-expectancy in terms of months. And the truth is, one way or another, he did save him. What should we have done? Let him suffer? Let him die?" *But would he ever have been sick in the first place if Klemper hadn't gotten his hands on him?* Continued in Part 19. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 17 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ As for the outside world, the artist is confronted by what he sees; but what he sees is primarily what he looks at. - Andre Malraux April 28, 1996 Greenwich, Connecticut "What for?" Mulder asked. "They want us--to do what with us?" "I don't know," his mother said. "I don't think anyone does. It's just what they do, absorb others. They took the grays that way, and the morphs, too. Absorbed them, took them over." He thought of Krycek's description of the oil-based alien in the missile silo. "What if we don't want to be absorbed?" "If they have their way about it, we won't have any choice. But we've been trying to fight them--that's what your father and the others were trying to do. Only they discovered what they had to do to carry on the fight was...unappealing." "Unappealing?" Mulder demanded, stunned. "You call involuntary human experimentation on a national scale *unappealing*?" Her look was steady. "Would you have preferred to have them absorbed?" She had him. Mulder realized his neck hurt; he had clenched up the muscles. He worked his shoulders to release them. "Okay, look, just start from the beginning," he said. She sipped her tea. "They recruited me right out of college, much as the FBI did you. I was all afire with what I thought was idealism, and I volunteered for the experiments. They took some samples." "What kind of samples?" "They said they were tissue samples, like a biopsy. But the truth is, God knows what they did to us--we were always unconscious, anesthetized. When you were sick, I was sure it was because of whatever they'd done to me. That's why I went to Klemper." "Jesus, he was a Nazi war criminal! Why not legitimate doctors?" "We did take you to what you call 'legitimate doctors,' Fox. They washed their hands of you." Mulder let his head fall forward. "God, Mom, how could you trust him?" "How could I not?" He heard desperation in her tone. "Fox, you were *dying*. He was the only one who knew what had been done to us. Whatever else he did, he saved your life." She shook her head, reached out to take his hands in hers. "There was a night in the hospital--you would have been about three. You were...hardly conscious. I could hear the effort it took you to breathe. The doctors told us you wouldn't live through the night. Your father sat there and wept like a baby, and all I could do was climb up in the bed with you and hold you." Mulder could almost feel his eidetic memory reach, search. *She'd read from *Peter Pan*.* He couldn't remember the words--he hadn't been focused on them at the time. But just for a moment, he had a flash of it. *Eyes closed, as if that would shut out misery; his mother's warmth beside him; she reading softly while his father wept.* "I felt so helpless," Laura went on. "And then Victor came, and said, 'No, no--he'll be all right.' And he gave you a shot. In the morning, you opened your eyes and said you wanted me to read you the end of the story." Mulder closed his eyes, trying to dam up tears. They spilled over. She squeezed his hands. "What would you have done?" "I don't know," he whispered. "I don't know." "Yes, you do." He did. *The same thing. No matter how wrong. God help me, the very same thing.* "You probably want to know what he did to you. And I don't know. I never asked. Maybe you think that's unbelievable. But the truth is, I don't care--I never did." He looked up at her, astonished. The woman who had always wanted to be sure he was wearing his galoshes, had eaten his lunch, had done his homework, was playing with the right kids. *She didn't care what drugs had been handed out, what surgery had been ordered?* Still holding his hands, she said, "Fox, I'm sorry if he hurt you. But I look at you now, and I just don't care." He pulled his hands away and buried his face in them. His turn to lose himself in tears. He had half-expected to confirm some terrible evil in his mother; what he had discovered was that she was human. Evil would have been easier to endure--it would have had a power he could recruit or fight. He wasn't sure whether he was crying out of relief or sheer, helpless terror. When he could speak again, he said, "I don't hate you, Mom. No matter what you did, I could never hate you." She reached out and wiped the moisture from his cheek, and fresh tears welled up. But there was more he had to know, and he fought them back. "Tell me about The Five," he said. **** The omni-morph listened to Laura Mulder's confessions with great interest. Perhaps the Circles had been right to name a human Inquestor after all. It began to divide itself again. This Laura had been among the Responsibles. It would take her, too. And it would follow the Inquestor. He was close. The omni-morph could feel that Mulder was near to finding The Five, even if he himself didn't realize how close. And it would be right beside him the whole way. **** Bethesda, Md. Karen Curtis, M.D., PhD., was working for the naval hospital in Bethesda, where her office was guarded by a secretary who defended the sanctity of "the doctor's" schedule in a way that reminded Scully of an English mastiff. The doctor didn't have time to meet with Scully. The doctor had a busy slate of appointments, but it might be possible to work Scully in, someday in late June. Would that do? "No," Scully said firmly. "Look, it's very urgent, and I only need a few minutes, but I have to see her today." "That's impossible." The secretary was an immovable object; it was time to become an irresistible force. "I really must insist," Scully said. "Or perhaps you and 'the doctor' would like to explain to a federal judge why you're refusing to cooperate with my investigation?" It wouldn't have held up--technically, Skinner's authorization of her investigation had been informal, unofficial. But the secretary didn't know that. The secretary drew herself up like a chicken ruffling its feathers. "Are you threatening me?" she asked, all self-righteous outrage. "No, I'm arresting you on charges of obstruction of justice. Stand up against the wall, please. You have the right--" "What the hell is going on here?" a voice from behind Scully rapped out. "Melinda, who is this woman?" Scully flashed her badge at a statuesque, gray-haired woman with ice-blue eyes. "Are you Dr. Karen Curtis?" "Casper," the older woman said. "I married recently." "Congratulations," Scully said dryly. "I need a few minutes of your time, Dr. Casper, and I am prepared to be prickly about it." Casper sighed in annoyance. "I'm skeptical that you have the authority to come barging in here and make demands," she said. "Nevertheless, if it'll result in your removing yourself from my office, I'll give you three minutes." "Three minutes will be plenty." "Very well," Casper said. "Melinda, ask Dr. Markley to start the staff meeting without me. Tell him I'll be along presently." She led Scully into a small conference room across the hall, then shut door behind them. "Now just what the hell is this all about?" Scully fished the photo of Mulder out of her pocket. "You treated this individual for post-traumatic shock shortly after he was discovered on the Artemis space module." "No, I think not." "You were aboard the space module at the time he was discovered. He would have been twelve years old at the time. His name is Fox Mulder." "You are quite mistaken." "I don't think so. I've interviewed other witnesses who say you did." "Then they are mistaken, as well." "Dr. Casper--" "Look, Agent...Scully, you said?" She hadn't said. Scully thought Casper must have good eyesight to pick the name off her badge from halfway across the hall. "Don't you think that if, while serving on Artemis, I had encountered anything as utterly out of place as a twelve-year-old boy, I would quite clearly recall it?" Scully held her look for a moment. "He's starting to remember you." "Then I'm afraid he's delusional. I don't work with psychosis, but I can recommend someone--" "No, you work with memory. With recovery of repressed recollections, with puzzling out past events that have been modified by brainwashing. And apparently, with therapies designed to *suppress* memory, as well. What did you use on him, Dr. Casper? Hypnosis? Drugs?" "Listen to me," Casper said frostily. "I don't recognize this man. His name is not familiar to me, and it's a name one wouldn't readily forget, isn't it?" She didn't wait for Scully to answer. "My practice doesn't include children. It never has. And even if it were true that I had treated him in some way--which it is not--there are issues of confidentiality that would prohibit me from discussing it with you." "Why are you lying to me?" Casper's spine went ramrod stiff. "I believe your three minutes are up." She headed for the door. "You can talk to me now," Scully said, as Casper swept by behind her, "or under subpoena before a federal prosecutor. Your choice." "No, Agent Scully, if you have sufficient probable cause to get a subpoena, then it is your choice. But I don't believe you can produce a subpoena. Good day." **** Washington, D.C. The man on the other end of the telephone line was officious and ever-so veddy, veddy *British*. He was starting to annoy the hell out of Skinner. "No," Skinner said. "I'm not accusing the duke of anything. In fact, I'm hoping to prove he *didn't* commit a crime. I think there's someone here in the States who's been impersonating him." The fingerprints they'd gotten from Roy Higginbotham on his arrest matched the ones on his application for diplomatic immunity. Skinner had found that dreadfully frustrating, as he still thought the guy was a fake. Then he'd remembered what Mulder had said when he learned his captor's name--he had called Higginbotham the Duke of Effington. Dukes were relatively visible characters. They played polo with the king and whatnot--Skinner suspected that if he could get a set of the duke's fingerprints, they wouldn't match Higginbotham's. And then, at the very least, he'd be able to prove that the immunity had been acquired under pretense. He'd called Scotland Yard in London first. No, of *course* they didn't have the duke's fingerprints. Why would they? He was 42nd in line for the throne, lived in a castle in Scotland, was 77 years old and had never so much as double-parked his Bentley. What on Earth would anyone have wanted to fingerprint him for? Now the assistant director was wending his way through the enormous bureaucratic maze of the British Army. Yes, the duke had been fingerprinted during the war, for identification purposes, in case of...well, bombs and the like, you know. Skinner knew. "Yes, I can send an official request in writing," he said. "What's your fax number?" He was thinking, *I'm going to feel damned silly if this doesn't work.* But somehow, deep in his gut, he knew Higginbotham just wasn't the real thing. He just had to find a way to prove it. Continued in Part 18. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 19 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ I was passionate, filled with longing, I searched far and wide. But the day that the Truthful One found, I was at home. --Lalla April 28, 1996 Chestnut Hills, Md. "Why did the aliens take the children?" Scully asked Bill Mulder. "They wanted me to find The Five for them. They said they'd release Fox and Samantha if I found them. But I couldn't find them. By then the others working with the project didn't trust me any more, Bateman especially. They'd hidden them well, that's all I know. The aliens overestimated my skills." Despite her distaste for what this man had done, Scully felt a pang of sympathy for him now--the children's disappearance had put him in a horrific position. "But then why did they let Fox go?" "I told the morphs I didn't believe the kids were alive, that I wouldn't cooperate unless I had proof of it. They told me I could..." He closed his eyes again, fighting tears. "They told me I could choose, and they would give one of them back. And they showed me a recording of...what they were doing to my son." He looked at her, his face a harsh mask, his eyes dead. Imploring, as if he desperately wanted her understanding for something he knew couldn't be understood by any rational, ethical human being. "I knew the kind of tests they did," he said, his tone steeped in misery. "I knew what they would do to Samantha. But she was *healthy*. I thought she could survive it. And Fox..." *God. Dear God.* He looked away. As if he had read her mind, he said, "I don't expect you to understand." The hell of it was, she did. He'd been forced to choose, and he'd done it--it was a choice no one ever should have to make, but he hadn't been able to avoid it. Right or wrong, he'd done at the time what he'd thought was best, and his intentions hadn't been dishonorable. Trouble was, those intentions had paved a road to hell for both his children. "What was it?" Scully asked, forcing her tone even. "You said they showed you what they were doing to him." He told her in a monotone: The aliens had run a tube down the boy's throat, guiding it all the way through his digestive tract until it came out through his anus, then hooked both ends up to some kind of machine that ran various types of fluid through it. They had peeled back the skin on his chest and watched the muscles move as he breathed. As he screamed. And then somehow replaced the skin where it had been and healed it so that it left no scars. Attached a pump to his navel and filled his abdominal cavity with gas. Run long needles into his eyes, ears, nose... Scully felt light-headed. She remembered a pump attached to her navel. From when she'd been taken. "I know there was probably more," Bill said. "But that was what they showed me. I made them promise they wouldn't hurt Samantha, but what was there to stop them?" Scully drew a long breath. "And now you think that if The Five are located and returned, the aliens will release Samantha?" He looked at the floor and slowly shook his head. "I doubt they're alive to be found, anymore. But if we don't make the effort now, I don't know what the morphs will do to us." "Roy Higginbotham thinks your son knows where they are." Bill nodded. "I know he does. He says he doesn't remember, but how could he forget something like that? He's never forgotten anything in his life. I don't know why he won't say. The morphs must have threatened him with something terrible--that's all I can imagine." Scully drew a sharp breath. *He doesn't know about Curtis, about the hypnosis, the drugs.* She told him. He stared at her for a moment. "Oh, God," he moaned, then dropped his face in his hands and wept bitterly. Scully got to her feet and left him there. There was nothing left to do but go and tell Mulder that the truth he was seeking wasn't out there. It was where it had always been. In his head. **** West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard Scully found Mulder sitting at the breakfast room table, head nodding up against the window, trying hard to stay awake over a journal article on new discoveries in brain chemistry. She set his laptop, cell phone and car keys on the table. He started, snapping awake, his eyes wide. If anything, he looked worse than when she had seen him last, though the swelling on his jaw had gone down some. But the bruise remained, and Scully knew instantly, from his red, sunken eyes, that he hadn't slept in days. Probably hadn't eaten anything worth mentioning. He was in no shape to hear what she had to say. Standing beside the table, she smiled gently, and he looked sheepish, rubbing his eyes. "Guess I was kind of drifting off," he said. "You need some rest," she said. "No, I'm okay." She took his arm. "Come upstairs," she said. "I'll handle things here." He pulled away from her. "I'm okay, really." "Mulder, when did you sleep last?" "It doesn't matter." "Yes, it does. Come upstairs. Doctor's orders." He jerked up from where he'd been sitting and backed away from her, his mouth tight, his look defiant. "No," he said. She started to argue rationally, to say things like how he couldn't think clearly without rest, and then realized that had no chance of working. Time to change tactics. "Why?" she asked. "What's happened?" He held an anxious silence for a moment, then seemed to yield to something. "I..." "Mulder, what is it?" "The night before you came up the last time, I woke up in the bottom of a closet, all curled up in fetal position. I have no idea how I got there." *Yeah, that would scare the hell out of me, too.* Something had been triggered, some deep memory he couldn't access consciously. "Did you have another nightmare?" she asked. "I don't know. I guess I must've, but I don't think I ever really woke up." Scully could see in his dull, glazed look that he was painfully exhausted. She went to him, took his hand. "Come on," she said softly. "I'm afraid to go to sleep," he whispered. "I know. It's all right. I won't let you go wandering off." "How can you stop it?" "Hush. Come on." He let her tow him up to the bedroom, moving as if he had aged three decades in a matter of days. She drew the covers back while he untied his sneakers. He was wearing jeans and a Johnson Space Center T-shirt--he'd be all right like that. He crawled into bed, lying on his right side with his head buried in the depression between two pillows. Scully was tired, too--she'd had a long day and a long drive up from Washington. She knew she couldn't stay awake through the night, watching over him. Her only hope was to make him feel safe enough that he wouldn't dream at all. She kicked off her own shoes and got in beside him, snuggled up against him. He really was exhausted. He didn't even bother trying to make a smartass remark. **** April 29 7:42 a.m. When Scully had been a small girl, her father had brought her a gigantic stuffed dog. She'd slept with it for about a year, with her back up against it, soaking up the warmth and security she got from it. Nine hours after she'd lain down beside Mulder, she woke with that same feeling, half-persuaded she was back at home with that stuffed dog at her back. Then she realized what she'd thought was a stuffed animal was *breathing.* She opened her eyes. Mulder had wrapped himself around her like a blanket, one arm stretched out in the hollow between her neck and shoulder, the other draped over her waist, one leg between hers. His head leaned against her shoulder--she could just feel his silent breath on her throat. He was a pretty good cuddler, and it was tempting just to stay there, to close her eyes and let herself drift back into sleep. Instead, she lifted the arm across her waist and laid it down behind him. He sighed, and murmured, "Touch me all over." Despite herself, Scully smiled. "You'd better be asleep, Mulder," she whispered. No response, not even an eyelash-twitch. He was asleep. She got up, trying to block out of her mind that, however unconsciously, he had sprouted an impressive erection. His dreams had taken a more pleasant turn. She picked up her shoes and went downstairs. She needed coffee, and whenever he woke up, she suspected he would, too. **** 8:38 a.m. He came down about an hour later with his hair wet, smelling of soap. "Better?" Scully asked. "God, I feel like a zombie," he muttered. But he looked human again, his eyes clear. Scully gave him a mug of coffee and began making toast. "I'm not hungry," he said, and sipped coffee. "You'll eat it," Scully said cheerfully, "or I'll tear it into small pieces and shove it down your throat." He groaned. "Uncle," he said. "I've had enough things shoved down my throat to last me for a while." "In the meantime," she said, "tell me what your mother said." He seemed to find something in his coffee enthralling and stared down into the cup intently for a minute. Then, slowly, he began to recount what Laura had told him. He didn't look at her. "My God," she said, when he had finished. "She's known this all along?" "Apparently so," he said grimly, giving the toast a look of supreme distaste. He bit off a piece and chewed. Scully let him have his silence until he finished eating. Finally, she said, "Do you think that if The Five are found, the aliens will leave us alone?" He shrugged. "Who knows?" Then he seemed suddenly to shake himself out of his gloom. "Okay, Scully," he said. "You've put me off long enough. What've you got?" "Let's go for a walk," she suggested. She didn't really think the house was bugged, but why take any chances? "I'd like to get a look at the famous Great Tisbury Pond in daylight." He gave her a questioning look, but didn't resist as she headed for the back door. **** 8:46 a.m. New York City It hadn't taken Roy Higginbotham long to realize he would have been better off in a federal prison. In jail, it would have been infinitesimally more difficult for the omni-morph to find him. As it was, his only hope was to stay visible. In a crowd, it would be awkward for the morph following him, watching him, to kill him. And so he finally had chosen to meet Duval and Semarone at the Amtrak station because they, too, were being shadowed by omni-morphs, because all three of them hoped there'd be safety in numbers. They were headed for Boston. Bateman was in Boston--had to be because of the test scheduled there. And so they'd go and get Bateman, and, appeasers that the three of them were, they'd cut a deal with the morphs again. They'd give the morphs Bateman in exchange for their own lives. **** 8:53 a.m. Boston, Mass. Shelby Bateman wasn't worried about the morph following him. Unlike the real threat, the radiation-spewing invisible aliens, the morphs could be handled. It wasn't easy to capture and subdue them, but he had enough troops around him to manage anything the morph tried. Besides, he had a test to conduct. **** 9:07 a.m. West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard Scully knew she had to be careful. Had to let Mulder come to the nub of the story on his own, to lead him to it, not feed it to him. "Tell me about the night your sister was abducted," Scully said. Mulder's look was wondering. "You've heard it before." "Humor me." It was a cloudy day, and darker yet for the thick trees. The Great Tisbury Pond was shaped rather like a hand with outstretched fingers, and they sat side-by-side on a big log, the remains of a downed tree, near the tip of northwest-most finger. Mulder looked out across the gray water on the pond, squinting toward the sky. "Which version? The one I dream, or the one I remembered in therapy?" "Whichever one you believe is closest to what really happened." "The dream," he said, without hesitation; he had thought that question through. "Okay," Scully said. He told her. About playing Stratego with his sister. The power going out. The bright light, and the figure coming through the door. Samantha calling for him, levitating, bathed in a blue-white glow. Scully felt her pulse pounding, remembering her own experience with levitating, with a blue-white light dancing on her own body. He told her about grabbing his father's gun, trying to load it with his hands shaking in terror. "And then I couldn't move anymore," he said. "And she was gone. I don't remember anything else until I woke up in the hospital." "Which hospital?" Scully asked, holding her tone carefully neutral. "Here in West Tisbury, I guess. It's the closest one." "Describe it." "The hospital? Oh, come on, Scully--what the hell is this about?" "Just stay with me for a minute." He sighed and looked out across the water again. "It was just a hospital. The usual. All the walls brushed steel, or some kind of metal. A ward, I think, with twelve beds in it." He was describing the Artemis infirmary. Scully waited him out. "Nobody else was in there, though, just me. I couldn't have been out too long, I guess, because it was still dark outside." *It's always dark in space.* He paused, and she could almost hear him accessing his memory. "Well, it did have this weird door right in the middle of the wall. Double door, like a hatchway--almost like an airlock." He frowned. "That's strange, isn't it? Maybe it was some kind of quarantine ward. Only I didn't have anything contagious." She pulled out the photo of the Artemis infirmary and handed it to him. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, that's it." He looked at her, his eyes narrowed, wariness edging into suspicion. "Where'd you get this?" "You're absolutely positive that's the place?" "No doubt whatsoever. Where'd you get this?" he repeated. "From the NSA. It was in the documents they released a couple of days ago related to the Artemis space module. It's a picture of the infirmary there." He glared at her. "I don't think that's funny, Scully. How would I have gotten there? How would I have gotten back--especially without remembering anything about it? Jesus, you're saying when I woke up, I was in outer space!" "Yes," she said calmly. He stood, restlessness driving him to his feet. Took two steps away from her, then came back. "In theory, you wouldn't be saying this without some kind of proof of it," he said. "No. I wouldn't." Without realizing it, she had already set one foot over the threshhold, had already said too much to stop. And at some level, he clearly had felt a resonance of truth in it. He was pale; the hand still holding the photo trembled. He was fighting down a panic he couldn't identify. She put the other foot over the edge. "I've seen your file, Mulder. The original X File opened up in 1973." "Where is it?" he demanded. "I'll give it to you, on one condition." "What about Samantha's?" He still had some grip on himself, tenuous though it was. He had noticed she hadn't answered the "where" and focused on what she *had* said. "You can have that, too, but there's not much in it. All the interesting stuff is in yours." "What's the condition?" "You let me tell you what's in it, and you take at least a twenty-four hours to think very hard about whether you want to know any more." "I can answer that right now, Scul--" She tapped the photo in his hand and gave him a searching look. "Can you?" He looked at the photo and said nothing. "You wait," she said. "You think. That's the deal--take it or leave it." He turned his back on her and gazed out at the white caps whipping across the surface of the pond. She wondered what he was debating with himself. "Okay," he said, at last. "I don't know what you think you're protecting me from, but I think maybe I should just let you do it. Only tell me one thing--just promise me that, wherever the file is, nobody can get to it and destroy it while we're out here jacking around." "It's in a very safe place." "Yeah, I've heard that one before." "I know you have. You just have to trust me." "You know I do." She looked up. The suspicion in his eyes had given way to plain fear; suddenly she was looking straight into the same face, the same eyes on the film, the dark eyes looking up at Bill Mulder, terrified and trusting at once. *Please don't hurt me.* She made herself turn away. "Sit down," she said. Continued in Part 20. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 20 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ Occasionally a daring soul, desiring immortality, has looked back and found himself. - The Upanishads April 29, 1996 9:17 a.m. West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard "I'm okay," Mulder said. "I don't want to sit down." "You're making me nervous, Mulder. Please." He sat on the fallen tree beside her again. It was no better; he radiated impatience and anxiety. She began. "The Air Force reported an unidentified object skirting the northwestern outskirts of metropolitan Boston, heading south, about 8:35 that night--" "That's in the Blue Book report," he said, his tone edged with frustration. "I've seen that." "Don't rush the tour," Scully said evenly. "They lost contact with it out over Rhode Island Sound. Then at 8:54 p.m., a West Tisbury police officer, Ralph Watkins--" "Old Ralph?" Mulder said, sounding incredulous. "Jesus." "--saw a bright object descend behind some trees and estimated that something had landed or crashed just at the northwestern tip of the Great Tisbury Pond. Just about where we're sitting, I'd think." Mulder said nothing. "Officer Watkins couldn't report it," Scully went on, "because his radio had quit working. When he drove toward it, the engine in his cruiser died. He got to the water's edge, on foot, at about 10:40 p.m., where he found some trees burning and a lot of broken limbs scattered on the ground. When he got back on the radio, he reported a lightning strike." "Perfectly reasonable," Mulder said bitterly. Scully shrugged. "Based on the evidence he had, frankly, it's the same conclusion I would've drawn. Anyway, your parents returned home and found the two of you missing and called the police. When a search didn't turn up anything by morning, the West Tisbury police reported a kidnapping to the FBI." "Wait," Mulder said. "I wasn't missing. Ralph Watkins is no Sherlock Holmes, Scully, but I think he would've noticed an unconscious 12-year-old kid." "Me, too." She tapped the photo again. "He didn't find you because you weren't there." "I wasn't missing," he repeated. "Yes, you were," she said slowly. She watched it sink in, the sick realization rising into his face as the blood drained out of it. "For seven and a half months," Scully said. "Until a cargo specialist on Artemis found you wandering around in a state of shock and took you to the infirmary." He was looking at her, but not seeing her. Processing. "They sent me to Aunt Delia's," he said carefully. "I'm not sure how long I was there, but it must've been several months." She could see that he badly wanted to believe it. "I don't doubt that you remember it just that way," Scully said. "They would've seen to it that you did." "I built a tree house, Scully. It's still there--I saw it when I went for Delia's funeral five years ago." He had kept his voice quiet, but she could hear in its undertones the terrified wail he was struggling to control. She gave him a moment. He closed his eyes, and she saw again the ghost of the panic-stricken child from the film. He was shaking, that same convulsive shudder. She reached for him, intending to let him lean on her the way he had on his father. Suddenly his eyes snapped open. "She let go," he said, his tone harsh. "I fell, and Samantha couldn't hang on. "I remember," he whispered, stunned. "She let go of my hand." Scully put her hands on Mulder's shoulders. "You're hyperventilating," she said. "Take a deep breath and hold it." He drew a long, shuddering breath, then released it when he couldn't hold it any longer. "It's all right," she said. "You're safe now." "God, how can you be sure?" The wail was nearer the surface now. Scully thought it might break through at any second. "Because they could have taken you at Arecibo, or at Lake Accotink Park. Whatever they wanted from you, Mulder, they've already got it." "What did they do to me?" "The medical report from Artemis shows calcium depletion consistent with your having been in space for several months, some miscellaneous bruises, and a nasty cut on the palm of your left hand." He opened his hand and stared at the scar across his palm. He shook his head, hard. "No," he said. "I did this playing basketball--I caught it on the rim of the basket when--" He burst into tears, and put both hands over his face to try to stop it. Scully wrapped her arms around him and pulled his head onto her shoulder. "Let go," she said. "Just let go of it." She hung on to him, whispering comfort into his hair, while he sobbed helplessly. She knew there was no comfort except for him to cry and cry until he had exhausted himself, yet she had to say the words, to reassure and gentle and soothe. His pain was too terrible; she had to try to soften it. Eventually he quieted. She could feel fear and pain and anger still washing over him in spasms of shivering, but the tears slowed and finally stopped. "Why can't I remember?" he asked. "Dr. Karen Curtis, now Casper, interviewed you under hypnosis at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, aided by some kind of psychotropic drug--" "Pentothal," he guessed. "Likely. It was in vogue at the time. While you were under, she told you what to remember." "So they found out what I knew and took it from me." "I'm not entirely sure it was meant to hurt you," Scully said slowly. "Mulder, you've got to bear in mind that not even doctors knew then what they know now about repressed memory. It was 1974. And you came back from Artemis in a profound state of shock. You didn't speak for weeks; you were having terrible nightmares; hiding under the bed. Fighting the doctors whenever they tried to do anything for you." "Tubes and needles," he murmured. "Yes. That doctor may have believed she was doing what was best for you." "Or trying to make sure it all stayed covered up." "Maybe," Scully conceded. She paused again, to let him absorb it. He was staring down at the ground at his feet, just staring, but this time she didn't think he was processing. If anything, he was trying to avoid remembering anything else. She touched his cheek, and he started, his eyes wide with alarm. "Don't shock out on me now," she said. "Don't let me." "I won't." She decided to push on, to give him the evidential details, something to focus himself on. "In the interview, you talk about needles and instruments, but it's not very revealing. It's clear you didn't understand the procedures; you couldn't say what your captors did to you because you didn't know." He shut his eyes. "What did I say about how I got away?" "Not much. You said you fell, and Samantha let go of your hand. And when Curtis tried to get you to be more specific, you went into hysterics. She cut it off at that point." He thought about this for a moment. "She must have taken really detailed notes, for you to know all this." He sounded numb. Distancing himself, Scully thought. Professionalizing it, normalizing it. "There's a film of the interview," she said. As if he had read her mind, he said, "It's bad, huh?" "I found it very disturbing." "Why?" "Because it shows you and your father in a great deal of distress." "My father," he said softly. She held her silence, waiting until he looked. "Oh, God," he said. "There's more, isn't there?" She nodded. She put her hands on his shoulders to steady him. "He's alive," she said. She didn't hold him tightly enough. He grinned crazily, murmured, "I knew it," then slid out of her grip onto the ground in a dead faint. **** 9:34 a.m. Approaching Albany, N.Y. The omni-morphs didn't care about Bateman's test in Boston. And they were in no mood to bargain. There was so little time left. The Five would not live much longer separated from the Circles. The time was coming--coming soon--when no more deals could be made, no more bad faith on the part of the humans could be tolerated. If need be, the Circles would take all the humans as their own, in order to get The Five back before they were lost. In fact, the deals already made were of no consequence, violated by treacherous humans almost as soon as they'd been agreed to anyway. What the humans had offered had been meaningless. The planet itself had no important resources that could not be acquired as easily elsewhere, where there no troublesome indigenous species to overcome. Planets like Earth were as common as grains of sand in the universe. As for the humans themselves, did they really think even millions of them would compensate for the loss of Five from the Circles? What insolent madness! Humans, who thought themselves so valuable that the Circles would interrupt their own timetables just to conquer *them,* were not even good to eat. But humans, in their arrogance, had decreed that their own safety warranted the deaths of helpless ones--their own and those of the Circles. Humans were vile, immoral creatures. How vile, even the Circles hadn't realized at first. One moment obsequious, the next demanding and abusive. Nothing the humans had promised had been delivered, nothing they pledged could be believed. First they had said the helpless ones were safe and alive, then that they had become ill shortly after arrival on Earth and had perished from the disease, then that they had been killed in the crash. Only when Fox Mulder had found the bodies in New Mexico, poisoned in the train car, had the full extent of the Responsibles' deceit become clear. The Circles had time; each of them having the span of twelve lives, they were nothing if not patient. They had waited, occasionally taking a human or two to learn what he or she knew. They had watched those desperately ineffectual humans who tried to seek answers about events connected to the crash, the disappearance of The Five. So easily defeated, these humans. So easily brushed aside, distracted. They had so little sense of honor or dedication, so little regard for truth. All the waiting was nearly over. Now the Responsibles were to be brought to justice. If they could not be made to cooperate in the search for The Five, then the humans and their puny world would be taken. And if the Responsibles were foolish enough to gather in a group and make themselves easy targets, the omni-morphs would not complain. They rode the same train toward Boston that Higginbotham, Semarone and Duval had boarded, and looked forward to journey's end. **** 9:35 a.m. Chestnut Hills, Md. Two warrior morphs approached the safe house in their invisible form. One flared radiation to burn the guard at the gate house before he even knew it was there, then both of them took the guard's shape. One flipped switches to disarm the electric fence. Then the two morphs went up the road together in the guard's Jeep. They knew the humans in the building would fight, but they were prepared for that. Those who fired at them would die from the retrovirus, and the others would be burned, if need be. They went in and found one man, a burly agent with thin brown hair who smiled, then noticed they looked the same and went for his gun, yelling. They stood still until he shot them, and then he screamed, dropped his gun and clutched at his eyes in agony. He was already decomposing, melting, before he hit the ground. One of the morphs took his shape. The guard morph looked up to see another man staring in horror while he watched the other morph change. Together they burned him, his skin blackening and peeling away from his flesh--he'd been too stunned to move, but he was in the way, and it was hard to know when a human might suddenly come to his senses. Then there was commotion. Shouts, the sound of running. The morphs pursued the sounds until all were quiet. In a few minutes, everyone in the safe house was dead or dying--except the two Responsibles the morphs wanted. And of course, neither Krycek nor Bill Mulder was stupid enough to try to fight them. **** 9:38 a.m. West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard Mulder came out of it almost as soon as he hit the ground, with a soft groan, his eyes fluttering open. "Where?" he said, his voice fuzzy, trying to get up, his balance uncertain. "Try to relax," Scully said, kneeling beside him. She still had both hands on his shoulders; she applied some weight to keep him pinned down. "Where is he?" "Safe. He's under heavy guard." He was struggling now. She could hardly hold him. "Mulder, if I have to sit on your chest to keep you on the ground I will, and it will hurt a lot." He let his head fall back, his face contorted in frustration. "They'll kill him!" he yelled. "No, they won't. And in a few hours, it'll be pointless for them to try--it'll be too late." She had his attention now. "He's agreed to testify before a Senate subcommittee on the MJ-12 project. If you go to him now, you'll just lead them to him before he can finish. He needs to do this, Mulder--you need him to do it." She paused, to let it sink in. "I need it. This is the best weapon I have to make those bastards pay for what they did to Melissa." He closed his eyes. He was breathing hard, adrenaline galloping through his veins. "Heavy guard," he said, and opened his eyes, seeking reassurance. "All FBI. No Secret Service, no CIA or NSA. Skinner hand-picked them." He looked thoughtfully at her now, and for a moment, Scully sensed the familiar sharp edges of his intellect. That was Mulder--her Mulder, the one she knew better than she knew herself--his heart and soul were vulnerable, but the mind was hardened steel. Wear it down, and it just got sharper. He sat up, and she let him. She had seen in his look that he wasn't going anywhere. "So I'm just supposed to sit here?" he asked. "I don't think you or your mother should be left unguarded, either," she said. "I'm as confident as I can be that no one can get to your father. But if someone gets wind of what he's doing, and they come for one of you, that could stop him as surely as a bullet. We can't let that happen." "You came to back me up." She picked up the photo he had dropped when he fell. "And to deliver a message from your father." He stared at it, his expression suddenly haunted again. She lifted his chin so he was looking at her. "And to spell you until you get some sleep and something to eat and start to come back to yourself." She shook her head. "You're crazed, Mulder." He looked away, and she could see he wanted to deny it. He was just too honest to go through with it. "God knows you have every right to be," she said. "Nobody knows better than I do that you have a strength that's almost bottomless. But I think you're about used up. Five minutes ago, you went dead out like somebody flipped a switch. And this thing's not over. We may need that strength yet." He was silent, staring off at the water again. "Did my father say why? Why they took us?" "You remember when we met Higginbotham in Victor Klemper's greenhouse?" He nodded. "I know I said he was lying, but I was wrong." "You said the structure of DNA wasn't discovered until--" He stared at her. "Holy shit," Mulder said. "Klemper got the technology from the aliens themselves?" Yes, the steel was back, all right, as tough and keen as ever. She nodded. "I can't prove it, but I think so. It's the only answer that makes sense. When Higginbotham said some mysterious 'they' took you as insurance, I thought he meant some of his people. But that wasn't what he meant." "The aliens took us. As hostages to trade for The Five. Insurance that they could get their people out." She nodded again. "But then why let me go?" There was agony in his tone and his eyes, and suddenly she knew there was more in his desperate search for his sister than just that Samantha had been taken from him. There was guilt, too, at having been spared himself. She had no intention of telling him what she knew about what the aliens had done to him--she figured that was more than he needed to know at the moment. "Your father demanded proof that the two of you were alive. They gave him proof, in the form of one live 12-year-old." "But they made him choose, didn't they? Why *me*?" "You'd been in poor health, Mulder. He was afraid...that you didn't have the strength to withstand it, that they wouldn't give you the care you needed to survive, if you got sick again." "What was it that he didn't think I could stand?" She heard a current of hysteria in his tone. She was losing him to his terror again. "Mulder--" "I have to know what they did to her!" he yelled. "How do you know they did anything to her?" "Because they did something to me!" Scully held his look for a moment to warn him down. "Mulder, what happened to Samantha wasn't your fault. And it isn't as if you didn't try to stop it--not just any 12-year-old would have had the presence of mind to try for that gun." He was plotting something; she could see it in the way his brows had knit, in the set of his mouth. Suddenly she knew what it was. "No," she said firmly. "No way, Mulder." "I need to know, Scully." "You can't do it by yourself, and I'm not going to help you." "Fine. I know people who will." He jerked up onto his feet, headed for the house. She went after him, jogging to catch up with his long, angry strides. She planted herself in front of him, grasping his arms. "Mulder, you promised me you would wait." "For the file, not for the stuff that's already in my own head." "Don't mind-fuck me. You promised. Besides, if you couldn't retrieve those memories under hypnosis before, what makes you think you can get at them now?" "Maybe because it didn't occur to me to try penthothal. Scully, bits of them are already coming back--that's what's been so goddamned upsetting about this whole episode. I'm getting flashes of them, and they don't make sense. They don't fit. They're just...chaos. I need to put them in order." "If they're already coming back, why rush it?" "Because it's making me crazy!" "Did you stop to think that knowing might make you crazy, too? It already did, once." "I'm a lot bigger kid now, Scully. It didn't make sense then, either, and that's what made me crazy. Now, for the first time, I have a real shot at getting it straight." She sighed and looked away. He was bent on it; she could see that. If he went looking for someone to do it, he'd find someone. Hypnotic drugs were dangerous stuff if misused--even he knew that, but she knew he was ready to take the risk. She didn't want him to risk brain damage or worse at the hands of some quack who might substitute paranoiac conspiracy myths for good medical procedure. She nodded. "All right, but butabarbital, not pentothal." "Will it work as well?" "I have no idea, but it's slightly less likely to leave you in a persistent vegetative state." He crooked an eyebrow. "That's reassuring." "Not to me," Scully shot back. Continued in Part 21. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 21 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ This is it. There are no hidden meanings. All that mystical stuff is just what's so. - Werner Erhard April 29, 1996 1:21 p.m. Boston, Mass. As usual, just when Scully thought Mulder finally had gone completely over the edge, he did something that had at least the patina of reasonableness. He took her to Boston, to Jannie Larrimer--an actual medical practitioner--to do the hypnosis. And for a moment, Scully thought Jannie might talk him out of it. "I just want to go on record, here," Jannie said. "Fox Mulder, of all the half-baked, hare-brained, stupid bullshit notions you've ever had--and by the way I include in that list such things as the ill-fated plan to bungee jump off the Tower Bridge in London--" Mulder rolled his eyes. "This is the acer," Jannie went on. "I don't have time to enumerate all the reasons why you shouldn't do this. Besides which, I have good evidence to the effect that you already know all the reasons why you shouldn't--" "If you don't want to do it, then don't. No, in fact, I don't want you to. Just forget all about it." "Oh, no," Jannie said. "If you think for one second I'm going to let you put your life, limb and sanity into the hands of some medical shyster, guess again. And don't tell me that's not what you're hatching. I see that dawn-patrol look in your eyes. If you're going to do it, by God, it'll be done right, and it'll be done safely. Or as safely as it can be done." She sighed. "And I hope to hell it puts this green-eyed monster in its grave at last." His look was steady. "So do I." **** "Will this really work?" Scully asked Jannie. "Odds are about 50-50 that it'll just put him out for a few hours." Jannie glanced over at him. "Not that that necessarily would be a bad thing." "No, it wouldn't." "The two potentially disastrous results are that if it doesn't work at all, he'll get seriously frustrated and try something even crazier. And that if it works too well, he won't be able to handle what he sees." "What are the odds it'll work too well?" Scully asked. "Relatively small. The likely result is that he'll recover something, fragmentary bits. Ideally, there's the possibility he'll be able to visualize the whole incident--whatever it was. But I'd guess if anybody's a good candidate for that, he is. He's highly motivated, and he's a good hypnotic subject. Fox can hypnotize himself in about five seconds flat." "I know," Scully said. "I've seen him do it." Jannie nodded. "Of course, it's not the same thing to use self-hypnosis to put yourself to sleep on an airliner. Still, he knows the drill, and he can get himself locked down pretty good; he doesn't pop out of trance on you or fade off to sleep." "He looks nervous," Scully said. "Hypnosis doesn't scare him. But chemical enhancement probably does. Even the mild hypnotics, like that butabarbital, really up the ante. Without the drug, the subject has more control and can pull himself back from something that's too much to cope with. That's what I'm counting on you for--to help me make sure we can lead him back to a psychic niche if we have to." "Me? I don't even know what a psychic niche is." "It's a hidey-hole you can get a client to duck into if things get rough. You remind him that what he's seeing happened a long time ago, or that he's actually somewhere else. Like on good, old planet Earth, for example. Anyway, that'll likely be less important than just holding his hand." Jannie studied her briefly. "You look a little tense yourself." "I've never done this before." "That's okay. I have." He went a little pale at the sight of the needle, and Scully sensed him regulating his breathing for calm. She thought of the film. His fear was only natural--someone not human had shoved a needle in him as a boy and left him with a horror of the things. She put the tray down. He wasn't looking at her--if he had, he would've been able to see the needle in his peripheral vision. Jannie put one hand over his eyes and turned his head, and he let her do it. Scully gave him the shot. He flinched, but managed somehow to keep his arm relaxed, until it was done. Then he let go a long breath, as if the worst were over now. "This was what, '73?" Jannie asked. "Yeah." "So you were eleven?" "Twelve." She reached over to touch his left shoulder. "Let go of that," she said. He drew a long breath, then released it, and let his shoulder drop where he had hunched it up. "Here, too," she said, brushing a finger along his upper arm. Again the breath and release. He turned his hand palm up, the long scar pale against the rest of his skin. Scully sensed more than saw that the muscles in his arm had relaxed. But not his face. "You're okay," Jannie said quietly. "Come on, Captain Planetoid, this was your idea." He gave her a pained smile, then closed his eyes. "You want me to count for you?" "Uh, yeah. I can't get centered." His voice had started to sound drowsy, as if all the edges had been ground off it. Jannie put one hand lightly on his chest. "Breathe," she said. Scully glanced at the pulse/pressure monitor. He was easing toward unconsciousness. When she glanced back at him, he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. "Breathe," Jannie said. Scully thought the other woman was watching the set of his mouth. He closed his eyes. "Breathe. Five. Four. Three." Scully saw the muscles in his face start to let go. "Two," Jannie said. "One." He released a long sigh and slipped into trance. **** 1:40 p.m. Washington, D.C. Walter Skinner had never been so pleased to have arrest warrants in his hands. He had to fight back a temptation to count them, flip through and look at the names on them, one by one. And cackle while doing so. Bateman. Duval. Higginbotham. Krycek. Bill Mulder. It had turned out that Enrico Semarone's diplomatic immunity was real, unlike that of Higginbotham and Duval. But now, because of what Scully had found, the fingerprint discrepancies he had ferreted out himself and what was on that film, he had them. He finally had that chain-smoking son of a bitch and his pals. Bateman and Krycek for murder. And the others for conspiracy to overthrow the government, based on Bill's testimony. Skinner suspected Bill would get the immunity he had asked for, in exchange for his cooperation. And after Bill had talked to Scully, he'd removed the conditions from his agreement to cooperate. Lord knew what she'd said to him, but God love her for it, whatever it had been. If this all worked out as well as he hoped, Skinner would see she got a commendation. Oh, what the hell, Skinner thought, grinning to himself. While he was handing out commendations, he supposed he could spare one for Mulder, too. Nobody in his right mind would have pursued this case, or even dreamed it existed, except for Mulder's goofy obsession about UFOs and his sister. The only question now was, where to find the bastards whose names graced the warrants in his pocket? His phone rang. Thirty seconds later, he slammed it down in a rage. Somebody had broken Krycek and Bill Mulder out of the safe house in Chestnut Hills. **** 1:42 p.m. Boston, Mass. "Fox?" Jannie said softly. "Fox, can you hear me?" "Yeah." His voice sounded as if it were coated with velvet. "Do you know where you are?" "Boston." "Do you want to go someplace else? Is there someplace safer where you'd rather be?" "No." "Okay, then, I want you to picture yourself in a little helicopter. It's a very special helicopter that can't crash or be shot down. You can fly it anywhere, any direction you want to go, or up and down. It can hover, or it can fly away. Just fly around for a minute and try that out." She fell silent, watching him. Scully glanced over at the monitor. His pulse and blood pressure were just barely above complete unconsciousness; his breathing had the unmistakable rhythm of deep sleep. "Where did you go?" Jannie asked him softly. "Grand Canyon. It's really beautiful down there." "Okay. Now, look at the helicopter's control panel, on the right side, and you'll see a big green button that will make the helicopter fly backward in time. I want you to push the button." He lifted his hand and made a languid, lazy motion, like pressing a control. "That's good," Jannie said. "I want you to fly back in time a little more than twenty years. Back to a night in 1973, when something very strange happened to you. Do you want to go there?" He was shaking his head slowly, but he said, "Have to. I can't let them take her." "Can you see yourself there, on that night?" "Yeah." "Do you want to land and have a closer look?" "I think I already did." "How old are you now?" Jannie asked. "Twelve." Scully stared at him. It was a twelve-year-old voice, Mulder's pleasant baritone shifted upward by a fifth. "Are you at home?" "Yes." "Is it day or night?" "Night." "Is Samantha there?" "Yes. She's yelling at me. And there's...there's a noise." "What kind of noise?" "Loud. Like thunder, but it doesn't stop. It's just getting louder, and everything's starting to shake." He drew a sharp breath and jerked slightly, as if something had stung him. "Bright," he said. "What's bright?" Jannie said. "There's a bright light. Hurts my eyes." "Can you look away from it?" "No. I want to go and hide, but I can't move." He paused. "Somebody's coming." "Can you tell who it is?" "No. Somebody strange." Scully looked at the monitor again. The graph was rising, but not very much, not very fast. She had seen him more freaked after a close call on the I-95. Jannie caught her look. "Are you afraid of them?" she asked. "A little. They're weird, but they're not very big." Scully thought of the aliens in the mine shaft in West Virginia. They'd been half her height; Mulder had been tall even as a boy. "What about them is weird?" "They're...they're not...people, exactly. They have huge eyes, and they don't have on any clothes. They have--" Out the corner of her eye, Scully saw the heart-rate monitor take a wild leap. "No! Leave her alone! Samantha!" Scully's heart leaped, too--she had heard in his voice the echo of what he had shouted at Lake Accotink Park as he had thrown himself over her. *Leave her alone!* "Fox, that was a long time ago," Jannie said, her tone even. "I want you to get back into the imaginary helicopter. Just watch what's happening. You don't have to relive it; just see it." "They're taking Samantha! I can't move!" "Where are they taking her?" "Into the light--there's...there's something big back there, but I can't make it out; it's too bright." "Why can't you move? Is something or somebody holding you?" "No. I'm just...it's like I'm frozen. I'm trying to go after her, but I can't. Wait, there's a shadow. I'm running toward her now." "What's the shadow?" "You can't look at the light. If you look, it'll paralyze you. Oh, God, I can't find her, and the light's almost gone. No, it's there. It's there. Put her down! I said, put her down!" He gasped, and suddenly he was trembling all over, just as he had on the film. His face contorted in pain. Scully threw Jannie a look of alarm--the pulse/pressure monitor was headed off the scale. "Fox, what's happening?" Jannie asked. "Hurts!" It came out like a sob. "It hurts." "What's happening? What are they doing to hurt you?" "He touched me. He put his hand on my face...oh, God, make it stop!" Jannie opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, it was over and he had relaxed. "Did he let go?" she asked. "I don't know. I think I must've passed out." "Where are you now?" "In a little room shaped like a piece of pie. I'm waking up." "Is Samantha there?" "I, uh...I don't think so. But I can't see anything except the ceiling. I think I'm tied to something. I can't get up." He paused, his head cocked as if he were listening to something, for something. "Oh, God," he moaned. "They're coming. They're looking at me. I'm scared. God, I'm so scared." Scully took his hand. "Samantha?" he asked, Scully shot a terrified look at Jannie--had she screwed it up? Jannie shook her head, made a "go ahead" motion. "No, it's me, Scully. Mulder, whatever they do to you, remember it happened a long time ago. You survived it. You're going to be okay." "They have black eyes," he said. She thought of the figure in the black spacecraft staring down at her in Lake Accotink Park. "I know," Scully said. "Terrible black eyes." His hand closed around hers. "I'm right here," she said. He relaxed a little. It didn't last long. Suddenly he was panting in terror. "Fox, what's happening?" "They put something in my eyes--I can't see! I can't *see*!" His face twisted in agony again, and his back arched, and he gave a terrible groan. Gasped a breath. "Oh, it hurts." Scully stared at him. She remembered this, from when she'd been abducted. It was one of the same procedures conducted on her, when she'd been abducted, but she hadn't felt any pain. She recalled sparkling, bright twinkles of light that somehow had numbed her body. They had skipped the anesthesia with Mulder, and in a flash of sudden insight, she knew why. Bill Mulder had said he'd seen what the aliens had done and had tried to bargain to make sure they wouldn't do more. The aliens hadn't just tested Bill Mulder's son, they had tortured him, and then made sure his father knew about it. "Fox," Jannie said urgently. "Fox, it was a long time ago. Do you know where you really are? Remember where you really are." "Boston," he said weakly. His own, adult voice, for a moment. "You're safe here," she said. "Whatever happened to you then, you got through it. You're all right." "I don't know where Samantha is." Back to the child's voice. "I don't know where they put her, and they...they won't let me see her." "Okay," Jannie said. "When's the last time you remember seeing her?" "On the...the ship." His brows knit for a moment. "They kept her in another place, but sometimes they would put us together in a room. I made her hide from them when they came. But then I got sick, and she came out to help me. I didn't...want them to hurt her. So we tried to run away. I got her hand, and we just ran and ran down a long hall. It was hard to run; it was like the floor wouldn't stay under our feet. Samantha kept tripping and falling down. And there was this big window, and outside I could see a...like a space station." He drew a shuddering, convulsive breath, and Scully saw moisture gathering on his dark eyelashes. "Then they were all around us, and there was nowhere else to go but into a tunnel, so I jumped in. But I slipped and fell, and one of them grabbed Samantha, and she screamed, and she couldn't hang on, and--" He was crying hard now, the miserable, agonized child-tears Scully had seen on the film. "She let go," he sobbed. "She let go of my hand, and then she was gone. *"Oh, God, she's gone."* Continued in Part 22. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 22 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, there we enter the realm of art and science. - Albert Einstein April 29, 1996 3:35 p.m. Boston, Mass. Mulder finally woke up about two hours later, groggy and subdued, as if at last he simply had no more strength to feel anything. He sat up, slowly, cautiously. "Easy," Scully said, as he swayed a little, still woozy from the drug. She held one of his shoulders to steady him. "I'm okay," he murmured. "Are you?" He sighed. "I don't know. Probably too soon to be sure, I guess. It's...kind of like freefall." She nodded. "We should get on the road pretty soon," he said. "It's going to be rush hour--we don't want to get caught in Boston at rush hour." "Okay," Scully said. She knew what this was--he was normalizing the situation. One step at a time, focus on the mundane, everyday things he could handle without any more stress. Probably the best thing for him, she decided. He handed her his car keys. "You'd better drive." **** 6:14 p.m. West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard There was a car Scully didn't recognize in the driveway when they returned to Mulder's father's home. Connecticut plates. "Mulder, wake up," she said. He lifted his head, blinking in the harsh, red sunset. "Hey," he said. "What's my mom doing here?" "I don't know," Scully said, as surprised as he sounded. "Let's go in and find out." Laura was pacing the kitchen floor. She looked nervous. "Oh, thank God," she said, when she saw her son. "I've been trying and trying to call." Still drowsy, Mulder retrieved his cell phone from his pocket, studied it for a moment, as if he'd never seen it before. "Battery must be dead," he said. Then he snapped. "Mom, what's wrong?" "There was a man watching the house. I...I thought he might be following me, and I was frightened." "What man?" Mulder said, frowning. "I don't know who he--" "Skinner said he was going to order protective surveillance," Scully said. "He's probably one of ours." "Where did you see him last?" Mulder asked his mother, as if he hadn't heard, although Scully knew he had. "Across the street, in a blue car." Mulder gave Scully a try-and-stop-me look. "You don't mind if I just make sure, do you?" "No." She was already reaching in her briefcase to retrieve his badge and gun. "You'll want these, I expect." "I don't need those," Mulder said irritably. "I quit, remember?" "Make me feel better, will you? Most of my success with mayhem victims has come after they were dead." He sighed, but he stuffed the badge in a pocket, hooked his holster onto his jeans and pulled his T-shirt down over the gun. Scully watched from the window as he went out to the blue car across the street. But he hadn't gotten halfway there before the man sitting in the car caught sight of him, started the engine and roared away. As he drove off, Scully got a quick glimpse of his face. Oh, my God, she thought. From the look on Mulder's face as the car disappeared and he turned to meet her gaze, she could see he had recognized the driver, too. It was the brown-haired man from Lake Accotink Park. **** 6:19 p.m. Boston, Mass. Just at sundown, Shelby Bateman gave the order to flip the switch. And everything in the city went dead. Phones, power, radios, gas, water. Nothing worked. He grinned. Perfect. They'd stay down long enough for people to get really annoyed. Really worried. Thirty minutes after the test had begun, he learned that the area of the outages was larger than it was supposed to be. In fact, it had taken in nearly the whole of the Massachusetts coast. Strange, Bateman thought, and he went outside for a moment to have a look at the abnormally dark night. In the flare of his lighter, he got just the barest glimpse of the omni-morph behind him, just a flash of the blow that knocked him out. **** 8:04 p.m. Somewhere over the East Coast The rendez-vous was set, at a place the grays had landed before, at a time all had agreed upon. The warriors would bring the Responsibles they had already collected to the place where the last one, the woman, had gone. The ship descended through a layer of cloud, and slowed. Peering through the viewer, the Pilot morph scanned for a small body of water. Shaped like a human hand, with its fingers outstretched. Ah. Yes, there. **** 8:13 p.m. West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard The power was working on the island, but there was nothing but snow on the television, and the radio said all the phone lines were down in Boston. "Geez," Mulder said. "Good thing we got out when we did." They'd been making light conversation for Laura's benefit, although he knew Scully was as worried about the morph's reappearance as he was. What would a morph want with his mother, especially now? Did it think somehow that she knew something about The Five? Did it think he had told her something about The Five, rather than the other way around? He had a vague, uneasy sense that the techno-disaster that appeared to have befallen Boston had some meaning other than a simple malfunction. He didn't want to say that even to Scully, who likely would have offered a whole litany of reasons why he was a nut case to think so. He wasn't in the mood for Dr. Scully's supposedly irrefutable logic. Not that he wasn't damned glad she was there. The situation definitely seemed to call for as many cool heads and dead-eye shots as could be rallied to the cause, and Scully certainly fell into those categories. What disturbed him more than anything was that there seemed to be no news getting out of Boston. He'd been around enough reporters to know they had pretty good technology for dealing with emergencies--cell phones, laptops, generators, battery-powered radios. If the news crews were down, what did that mean? How could a power or phone line outage bring two-way radios and diesel-powered generators to their knees? "Maybe we should fix something to eat, while we still can," Laura said. "Just in case it goes out here, too." "Sure, mom," Mulder said, trying to be subtle about watching the back windows and confident that he wasn't succeeding. "That's a good idea." **** 8:35 p.m. Over Rhode Island Sound, on final approach to Martha's Vineyard They'd gotten lucky. A police officer had spotted Krycek and three other men at the airport in Providence and called it in. But before the local boys could grab them, they had chartered a small plane, bound for Martha's Vineyard. Skinner had commandeered four choppers for the flight out there; the local police on the island said they'd be glad for the presence and happy to help search for the escapees. The phones and radios at the police station in Vineyard Haven were working only on-again, off-again. People were nervous about the situation in Boston, and all in all, the police chief figured it was going to be a long night anyway. Skinner figured the chief was a lot more right than he knew. It had not escaped Skinner's notice that the airport on the island was just about equidistant from Edgartown and West Tisbury. He had two of his own people in West Tisbury at the moment and no desire to lose either of them. And he doubted there was anything else that Krycek--and whoever had taken he and Bill out of the safe house--would want on Martha's Vineyard. No, they were after Mulder and Scully. Skinner willed the helicopter to go faster. He could see the airport below. Something bright red flashed by the cockpit on the right side. The pilot gasped, "What the--" And for a moment, the helicopter's turbine engines seemed to stall. Skinner's stomach tightened. He'd been in a chopper that had lost its engines once before, over Vietnam, and he hadn't shared the pilot's confidence in what he had called "auto-rotation--piece of cake, man." But this time, the engines whined back to life almost immediately. Skinner drew a long breath of relief as the choppers set down. **** 8:37 p.m. West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard Mulder heard the chime on the burglar alarm that sounded whenever anyone opened a door or window. He drew his gun and motioned at Scully. She pulled her own gun, then caught Laura's arm and drew her out of sight. Carefully, Mulder looked down the hall toward the front door, tensed to swing around and fire. The man standing just inside the door was his father. Mulder frowned. He lowered his gun and stepped out into the hall. "Dad?" he said. His father looked startled. "Fox, don't--" he said, and then Mulder saw who was behind his dad. The morph. It had that sharp weapon held to his father's back. It said, "I have come for the woman." Mulder holstered his Smith, and pulled the alien weapon he had removed from the bathroom out of his pocket. Flicked the switch to release the point. He set his jaw. "You can't have her," he said. "Nobody's leaving here with you--not any of us." Then without any warning, the lights went out. There was a low rumble, and the house began to tremble. *Oh, shit. They're here.* **** Skinner had commandeered a van at the airport, but the goddamned thing's engine died a couple of miles from Mulder's father's house. "Okay," he said, through teeth clenched in frustration. "We're on foot." They had idled to a stop on a dark, two-lane road where thick trees stood up on both sides like walls. He got out of the van, and a sudden sharp gust of wind whipped a thin tree branch across his cheek, the blow stinging. Then he saw a shadow move silently overhead, and his breath caught in his throat. "Jesus," Westin whispered. "What the fuck is that--one of Spooky's UFOs?" It moved fluidly, almost gracefully, a gigantic black triangle, a forest of dark piping dotted with dim white lights, almost too big to comprehend. How could it move so quietly, something so big? He watched it descend, land, the lights along its hull winking out as it dropped below the tree line, then a brilliant blue-white glow gleam up from where it went down. Skinner squelched a flash of fear--a cold, gut-soaking dread he had not felt since Da Nang. God only knew what might be in that thing. Was it a gunship? A troopship? What weapons, powers might it have? He had no idea. But just like in Vietnam, there was no time or room in the situation for his horror. Afraid or no, the next moves had to be played, whatever they were. He had no choice; none of them did. "Yeah," he said to Westin. "I think that's exactly what it is. One of Spooky's UFOs." He gestured with his gun. "Let's move." **** Mulder had never so intensely wished for a flashlight. He yelled, "Scully, get her out of here!" He flung himself blindly toward the spot where he had last seen his father and collided with someone. But then the light came, and Mulder saw that he had struck the morph. He tried to twist away, keeping his face turned from the light. It closed one hand around his upper arm, with that steel-clamp grip. Mulder kicked viciously, and one of the morph's knees went out from under it. It fell, dragging him down with it. He stabbed with the weapon, but the morph twisted away. The weapon's point lodged in the wood floor, and when Mulder tried to remove it, the long shaft broke. Out of the corner of his eye, he got a glimpse of his father. "Dad, run!" he yelled. But his father was staring at the light, paralyzed. Continued in Part 23. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 23 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ We're all in this together--by ourselves. - Lily Tomlin West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard The morph got up, limping, and dragged Mulder toward the kitchen. Mulder got one hand on the stair post and hung on, grinding his teeth to keep from crying out as the morph pulled--it felt as if the morph were ripping his shoulders apart. But he couldn't let go; he had to slow the morph down, give Scully time to get away with his mother. Suddenly the pressure let off, and he realized the morph had released his arm. Mulder scrambled to his feet, shoved his father into the shadows and went racing after the morph. The light from outside blazed in through the kitchen windows, and Mulder could see Scully silhouetted in it, paralyzed by it. He shut his eyes and took a low dive into the shadow behind the island counter top. He couldn't see his mother, but he could hear her struggling with the morph. Feet scuffled near him, and then he could see their shadows--the morph with his back to the light, his form towering over Laura, who was backing away. She had the alien weapon in her hand, but the morph held her wrist firmly. Mulder crouched, waiting for them to move a little closer. Then the morph jerked on her arm. She gave a little cry and dropped the weapon. The morph kicked it when it hit the floor, and it skittered away from where Mulder had hunkered down behind the island. He measured the distance to it, figuring he had little chance of retrieving it before the light froze him in place. Still, what choice did he have? He would have to try to keep his back to the light, not look at it. He drew a long breath for courage and pounced. The morph saw him coming. It shoved Laura, and she fell. Mulder grabbed the weapon and leaped at the morph, but he hadn't moved fast enough. The morph had already turned to face him, and Mulder couldn't use the weapon from the front. All he could do now was get between the morph and his mother, hoping the morph still didn't want to hurt him and would leave her alone to avoid damaging him. But that would put him facing the light. He edged around to the right, with the morph tracking him in a circle to keep its back away from him. And just at the point when Mulder couldn't help but face the light, he ducked his head and lunged at the morph. The morph held him at arm's length with no trouble, but again it seemed not to want to damage him, and its shadow kept Mulder's face out of the paralyzing light. But the situation was an impasse; Mulder knew he couldn't hold things off forever. While he was trying to work through what to do next, suddenly another figure rushed in from the other side of the kitchen, slamming into the two of them. Mulder fell, squeezing his eyes shut to keep from looking at the light. He heard another scuffle, and then a cry--his father's voice, he realized. When he could look up from the shadows, he saw that his father lay on the kitchen floor. The morph had slashed a bloody line across Bill's chest with the alien weapon. The light went out. Mulder launched himself at where he thought the morph was, but he missed completely and wound up smashing into the kitchen island. "Mulder," Scully called. His night vision coming back, Mulder realized there was some moonlight. His father groaned. His mother was gone; the morph had taken her. "Scully, over here," he said, urgently. "My Dad's down, and that thing took my Mom." She was beside him by the time he finished. "Go, I've got him." He bounded out through the back door, heart pounding, hand tight around the alien weapon, then jumped the fence. Outside, there was no need for a flashlight--the glow off the ship penetrated the trees in long bright beams. Mulder kept his head down between the fences as he raced along the alley, then closed his eyes and sprinted into the park, trusting his memory to tell him when to stop before he ran headlong into a tree. The light was bright even through his closed eyelids, but he got into the shadows to avoid it. Then he ran again, to the next tree and then the next. When he drew closer, he could see that the ship had landed. And then he saw that the back side of it was dark. He began working his way around to the rear of the ship. **** Scully regretted having let Mulder go almost immediately. His father wasn't seriously hurt, and God knew what desperate trouble Mulder might be racing off into. She hadn't seen where he'd gone, though it didn't take rocket science to guess he'd head straight for the ship if he could--that was likely to be where he'd find his mother. She ground her teeth and helped Bill to his feet. Could she leave him alone while she went after Mulder? Would the aliens come back for Bill if she did? She heard a noise from the front of the house. She took a sharp breath and drew her gun. "Stay here," she whispered to Bill. She crept toward the door that led into the hallway, leading with her gun. She saw a shadowy figure step through the front and aimed. "Federal agent!" she yelled, and was astonished to hear, almost in unison with her shout, the other person shout the same words. The other voice was familiar. She hesitated. "Scully?" It was Skinner. Scully lowered her gun, her pulse thudding in her throat, adrenaline roaring through her veins. "I'm glad to see you, sir," she said softly, then wondered, was it Skinner, really? Could it be one of those changeling things? She backed away a little as he approached, her gun pointing at the floor but still in her hand. Then, in the dim glow from outside, she could see the scratch on his face, saw the blood was red. She relaxed, then told him what had happened, the tale spilling out in a rush. The paralyzing light. The morph. Laura Mulder's capture, and that Mulder had gone after her. "Okay," Skinner said. "Norris, Stilwell--you stay here with Mr. Mulder." The two he named headed into the kitchen. Skinner deployed his troops, his tone cool and even. Scully could feel all of them steady under the influence of his calm, his competence. The mere fact that he knew where to find the ship reassured her. When he had finished, Scully piped up, "I think the light loses its effect if you don't look directly at it." The assistant director nodded. "Let's go," he said crisply. "Move it out." Then Norris stuck his head out into the hallway from the kitchen. "There's nobody here," he said. Scully pushed past him to have a look for herself. Bill was gone. **** Bill Mulder had spent the last twenty-three years believing three things about his son: First, that Fox had not done much to prevent the aliens taking him and his sister; second, that he had not cooperated with efforts to get Samantha back to the extent that he could; and third, that his lack of cooperation must have been out of some fear for himself or guilt at something he had done. Operating on those assumptions had brought Bill near the brink of hating his own flesh and blood, had made him capable of doing things to his own child nearly as terrible as what he knew the aliens and Klemper had done. And now, with those beliefs utterly debunked, he could feel his hatred turning on himself. Dana Scully had told him why Fox could not say what had happened to Samantha--couldn't say it even to save himself from another savage beating. And not because he was afraid or ashamed, but because others in the project had seen to it that he was incapable. And in the hallway, with the morph after Laura, with Bill the one who been helpless, it had been Fox who had kept his head and faced down the morph with courage and determination. Bill had seen the set of his jaw, the grim resolve in his son's eyes. Oh, yes, there'd been fear in those eyes, too--Fox wasn't stupid enough to take on a morph unafraid. But he could have run, when the power went out, in those moments when the house was dark. And he hadn't. He had fought like a wildcat, without even a moment of shrinking from the battle, despite knowing his opponent outweighed him in nearly every category--size, strength, speed. Even after the morph had gotten Laura, and it would have been easy just to give up the fight--when Bill himself would have argued there was nothing else to be done--Fox's response had been to race off after her. Frozen in Bill's mind now was an image of his son, who even now he tended to visualize as a sick, weak little thing, launching himself out the back door like a cheetah after a gazelle, vaulting the back fence, that same indefatigable resolve in his eyes. No, even as a 12-year-old, Fox had not merely stood there and let himself or his sister be led up into an alien space ship. Bill remembered the gun he had found on the floor after the kids had disappeared. He not thought much of it at the time. It had been unloaded, the cartridges scatttered on the floor, the cylinder open, and he had not believed Fox knew where it was, much less what to do with it. Bill had figured it had simply fallen on the floor. Now he wondered. Maybe Fox *had* been observant enough to know where the gun was, brave enough to try for it, smart enough to figure out to get the cylinder open and try to load it. Maybe the roots of the man who had run headlong after a dangerous alien already had been growing in that naive, rather timid boy. There'd been a hint of it, about a year ago, when Fox had risked his life to investigate the Defense Department tape, in an effort to bring to light what had happened to the aliens in the box car in New Mexico. Bill had wanted to tell him it was too dangerous, that Bateman would kill anyone who got in his way. But he had been too frightened for himself, too consumed with shame about his own role, to get the words past his throat. Before he had managed to say anything, there'd been Bateman's lapdog Krycek in the bathroom, dragging him off and leaving that specially made-up morph bleeding Klemper's synthetic blood on the rug. Fox would have felt for a pulse, but he wouldn't have found it, not in the wrists or the throat. Not on a morph. But even that had not stopped Fox from trying to do the right thing. *Must've gotten it from his mother,* Bill thought bitterly, forcing himself down the same alley where his son had gone a few minutes earlier. *God knows I've been too stupid, too much a coward, to do the right thing.* He ground his teeth. This once, he would try to do it. Try to support Fox as he had always deserved. He reached the end of the alley and paused to reconnoiter. *There*. He could see Fox flattened against a tree, eyes squinted against the alien light. Then dashing to another tree. And to his horror, Bill saw that the movement had drawn the attention of one of the grays, which cocked its oversized head curiously and started toward where Fox had gone. Bill opened his mouth to shout, to sound the alarm, then realized that would only attract more of them. Thank God it was only a gray, not a morph. He ran, and flung himself at the gray, tackling it. When they both hit the ground, he heard it breathing and realized with a shock that it wasn't a gray at all. *One of the hybrids. What the hell was it doing here?* He hesitated, frozen in indecision. And in that second of confusion, the hybrid gray brained him with a rock. **** Mulder stopped to catch his breath a few yards from the back of the alien ship. Out near the pointed end of the triangular hull, he could see a line of humans frozen in the bluish light: Krycek, Bateman, Higginbotham, his mother, and two others he didn't recognize. A lot of grays, at least twenty that he could see. There was no way to get to his mother without exposing himself to the paralyzing light. Once paralyzed, he'd be helpless, and the aliens could do whatever they wished. While he watched, two morphs approached each other; one turned his back, and the other walked straight into him. The two of them seemed to *soften*, then shimmer, then they melted together into one creature. *Dear God.* Mulder was frightened, and completely out of program. He had no idea what to do--he only knew that somehow he had to get his mother away from the aliens. *Think*. He had to think, but somehow his capacity for it seemed to have evaporated in the icy frost of his own fear. He told himself that, in large part, it was the fear of the 12-year-old he had once been, the last time he had confronted this kind of ship, in this place. The automatic, almost autonomic emotional response of someone who knew damned well, from experience, that there was something here to fear. That piece of routine psycho-self-analysis--reasonable though it was--did nothing whatever to alleviate his anxiety. He looked at the ship, caught his lower lip between his teeth. His brain wasn't working, but his memory was. *Tunnel, like an escape hatch.* The memory flashed an image at him. The thing he had dived into, in his mad rush to get away with Samantha. The tunnel he had fallen through, when he landed on what had turned out to be the Artemis space module. At some level, he'd known even then it wasn't just a tunnel; it was something a great deal more complex and sophisticated than that. But he didn't know what the right word for it was. Trans-warp teleporter dingus? Whatever, it was on the bottom of the ship. In the shadows he could just see the opening. The ship was hovering so close to the ground he might be able to reach it and get inside. Why in the hell would he want to get inside the thing? *Because, butt-munch, that's where the Regulator is. Sheez. Some genius you are.* Samantha! It had been her voice, her thought, in his head. A voice he'd never really expected to hear again and yet always anticipated meeting just around the corner, if he could only find the right corner. Hearing it now sent a shiver through him. *Where are you?* No response. Okay, Regulator, then. He had no idea what it was, how to find it, what to do with it once he found it, but it was a better idea than anything he'd hatched up so far. He set himself to the task. He drew a long breath to steady his nerves and began low-crawling toward the ship. He found the tunnel easily, and looked around. Apparently the aliens hadn't expected to be approached from this direction--nobody was paying any attention to the ship itself. They seemed to be discussing something with animation. Mulder stood up, reached, caught the edge of the tunnel and hauled himself up into it. The tunnel itself was not large; it had seemed gigantic when he was smaller, but now it was not much longer than his own height, and something of a tight squeeze. Designed for grays, the short, skinny little guys, he suspected. At the top, the view into the corridor warped at the edges, as if through a lens, and he could see in the bent image that there was nobody there. But what was causing that lens effect? Was there something between him and the corridor above? He remembered simply plunging into the tunnel when he'd come at it from the other side. Had it been open then, and closed now? Carefully, he reached up with one hand. He felt as if he'd stuck his hand into a whirlpool. In a mad whoosh of air and motion, suddenly he was sucked into the ship. Continued in Part 24. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 24 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ God! Is there anything uglier than a frightened man! - Jean Anouilh April 29, 1996 8:59 p.m. West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard Mulder shot out of the tunnel like he'd been fired out of a cannon and fetched up against the opposite wall of the corridor, arms and legs flailing. In his mind, he heard Samantha giggle, and he froze. *She's here. She can *see* me.* He looked around, but there was nothing but an empty corridor. *Where are you?* he thought again. No response. He didn't see any cameras, or even anything that he thought might some kind of alien camera. His ribs hurt again, a dull ache reminding him that he was still in no condition to wrestle alligators. Or morphs. He got up, took a moment to reconnoiter. The walls, floor and ceiling were round, more like a tube than a hallway, made out of some material that looked vaguely like granite, seamless. He remembered he and Samantha had had trouble keeping their balance, but there seemed nothing awkward about his footing now. *Gravity*, he thought. *The gravity was less. That's why we kept falling.* He and Samantha, running away, had come from off to his left. Samantha seemed to think he ought to remember, which implied he had seen this Regulator, whatever the fuck it was. His hand tightened on the alien weapon as he began retracing his steps. Unbidden, his memory began yielding up information he hadn't known he possessed. *Yes, this way. You've been here.* The corridor curved, branched. Mulder hesitated, then simply let his impulse take over, hoping his memory--or perhaps Samantha--would alert him if he went astray. The corridor widened, and he saw the thing he had thought, as a boy, was an enormous window. *Some kind of viewer,* he thought now. It had the same warped edges as the opening in the tunnel. What it showed was the outside, the captive humans standing dumbly in a line, the morphs and the grays still engaged in their discussion, and beyond them, the trees and the Great Tisbury Pond. And back in the shadows, someone dressed in black, moving stealthily. *First time I've ever been glad to see MIBs,* Mulder thought. A little help, even from Bateman's crowd, would be welcome. The viewer room contained three raised surfaces, almost like tables, that looked as if they'd been poured out of the same granite-like material as the floor. On their tops lay slick, clear panels in which patterns of colored light played, moving and swirling slowly, like the shifting glow of a lava lamp. Somehow he knew those were controls, but they were not the Regulator. He heard a soft sound, and ducked behind one of the tables. A gray entered the viewer room, hesitated, looking around, then proceeded through and on into the corridor from where Mulder had come. Mulder shut his eyes and sighed in relief. *Here,* his memory signaled. *You hid here.* Yes, they had crouched just about here for a moment, then hearing the aliens coming behind them, moved on. When he started to get up, he saw it. A circular metallic band, encased in a hard, blue glass-like sphere about the size of his fist. At even intervals around the outside of the sphere, tiny dark spots showed, and hair-fine sparks of electricity danced now and then along its surface, from one spot to another. Somehow Mulder knew that, whatever the thing was, it was as alive as he was. *The Regulator. One of the Third Circle.* How the hell did he know that? *Don't touch it.* That was his memory, not Samantha. He had a painfully clear flash, suddenly, of what had stopped him when he had tried to get Samantha away from the grays the first time--one of them had touched that metallic circle to his forehead. The pain had been excruciating, awful beyond description. *It was dead,* Samantha said, in his mind. *It was separated. This one's still alive.* Mulder set his jaw and reached. Grasped the sphere and picked it up. The electricity rippling along the cool surface of the sphere tickled his fingertips. He put it in his jeans pocket. *Now what?* *Go get Mom, stupid. And you'd better hurry.* **** Scully had followed Skinner and two squads of agents around to the back side of the ship while Westin and his three squads went to the front end. She didn't envy them trying to see what the hell was going on while at the same time trying not to look at that damnable light. Then she heard something, a rustling noise, and she and Skinner simultaneously swung around to aim at something moving through the trees. Whatever it was, it stopped. Scully heard breathing. *Mulder.* She knew him so well she could even recognize his agitated breath, at a distance could pick out the coppery scent of his sweat, mixed with Jamaica bay rum. "Mulder," she whispered. "Over here." Another rustle, and he was beside her. He looked at Skinner and said, "Jesus, am I glad to see you two." "Same here," the assistant director said. There was a harsh silence for a moment, as if none of them even breathed. Skinner broke it. "Okay, hotshot," he said. "All of a sudden I got religion about UFOs. But you're the expert on this kind of shit. Got any ideas?" "Yeah," Mulder said at once. Scully realized he had been processing on this one. "We have warrants on the non-aliens?" Mulder asked. "And your father. All but your mother, and I can arrange to have one on her before anybody knows I'm faking it." Mulder shrugged, as if to brush aside whatever threat the Justice Department might pose to his parents. "Got 'em on you?" "Yes." Mulder nodded. "Let's go make a bust." **** The morphs knew instantly that the Regulator had left the ship; they could feel the ship's pain at being separated from it. The Regulator could only live a few Earth-time hours outside the ship in its protective sphere. And while it was separated, none of them--not the morphs, the grays, the ship itself--could communicate with it or scan its location. The warrior morph also knew at once who had taken it. Mulder, that Circle-condemned human Inquestor. Who else could know? Who else could see past his own terror and enter the ship of his own free will? But while Mulder had the Regulator, he was doubly safe--none could touch him, none could even see or scan him, because the Regulator's defense mechanisms would cover Mulder, too, in a dark mask of psychic impenetrability. There was nothing to do but wait for the Inquestor to come to them. The warrior morph looked at the woman Mulder had tried to protect inside the house. He would come for her. He would come. **** Mulder waited, wondering how Skinner was going to react. Finally the assistant director shrugged. "Classy," Skinner said. "It's sheer lunacy, but it's got class. I like it. Scully?" "I'm there," Scully said. She wiped sweat off her gun hand and steadied her grip on the Smith. "Don't shoot the morphs," Mulder whispered. "I know." "Let's go," Skinner said. In unison, they stood up and headed toward the aliens, Mulder with the alien weapon, the other two with their pistols. *If we were wearing spurs,* Mulder thought, *we'd be playing out *The Magnificent Seven*.* When they got within rock-throwing distance, Samantha's voice sounded in his mind again. *Tell the Regulator to turn off the light,* she said. *How?* No response. "Turn off the light," Mulder whispered, and to his astonishment, the light went out. **** Bill woke when the light winked off. He found himself lying on the ground in the midst of his old colleagues--Bateman, Semarone, Duval, Higginbotham. Laura, looking at him in stunned confusion. Krycek, the little bastard. And around all of them, aliens. *Damn,* Bill thought. *They've got us.* And they'd been joined by hybrids. That was Higginbotham's doing--he had been trading information to the morphs again, and he had given them the best weapon the project had. *God,* Bill thought. *They have all of us but Corvin. Maybe they don't know about Corvin.* He sat up, then laid his arms on his knees and rested his head on his arms. It was over, and their effort to ward off the morphs had failed, finally and at last. The aliens would take them, but Corvin would be left behind to keep The Five hidden. To stoke up the aliens' wrath and grief until it became unbearable. And that would be the end of everyone on Earth. **** Mulder, Scully and Skinner hesitated while their eyes adjusted to the darkness. There were sounds of commotion, of human voices protesting. But the dimmer lights on the ship itself still glowed, and after a moment, Mulder could see the grays and the morphs getting their charges under control. And as his eyes adjusted, he noticed his father, sitting on the ground, hiding his face, dejected. Where had he come from? He hadn't been there when Mulder had looked through the viewer on the ship. Skinner stepped forward again, and Mulder followed, feeling Scully move right beside him. The A.D. held up his badge. "My name is Walter Skinner," he announced, in that drill sergeant voice of his. "I represent the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. I'm here to execute warrants for the arrest of--" He recited the names. Mulder looked around. Everyone--everything--seemed frozen in place, the humans, the morphs, the grays. Even the wind had gone dead. There was a pause after Skinner finished the list. Then, in that tone he had that admitted no possibility of contradiction, he said, "I'm afraid the rest of you won't be allowed to leave until we've concluded our business." One of the morphs took a step forward. "How can you stop us?" it said. Mulder pulled the Regulator out of his pocket, held it up. In the low light, the blue-white sparks dancing along the sphere were dazzling. "I don't think you're going anywhere without this," he said. He heard a voice murmur, "Clever boy..." Higginbotham's voice, Mulder realized. He ground his teeth. He'd as soon let the morphs have that son of a bitch. A gray came toward Mulder, reaching. Scully stepped between them, her gun leveled at the gray's head. "Back off," she snarled. "Your gun will not fire," the morph said. "Yes, it will," Mulder said. "Make her gun work," he ordered the Regulator. He had no idea whether that would do it or not, but hell, it was worth a try. The gray retreated. "You have no right," the morph said. "Let these people go, and I'll give it back." "We do not bargain with humans!" the morph shouted. "You have not dealt in good faith with us!" Another morph, a bigger one, made a growling sound, low in its throat. Mulder saw it was wearing one of the metallic circles on its wrist, like a bracelet. His heart galloped madly, and he fought to keep his voice even. "It wasn't your idea to make a deal, was it?" Mulder asked. "You were going to just take us over, like you did the grays. What kind of good faith is that? We had to defend ourselves." "You took The Five. Our mates and new ones, the helpless ones, were poisoned, murdered. They did not come for you--they were stranded here." God, Mulder thought. They never intended to assimilate us at all. "Roswell was an accident," Scully said softly. "Accident, yes. We did not want you. But to get The Five--" The morph growled again. "--we will take you! And first we will take these, the Responsibles, who have hidden our own from us." "Your people weren't the only ones who got hurt," Mulder said. Anger was hardening his nerve. *Talk to me about much *we* hurt *you*? Fuck you, asshole.* "These Responsibles owe a debt to us, too. Who will answer for what's been done to our people if you take these away from us?" The morph inclined its head, seeming to consider this. "Among humans, you are the only one who can say that to me with honor." "Bullshit," Mulder shot back. "What about all the other people you abducted, whose lives you ruined?" "Many of those," the morph said coolly, "were not taken by us. And what occurred was done with the sanction of your people. Do you not take great pride in your government of the people? Your laws allowed the tests that were done, allowed individuals to be taken for that purpose, so the Responsibles said to us. That was among you, and of no concern to us." "No," Skinner said. "These people have been acting outside our law. They took for testing people who didn't know why they were to be used. They took people without their knowledge or consent. That's why we've come for the suspects now. We're here to make sure they're punished for their crimes." The morph seemed stunned. "They did not know they were to be tested?" Mulder gestured at the group of humans, surrounded by morphs. "They deceived millions, in order to carry out their program. Many who would have revealed what they'd done were murdered." He drew a long breath. "You know that my father would've given you The Five, if he'd known where they were. But the project was carried out in such secrecy that even he couldn't help you, even though he would have done anything to deliver your people to you and get my sister back." Mulder hoped that was all true. In fact he had no concrete proof of it. Not that lack of proof had ever stopped him theorizing before. "You know where they are, Mulder," Higginbotham called. "Go ahead, tell them." "No!" Bateman yelled. He sounded desperate, his deeply lined face pale, twisted in fright. "You give up The Five, and the morphs will kill us all! Mulder, be reasonable! Roswell was no accident, no matter what they say!" "Look," Mulder said, to the big morph, "if I could give them to you and get my sister back, I would. I would in a heartbeat, just as my father would have." He felt desperately tired suddenly. "She's here, isn't she? Somewhere in your ship. I heard her there. Let her go, and I swear I'll dedicate the rest of my life to finding The Five for you. You know me--you know I'll do it. If it kills me, I will." "No," the big morph said. "We do not question your intent; we may not question the honor of an Inquestor, even a human one. But there will be no more negotiation for The Five. We will have them, or the humans in our possession will not be returned." Mulder drew a long breath. "Then let her go, and take me instead." Continued in Part 25. "The Five," Book 1 (Part 25 of 25) By Somebody Else Classification: XA WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this. International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers. See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary. ************************************************************************ Who knows what true loneliness is--not the conventional word but the naked terror? - Joseph Conrad 9:52 p.m. West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard "Mulder, no," Scully gasped. "You can't--" He ignored her--if there was a chance to get Samantha back, at whatever cost, he could not afford not to try it. "I'm a better hostage than she is, anyway," he said to the morphs. "She doesn't know anything, and I--" Now it was Skinner's turn to object. "Mulder, don't be an idiot. There's more at stake than you and your sister--every living soul on this planet could be lost if we don't find The Five, and you have a better shot at doing that than any of us." Coldly, Mulder said, "All you have to do to find them is to get Bateman to tell you where he hid them." "I'll die first," Bateman said. "You won't get it from me. This is war, goddammit!" The two morphs turned toward one another, conferred with each other silently. The big one faced Mulder. "It is not for us to compel an Inquestor. But fulfilling a request is not required. We will not take you." *What the fuck does that mean?* "Why not? I can--" The morph faced Skinner, cutting Mulder off by simply refusing to hear him. "If we leave these humans with you," it asked the A.D., "what will you do with them?" *Dammit,* Mulder thought, desperation turning him cold. Helplessly, he cast about for another idea while Skinner gave the morph a short course in American jurisprudence: Arrest, imprisonment, a trial, a jury of their peers... "They will be judged by the people who hurt them?" the morph asked. "By people like those they hurt," Skinner said. "And what of our people? What of The Five?" Skinner nodded. "We'll do everything we can to help you find them." "You goddamned fool!" Bateman yelled. "The Five are the only reason they haven't killed us! They'll burn this planet to a crisp the minute they get them back!" The big morph gestured. "Take them. Know that we will watch, and see that they are dealt with." Skinner signaled, and Westin's teams closed in, snapped handcuffs on Bateman, Higginbotham, Krycek, Duval, Bill and Laura Mulder. All but Semarone, who really did have diplomatic immunity. Semarone, watching the others go, suddenly spoke up. "You can't do this," he said, his voice hushed. "You can't let these monsters take me! It's...inhuman!" To the big morph, Skinner said, "I have no authority over this one. If you allow me, I'll see to it that he's returned to his own government and dealt with there." "We will take him," the morph said. His turn to use a tone that brooked no contradiction. Mulder felt his throat constrict. He had no sympathy for any of them, but he knew what the aliens would do to the big Italian--the same kinds of things the aliens had done to him. He reminded himself that Semarone had ordered exactly the same treatment for many others. But did anyone really deserve that? Skinner looked as troubled about it as Mulder felt, but he nodded grudgingly. "I have no power to stop you," he said. Semarone began to scream incoherently, thrashing as several grays dragged him toward the tunnel underneath the ship. "No!" he shrieked. He arched his back, twisting to try to get away, panting in terror. "Oh, God, no--" The sound stopped, as if chopped off mid-word, as the grays shoved him into the tunnel. The big morph turned to Mulder. "The Regulator," it said. "I will have it now." Mulder held his ground. To Skinner, he said, "Take Scully and get out of here." "No," Scully said. "Mulder--" "Just go," he said harshly. "We will do him no harm," the morph said to Scully. It sounded almost gentle. "It is not permitted. You need not fear for him." Skinner took her arm and drew her away. *Samantha, where are you?* Mulder thought, willing her to answer. *Please. Tell me where you are, and I'll come for you.* A silence at first, in which Skinner's departing steps sounded loud. *Not now, Foxy. I promised.* *Promised what? To whom?* *They didn't hurt me. Bye, bye, Foxy.* He sensed, somehow, that she was withdrawing from him. *Samantha, wait! Don't go!* But then she was gone. She hadn't been in the ship at all. It still hovered there, dark and humming with power. But Samantha was gone. The big morph was looking at him. Mulder handed over the Regulator. "One of The Five is mine," the morph said quietly. "Find them for us, and I will bring your sister to you myself." "What if I can't find them?" Mulder whispered. "Then we will both mourn for eternity." He turned and boarded the ship. Mulder watched it lift off and fly away, feeling as if his heart had swelled painfully and might simply explode out of his chest. *So close. She was so close.* And yet completely out of his reach. He headed down the same path Skinner and Scully had taken, back toward the house. **** 10:13 p.m. Scully knew that Mulder was just hanging on by his fingernails, a fraction of an inch from total collapse. And it hadn't helped anything that he had just watched his parents get hauled away in handcuffs, although the Mulders were more witnesses than suspects, and she supposed he had been steeled for that, at least to some degree. The power and phone service had been restored on the island, but the locals said Boston was still dark. Flash lights and the van engine were running again. Scully cast occasional glances at Mulder. He sat on the front steps of the house while Skinner and Westin dealt with the legal niceties, giving the local cops the heads-up for their reports. Meanwhile, Scully left him alone, watching him but afraid to do anything that might tip him over the edge until after the others had gone. Whatever grieving he had to do now, she knew he'd want it not to be public. Then Skinner motioned to her. "Look, Scully, these guys we just arrested have as many minions as the Mafia and ten times the technology. I want you two someplace safe." Scully sighed. "And just where would that be?" she asked. The A.D. glanced away helplessly. "We've got to try," he said. "All right. I'll get him back down to D.C. somehow. In the morning." "It's all right, Scully," Mulder said. He had come quietly up behind her. "I'll be good. Hell, there's nothing more I can do up here, anyway, and I don't know how much longer my neighbor's going to be willing to feed my cat." He looked at Skinner. "Bateman knows where they are," he said. "I'd bet my life on it. But he's not going to tell us--he thinks it'll be the end of the world, if we give them up. Higginbotham would help us if he could, but he doesn't know where they are." "What do we do, then?" Mulder shook his head, slowly, moving as if he had aged a decade over the course of the evening. "I don't know." Skinner put one hand on his shoulder. "Get some rest," he said. "In the morning we'll all be able to think more clearly." "I doubt it," Mulder said. He turned and went into the house. After a moment, Scully followed him. She found him in the living room, sitting on the couch, his pose sloppy, defeated. Knowing it was a stupid question, she asked, "Are you okay?" He shrugged. "Compared to what?" "Do you really think she was there? On the ship?" "No. Not now. I did at first." He told her, about hearing Samantha's voice in his head, how she had helped lead him to the Regulator. And how she had seemed to fade away. "I'm sorry," Scully said softly. "I wish I could say it was over." He shook his head. "It's starting," he said. "Yes." She reached for his hand, tentatively, unsure whether he would let her take it or pull away. He sat still, making no effort to resist. They sat like that for a long time, silently, neither of them moving in the dimly lit room. *Talk to me*, Scully willed him. *Tell me what you're feeling.* Mulder released a long sigh. As if he had read her mind, he said, "I feel orphaned. Abandoned." "I'm here," Scully whispered. "I know this is going to sound really stupid..." "I don't care how it sounds." "Will you read me to sleep?" he asked. "I just need another voice in the room." "Yes. Lie down. I'll be right back." She went into his father's study for a book, found *Treasure Island*--that seemed an innocuous enough choice--and returned with it. He lay down on the couch, his expression utterly forlorn. Scully sat on the floor beside him, leaned her head against his shoulder, and began to read. "'Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the particulars about Treasure Island...'" She got midway through the third page before he began to cry. **** The hybrid who had brought Bill Mulder to the ship was named Zachary. He was exactly 47.239 percent human, the remainder of his genetic makeup being those of the worker Circle, or what the humans called "grays." Very few of the hybrids knew whence their genes had sprung. Oh, they knew they were hybrids, all right. But not the details of it. He was one of the oldest of the surviving hybrids, old enough to have known Victor Klemper personally. And Klemper once had told him, gleefully, like a man taking joy from applying cigarette burns to a dog, who his ancestors were. In a sense, he had seven mothers and six fathers. That was how he thought of the people who had contributed to creating them out of their tissue samples. He considered those people's children--more than twenty of them--his siblings. He even had managed to collect photos of these family members. Sometimes, though he knew it was unlikely, he dreamed he'd meet them, openly, in a kind of gigantic family reunion. Maybe there'd be a picnic, with hot dogs on the grill and a volleyball game. *Yeah, right.* Some of them wouldn't be surprised at his appearance. Some had known, or at least suspected, that something like Zachary might result from experiments they had volunteered for. But some had had no idea. The bulk of his "family" would look at his huge black eyes and his awkward, long fingers, his misshapen head, his leathery brown skin, and run away in terror. And he couldn't play volleyball with them--what if he fell and skinned his knee? The fumes in his blood would kill them. But Zachary was human enough to wish for a family reunion. He was human enough to be sick and tired of being a slave to the morphs or the project or both. And there was talk among the grays that when The Five finally died their last death, that was the time for the long-awaited uprising against the morphs. When the morphs were grief-stricken and occupied with the assimilation of the humans. Zachary didn't trust humans. The ones he'd known were heartless, cruel, ruthless. He preferred the grays, who were by nature docile creatures. For that matter, even the morphs at least made no pretense about their brutal ambitions. They were savage, all right, but at least they were straightforward about it. Nevertheless, Zachary had mixed feelings about seeing the humans assimilated, even if it meant freedom for the grays. He especially disliked the notion that his own freedom might be had at the expense of slavery for the members of his "family." He had not been bothered at the notion of giving Bill Mulder up to the grays; Bill was not one of his fathers. But Zachary had been very disturbed to see Laura among the captives. And if the morphs took over the Earth, they would not give special consideration to pleas for clemency from a hybrid. If it came to assimilation, Zachary knew he would lose his "family" for good. But he had not had the least notion what to do about it. Not until tonight. Tonight he had seen a human hold a Regulator in his hand. And then he had known what to do. He would go visit his brother. Zachary suspected Fox would not be entirely astonished to see him. CONTINUED IN BOOK 2.