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ARIZONA HIGHWAYS                           
BOOK TWO: CHILD OF WATER
by Fialka <fialka62@yahoo.com>             

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PART 1

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SAN DIEGO CHILDREN'S CENTER
MARCH 10TH, 3:40 PM


Scully pulled into the parking lot in front of the center and stopped 
the car. 

Okay, calm down, she told herself. There was nothing so strange about 
this. If Caitlin Jenkins' parents had been killed and there were no 
known relatives, it was entirely possible she had been sent to 
Children's Services, just like Emily. 

Whether Emily would have been conveniently 'adopted' by a Project-
approved family was a question she would never be able to answer. The 
reasons the social worker had given for rejecting Scully's petition 
were valid enough that she hadn't even considered the possibility that 
she may never have had a chance, that a family for Emily had already 
been chosen. For some reason, the people who created the girls had 
wanted their existence to be recorded, wanted it all to look legal. 
Which meant that Children's Services might at least have a record of 
where Caitlin had been sent. 

Scully looked over at Jane, who was huddled into her own embrace, 
staring at the dashboard as if she didn't care where they were or what 
might happen next. 

"I'll be back in a few minutes, okay?" Scully said. "I just have to go 
check something out."

Jane nodded apathetically. Scully leaned into the back seat, opened 
the laptop case and selected a folder. 

Inside, Scully went the official route, using her badge and the voice 
that quietly demanded answers. It took only ten minutes before she was 
sitting across from the director of the San Diego Children's Center, 
handing the woman the photograph of the Jenkins family.

"I'm trying to trace the whereabouts of this little girl--"

"Oh!" the woman interrupted, taking the photograph into her hands. 
"That's our Jane Doe."

"She's here?"

"She appeared about a week ago. We called the police, but they haven't 
been able to trace any relatives. So, someone *is* looking for her. We 
assumed she'd been abandoned."

Scully took a moment to breathe before she continued. "What do you 
mean she appeared?"

"Someone rang the bell, and when we opened the door, there she was. 
People do actually do that sometimes." The woman looked at the 
photograph in her hands. "Funny, they don't look like the type, do 
they, but you never know."

Scully's eyes flicked to the nameplate on the woman's desk. "Mrs. 
Osborne," she said. "This child was not abandoned. Her name is Caitlin 
Jenkins and her parents were killed in a car accident on March 4th."

"Oh my. Well, I suppose we'd better alert the police then."

Scully stood quickly, slipping the file from the woman's hands. "That 
won't be necessary. I'm here to take the child into protective 
custody."

"Oh, I'm sorry." The woman looked up, smiling blandly. "The girl is a 
ward of the County until her identity has been officially established. 
I'm afraid you'll need a court order to remove her from the premises."

Scully reached into her pocket and showed her badge again. "Mrs. 
Osborne, I'm a federal officer. I'm sure the County would have no 
problem with your releasing her directly into my care. This child is a 
material witness in a murder investigation and we have reason to 
believe her life may be in danger if she stays here. I'm sure you 
understand."

"I understand that you'll need a court order to remove her from the 
premises, no matter who you are," the woman repeated, unperturbed. "If 
there truly is compelling reason, it should only take a day or so to 
obtain."

Scully took a deep breath, forcing the irritation down, out of her 
voice. "All right, then, I'll do that. In the meantime I would like to 
see her. You're aware that I don't need a court order to speak to the 
child."

The director shook her head. "She's not going to be able to give you 
any information."

"You'd be surprised what children notice," Scully answered.

Finally, the woman seemed to have been thrown somewhat off-balance. 
"No," she said. "That's not what I mean. I meant...oh, never mind. See 
for yourself."

Mrs. Osborne pressed a button on her intercom. "Adelaide?" she said, 
to the answering squawk. "Could you get one of the volunteers to take 
Agent Scully over to the Special Needs section?"

Deju vu ran up Scully's spine like a cold finger. The woman she was 
talking to must have been appointed since Emily had been there the 
year before, but everything else was beginning to play out with 
frightening repetition.

"That's all right," she said, picking up her file. "I know where it 
is."


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Caitlin Jenkins was in the daycare room, along with most of the other 
pre-school-aged children. Unlike the others, she wasn't playing with 
the stacks of brightly colored blocks, the numerous dolls, the clear 
plastic containers filled with Lego. Caitlin Jenkins sat in a corner, 
head down on her knees, ignoring everything around her. 

"That's her," one of the day care volunteers said. "Poor kid."

Scully watched the little girl rocking herself, a tiny ball of 
despair. "Has she been examined by a doctor?" 

"Sure, it's routine when they come in. I heard she went ballistic, had 
to be sedated." The woman sighed, making tsk-tsk noises with her 
tongue. "She should really be in a psychiatric facility -- we're just 
not equipped for kids like that here." 

"But she hasn't been ill?"

"Physically? No, she seems to be okay. No visible signs of abuse." The 
woman bit down hard on the word 'visible'. That someone had done 
something terrible to Caitlin at some point seemed obvious.

"May I?" Scully gestured to the far corner.

"Go ahead," the woman shrugged. "Be careful though. She's been known 
to scratch and bite when she's scared."

Scully approached the child slowly, kneeling down beside her. She 
stayed there, silent, for several minutes, giving Caitlin a chance to 
adjust to her presence. 

Caitlin made no sign that she was even aware anyone was there. She 
went on rocking herself with the same short, fast rhythm. 

Autism would be Scully's preliminary diagnosis, though she had no way 
of knowing if it had been induced by recent trauma, or if Caitlin had 
been autistic before. Scully could almost feel the pain emanating from 
the girl. 

She reached out and put a hand lightly on the child's shoulder, 
prepared to pull back if Caitlin suddenly turned aggressive. 

The rocking stopped.

"Caitlin?" 

No answer. 

Scully hunkered closer, speaking in a whisper.

"Caitlin? I know you're scared, but I'm not going to hurt you. I just 
want you to look at me. Okay, honey? Just pick up your head and look 
at me, if you can understand."

No response. Her hand moved tentatively to Caitlin's head, stroking 
the fine, tangled hair. It looked as if she hadn't let anyone near 
enough to brush it the whole time she'd been here.

"Caitlin? Can you understand what I'm saying?" 

Scully lifted the child's hair away from her face and nearly cried out 
loud. 

The girl was wearing earrings. Delicate silver earrings, beaten by 
hand into a thin disk and etched with black scored lines in the shape 
of petals, around a center of polished turquoise. 

"Oh my god," Scully whispered. "Amy?"

The little girl lifted her head, slowly, blinking her eyes as if 
waking from a long, horrible nightmare.

"Amy?" Scully's own eyes were just as wide as the child's, disbelief 
stealing her breath. "Amy Wallace?"

The little girl nodded, flinging her arms around Scully's neck. 


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SOMEWHERE NEAR SWEETWATER RESERVOIR
MARCH 10TH, 3:40 PM


Mulder's back was to the car, pulled haphazardly off the right side of 
the road. On the left side, ten or so rows back beyond the orange 
trees, the white stucco wall gleamed in the sun. Completely out of 
place in the middle of nowhere. 

Mulder's first instinct was to call Scully back. He was sure she 
thought he was wasting their time, trying to find a needle in a 
haystack that had rotted away a long time ago. 

His thumb had already hit the speed dial when he thought better of it 
and clicked off. He didn't know yet what he'd found and Scully's 
cryptic warning was so unlike her that he couldn't begin to figure it 
out.

If she were in danger, if she needed help, she'd have asked for it, he 
told himself. And if she didn't want help from him, for whatever 
reason, she had Kresge, who certainly would not turn her down. 

Oddly, he found that thought a comfort. 

Mulder grabbed the backpack and the half-bottle of Evian and set out 
through the trees. 

The wall was long, enclosing a good ten acres, and Mulder was 
beginning to wonder if he was going to have to follow it all the 
around to the other side it when he finally came to a door. Not the 
big wrought iron gate Jane had described, but a shiny steel door, the 
stone around it showing evidence of having been cut and cemented not 
very long ago. And beside it, not at all new and far less shiny, stood 
a large industrial dumpster.

There didn't seem to be any cameras on the outside of the compound, as 
if the idea of outside intervention was not worth contemplating. 
Mulder looked around, decided there was nothing to lose, and climbed 
up on the dumpster.

The wall was far higher on the inside, the ground having been dug out 
when the compound was built. Too high to simply jump without the 
chance of breaking something. 

Mulder climbed down and considered his options. The place had 
obviously been built with an eye to keeping things in, rather than 
keeping them out. He still had the rope. He could tie it to the 
dumpster and climb down, but he would have to leave it hanging on the 
inside or he would have no way of getting back over. Not very wise to 
leave something so easy to notice, though what he'd seen in his brief 
glimpse over the wall hadn't convinced him there would be anyone there 
to see it. The compound looked abandoned; nothing but glaring white 
adobe and dust-whirls glinting in the sun. On the other hand, the door 
was new, the dumpster had a small amount of reasonably fresh garbage 
in it and a row of trees had been removed from this point onward, 
making a dirt road that followed the outside of the wall, stretching 
as far as Mulder could see. 

There really was only one option.

Mulder heaved the dumpster a little further from the wall, enough to 
create a space he could hide in, and settled down to wait for night. 


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SAN DIEGO CHILDREN'S CENTER
MARCH 10TH, 4:32 PM


She was not conscious of making a decision, of following logic or 
reason. It was more like the irresistible pull of a magnet, like the 
game she had played as a child, inching the magnet closer to the nail, 
until the nail leapt across the floor. 

Scully looked up and saw that the volunteer was occupied with an 
argument between two small boys hell-bent on clubbing each other to 
death over a Tonka truck. She pulled Amy into her arms and stood, the 
child holding on as if she never meant to let go again. Scully began 
to move toward the door, only one thought in her head.

Don't let them stop us, dear God, don't let them stop us. 

She could feel the holster pressing into her back beneath the weight 
of Amy's crossed legs. She didn't want to know if she would pull her 
gun in this place, didn't want to find out if she was capable of 
making that kind of threat. Scully walked and prayed with a 
determination that might have fried the circuitry of the chip if it 
had still been beneath the skin of her neck.  

No one tried to stop her. No one even looked twice. She left the 
Children's Center, clutching Amy tight, as if God had heard her prayer 
and made her invisible to everyone but Himself.

Himself and Jane, gaping at her with horrified eyes.

"Can you drive?" Scully demanded, pulling the passenger door open. 

The other woman nodded, mute. 

"Then do it. Now!"

Jane gulped and scrambled over the gear shift as Scully climbed in 
with Amy still wrapped around her. 

"Not too fast," Scully cautioned, as Jane started the car. "Just 
normal. Don't attract attention."

"My god, Dana, what have you done?"

Scully dared a glance at Jane, saw a white face with huge eyes, her 
bottom lip held tight between her teeth.

"I'm sorry," Scully said. Sorry seemed to be all she could say these 
days. Everything seemed to be spinning out of her control. "I didn't 
expect--"

She cut off her own words and bent her head against the girl's. "I 
don't know."

"Is this the one?" Jane asked tightly, "The one you were talking 
about? Denise's twin?"

"This is Amy Wallace," Scully said. "The girl we were looking for." 

Amy looked up as she heard her name spoken, confusion written all over 
her small face. "I want my mommy," she said to Scully, her lower lip 
beginning to swell in a pout.

"I know," Scully answered. She pressed the girl's head back against 
her shoulder. "I know."

Amy began to cry, almost without sound, crushing Scully's lapel in one 
chubby fist. 

Scully held the girl closer, wanting to cry herself. It was only now 
beginning to sink in, the exact magnitude of what she had done. 

She had kidnapped a child. A federal offense. Whatever her life had 
been until this moment, it was over. 

"So where am I going?" Jane demanded, her knuckles golden beneath her 
pale skin as she strangled the wheel. 

Scully dragged herself out of the well of despair into which she was 
rapidly descending. Think. She had to think. 

"You know this part of town?" 

Jane nodded, refusing to take her eyes off the road, her expression 
grim.

"We need let you off somewhere. A motel, someplace you'll be safe for 
a while. My partner will pick you up. Whatever happens now, you can't 
be involved."

Jane cast her a long, hard look. "I'm already involved," she said 
harshly. 

"Jane, that's--"

"Just tell me where to go!"

Scully looked the woman sitting beside her, then down at the child, 
sniffling quietly now. 

The decision, it seemed, had already been made.

Scully reached behind her to wrench the holster from her waistband, 
stuffing it into the space between the door and the seat. "The 
interstate then," she said, adjusting Amy's legs so she could slide 
back into her seat, holding the girl close and buckling the seat belt 
around both of them. "East. To Arizona."


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NEAR SWEETWATER RESERVOIR, SAN DIEGO COUNTY
MARCH 10TH, 7:22 PM


The compound was shaped like a hacienda, four graceful buildings 
around a central courtyard. The oldest and largest was actually part 
of the far wall, the graceful arched entrance to the compound built 
into the center of the ground floor. It was guarded by an elaborate, 
wrought-iron gate, rusted over now with years of neglect. 

Jane had described the central courtyard as a playground, but there 
was nothing left to indicate that children had ever played there. Or 
that anyone was here now. Up close the whitewashed adobe was dirty and 
faded, crumbling in certain places. Abandonment hung over the place 
like a shroud. If there had once been children, there had been little 
joy, of that Mulder felt certain.

Mulder slipped from building to building, trying doors and dusty 
windows. Everything was locked. 

The third building he tried, the one furthest from both entrances, had 
a different lock than the first two. This was newer, electronic, maybe 
ten or fifteen years old and the dirt in front of the door bore the 
marks of having been disturbed recently. It was the first real sign of 
life Mulder had seen.

He open his wallet and fished out a credit card and a thin sheet of 
foil he kept folded in an inside pocket for just this purpose, 
covering the card with the foil. It was an old trick, one Frohike had 
taught him years ago, but it would only work on certain kinds of 
electronics.

He swiped the card through the lock, sure it wouldn't work on this 
one. 

The door popped open. 


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MOTEL 6, EL CENTRO, CALIFORNIA
MARCH 10TH, 7:52 PM


Jane came out of the shower wearing the blue dress, her eyes red, her 
manner distant. Scully said nothing. Even if she thought Jane would 
welcome some kind of comfort, she wouldn't have known how to give it. 
Instead she concentrated on her hands, moving a brush through Amy's 
tangled hair. 

You go home, she told the girl silently. Be ordinary. Be special to no 
one but the people that love you. It's a strange thing to wish for a 
child, but for you it will be a miracle.

Finished, she put her hand on the child's shoulder. It seemed 
unbearably thin and small, too fragile for the weight of her blessing. 
Too easily broken. "All done," she said and the child turned and flung 
herself into Scully's arms. 

Not yours, Scully told herself as Amy wriggled against her, wanting to 
be hugged. She held the child for one brief moment, then made herself 
let go. 

"Into bed with you," she said, forcing herself to sound cheery and 
light. Amy looked like she didn't believe the cheeriness for a moment, 
but she allowed Scully to tuck her into the cradle she had made by 
pushing the room's two armchairs together. 

Scully wrapped the girl in a spare blanket, tucking it tight around 
her shoulders. She almost leaned over to kiss her goodnight, then made 
herself stop. 

"Sleep well," Scully said. Amy nodded, her expression old and tired, 
then closed her eyes. She was asleep within moments.

Jane was surfing channels with one hand and eating Kentucky Fried 
Chicken with the other, making Scully think desperately of Mulder. She 
picked up her phone and tried calling for the third time, but there 
was still no answer, not in his room and not on his cell. With Amy in 
her custody and Skinner breathing down everybody's neck, all Scully 
could say was, "Call me, it's urgent." She didn't dare leave any kind 
of explanatory message.

Scully sighed and turned her phone off. Angry, worried, or all of the 
above -- that was the general choice Mulder left her with when he did 
this sort of thing. She didn't really want to return the favor, but 
she didn't have her charger and there was no point wasting her cell 
battery waiting. She'd check her voicemail in a couple of hours and 
see if he'd called. 

At last Jane chose a channel and lay back, tossing the bare chicken 
bone back into the box. The choice of dinner had been hers and Scully 
had too much experience with the horrors of hospital food to say no. 

"You ever seen this movie?" Jane asked, the first words she'd spoken 
in hours. "It's pretty good." 

Scully glanced at the TV. Harrison Ford was taking down some craggy 
blond extra in a blaze of gunfire. "I've seen too much of that to 
enjoy it as entertainment," she said, instantly wishing she hadn't. 
She didn't like the expression on Jane's face as the other woman 
turned to stare at her. 

"We can watch something else," Jane offered, her intonation flat and 
dull. 

"No, please." Scully bent her head, avoiding Jane's eyes, picking up a 
chicken wing of her own to nibble on. "By all means, watch what you 
like."

"It's okay. I've seen it." 

Scully heard a cacophony of noise that reminded her of Mulder next 
door in a hundred motels, then Jane settled on the Sci-Fi Channel. 

"Brain candy," she shrugged, tossing the remote down and rubbing at 
her wrists. 

"Those stitches will need to come out in a day or so," Scully informed 
her. "Remind me."

"You were the one who wanted to autopsy Denise," Jane stated, making 
Scully's stomach suddenly aware of the awful greasiness of its 
contents.

"Yes," she admitted, pushing the remains of her dinner away. 

Jane sat up abruptly and shut the TV off. "Was it worth it?" she 
demanded. "To cut her up like that? Did you learn something you didn't 
already know?"

Scully sat still, willing the nausea to go away. "It's my job, Jane," 
she said quietly. "If a death is suspicious, I try to uncover the 
story the body wants to tell me. I can't bring people back to their 
families, but I can try to find justice." 

She could feel Jane's eyes on her, frigid now. Blue could be such a 
cold, cold color. She wondered if this was how Mulder felt when she 
was angry with him. 

"Justice," Jane spat. "Is that what you brought me?"

Scully kept her voice low, refusing to be dragged into an argument. "I 
brought you the truth."

"Fuck you! Do you think I needed that kind of truth? Did I ask for it? 
Who the hell are you to come in and blow my world to shit? You ought 
to have to watch your own kid die like that, you ought to have to hold 
her hand while she cries from the pain or see the look in her eyes 
when the goddamn nurses come at her with another goddamn needle--"

Scully held her breath and stared at her knee, hands contracting into 
fists pressed hard against the mattress. She fought to make her mind a 
blank, an empty screen upon which she wrote only the seconds she 
counted, refusing to let the image of Emily's terrified face coalesce 
in her brain. 

"Please," Scully managed, casting a look at the sleeping Amy.

"She won't wake up," Jane answered. "Not if she's anything like--"

She cut her words off, evidently fighting her own internal battle 
against things better not remembered. 

Enough, Scully thought, averting her eyes. 

"I didn't even get to bury her." Jane's voice had gone high and thin, 
all the anger drained out of her now. A short, harsh sob escaped and 
Scully realized that the woman had been crying for some time. "The 
funeral is tomorrow and no one will be there."

Scully glanced up to see Jane wiping a shaking hand across her eyes. 
She quickly looked away again, giving whatever privacy she could, 
breathing carefully through her mouth as if the anguish in the room 
could be expelled with her breath. Focus on a point and breathe, the 
way a woman is taught to pant to rise above the pain of giving birth. 
There must be something similar to this, Scully thought, a wave that 
rose and broke and receded again, but the irony of the thought was 
bitter. There would be no cry of life at the end of this. Only empty 
relief.

She closed her eyes as the moment finally ebbed and her muscles dared 
to relax. Dry-eyed and calm now, she rose from the bed, removing her 
watch and laying it on the dresser as she went. 

"I'm going to take a bath," she said to Jane. "Don't open the door for 
anyone."

"Dana?"

It was the change in Jane's voice that stopped her in her tracks, the 
shift from anger to compassion. Scully steeled herself to meet those 
eyes, to guard against whatever kindness she might find there. 
Kindness was not a gift she could accept tonight. It would be her 
undoing, and she couldn't afford the weakness of tears. 

"There were three girls, in the pictures you showed me. What happened 
to the third?" 

Scully made herself look at Jane. "She died last year."

"Was she...?" Jane swallowed loudly and left the question hanging in 
the air, a presence so strong Scully could almost smell it. It smelled 
of sand and antiseptic and the sweat on a small child's skin. 

"Did you know her?"

There was no answer Scully could give. To say yes was to cast herself 
as having experienced the same grief Jane had, to have mourned a life 
she believed she had carried inside herself. To say no would imply 
that Emily's death had meant no more to her than the death of any 
child. Both were lies. Anything she could ever say about Emily would 
be a lie. How could she speak truthfully about a child she'd lost, but 
never had?

"I'll be out in a few minutes," she said instead, and escaped into the 
bath.


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Jane padded silently toward the door of the bathroom. The changing 
pattern of the water told her that Scully was in the shower and she 
seemed like the sort that would stand under the hot spray for a while. 
Jane figured she'd have a good ten or fifteen minutes, maybe longer.

She opened Scully's laptop bag, sitting by her bed. 

The bag was big, the kind meant to also hold a portable printer. The 
first pocket held the computer, a rolled-up towel wedged beside it, 
holding it firmly inside the case. The center one, meant for the 
printer, was filled with files. Jane saw her name on one and pulled it 
out. Lying on top were the plastic sheets Scully had shown her 
earlier. Jane shoved it back in. She didn't want to see those ever 
again. 

The front pocket held a couple of unlabelled disks, a laplink cable, 
the power cord for the laptop and an assortment of things that would 
usually be found at the bottom of a woman's purse. A heavy set of 
keys, a thin notebook and a couple of pens, a comb, a small, flat case 
containing basic makeup, a tube of coral-colored lipstick, and a 
wallet. Two wallets, in fact. 

Jane opened the first, running her finger over the FBI badge. The 
woman in the picture looked much younger than the woman in the 
bathroom, her face nearly unlined. Serious, but ready to smile. 

Jane tossed that back in and opened the other wallet. ATM card, credit 
cards -- Mastercard and Visa in the name of Dana Katherine Scully, the 
other an AmEx made out to DK Scully JTT0331613. Jane considered taking 
the Visa and doing a disappearing act, but the consideration was 
short. Stealing an FBI agent's credit card could only be listed under 
'Phenomenally Stupid' in the classification of illegal acts. 

She looked at the sleeping girl and nodded to herself. Anyway, she was 
not ready to go. 

She pulled out Scully's driver's license, noted the Georgetown address 
with a snort. Yeah, she could believe the woman made money -- silk 
suits were not cheap. 

Scully had gone to the bank on the way out of town, and the money 
portion of the wallet now contained several hundred dollars in 
fifties. This time Jane gave in to temptation, slipping two of the 
bills out and folding them into a size small enough to tuck into her 
pocket. 

Only if I need to make a break for it, she reasoned. She wouldn't get 
very far, would she, with no clothes and no cash? Scully wouldn't even 
miss a hundred bucks. And if all went well and she didn't need it, she 
would find a way to put the money back. 

Jane slipped her finger into the hidden pocket behind the credit card 
flaps. It touched on something smooth and she coaxed it out. 

"Oh, Christ," she said aloud. 


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The door opened onto a short hallway that led to a central area, a 
waiting room with no outside access. Mulder glided along the edge of 
the wall and glanced around before slipping inside.

Had they been so certain no one would never find this place that they 
had barely bothered to protect it? 

There were just two guards, young men no more than twenty-one, as 
clueless as the night cashier at a convenience store. The consortium 
must have really fallen on hard times, Mulder thought, if these were 
the only foot soldiers they could afford. 

Slipping up behind one as he watched TV was so easy Mulder almost felt 
ashamed of himself. Candy from babies. It didn't stop him from 
pressing his gun to the back of the man's head, of course.

"Don't even think about it," he said, as the second guard turned 
around. "Just put your hands over your head."

He saw the second one glance towards the control desk and cocked his 
weapon behind the head of the first. 

"This is a semi-automatic. I can shoot whether or not I've cocked it, 
but now that I have, it will take only point-zero-two pounds of 
pressure to release it. That's a twitch of my finger, and I'm feeling 
pretty twitchy right now."

The one whose head was threatened swallowed audibly. "Do what he says, 
Andy," he hissed at his companion. "I ain't dying for fifteen bucks an 
hour."

Andy was a little braver. Of course it was easier to be brave when you 
weren't the one with the gun to your head. Mulder saw Andy's beady 
grey eyes flash, as if the guy were doing the math -- if a man with a 
hair-trigger shoots my friend how long does it take him to recover 
from the recoil and aim again at me and is that greater than the 
length of time required for me to pull my gun and shoot the fucker in 
the head?

"Yeah," Mulder agreed easily. "You might be fast enough to get me 
before I get you, but your friend here will still be dead." 

Mulder regarded the friend -- now beginning to quiver with fear -- as 
if appraising a doubtful piece of art. "I don't know, Andy. He seems 
like a nice enough guy. What do you say we let him live?" 

Mulder looked back at Andy, putting on his best blank, unreadable 
expression. "What do you say we all live? I'm not here to hurt anyone, 
but I think you have something that belongs to a friend of mine, and 
if I have to kill you to get it back, believe me, I will."

He saw the boy think again and smiled his sweetest come-on-Scully-
you-know-you-want-a-french-fry smile. "Think about it, Andy," he 
cajoled. "Fifteen bucks an hour? Is that really worth someone's life?"

"For twenty," Andy replied, raising his hands with surprising 
equanimity, "I might have tried." 

Mulder tied the men's wrists behind their backs with their own 
shoelaces, and left them sprawled on the couch in front of the TV. No 
need for the poor guys to be bored waiting for the next shift to 
arrive.

It was the third door he opened that yielded the treasure. So 
innocuous, yet so enormous a moment, to stand in a windowless room 
painted institutional green and gaze down on Scully's child. 

Mulder picked her up, his hand automatically checking for a cyst at 
the back of her neck. There was nothing there, only warmth and the 
smell of a little girl put to bed in clean pajamas.   

The second bed in the room was empty. Mulder didn't have time to stop 
and wonder for whom it might have been intended. 

He shrugged out of his now-empty backpack and put it on from the 
front, threading the girl's arms and legs through the straps and 
pulling them tight, so that it became a kind of harness. The child 
must be drugged, he thought, to sleep through his tugging and nudging, 
but in a way he was grateful. Awake, she might have been too 
frightened to deal with. 

The easiness of it all suddenly hit him. Scully's theory about the 
handle of the mug was beginning to make a kind of inexorable, horrible 
sense. 

Fuck it, Mulder thought. Whether he had been led to rescue the child, 
or was being led into a trap, he had her now, and no one was taking 
her again. 

He wrapped one arm around the girl, gripped his weapon in the other 
hand and stepped out into the corridor again.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 

PART 2

<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 


MOTEL 6, EL CENTRO, CALIFORNIA
MARCH 10TH, 8:22 PM


Jane was staring at a picture of Denise that was not Denise. This girl 
had shoulder-length hair and wore a dress and stood in front of a 
birthday cake at a party Jane knew damn well Denise had never had. 

"What are you doing?" said a quiet voice above her head. Jane looked 
up to see Scully standing above her, clutching a towel around herself. 
She'd been so engrossed in the photo she hadn't heard the water go 
off, hadn't heard the other woman come in. 

Jane brazenly held the photo up to Scully's pale face. "You showed me 
this picture before. Whose daughter is this?"

Scully blinked twice before taking the photo back, bending to retrieve 
her wallet from Jane's hand. 

"May I ask why you're going through my things?" she said coldly, 
carefully replacing the photograph in its private pocket. 

"She was yours." 

Scully lifted out the bills and fanned through them quickly. "There's 
a hundred dollars missing."

"I know," Jane said, unrepentant. "I took it."

Scully regarded her with glacial eyes. "May I ask why?"

"Because I don't know who you are, I don't know what's happening and I 
can't go home and I haven't got a cent." A pause, then Jane added, 
"Look, I'm scared, all right? If I live through this, I'll send you a 
check."

"If you need something, you only have to ask." Scully pulled another 
two bills out of the wallet and tossed them in Jane's lap. "I'm not 
your prison warden, and you're no longer a murder suspect. You asked 
me to take you out of the hospital and you insisted on coming here. I 
don't care if you stay or go, but if you stay don't ever touch my 
things again."

She picked up her bag, dropped the wallet in and retrieved her comb. 
Trusting or stupid, Jane wondered, as Scully put the bag down exactly 
where it had been beside her bed, and headed back into the bathroom. 

Jane picked up the money Scully had given her, staring at the bills. 
At last, she fished the other two bills out of her pocket, smoothing 
the four notes together. She glanced in the direction of the little 
hallway that led to the bathroom, then at the door to the room. 

And then at Amy, asleep in her cradle of chairs.

Trusting or stupid, Jane asked herself again. She felt suddenly awful, 
like a child that knows she's disappointed someone she loves. 

Carefully, she folded the bills in half and put them on Scully's side 
of the night stand. She took off her dress, wrapping it tight around 
her hands. 

A low sob broke from her throat. She saw Denise behind her closed 
lids, her baby with her sweet smile and bright blue eyes.

Jane pulled her hands out of the dress and flung it on the floor. She 
got into bed and curled up in a ball, pulling the covers over her 
head.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


SEA COURT MOTEL, SAN DIEGO
MARCH 11TH, 3:04 AM


Mulder lay awake, staring at the ceiling. He'd memorized the shape of 
the cracks hours ago, had summoned every image he could from the water 
stain above the bed. 

His arms knew the shape of Scully now, and they missed her. 

He looked over at the other occupant of the room, the child sleeping 
soundly on what he'd come to think of as Scully's side of the bed. He 
had no idea what was supposed to happen next.

He'd been to Scully's room but she wasn't there, and once again her 
phone was off. Mulder didn't know what to make of that, didn't even 
want to try. The moment he did, his mind would be happy to supply him 
with all sorts of unpalatable scenarios -- everything from Scully 
lying unconscious and bleeding somewhere to Scully lying in Kresge's 
bed, legs wrapped around his waist.

He closed his eyes and instead summoned up the image of Scully as he'd 
once known her, round-faced and eager. Imagined her trying not to 
laugh as he waved blurry UFO pictures under her nose; pretending to 
put a live cricket in her mouth; eating ribs in the days when she 
still ate like a normal person, light in her eyes and barbecue sauce 
in the corner of her mouth. 

He wondered if this was what she did on the nights when she did not 
know where he was, could not be certain he was even still alive. If 
she too ran through a series of beloved images, as if arranging them 
in a mental scrapbook in case he never came back. 

He doubted it. Scully didn't hang on to memories the way he did. She 
was a forward-moving person, one who tucked the past away and 
preferred not to think about it. Not like he did anyway, mulling and 
brooding and playing his mental videotapes over and over, as if this 
time he could freeze the frame, rewind just a little, and change the 
moment when it all went wrong. 

He turned over, blindly groping for the phone. He didn't care how 
embarrassing or childish it was any more. He had to know. 

It took five rings before the phone was picked up. 

"Kresge, what?" 

The man sounded pissed off, as if he knew who it was. Mulder ran a 
hand through his hair, for one second contemplating hanging up. But 
then he would have to go back to staring at the ceiling, wondering if 
she was safe in Kresge's arms, finding himself almost hoping she was, 
because the other possibilities were so infinitely worse.

"Um, it's Mulder," he finally managed to mutter. "I'm sorry to call at 
this hour, but I need to talk to Scully if she's there."

Silence.

"Look, it's none of my business, and that's not why I called. Just put 
her on for a second, and then I'll leave you alone."

"Mulder, she's not here."

Mulder had to swallow a couple of times before he could take that in. 
He hadn't realized until now how tightly he'd been clinging to the 
hope that the explanation for Scully's absence might be so obvious. 

"Well, have you heard from her?"

"No, I haven't. Didn't she tell you? I've been forbidden to talk to 
either one of you."

"What do you mean, forbidden?"

"I got yanked. Seems word came down from above. Your above."

Mulder felt his patience beginning to wear thin. "What do you mean, my 
above?"

"Whoever you take your orders from. Some Assistant Director. They told 
me to turn all my files over to the San Diego bureau."

Mulder sat up abruptly, his feet slamming on the floor. "Tell me you 
didn't."

"No, Scully got pissed off and took them with her."

"Thank god," Mulder breathed, forgetting the phone would pick that up. 

"Yeah, well don't thank god yet. Jane Hampton is missing from the 
hospital and apparently the last person she was seen with was your 
partner."

"When was this?"

"About three this afternoon. And Mulder, I've got to say, the last 
time I saw her, she looked like she was hanging on the frayed end of 
her rope." 

She had called. Scully had called, had wanted to tell him something, 
something she was afraid to say over an unsecured line. Now she was 
out there somewhere, in trouble, alone.

"Listen, Kresge. We need to talk."

"What are we doing right now? Playing basketball?"

"No. There's something I need to show you and I can't bring it over. 
Can you come here?"

"Right now?"

"Yeah."

"Mulder, it's three o'clock in the morning. Can't it wait a couple of 
hours?"

"No, it can't. Listen to me -- Scully wouldn't just disappear. 
Something is wrong, and I may know what it is. You'll understand when 
you get here."

There was a pause. "I'm on my way," Kresge answered finally, managing 
to sound pissed off, tired, and worried all at once.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


MOTEL 6, EL CENTRO
MARCH 11TH, 3:22 AM


Hands pushing her down, hard, stuffing her mouth with foul bloodied 
cotton. Pushing her into darkness, into a space too small, where the 
air too was foul, where there was no air. She fought blindly with 
bound hands, seeing nothing, hitting nothing, yet the space was too 
small, there was still no air, still no--

Scully woke, choking, clawing at the blankets. 

Air. 

She threw her legs over the side of the bed and put her head down 
between her knees, breathing into her cupped hands. You're 
hyperventilating, she reassured herself. You're perfectly fine. 
There's plenty of air. 

She concentrated on her breath, big in, little out. Retain that carbon 
dioxide. Restore the balance. Slowly, her heartbeat returned to 
something more normal. Scully sat up, pulling at her shirt,  clinging 
like cellophane to her damp skin. 

"You have some pretty wicked nightmares."

Scully started at the voice. 

"Sorry," Jane added. "Didn't mean to scare you."

She snapped on the light, and Scully flinched from the sudden 
brightness. This was not going to do at all, she thought. She was 
supposed to be the one in control. Not a trembling bundle of nerves, 
but a calming presence, making this woman feel safe.  

She wiped a sleeve across her forehead, shivering as the cool night 
air chilled her sweat-damp clothes, wishing she had something else to 
wear. 

"Take one of those t-shirts you bought for me," Jane offered, as if 
she understood nightmares quite well. 

Scully shook her head. "I'm fine, thanks." She got up to check on Amy, 
who had started to slip down between the two chairs. 

Not yours, she reminded herself again, lifting the child from her 
makeshift cradle and laying her on the bed. Scully untangled Amy's 
blanket from her arms and legs and tossed it on the floor, drawing the 
other covers up over her. The child took that moment to wake, her gaze 
drifting over Scully's face for a moment before she mumbled something 
indistinguishable and rolled onto her stomach.

Scully slipped her hand under the pillow and retrieved her weapon, 
clipping the holster to the front of her slacks. She snapped off the 
lamp, picked up the discarded blanket and wrapped herself in the warm 
wool, curling into one of the armchairs with the remote in hand. She 
turned the TV on, flipping channels until she found Nick-at-Nite.

"You should sleep," Jane said, her voice soft in the darkness.

"I'm fine," Scully repeated. She turned the captions on and hit the 
mute button, resigning herself to another night of reading reruns. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


"Jane's orphanage," Mulder said, unable to hide the slight note of 
triumph, even now. "I found it." 

The place had been real. Looking at the child now, still sleepy, but 
waking up, Mulder could finally begin to believe that she was real as 
well. 

Kresge was wiping one hand back and forth through his hair as if 
trying to massage his brain into accepting what he saw. 

"You...what?" he finally asked. "You just walked in, picked her up and 
walked out?"

"Pretty much." 

Kresge sat down on the bed. The girl's eyes were open, but they were 
dull and unfocused. He put a hand on the child's stomach, shaking her 
slightly, but she only blinked once in response.

"This isn't right, Mulder. I don't know a lot about kids but if I were 
four years old and woke up in a strange place with strange people 
staring at me, I'd be screaming my head off."

Mulder bent over, tickling an upturned palm. The child clasped his 
finger lightly, but that was all. 

"You're right," he said. "We need Scully."

"Mulder, we need to get this kid to a hospital. You should have done 
it immediately. She may have been drugged, even poisoned."

"Scully is a doctor. She'll know what to do."

"What, like she knew with the Sim kid last year?" 

Perversely, his words brought Mulder the faintest glimmer of hope. She 
had never told Kresge that Emily was her child. Scully didn't trust 
him that much. And if she didn't trust him that much, then maybe 
Mulder hadn't lost her after all.

"She's not a magician," Kresge continued, impatient now. "She can't 
pull poison out of someone by waving her hands. She can't cure the 
incurable. And we don't even know where she is." 

Mulder hesitated. Kresge had a point. Until Mulder remembered Gibson 
Praise, the boy who'd disappeared from a hospital bed with Scully not 
ten feet away and was never seen again. 

"No," Mulder said firmly. "If it's what Emily Sim had, there's nothing 
a hospital can do to help. And considering where I found her, it would 
be too dangerous. These people are going to want her back."

"I will be with her every minute," Kresge answered firmly. He pulled 
back the blankets and gathered the little girl into his arms. "You 
better stay here, in case Scully calls. Try to get a hold of the 
parents."

Mulder stopped him. "This isn't your decision."

"The hell it's not. You involved me when you made me come over." 

"There are complications you don't understand." 

"Well, who's been keeping me in the dark?" Kresge hissed, holding his 
voice down with an effort, mindful of the child in his arms. "Look, 
I'm willing to lose my job to help this kid, but I'm not willing to 
stand around and watch her die while we try to figure out what the 
hell is going on!"

Mulder looked at the room phone, willing it to ring. 

"All right," he said at last, bending over to take the girl from 
Kresge. "But I'll go. You stay here."

Kresge nodded, standing up to wrap the blanket around the girl, 
surprising Mulder by clasping his arm. At first, Mulder had the absurd 
thought that they were about to wrestle for the child; then he 
realized what Kresge was offering.

"We'll find her," Kresge said, and Mulder reached out with his free 
hand, holding tight to that pact.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


SAN DIEGO GENERAL HOSPITAL
MARCH 11TH, 5:23 AM


Mulder watched as the girl was taken into an emergency cubicle and 
settled. She still seemed unnaturally docile, unresponsive. If it 
weren't for the fact that her eyes were open and tracking in a vague 
way, Mulder would have thought she was still asleep. 

A small, efficient ER technician bustled behind the curtain, hair in a 
ponytail rapidly losing wisps. She looked like a black-haired version 
of a much younger Scully and Mulder found an odd comfort in the 
resemblance.

"You the daddy?" the woman asked.

"Yes," he answered, another lie. He was full of them this morning, 
every line on the admissions form full of creative interpretation. 

She set her tray of blood samples down, and looked up at Mulder. 

"What's her name?"

Mulder gave the name he'd filled in on her hospital forms: Amy 
Williams.

"Just this one little prick, Amy honey," the young woman crooned, 
smoothing the hair back from the child's forehead. "That's all, and 
then it's over." 

She took the girl's wrist and swabbed the inside of her arm. Dull eyes 
came to painful life as the nurse held up the needle. The child turned 
her head and cast a mournful look at Mulder, actually focusing on him 
for the first time.

"Wait." 

He knelt by the bed, wrapping his hand around the girl's chubby fist. 
For the first time, he was glad that Scully wasn't here to see this, 
another child tortured for the sake of evidence. She'd never forgiven 
herself for what she'd put Emily through, trying to save her. 

Mulder put his hand over the top of the girl's head, one finger gently 
rubbing her temple. She seemed to like that. Mulder leaned over and 
whispered, "Just this, Amy, okay? Just this and it will all be over in 
a minute."

He nodded at the nurse, and she deftly slid the needle into the 
child's arm.

The girl's mouth opened in a silent cry, her eyes once again going 
lifeless. She was still now, deathly still, all but the fist inside 
Mulder's palm, clenching rhythmically like a tiny, terrified heart. 

Shame, Mulder thought, was like falling down an endless hole. Each 
time he thought he'd hit bottom, he rolled off the ledge and found 
there was further to fall.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


MOTEL 6, EL CENTRO
MARCH 11TH, 6:02 AM


She was in a place where the sun was bright and she was walking with 
her daughters. Five little girls, bouncing in the tall grass, calling 
to each other, painting the air with high baby laughter. It was a 
dream, she knew, even as she felt the sun on her face and the soft 
wind playing with her hair. She wondered if she could manage never to 
wake up again. 

One of her daughters tugged on her hand. "I have to go."

Scully looked up and saw clouds gathering on the horizon, towering 
high like thick, heavy smoke. She tried to gather her children 
together, but they wouldn't listen, running off just as she tried to 
draw them close. Then the storm was on her, the grass waving so 
violently she could no longer see them. There was only the one that 
kept pulling at her hand. 

"Dana," the girl demanded. "I have to go." 

She opened her eyes and Emily was standing in front of her, legs tight 
together. Scully gasped and sat up, her heart pounding so hard she 
could feel it in the back of her head. 

Where was she? 

Motel. Not Emily. Amy Wallace.

"Dana, I have to go." 

"Go? Go where?" Scully swiped at her eyes with her free hand. They 
felt like someone had sprayed the inside of her lids with powdered 
glass. 

"Now," Amy insisted, bobbing up and down. It took Scully a moment to 
comprehend what she meant.

"Oh."

"Mommy always comes with me." Amy tugged on her hand again, her little 
face twisting with need.

Scully unfolded herself from the chair, back and neck and legs 
screaming in protest as she moved. She took the girl into the 
bathroom, helped her get her underwear down and lifted her onto the 
toilet. Amy held on to her shoulder for balance while she peed, her 
childish dignity at having a stranger witness such private functions 
somehow disconcerting.

Finished, Scully tried to smile encouragingly into the little girl's 
eyes. They were like her own on the best of days, a bright, clear 
blue. Like Emily's, but the intelligence shining out of Amy's round 
face was very different from Emily's shyness. 

"Do you know my mommy?" Amy asked.

"I've met her, yes," Scully answered. "She sent me to look for you." 

She led Amy over to the sink and turned the water on so she could wash 
her hands. Amy rubbed her hands together under the flow, over and over 
as if mesmerized by the motion. 

"Amy?" Scully knelt by the little girl, tapping her on the shoulder. 
She went on washing her hands. 

"Amy, what's the matter? You can tell me, I'm your friend."

Amy shook her head.

Scully shut the water off and turned the girl to face her. "It's okay, 
honey. I know you're scared and you want your mommy. But Flagstaff is 
a long way from here and we have to drive. It won't be today, but 
you'll see your mommy soon." 

She saw the tears start, and wiped them away with a gentle thumb. "You 
don't have to be scared anymore, Amy. No one here is going to hurt 
you."

"What if they hurt my mommy?" Amy whispered. 

"Who?" Scully whispered back, hardly daring to breathe.

"The bad men." 

"Amy...was it the bad men who took you away? Do you remember anything 
that happened?"

"They said I shouldn't talk to anybody. They said if I was a good girl 
they wouldn't hurt my mommy. But I wasn't a good girl. I talked to you 
and then I went away." 

Her small face twisted and she began to cry at last, the way a small 
child should cry. 

"Baby, no, shh." Scully gave up any residual pretense at detachment 
and gathered the girl in her arms, rocking her until the tears 
stopped. 

"You are a good girl," she said, kissing Amy's hot forehead. "A very 
good girl. And a very brave girl. And I'm sure your mommy is all 
right."

She let Amy snuffle against her shoulder for a few more minutes before 
helping her wash her face and blow her nose. 

God, please, she prayed, leading the girl out of the bathroom. Don't 
make me a liar.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


SEA COURT MOTEL, SAN DIEGO
MARCH 11TH, 6:42 AM


It took three rings before Kresge was able to rouse himself to  
associate the noise with the telephone. At some point he'd finally 
stopped pacing with impatience and laid down on Mulder's bed for a 
minute. He must have fallen asleep. 

He rolled over, picked up the phone and mumbled a greeting.

"Who is this?" A female voice, sharp with distrust. Hers.

"Scully, it's me. Kresge." He sat up, awake now. "Jesus, you've got 
everybody in a panic. Are you all right? Where are you?"

A pause, then, "Where's Mulder?"

"He had to go do something. He told me to wait here in case you 
called."

Another pause. 

"Scully, are you okay? Where are you?"

"No."

"No?"

"You're not supposed to be on this case. You're not supposed to be 
talking to us. So what are you doing in Mulder's room?"

The rising note in her voice was unmistakable. He hadn't thought of 
this, hadn't imagined his presence would be perceived as a threat. 
Jesus Christ, what had happened to her? 

"You're tracing this, aren't you?"

"What? Dana, for god's sake it's me. John. I'm here to help."

Another pause. Oh Jesus, he thought, don't lose her, don't lose her 
now.

"Dana? I swear to god I'm not tracing this."

He could hear a slight change from the other side, a slowing down of 
breath. He tried to keep his voice as level and soothing as possible. 
"Listen, you don't want to talk to me, you don't have to. Just call 
Mulder. He's worried about you. We both are." 

"I can't call him right now," she answered, her voice a tiny bit 
calmer, a tiny bit more like herself. "But you can give him a 
message."

"What?"

"Tell him it's going like clockwork," she said, and hung up.  

Kresge put the phone down slowly. If there was an inside loop with 
these two, he was definitely out of it. 

He dialed Mulder's cell, his hand nervously working back and forth in 
his hair. "She called," he announced as soon as Mulder picked it up. 

"Thank god. Is she okay? Did she tell you where she was?"

"No." Kresge sighed. "She sounded strange, Mulder. I think it freaked 
her out that I answered the phone."

"I thought she trusted you."

"Well, obviously she doesn't," Kresge replied, annoyed. "She said to 
give you a message."

"What was it?"

"She said to tell you it was going like clockwork. That's all. Does 
that mean something?"

No answer. "Mulder?"

"Fuck," Mulder whispered. "Fuck. Yeah, it means something."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


DENNY'S RESTAURANT, EL CENTRO
MARCH 11TH, 8:43 AM


Scully and Amy sat across from Jane, waiting for the waitress to come 
take their order. 

"I want chocolate cake," Amy announced, in the kind of voice that 
would have been appropriate for the Queen of Hearts ordering some poor 
soul's decapitation. 

"How about something from the breakfast menu?" Scully suggested, 
ignoring Amy's tone. "And if you're still hungry after that, you can 
have some cake." 

Jane looked at the girl over the top of her menu. "I bet you like 
scrambled eggs."  

Amy shook her head, making a retching noise.

The end of Jane's nose slowly turned pink, the way Scully's always did 
when she wanted to cry. Jane quickly buried her face in the menu 
again. 

The waitress came and took their order. Scully and Amy bargained on 
pancakes, which Scully ordered, along with dry toast for herself. Jane 
returned their menus without asking for anything, waving the waitress 
away. 

"Are you okay?" Scully asked quietly.

"What happens to me when we get to Arizona? What do I do for the rest 
of my life?"

The question caught Scully unaware. In truth, she hadn't thought much 
further than getting Amy home. There'd been no time to worry about the 
rest of anyone's life. 

"We have friends who can arrange certain things. New identities. I can 
contact them."

"So I just go some place I've never been and pretend to be someone 
else. Forever."

"It's not the worst that could happen, is it? Under the circumstances? 
To be honest, I almost envy you the chance."

"Excuse me?" Jane stared at her. "I've just lost everything I ever had 
-- family, house, money, name, photographs. No big deal. You want that 
chance? Go on, take it."

Scully felt her face burning with shame. She looked and saw Amy 
staring at her as well. Even a four-year-old had better sense.

"I apologize," Scully murmured, forcing herself to meet Jane's furious 
eyes. "I phrased that very badly. I meant only that it would be better 
than--"

"I know what you meant." Jane reached for her napkin and blew her 
nose, wiping it hard. "So call your partner," she said, wadding the 
napkin into a damp grey ball. "Let's get on with it."  

Scully nodded, worry flickering at her stomach. It'll be okay, she 
told herself, taking a deep breath. You'll talk to Mulder and 
everything will be fine. 

Well, she silently added, glancing at the stolen child next to her, as 
fine as it's ever going to be again. 

"I've left a message," she told Jane. "He'll call me at nine. Unless 
he's still out looking for your orphanage."

Jane's brows twisted downward into an expression of disbelief. "What 
do you mean by that?"

"He's looking for the place you grew up. He thinks Amy is being held 
there."

"Dana, he's not going to find that."

"Oh, you don't know Mulder. He'll find it. But we have Amy right 
here."

"No, Dana, you don't understand." Jane leaned over the table, lowering 
her voice with a wary glance at the child. "He won't find it because 
it doesn't exist. I made it up."

Now it was Scully's turn to stare, incredulous. "You lied to him?"

"I tell that story to everyone," Jane pleaded. "I don't remember 
anything before I was eleven or twelve."

"But then--"

"They found me wandering around the zoo one day, after it closed. I 
didn't know who I was or how I got there. I still don't." 

Scully sat back, stunned. 

"Why would you make up something that elaborate?"

"I had to tell the other kids something when I went to school, about 
where I was from. So I made up the orphanage. And then...I don't know, 
you tell a story over and over, it takes on a life of its own." 

"What else have you told us that was a lie?" Scully asked, letting her 
voice go as hard and cold as she felt. 

"That's all. I swear." Jane shook her head, wiping away the tears that 
had slipped her control. "I don't know how to convince you, but please 
believe me when I say I never meant to send your partner off on a wild 
goose chase. It's just what I say when people ask about my childhood. 
I've told that story so often even I believe it by now."

"So you're a thief," Scully said. "And now you're a liar."

Another tear slid down Jane's cheek. "I thought he was asking just to 
ask, to get me talking, or trip me up. How the hell was I supposed to 
know he'd go off looking for it?"

Scully almost smiled at that. "You'd have to know Mulder." 

"Haven't you ever told a lie because the truth was nobody's business?" 
Jane demanded. "Haven't you ever taken something you needed because 
somebody else seemed to have enough of it to spare?"

"That seems very self-justifying. You could simply ask."

Jane's gaze fell on Amy, listening open-mouthed to the conversation. 

"Yeah, well, I guess your life has been a lot kinder than mine," Jane 
said, her expression drawing in and closing up. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


Clockwork. 

In their private code, that was an all systems alert, an elaborate 
scheme for reaching each other. 

That meant Scully was in serious trouble.

Mulder jogged out of the hospital at 8:57, looking for a pay phone. By 
9am he was standing in front of a 7-11 a block from the hospital, 
dialing Scully on his cell. 

Voicemail. 

He caught his breath. Too soon, too early. Wait two more minutes, 
she'll turn it on. 

The litany failed to calm him. If he were sixty he'd be bucking for a 
heart attack the way that poor overworked muscle was convulsing inside 
his chest. The last time he'd felt so sickly nervous making a phone 
call he'd been fifteen years old, trying to get his first date. 

He waited until his digital watch ticked over to 9:02, then hit speed 
dial one again. 

One ring. A click. "Scully."

The sound of her voice took his breath away. There was nothing else in 
the world at that moment, no other woman but this -- alive, healthy, 
safe.

"Scully," he breathed, not caring what she picked up from his 
breathless pronunciation of her name. "Scully, it's me."

Her voice was tight, repeating the accepted formula. "How's it going?"

"Like clockwork." 

He heard her exhale sharply. What had she expected of him? That he'd 
ignore her? Leave her out there alone, hanging over some unknown 
abyss?

"You ready?" Her voice was normal now, all business. She was okay. 
Everything was going to be okay.

"Go." He had a pencil poised in his hand and scribbled down the number 
she gave him. 

"760-857-4897," he repeated, writing the last four digits of the phone 
number down backward. Double security. Langly's idea. Even if someone 
managed to trap the cell signals that quickly, it was unlikely they'd 
figure out Scully's actual position by tracing the number she'd given. 

He waited a moment after she hung up, then used the pay phone to dial 
the number as he'd written it. She picked it up on the first ring.

"Scully, what the hell is going on? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Where the hell have you been?" she shot back. 

He caught himself about to completely lose his temper, grabbed the 
phone cord and wrapped it tight around his fingers. They were both 
wound up. Now was not the time to start an argument. 

"Scully," he said in a much more reasonable voice. "I've been trying 
to call but your phone was off. Look, where are you? What's going on?"

He waited for her to say something. Maybe she was trying to get hold 
of her own temper. 

"Why was Kresge in your room?" she returned, finally. Cold, but 
calmer. 

"I asked him to wait there. I had to be somewhere else and I was 
afraid to miss your call."

"So where were you, Mulder?" Curiosity now. Oh, thank god. That was 
the Scully he knew.

"Scully, I found it," he said, unable to keep a note of glee from his 
voice. "What we were looking for."

"Mulder, that's impossible." 

Listening so intently, he was able to hear the fear rising beneath the 
surface of her voice. 

"Scully, what's going on?" he asked. Kresge was right, she sounded 
spooked in a way he'd never heard before. "Look, tell me where you 
are. I'll come get you."

There was a pause. Mulder readied the pencil, though he didn't really 
need it. 

"Tell me what you found." 

"Scully, this is dangerous. Don't play games. You gave the signal. Did 
you mean it?"

"Yes."

"Then tell me where you are."

"First tell me what you've found."

"Scully..." They'd set this up so long ago -- had she forgotten what 
the whole clockwork scenario was for? 

"I want to hear you say it." 

"You want me to say it over the phone?" That was against every 
protocol they had set up, every precaution they were supposed to take.

"Yes." 

She's scared, he told himself. Do what she wants. "All right. I found 
Amy Wallace in the orphanage, just like I thought." 

There was a long pause. 

"Mulder, why are you lying to me?" Her voice was liquid nitrogen, 
stopping breath. His world became a frozen lake of fear, and she was 
there, in the middle, the ice sagging beneath her feet, and he had to 
cross, he had to get to her before she sank.

"Scully, I'm not lying."

"Yes, you are." She was disappearing now, about to hang up.

"Scully! Listen to me, wait!"

"I don't know who you are," she said, in that same arctic voice. 
"Maybe you're not even Mulder."

"Scully, it's me. I swear! Ask me anything, just don't hang up."

"Then you're a liar," she spat, the slam of the phone like the last, 
fatal crack of ice.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 

PART 3             

<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 


DENNY'S, EL CENTRO
MARCH 11TH, 9:07 AM


Scully gripped the sides of the phone booth, tiny bursts of light 
pinwheeling before her eyes, wondering how the cracking open of the 
world could be so silent. 

In all the years she had known him, Mulder had never lied to her like 
this. Lies of omission, yes, all the time. Withholding information, 
haring off without leaving her a clue, sure, right from the start. But 
outright, bald lies? No, not that she could remember. 

He would not turn against her. She could not believe that, not even 
with her trust lying at her feet in shards. He must have been told to 
bring her in any way he could. He must believe it was the best thing 
to do. 

Maybe they had arrested him. Maybe she hadn't even talked to Mulder, 
maybe it was one of those...those *things* that could look and sound 
like anyone. 

No. 

She made herself breathe, made herself close that thought and put it 
away, not to be looked again. If she started to think like that, she 
wouldn't be able to function at all.

Scully fished in her pockets for change. Not enough. Not enough to 
call Arizona. 

She drew out her cell and the piece of paper on which she'd scribbled 
Jennifer's number. Take a chance, don't? Jennifer's phone was probably 
bugged anyway. 

Scully dialed.

"Hello?"

"Is this Jennifer Wallace?" 

"Yes." A pause, then, "Who's calling, please?"

"This is Agent Scully from the FBI," she said. "Do you remember me?"

"Oh, my god. Yes. Did you find anything out about Amy?"

Scully drew in air. Careful. Careful. "Jennifer, I can't talk right 
now. I just want to know -- have you been all right out there? Has 
anything strange happened?"

"No, no everything's been fine. I mean, apart from Amy being missing." 
Scully heard the woman's voice start to tremble. She was only getting 
Jennifer scared. 

"Good," Scully said quickly. "Jennifer, listen, I think everything is 
going to be fine, but I want you to be very careful today. I'm going 
to call you back later tonight with more information. Until then, 
don't let anyone in the house you don't know. Okay?"

"Okay." 

"I'll talk to you then," Scully said, and clicked off, looking at her 
watch. Two minutes, twelve seconds. How quickly could a cell signal be 
trapped?

She hurried back inside, where Jane was staring at the table and Amy 
was eating maple syrup by sticking her finger in the plate and licking 
it clean. 

"We need to go," Scully said tightly. "Now."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


OUTSIDE SAN DIEGO GENERAL HOSPITAL
MARCH 11TH, 9:07 AM


Mulder stood in the phone booth, listening to the dial tone.

What the hell just happened?

He swallowed painfully, forcing himself back into the present. He 
could replay the conversation later. Actually, he could replay it ad 
infinitum, it probably wouldn't help. Lately Scully's emotional 
landscape was a minefield -- all he could do was stand in the middle 
of it and wait for her to guide him out. 

He dialed the number she'd given him again. 

Please, Scully. Please be there. 

He let the phone ring until a gruff male voice answered. He tried her 
cell, left a brief message, but he already knew that would be 
pointless. It was a motion he had to go through. All leads followed. 
All bases covered. 

It wasn't real until he dialed the Gunmen.

"Turn it off," he growled, to whoever picked it up.

"It's off, man. It's off." 

Langly. He didn't want to talk to Langly. He wanted, actually, to tell 
Scully all about it but how was he supposed to do that? Hey Scully, 
listen, I just talked to Scully and she wigged out and I'm starting to 
get more than just a little scared. 

"Put Frohike on, will you?"

"He's leaning over my shoulder. You're on the speaker. What's up?"

"I don't know. Scully's gone..." He let the sentence hang in mid-air, 
not knowing how to finish it. Gone away? Gone off? Gone mad, in the 
quiet way that only Dana Scully could embrace madness? He would have 
wound up screaming in restraints, but Scully would simply crack, 
polite as ever, trying not to disturb those around her, trying not to 
demand anyone's attention. 

"Mulder?" Byers' voice, calm and boyish. "Is there something going on 
that we should know about?"

Mulder swallowed. "She's on the clock."

Stunned silence greeted him from the other side. 

"Scully called it?" Frohike squeaked.

"Yeah. I don't know why. She's been...she's been hard to get anything 
out of for a while."

There was a silence on the other end. Mulder could just imagine the 
looks they were exchanging. Yeah, fine, he thought. I treated her like 
shit and you all saw it. Let's just get on with this, okay? He sighed, 
lowering his head to his arm, resting on top of the phone. 

He heard one of them clear his throat, then a shuffling. Someone was 
changing places with Langly.

"Hey, Mulder?" 

Frohike. Of course. The guy who wore a tux and brought flowers when 
Scully was in the hospital unconscious was not ever going to let 
Mulder forget what an asshole he'd been to her. 

"Listen. Yesterday morning, Scully gave us some more names to check 
out. Background on your boys. You in a mood to hear this?"

"Yeah," Mulder answered, surprised and deeply grateful for the change 
of topic. 

"Hampton and Sim and MacEntyre used to work together, Mulder. Back in 
the mid-'80s. Probably their first real jobs." 

"Where?"

"You're not going to like this. They were clerks at the State 
Department. They worked in the same division as your father."

Mulder was glad he had his head down for that one. "Does Scully know 
this?"

"She suspected something like that, but we never had a chance to 
confirm it with her. But this she doesn't know, cause we just cracked 
the files last night -- your human genome guy, Potts, out at UCSD. 
He's a consultant for Roush, right? Guess who was his teaching 
assistant about ten years ago?"

"Paul Mason."

"Go to the head of the class. Now, guess who was Mason's replacement? 
Short-lived replacement, because he seems to have had quite an 
argument with Potts, who may actually be on the up-and-up. Potts 
accused him of trading certain commodities on the medical black 
market. Nothing proven, but it was enough to have him stripped of his 
fellowship and thrown out. Any guesses what it was?"

"Fetal material."

"And again, we have a winner. Wanna try for the jackpot?"

"The replacement was John Wallace."

"Bingo."

They both fell silent for a moment. 

"Hey, Mulder?" 

"Yeah."

All the play had gone out of Frohike's voice. "There's something else. 
Some of the tissue Wallace was accused of selling? It wasn't exactly 
fetal."

"What was it?"

"Human ova."

"Jesus Christ. Who was he selling it to?"

"We don't know yet. And before you make a spooky leap, there's one 
more megafactoid you need to know. We were trying to hack into some of 
the stuff Potts has stored on the university mainframe. Most of it was 
pretty easy, your basic password protection. Guy's not clever, his 
password was genome. But then we came across this stuff -- 8-bit 
encryption, Mulder, the kind of code the military was using twenty, 
thirty years ago. You know Alan Turing? The Enigma codes?"

Langly's voice came into the receiver. "Totally cool stuff, Mulder. 
Cambridge mathematician, basically invented the computer to crack the 
German military codes in World War Two. Pretty much saved our ass, or 
at least they'd be speaking English as a second language in London 
right now. And you know what His Majesty's government did a couple of 
years later--"

"Not now, Langly, shut up," said Byers, his voice tinny in the 
background. 

"And get out of my face," Frohike added. Mulder heard a scramble, as 
if the three men were fighting for the mike. He looked up, across the 
busy street, and sighed. It wasn't just Scully -- they were all going 
insane. Kids soaked in gasoline, throwing lit matches into the air. 

We're going to get burned, Mulder thought. Burned, burned, just like 
El Rico. We're never going to get to the bottom of this thing, it's 
too big, it goes too far back. It's everywhere, like a cancer, carried 
from place to place by the very structures that allow us to function 
as a society. Attack it, and society dies. The world descends into 
anarchy, into chaos. 

Frohike was talking again. Mulder made himself focus. "--classified 
stuff. Can't imagine what a guy like Potts is doing with it. Best we 
can get so far is that it's some kind of tracking study. Looks like 
the original test subjects were coming from Miramar."

"The naval air base down here?"

"Yeah. They might have been looking for pilots for the space program -
- the stuff comes in waves, each one at about the right time. Right 
after the war, and again in the mid-'60s. It's a pretty wide range of 
tests -- everything from motor skills to intelligence to red blood 
cell counts."

It was like hearing the soft clatter of puzzle pieces falling onto the 
card table he and Samantha had set up in his room. His room, because 
it was bigger, because he was the one who could sit hunched over a 
puzzle for hours.

"Kids. They were tracking kids from the base. Listen to me, guys. 
You've got to get that stuff cracked. You've got to find out what the 
purpose of that study was."

"I don't get how that fits into this," Langly chimed in from a 
distance. They must have shoved him to the other side of the desk -- 
he sounded like a kid shouting down a tin can. "It was years before 
Wallace or Mason."

"Because Scully was one of those kids. She grew up at Miramar."

There was a long silence from the other side. It was the quiet Byers 
who broke it. 

"We're on it." 

Mulder heard the scrape of a chair. It sounded like Byers was making 
good on that statement right then and there.

Mulder swallowed again, his mouth so dry that even the sides of his 
throat seemed glued together. He looked quickly at his watch. The girl 
would still be with the neurologist. He didn't want to be away any 
longer than absolutely necessary.

"Frohike, you still there?"

"I am."

"I need you to do something for me."

"Sure, Mulder, what?" 

"In my apartment, in my nightstand, there's a set of keys. They're for 
Scully's apartment. I want you to go there and get her credit card 
numbers. She keeps the bills in the bottom drawer of her desk. I want 
you to track those cards, see if you can tell me where she is."

"Mulder, she's not going to like that."

"I know." He sighed, rubbing a hand across his face. Any way he looked 
at it, he was going to have the wrath of Scully to face when he saw 
her again. 

God, he was looking forward to it. 

"Is Langly still standing there?" he asked. 

"Nah, he went off with Byers to crack that shit."

"Take me off the speaker."

He heard the click and the sudden quiet as the phone transferred.

"Okay, you're off," Frohike said in his ear. "What's up?"

"Something I don't want published. Not even to Byers. I'm not sure how 
much of this is happening because Scully knows something that I don't, 
but when I spoke to her today she wasn't--" 

He took a deep breath and made himself say it. "She wasn't herself. 
She hasn't been herself since this started. Maybe before. I'm not 
sure, but there may be a reason why she's behaving like this. A 
physical reason."

There was a long silence as Frohike took that in, replaced his 
euphemisms with the real words. 

"Tell me what you want me to do," he said finally, more serious than 
Mulder had ever heard him.

"Her oncologist is a Dr. Zuckerman. He's at Trinity Hospital. I need 
you--"

"No way, Mulder, I'm not doing that. The credit cards are bad enough 
but that's Scully's private stuff."

"Frohike, I have to know."

The silence on the other end stretched to interminable proportions. 
"Please," Mulder added, pressing the heel of his hand into his eye so 
hard that fireworks appeared.

"All right, I'll try," Frohike said, at last. "Anything else?"

Mulder stood up straighter, drawing a clean breath. "Just -- if she 
calls, don't try to talk her out of anything. Just give her whatever 
she needs, try to get her someplace where she feels safe. Someplace I 
can find her. And call me as soon as you have anything. I'll be on the 
clock."

"Jesus, Mulder. What have you guys gotten into out there?"

"I don't know, but it looks like the whole thing's about to come down 
on our heads." He closed his eyes, thinking of the strange quality of 
Scully's voice on the phone. "Maybe it already has."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


STATE HIGHWAY 95, NEAR LAKE HAVASU, ARIZONA
MARCH 11TH, 4:08 PM


Jane Hampton was driving through the desert, twisting the dial of the 
radio, looking for a song to fit her mood. 

She came in halfway through 'Running on Empty' and had to smile. 
Perfect soundtrack -- she'd been running her whole goddamn life. 
Running after memories that slipped through her fingers like mercury. 
Running from truths that rearranged themselves before her eyes, from 
people who suddenly shed the mask of normality, revealing the monster 
beneath. 

Tom had been one of those people. She'd thought he would be the big 
strong man she'd always wanted. A rock in the storm of her life, 
something to tie a rope around so that she couldn't blow away. 

By the time they met, Jane had been blowing from place to place for 
almost four years, the tethers having come loose when her parents 
died. The men who took care of their will had given her the creeps, 
but they had also given her a generous allowance and a guardian who 
made sure she finished school.

From high school, she'd been advised that her parents' will stipulated 
she would get an allowance as long as she was in college, and nothing 
if she didn't go. Jane believed in her own capacity to take care of 
herself, and anyway, these guardians were starting to look at her as 
if toting up her value on the open market. 

The creeps turned into the jitters. She turned the money down and 
choose freedom in poverty, working an endless series of crappy jobs 
and going through an endless chain of equally poor-but-free 
boyfriends. Not as romantic as it sounded, and by the time Tom came 
along, with his nice apartment and his good job and his promise that 
everything was going to be all right, Jane had been so grateful that 
she fell in love with him almost at first sight.

Denise had been a year old when Jane found out she'd gone from one set 
of guardians to another, that Tom had been put in her path and told to 
marry her by the same men who had controlled her parents' money. 
Whatever they had on Tom, she never knew. The two of them might have 
thrown their lot in together, disappeared with their child, but he 
laughed when she suggested it and she knew from that moment on that it 
had all been a lie. She'd been trapped by her heart, not once, but 
twice. She would never leave without her daughter, and if she took the 
child away she could never afford the treatment Denise needed to keep 
her alive. 

Jane looked in the rearview mirror, at Amy asleep in the back seat, 
haphazardly buckled in with Scully's jacket wrapped around her for a 
blanket. Her mouth was open and she was snoring quietly, the way 
Denise had when she slept on her back. 

Denise and not Denise. 

Jane reached behind her and touched the child's warm cheek. Amy slept 
on, her steady rumble supplemented by Scully's harsher, uneven 
breathing. She'd fallen asleep with her head against the window, 
frowning deeply, as if concentrating hard on her dreams. 

"Whatever," Jane said to no one in particular, glancing out her 
window. The sun was just beginning to go down and the sky had turned a 
rich, iridescent blue. She'd need to wake Scully soon; her eyes were 
beginning to smart and water from the dry air and the hours on the 
road.

Jane took the map from Scully's sleeping fingers, checked to see how 
far they had to go. Scully had gotten all nervous after breakfast, 
worried about staying on the direct route from San Diego in a car 
she'd rented under her own name. They had chosen a less obvious 
course, picking up the state highway out of Yuma and heading directly 
north. The slower road had made the trip a few hours longer, but they 
would be coming in from the west now instead of the south, and the 
chances were good that if anyone was looking for them, it would be on 
a different road.

Twenty minutes later, they hit the I-40. Jane pulled into the first 
service station she saw, cut the engine and reached over to shake 
Scully's shoulder.

"Hey, sleepyhead. Wake up."

"Go 'way Missy, lemme sleep, okay?" Scully mumbled. There was a moment 
when it seemed she had fallen back asleep, then she shot bolt upright, 
reaching for her gun.

"It's me, it's me," Jane said quickly, pulling back against the door. 
Jesus, she thought, the woman was strung as tight as an overtuned 
piano. Some people watched too many damn movies.

Scully looked around, took her hand off the gun.

"Don't do that. You scared me half to death," Jane said, trying to get 
the pounding of her heart under control. 

It occurred to her that maybe Scully hadn't seen too many movies, 
maybe she'd just seen too much. A frightening thought. Why anyone 
would choose a life like that, Jane couldn't imagine. All she'd ever 
wanted was quiet. A child and a husband and a little love. 

Well, she'd thought she had it, and it had turned out to be no more 
real than a movie after all.

"I'm sorry," Scully said, with a little half smile that seemed to be 
less about reassuring Jane than herself. She checked the back seat, 
where Amy was still asleep, her mouth a slack circle pointed upward.

"Who's Missy?" Jane asked.

Scully smoothed her hands through her hair, pulling it back from her 
face. "No one," she answered unevenly, unlocking her seat belt. "Do we 
need gas? I'll pump."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


SAN DIEGO GENERAL HOSPITAL
MARCH 11TH, 4:30 PM


Mulder was trying to get the little girl to eat some oatmeal. She was 
looking at him, but without interest or comprehension until he tapped 
the spoon gently against her lower lip. That signal she seemed to 
understand. Her pouty little mouth opened, enough for Mulder to get 
the spoon in and deposit the cereal in her mouth. The girl chewed 
briefly and swallowed, her eyes drifting back over Mulder's shoulder 
to the television, where he'd tuned in the Cartoon Network.

He tried another spoonful. Again the same thing, and again, as soon as 
she had swallowed, her face went slack. Mulder turned the television 
off, but the girl still went on staring in that direction. He wondered 
if she expected it to come back on, if she even registered what it 
was. 

"Mulder?" 

He turned to see Kresge standing in the doorway, turning a manila 
envelope over and over in his hands. 

"Did the doo-doo hit the proverbial fan?" Mulder asked. The man looked 
like he'd been hit *with* the fan, and several other heavy objects. 

Kresge came in, leaning over to look at the little girl. "How is she?" 
he asked. 

Mulder put the bowl of oatmeal down, and drew the blankets up over the 
child's shoulders. He clicked the TV back on, so at least she was 
staring at something. It made her face seem less vacant. Less 
unnerving. 

"No change. And I haven't been able to get a hold of her mother, which 
is beginning to worry me as well."

Kresge nodded, looking down at the envelope in his hands. "Did you 
talk to Scully?"

"We didn't really...connect," Mulder answered, fishing for a phrase 
that would contain the truth while hiding the fact that Scully had 
freaked out on him. "I've got friends of ours working on finding her. 
If she's left any kind of trail, they will."

"You didn't speak to her at all?"

"I did, but it was very brief. She wasn't able to give me any 
information." 

Kresge's look grew even stranger. 

"There's something I have to show you, Mulder." He pulled a piece of 
paper out of the envelope. "Apparently, a woman posing as an FBI agent 
walked out of the San Diego County Children's Center yesterday with 
one of the kids. They called me in because the director of the center 
dictated a composite that bore a remarkable resemblance to someone 
I've been seen with at the station."

He held out the drawing. 

Mulder didn't need to look, but he did anyway. Just for a moment, just 
to bring Scully's face back before his eyes again. 

"I had to identify her, Mulder. There was no way out of it."

"He's a good artist," Mulder said, handing the drawing back. 

"I'm suspended, pending review. Probably out of a job, out of my 
pension. I just threw away my whole career, Mulder. For what? Would 
you tell me that, please? What was she trying to do?"

Mulder looked at the little girl in the bed. He felt like a whole dark 
corner of his mind had suddenly been illuminated. 

Maybe they'd been handed this case for just this reason. To drive them 
apart, to drive Scully insane, to make her do something that no one at 
the Bureau could ever sanction. People had been laughing his theories 
off for years, but Scully was too rational, too meticulous to simply 
dismiss. 

His report on El Rico was full of wild speculation, but hers relied on 
proof, on the analysis of cellular damage to the bodies, proving that 
no legal, hand-held weapon in the US arsenal was capable of that kind 
of incineration. It was same way she had, over the years, documented 
the implants, the tagging of civilians through genetic markers, the 
effect of an unclassifiable virus on human physiology, scientifically 
validating every piece of evidence they'd ever managed to hold on to, 
right down to the presence of a chimerical organism in her own blood. 

They'd had the answers for years, but they were always too busy being 
themselves to figure it out. Scully denying anything that upset her 
world order, him screaming 'alien' every time she came across 
something strange. And then he had turned, just as she began to 
believe, taken the DNA evidence from Gibson Praise and thrown it all 
back in her face.

"Mulder." 

Kresge's hand on his shoulder brought him out of his fugue. "Mulder, 
has she lost it, or what? Because I've got to say, the last time I saw 
her, she looked like she was hanging on the frayed end of her rope." 

Someone else had been watching. Someone who had decided that Scully 
had gotten far too close, was far too dangerous. This would be the 
ultimate discrediting of all of her careful work -- ignore the 
message, the messenger is insane.

His stomach turned as a name came into his mind, one he could not bear 
to suspect.  

"No," Mulder answered, pushing those other thoughts aside for the 
moment. He now understood why Scully's behavior had been so strange on 
the phone. She might be walking the fine edge, but she had not gone 
over.  

"No," he repeated, his voice gaining strength along with his 
conviction. "She was just trying to save her daughter."

"Her what?" 

"The girl Scully took is her biological daughter."

Kresge's mouth opened and slammed shut. He leaned over Mulder, his 
face lined with suppressed fury. 

"Listen," he growled, "I just gave you everything that meant anything 
to me. Now, once and for all, you are going to tell me what's going on 
here. The whole story. You owe me that much."

"Once upon a time there was a bright young FBI agent named Dana 
Scully, who was abducted and experimented upon. Three years later she 
discovered that as a result of those experiments, a child had been 
created."

He looked up at Kresge, who was standing straighter now, his eyes 
searching Mulder's face. "Emily Sim? Emily Sim was Scully's daughter?"

Mulder nodded. "Biologically speaking, yes."

"Then...?" Kresge looked at the girl lying beside Mulder, the one that 
was unmistakably a copy of the other. 

"One year later," Mulder said, watching Kresge's face for signs of 
disbelief, "while investigating a routine kidnapping, Agent Scully and 
her partner discovered that Emily was actually one of a series."

"Jesus," Kresge breathed.

Mulder nodded again. "There are five, as far as we've been able to 
determine. Two, possibly three, are dead of the same illness. The 
fourth is the kidnap victim, Amy Wallace. The fifth, the one Scully 
has, is Caitlin Jenkins."

"Mulder--" 

He stopped his recitation as Kresge bent over the girl. 

"Say it again."

"What?"

"Caitlin Jenkins."

The girl tilted her head to look at Kresge's face.

The two men stared at each other. 

"The fifth is Caitlin Jenkins," Mulder repeated, sucking in his breath 
as the girl's head turned toward him. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 

PART 4             

<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 


SAN DIEGO GENERAL HOSPITAL
MARCH 11TH, 5:15 PM


Mulder was looking at a set of MRIs, wishing that Scully was there to 
explain them to him, even while he was grateful that she was not. The 
hysterical screaming fit Caitlin had thrown when they put her in the 
machine was one memory Scully could certainly live without. 

"How long do you think she has?" he asked the pediatrician. 

"I'm not sure. She could survive with limited brain function for quite 
some time, much like a patient in an irreversible coma."

"And there's no treatment, no chance of reversing this?"

"Nerve cells don't regenerate." The pediatrician pointed to the MRI of 
the girl's head, tracing the thick lines radiating out from the 
cerebellum and down her spine. "This has been growing for quite some 
time. When did she begin to show symptoms of brain impairment?"

"I couldn't really say." At the doctor's incredulous glare, Mulder 
swallowed nervously, remembering he was supposed to be the child's 
father. "I, uh, I haven't seen her for a long time. It's complicated."

"And her mother? Where is she?"

"As I said, it's complicated. She was being treated for autoimmune 
hemolytic anemia, I know that."

"Yes, the CBC bears that out, but that's not entirely responsible for 
what I'm seeing in this MRI. I'm not sure all the damage she's 
presenting is a direct result of her immediate condition."

The doctor clipped another film to the light box and pointed to an 
area directly above Caitlin's left ear. 

"See this? That's the most heavily affected area. I'm seeing massive 
tissue death across the left hemisphere -- in both the parietal and 
temporal lobes. That's consistent with the lowered response to stimuli 
on her right side. It may also be why she apparently has no speech and 
no affect -- this area governs the ability to learn and to express 
emotion. But if this is the reason she has no speech, it's an older 
injury, probably incurred during her infancy. She hasn't lost her 
language -- she never learned to speak."

"So what caused it?"

The doctor shook her head. "A prior opportunistic infection, a gross 
injury? With no medical records, I can't tell without further 
testing."

"And there's absolutely nothing you can do?"

The woman's face registered a brief moment of despair. "I'm not a 
hematologist," she replied, "but as far as I know, there's no 
successful treatment for the kind of anemia your daughter has. 
According to Amy's blood workup she's already severely hypoxic -- her 
blood isn't carrying enough oxygen. Eventually that will begin to kill 
the surrounding tissue, and she'll be open to a host of secondary 
infections. My best recommendation is that we transfer her to 
Children's Hospital immediately. They'll be better able to care for 
her over there."

She pulled the films from their clips and slipped them back into their 
cardboard sleeve. "It's none of my business, I suppose, but I might 
suggest you try to put aside whatever differences you have with the 
child's mother--"

"I'll need those," Mulder said, pointing to the test results. 

The pediatrician looked at him. She too was a redhead, the kind that 
always looked hot and bothered, her pink face clashing with the bright 
orange of her hair. 

"I'm sorry, I can't release these to you. You're not her doctor."

"Her mother is a doctor. And I'm a federal officer." Mulder held up 
his badge. "And I know of two other little girls who have died of a 
similar illness." 

"I don't understand. Is this the result of some kind of toxic spill?"

"We don't know what caused it. The records have all disappeared. Just 
like these will disappear if I leave here without them. The only thing 
I know for sure is that this illness was deliberately engineered. If 
you give me those, I may be able to keep them safe long enough to 
prove that. To get the men who did this."

He saw the woman hesitate and pressed on. "These are doctors, carrying 
on unlicensed experiments on children. Wouldn't you like to see them 
stopped?"

There was a moment of silence, then the doctor put the envelope down 
on her desk and turned her back. 

"I have no idea how they got into your hands."

Mulder grabbed the envelope and took the stairs, two at a time, back 
to pediatrics. 

"Any good news?" Kresge asked, as Mulder entered the room, breathless. 

He shook his head and sat down beside Caitlin, leaning over to rub his 
fingers through her soft, reddish-blonde hair. Even with her lack of 
expression, even through the layer of baby fat, he could still see 
Scully in the shape of the child's eyes, in the tracing of her 
eyebrows, in the full, soft lips.  

"You said her parents are dead?" Mulder asked. 

"In a car accident, according to the file Scully had."

He lifted the girl from the bed and held her against his chest. Such a 
tiny life, not much more than heart and breath. Mulder closed his 
eyes, holding the tenderness back with a practiced hand. 

"Fine," he said. "Then there's no one to miss her."

"Where are you going?" Kresge demanded, as Mulder stood, shifting the 
child onto his shoulder. "Mulder, you can't just--"

"Yes, I can. I know where Scully went. I have to get to her and I'm 
not leaving Caitlin for those bastards to find again." 

The two men stood, challenging each other. "All right," Kresge said at 
last, picking up the MRIs. "Then you're going to need a ride."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


SEA COURT MOTEL, ROOM 62
MARCH 11TH, 7:18 PM


Mulder walked around the tiny room, touching Scully's things where she 
had left them. A hairbrush in the bathroom, the white robe. A copy of 
the latest AMA journal by the bed. Three black suits hanging in the 
closet beside five white shirts of roughly the same style. The black 
sneakers he'd bought for her lay below them, looking ridiculous 
sitting next to a pair of fashionable heels. 

He picked up one of the sneakers and held it against his palm as he 
had in the store, measuring so big.

Once, he remembered, Scully had a deep red suit that matched her hair. 
He hadn't seen her wear it in years. Couldn't remember the last time 
he'd seen her wearing anything but white and black, not even in their 
off-hours. But then, they didn't spend much of their off time 
together. Never had. 

"Mulder?" He looked up to see Kresge standing in the doorway, holding 
Caitlin balanced on his hip. 

"I'll be there in a minute," Mulder answered. 

He opened the suitcase on the bed and began to fold Scully's things 
carefully into it. She wouldn't want her suits wrinkled when she got 
them back. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


BEAVER STREET, FLAGSTAFF
MARCH 11TH, 10:07 PM 


Flagstaff was a strange place, Scully thought, half strip-malls and 
planned communities, half the original settlement. The downtown part 
still looked like a movie set of the old wild west, especially now, 
with the snow obscuring most of the modern details. Parking meters, 
streetlights, railroad tracks - all had disappeared beneath the white 
flakes falling thickly from the dark grey sky. 

Snow in Arizona. Who'd have expected it?

Macy's European Coffee House appeared on her left, and Scully took it 
as a sign to pull over.

"What's up?" Jane asked, sleepy from her turn dozing in the passenger 
seat.

"Something to eat." Scully glanced into the back seat where Amy was 
sitting up as well, rubbing her eyes and yawning. "And I need to make 
a call."

It was freezing outside, but Macy's was warm, smelling of cinnamon and 
ground coffee beans, of a normal life she hadn't been close to in 
years. It was the kind of place she and Melissa had sometimes gone on 
lazy Sunday afternoons, before the X-Files had taken over every waking 
moment. 

"I wanna brown muffin," Amy declared, standing on her toes to inspect 
the treats set out behind the high glass counter. 

"Please," Jane said automatically.

"Wanna brown muffin please?"

Scully spotted a pay phone over by the toilets. She handed Jane some 
money and asked for a large latte.

"You don't want anything to eat?" Jane asked. "I'm starved."

"Dana wants a brown muffin too," Amy said. She turned to smile at 
Scully, who felt her throat tighten painfully. 

Not yours, Scully told herself for the fiftieth time. So different 
than the days she'd spent gazing at Emily through glass walls, saying 
the word 'mine' over and over in her head, trying to squeeze some 
reality out of an idea that always ended on an upward note, a 
question. Her attachment to the girl had been clouded in shock, in 
disbelief. In brevity. Emily was gone before words like 'mother' and 
'daughter' had found time to take on this strange, impossible new 
meaning. It was only later -- months later -- that she'd begun to 
understand that she had lost someone, not something. Then she had not 
known how to grieve. 

"A brown muffin," Scully agreed. She dared a brief finger along the 
child's round cheek, tickling Amy's dimple as her own mother used to 
tickle hers. 

She left Jane to get their order and headed for the phone. This time, 
she'd made sure to get change at the gas station. Everything in order. 
Every action planned. 

Except snow in Flagstaff and winter temperatures in March. 

Scully put the money in and dialed, leaning against the wall when she 
was done. Wrung out, that was how she felt, body and soul twisted and 
pulled tight until there wasn't a drop of energy left. 

Almost there, she consoled herself. She would bring Amy back...and 
then? 

Her mind skittered away from that thought, as it skittered away from 
trying to analyse what had happened with Mulder that morning. She 
couldn't begin to think about either. She had to focus what energy she 
had left on the task at hand.

Scully turned her back to the phone and looked over the other 
customers while she listened to it ring. College students, radical 
activists, Indians -- all mixed together, murmuring in soft voices, 
intent on their own conversations. Nothing seemed to be out of place. 
No one seemed to be watching either her or Jane, giving their order to 
a young woman with blonde dreadlocks and the kind of septum ring that 
made her nose look like it needed to be wiped. 

"Hello?"

Scully whirled back to face the wall, her attention abruptly shifting. 
She bent her head over the phone and spoke softly, one finger in her 
free ear. 

"Jennifer, it's Agent Scully." 

"Yes. Hello." Scully heard the shaky note in the woman's voice. It 
might only be the nerves of a woman whose phone is ringing late at 
night when her child has been missing for nearly two weeks. It might. 
It might also be that the Wallaces' phone was tapped and Jennifer knew 
it. 

"Did you find anything more about Amy?" Jennifer asked.

"I have."

"Oh, god. Is she okay?"

That sounded like the first spontaneous thing the woman had said. With 
all the noise behind her it was hard for Scully to hear nuance, but 
Jennifer's responses were like notes struck on an old piano -- 
something that scratched at the back of the brain, a sense of the 
vibrations being just slightly out of tune.  

"Yes, she is. Mrs. Wallace, could you come into town to meet me 
someplace?" she asked. "I know it's late, but it's urgent."

A pause. "Is Amy with you?"

Someone was there. Not just listening, but telling her what to say.

"She's someplace safe. That's all I can say over the phone. Look, it's 
very important that I talk to you. Tonight. Could you meet me in 
town?"

"I...there's too much snow out here," Jennifer answered, her voice 
back to tremolo. "I can't get the car out."

"Are you alone out there?"

Again, the barest hesitation. "Yes."

She definitely was not alone. Now what?

"Mrs. Wallace, I want you to stay by the phone, okay? I'm going to 
call you back in an hour or so."

"You'll call me in an hour," Jennifer repeated, in a flat tone that 
sent chills up Scully's spine. 
 
"That's correct," Scully lied. "Just lock--" she started to say, but 
the phone was already dead.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


Kresge drove, while Mulder talked and talked and in the back seat, 
Caitlin slept. 

Even sensing as he did that he was being spared some of the wilder 
details, Kresge had a hard time making sense of the accusations 
tumbling from Mulder's mouth. From secret research projects to 
Scully's abduction by a rogue faction of the military or the 
government, to babies being created for nefarious medical research -- 
it was science fiction. It was stuff right out of the cyberpunk novels 
that Kresge was so fond of. 

"This thing exists," Mulder insisted. His face, illuminated by the 
green of the dashboard light, was haggard with worry and the road and 
the need to make Kresge believe him. "I've seen it. Fetuses in jars, 
waiting for implantation -- at that nursing home, the one where you 
breathed the gas that made you sick. Walls of vaults holding the ova 
of women who have all died since. People who go missing, returned with 
a chip implanted just under the skin of their neck, a chip that can't 
be removed without dire consequences, that we know is somehow 
controlled by whoever put it there. A chip that's been used to lure 
people out to central meeting places--"

"Why Scully?" Kresge interrupted. "Why would these people kidnap a 
federal agent? Wouldn't that be stupidly dangerous?"

Mulder thumped the dashboard in frustration. "I don't know. I always 
thought it was a warning. To me. To stop what I was doing. Now it 
looks like they may have targeted her before we even met."

"And she has one of these chips?"

A muscle flashed in Mulder's jaw. "She did," he answered tightly.

Kresge absorbed that news with a sickening sense that he already knew 
what he was about to hear. "And the dire consequences?"

Again, that muscle flashed. "Cancer," Mulder spat, and Kresge could 
clearly hear the loathing behind the words, the reluctance to voice 
the unbearable. "It's a tumor on the back wall of her sinus cavity, 
just below the cerebellum. She went into remission when we were able 
to replace the chip."

"So she's okay now?"

Mulder paused, clearly wrestling with some heavy, unwelcome thought. 
"I'm not sure," he finally admitted. "When she was with you that 
night...how did she seem?"

Kresge threw the man a sidelong glance. "Are you asking as a federal 
agent or as something else?"

"I'm asking as her friend," Mulder answered in a flat monotone. "As 
someone who knows her very well and knows that isn't the kind of 
behavior she normally engages in."

Kresge glanced again. The muscle in Mulder's jaw had ceased jumping 
and was now permanently flexed. It was not the face of jealousy, but 
something deeper, something far more upset. 

"Then I would say she seemed lonely," Kresge answered. "In need of a 
certain kind of attention. Normal for a woman who works too hard and 
hasn't been involved with anyone in a very long time. She didn't seem 
unbalanced, if that's what you're really asking."

Silence. He glanced at Mulder. The jaw was still clenched.

"We didn't have sex," Kresge offered at last, taking pity on the man. 
"Does that make you feel better?"

"That wasn't my question."

Kresge let out a long, controlled sigh. Jesus, it was all over him. 
Didn't he realize? 

"Look, Mulder, she's a very intriguing woman," Kresge said. "And you 
spend most of your time together, under a terrific amount of stress. 
You know each other in a way no one else ever can. It's understandable 
that you would--"

"Scully's private life is private," Mulder cut him off. "What she does 
on her own time is her business."

"It's understandable that you would eventually form a very deep 
attachment to each other," Kresge finished. "And that attachment might 
understandably grow into something else."

No answer. 

Kresge sighed again. "Once upon a time," he said, "there was a cop who 
fell in love with his partner."

Mulder glanced at him, his customary blank expression finally 
beginning to falter. "And?"

"They had a short, wonderful time together. And then she was killed."

That silenced them both for several minutes. Kresge looked out the 
window, at the desert illuminated by a high blue moon, the familiar 
pain washing over him in bitter waves. 

"We had a bust that went bad. I saw her go down. Blew the fucker's 
head off. Emptied my entire clip into his face." Kresge let out a 
harsh breath. "It didn't help."

"No," Mulder answered. A moment of silence then he added, "But I would 
do the same. I know that."

A flash of furious impatience made Kresge grip the wheel so hard he 
thought it might break. "Mulder, you're wasting time. Just tell her."

"I have." 

Kresge glanced over. The mask had finally slipped from Mulder's face, 
and Kresge wished he'd held his temper. 

Mulder caught the glance and shrugged, his features slowly growing 
expressionless again. "She's a smart woman. Most of the time I don't 
even make a very good friend."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


FLAGSTAFF INN
MARCH 11TH, 10:55 PM


It was late when they finally found a motel, and everyone was edgy and 
nervous. Amy fussed and fretted and wanted to go home NOW. Scully 
couldn't blame her. She wanted to go home too. 

"You know how you can't drive on the road to your house when there's 
too much snow?" Scully asked. 

Amy nodded, still pouting. 

"Well, we're going to have to wait until the snowplow comes, and 
that's tomorrow morning. But if you go to sleep now, the morning will 
be here before you know it."

"Then I want a story," Amy said. She burrowed under the covers, 
pulling them up to her chin. "A big story. With horses and dinosaurs 
and stuff."

Scully looked hopefully towards the other woman. Jane was standing by 
the window, peeking through a crack in the curtains, watching the 
parking lot. "Maybe Jane will do the honors?"

"No." She didn't even turn her head. "Not tonight."

"I'm not very good at telling stories."

"She only wants to hear your voice," Jane answered, her tone 
sharpening. 

Scully tried to dig back into her own childhood, wondering if there 
was anything left of innocence in herself to dig out. She managed a 
wan equine rendition of the Three Little Pigs. Thankfully, Amy was so 
tired she fell asleep before Scully had to figure out where the 
dinosaur was going to come in. 

She tucked the covers around the girl's shoulders and began to make 
her own preparations. "I'm going to try to get to Amy's mother," she 
told Jane's stiff back.

"These people who tried to kill me, they could be waiting there. They 
could be waiting for you."

Scully checked her clip before attaching the holster to the waist of 
her slacks. "I'm aware of that. I'll be careful."

"And what happens to us," Jane asked harshly, "if something happens to 
you?"

A point. A point Scully had not thought about. 

She scribbled the Gunmen's number in the margin of a take-out menu 
sitting by the phone. "If I don't come back by dawn, you call these 
people. They're friends of mine. They'll help you." 

She held out the paper to Jane, who refused to turn around to take it. 
Scully laid it on the empty bed, along with most of the money in her 
wallet.

"Jane," she said. "This is my job, to bring this child home."

"Is it your job to get yourself killed?"

"It's an occupational hazard. We accept that when we accept the 
badge." She touched the woman's arm lightly for goodbye. "I have to 
try. There's nothing else I can do."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


WALLACE RESIDENCE
MARCH 11TH, 11:52 PM


The house was sitting quiet in the middle of its snow-covered acres. 
The clouds had cleared by the time Scully arrived, and the full moon's 
light created a bleak, eerie beauty, all shining white earth and 
twisted black trees. 

Before her, Scully could just make out the silhouettes of two high 
hills, soft and rounded. Behind her the craggy-faced mountain, its 
white peak aglow, held up the crisp, starry sky. 

Scully gave herself a moment to take it all in. Such a place of 
contradictions. Male and female, harsh and soft. It would have been a 
beautiful place to grow up.

The car could go no further than the first house along the dirt road, 
and she'd left it there. Dirty and bug-smeared, in the dark it almost 
matched the battered van already parked out front. She was on foot 
now, or rather, on rapidly freezing feet, her shoes already soaked 
through from the ankle-deep snow.

There was no black sedan to be seen, but there were tracks in the 
road, lightly covered over. Whoever had come or gone had done it 
before the snow stopped about an hour before. There was nothing else 
to indicate the house might be watched, but they were here somewhere. 
She was sure of that now. Maybe in human form, maybe only in a small 
bit of electronic gadgetry hidden in the walls, but here.

She touched the cross at her throat, thinking not of her mother, but 
of Mulder. He had worn this for her when she was gone, keeping the 
faith that she would return. Mulder the godless, the atheist. Who did 
he pray to, when prayer was needed? 

Reluctantly, she pushed the thought of him away. She had left a note 
inside the laptop case. Hopefully, if she did not make it back to him, 
the note would. Maybe it would matter, maybe not. She could do no more 
right now.

Scully took a deep breath and moved the hand from her cross to her 
weapon, wrapping her fingers around that cold, familiar comfort. 
Either They had been waiting for her all along, or she'd succeeded in 
outwitting them, just this once. 

It was time to find out.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


INTERSTATE 8, YUMA, ARIZONA
MARCH 12TH, 12:04 AM


There was a terse, angry message from Skinner on Mulder's voicemail 
when they stopped to refuel. A small worry compared to the fact that 
there was nothing from Scully and her cell was still off. 

Mulder tossed his phone on the dashboard and leaned into the back 
seat, putting a hand over Caitlin's forehead. No fever. She'd been out 
for almost the entire trip, but he was beginning to think that this 
coma-like sleep was normal for her.

He got out of the car, walking around it to calm himself. He would 
give anything to jam his sneakers on and run right now. Straight into 
the desert, until he passed out and woke in a hospital somewhere with 
Scully leaning over his bed, telling him that he'd been drilling holes 
in his head again and had hallucinated this entire case.

"The Bureau's been notified," he told Kresge, as the other man came 
back with a cardboard tray containing two steaming microwaved burritos 
and the largest coffees the Quikstop had to offer. 

Mulder took the driver's seat this time. "Our boss is threatening 
arrest and dismissal if we don't identify our location and explain 
ourselves immediately."

"Which I take it you're not planning to do?" Kresge climbed into the 
other side, handing Mulder his share of the food. 

"To arrest us, they have to find us." Mulder set the coffee between 
his legs and tore at the wrapper of the burrito. He'd give anything to 
have Scully sitting beside him right now, rolling her eyes as he 
wolfed down some pre-processed garbage, while she daintily opened a 
yogurt for her own midnight snack. 

"You don't want to leave that coffee there," Kresge said, as Mulder 
started the car. "Unless you're bucking to sue Quikstop for millions."

Mulder gave a short grimace, setting his coffee in the cardboard tray 
at Kresge's feet. He put the car in gear and headed back out onto the 
highway.

"If they think that Scully has Caitlin," Mulder said, thinking out 
loud, "there's no reason to presume she's left San Diego. And no 
reason to presume that I'm not with her. If I talk to Skinner, I'm 
going to have to lie to him. So I can't. Scully didn't go for the 
midnight call window and I'm not talking to Skinner until I've talked 
to her. That won't be until at least 6am."

"Would there be a reason she didn't turn her phone back on?"

"I'm hoping it means she's fast asleep in some safe bed somewhere." 

Kresge's face said he wasn't any more convinced of that than Mulder 
was. 

Mulder thumbed the wrapper back over his burrito, no longer in the 
mood for it. Yes, there had been a misunderstanding, but the one thing 
Scully had always given him was a second chance. 
 
He put the pedal down further, speeding into the night, hoping the 
wrath of Scully would be the worst thing they ran into on the other 
end.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


John Wallace opened the door to her knock. 

Scully stepped back, momentarily startled, her hand automatically 
raising her gun. 

"Agent Scully," he murmured. He didn't seem surprised to see her, so 
much as reluctant. Certainly he was less surprised than she was at the 
moment.

She thought about it, then let her hand drop to her side. "I've come 
to see Jennifer."

Wallace smiled, not a comforting sight.

"You've come too late. She's gone."

"Gone where?"

Wallace's smile just grew colder. 

"It's important that I speak with her," Scully tried, her thumb 
rubbing lightly across the safety of her gun. She pulled it back as 
she spoke, hoping to hide the quiet click with her voice. 

Wallace took a step forward, still staring down at her with that 
frigid smile. It was more than moving forward a few inches. It was 
about intimidation, about making her feel small and unprotected. She 
wondered how often he'd used that kind of move on Jennifer. 

"Where's my kid, Agent Scully?"

Scully held herself straight, refusing to be cowed. This man was 
nothing compared to some of the men she'd dealt with. Kersh in a mood 
was far more intimidating, and that had been on a daily basis.

"I thought you went to San Diego to look for her," she replied, 
matching him for coldness.

"So did you. And apparently you found her."

He moved so quickly she had no time to raise her gun before his own 
was pressed calmly against her forehead.

"I could quite happily kill you, so don't even think about it. It's 
very simple, Agent Scully. Tell me where Amy is, I let you live. Make 
the slightest move, your body gets auctioned to the highest bidder. 
And believe me, there are people who will bid on it."

So, she thought, surprised at her own calm, it doesn't even end with a 
bang. The silencer on his Colt would take care of that. There would 
only be her own whimper of surprise as the bullet entered her brain, 
plunging her into that final darkness. 

It didn't sound half bad, actually. It would be quick. Painless.

"Forward," he ordered, and since she was good at obeying orders, 
especially when facing the hollow end of a gun, she complied. He took 
three steps backward into the house and kicked the door closed before 
backing her up against it.

Scully met his stare with an even icier one of her own. "May I ask who 
would be willing to purchase my dead body? Just out of curiosity, 
since it can hardly matter."

"This is not a conversation, Agent Scully. Now where is my daughter?"

"I haven't got the slightest idea." 

"You don't lie very well."

"It's not a skill I've tried to develop."

The words came from her mouth in a tone that was almost offhand. She 
blinked once, slowly, the way Mulder did when he was trying to throw a 
witness off-balance, and saw something flicker in Wallace's eyes. He 
had expected her to be stereotypically female -- fragile and easily 
frightened. It had just occurred to him that perhaps she was not.

Speed was the key, before he could change mental gears. Speed and 
knowing how to use her height -- or rather, her lack thereof -- to her 
advantage. Scully simply unlocked her knees and dropped below the 
trajectory of the shot, while her left arm flew up to knock Wallace's 
hand away from her face. She heard the deadly *whffft* as his gun went 
off, but her right hand was already rising. 

Stupid, she thought, stupid man. He'd been so sure of himself he 
hadn't even disarmed her. 

She shoved her gun into his ribs but he'd caught up by then. She 
caught a flash of movement on the periphery of her vision and pulled 
the trigger just as the handle of his gun came smashing down on the 
top of her head.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 

PART 5             

<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 


WALLACE RESIDENCE
MARCH 12TH, 4:12 AM


She couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't see even the red of her 
own blood moving through the delicate skin over her eyes. 

She's not gone, she's not gone, she's not gone. 

-Mulder? 

She could feel him like a flame, like a fire, and she wanted to huddle 
by him. He would make her warm. 

"Dana, I know you can hear me. I know you want to sleep, but you have 
to wake up."

-Missy...you're so...far

It was green where she was, and quiet and the light was soft. She was 
floating in grey water. There was no pain, but she was so cold, and he 
was warm and so close. He would hold her if she could only reach out, 
if she could only move and he was going no Mulder no don't go don't go 
don't go don't--

She woke with her hand over her mouth, as if some part of her 
remembered that it would not help to cry out. 

"That's good, Dana. Come on now, try to stand up."

She tried to move and her stomach heaved. She closed her eyes, willing 
it to settle back down. 

"No. You have to get up, get up, get up." Her ears were ringing now, 
Melissa's voice tolling in and out. 

Scully rolled over, made it to her knees. She licked her lips and 
tasted blood.

Blood. There was blood. He had punched her right through the window 
and she was so surprised he was on her before she could react and he 
slammed her head into the table and it was dark and she woke up in the 
trunk of her car and she had to get up or he would take her again and 
They would put things in and tear things out and she would die this 
time if only she could if oh god anything but the white light and the 
pain and the babies inside that would never be hers that would never-- 

"Get up. People will come. Please, Dana, get up."

-Can't. Scene of the crime, can't leave.

"Yes, you can. You have to. You have to get back to Jane and Amy. 
You've left them alone."

She clutched on to Melissa and stood, shaking with nausea. Her 
doctor's mind took in her chill, the cold sweat running down her face 
and beneath her arms. She reached up and touched the painful lump on 
her head, her testing fingers coming away covered with blood. 

Concussion. Shock. Danger. 

Scully looked down. She was leaning against the wall, alone, and John 
Wallace lay sprawled at her feet, blood soaking through his clothes. 

Don't hold the wall. Fingerprints. Bloody handprints. 

Too late. Head wounds bleed. She was covered in blood, leaving 
evidence everywhere she touched.

Scully sank to her knees as the dizziness threatened to overwhelm her. 
There was blood in her eyes now, running down her face and into her 
mouth. She rode up the crest of another wave of nausea and knew that 
next time it was going to slam her into the ground. 

Hand, knee, hand, knee, Scully crawled painfully towards the bathroom. 
She needed water. A towel. Someplace to be sick.

She got there, eventually. She saw that John Wallace had not been 
lying. Lying in a bath of her own blood, Jennifer was well and truly 
gone. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


ROUTE 66, FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA
MARCH 12TH, 7:05 AM 


It was morning when they finally reached Flagstaff, and both Kresge 
and Caitlin were snoring. Mulder pulled into the empty parking lot of 
a huge bookstore and stopped in front of a pay phone. 

Banks of snow greeted him, not compressed and dirty, as they would 
have been back in DC, but pristine, glittering softly in the early 
light. 

Now what? It was not safe to take the girl out to the Wallaces', 
certainly not safe to leave her behind. 

He nudged Kresge. "We're here."

Kresge grunted as he woke, rubbing his hands hard over his face. 

"Sorry. I tried to stay awake."

"I'm used to it," Mulder observed, with the pang in his stomach that 
was starting to become habitual whenever he thought of Scully. 

He checked his watch again -- 6:07, California time. 

Trust me, partner, please, he thought, hitting the speed dial. Just 
put the phone back on. 

Voicemail. 

"Damn it," Mulder snapped, one breath away from chucking the phone out 
the window. 

"What?" Kresge asked, looking around. 

"Her fucking phone is still off. Damn it." He threw his door open and 
stalked towards the pay phone, grabbing the receiver off the hook as 
he stuffed coins into the slot. His finger ached from the force he 
used to stab the buttons, but it was not enough pain to take away his 
fear. Kiss her or kill her when he saw her again, right now it was 
even money which he would choose. 

"It's Mulder," he said, as soon as the phone picked up.

"Mulder," Frohike repeated, sluggish, as if drunk. 

"I know my name, Frohike. Any news?"

Silence was not something he was used to hearing from the Gunmen's 
den. There was always something going on in the background -- the hum 
of computers, Langly droning on, Frohike fidgeting with whatever was 
in front of him. Silence was unnerving, coming from them.

His anger evaporated, changing to panic. The heart-in-the-throat, 
Scully's disappeared, collapsed in a meeting, been shot in New York, 
ohgodjustletmegetthere kind of panic he never wanted to feel again.

"Frohike? What the hell is going on?"

"Mulder."

"Spill it, Frohike," he hissed, sucking icy air between his clenched 
teeth, making them ache.

"A woman named Jane Hampton called us, about an hour ago. She said 
Scully went out to the Wallaces' last night. She gave Jane our number 
to call if she didn't come back."

Mulder rubbed away the pictures his mind wanted to form. "Where was 
Jane calling from?"

"She wouldn't say. We tried tracing it back and she was using Scully's 
cell. She's supposed to call again at nine." Frohike drew a loud 
breath. "The good news is nothing's been called in on Scully's medical 
insurance, and no five-foot two-inch hundred pound Jane Does have 
turned up anywhere in Northern Arizona. I thought that might make you 
feel better."

"Not really, Frohike, but thanks."

"Mulder, I don't think you should go out there."

"The hell I'm not."

"Mulder, listen to me. Byers has been at those files all night. This 
is big shit you're into--"

"Tell me later, Frohike. I gotta go find my partner." He hung up, 
silencing the man's final protest.

Mulder got back into the car and sat for a moment, not knowing where 
to begin, warming his hands in his armpits.

"Bad news?" 

"There's a string of motels down this road. I'm going to drive a 
little way out of town and drop you and Caitlin at one of them."

Kresge blinked at him twice before replying. "No, you're not. I didn't 
come this far to play babysitter."

"We don't have a choice. Someone's got to watch her."

"Then take her to a hospital."

"No." Mulder looked over the seat just as Caitlin's soft little mouth 
stretched in a sleepy yawn. She rubbed at her eyes with the backs of 
her oddly uncoordinated hands, then blinked at him. For a moment, he 
could swear she saw him and knew him, before she blinked again and her 
eyes lost their focus. 

"No," Mulder repeated. "No more hospitals. No more tests." He looked 
back out the windshield. He needed to start the car, needed to get on 
with this.

Needed not to find what he was afraid to find out there. 

"Mulder." Kresge put a hand on his arm to get his attention. "What's 
going on?"

"Scully went to the Wallace's last night. She didn't come back."

Kresge's hand dropped away as he settled back into his seat to take 
that in. 

"All right," he said finally. "We're going to hope for the best. But 
just in case, you'd better let me be the one to go out there. You stay 
with Caitlin."

"I can't do that."

"Mulder, it could already be a crime scene. Your people could already 
be there. You can't get arrested. If you do, I'm helpless out here -- 
I have no gun, no badge, no contacts. And they'll have my car. How am 
I going to protect this kid with nothing?"

"I have to find Scully." 

"And I have a better chance of doing that right now. You've been 
driving all night and you're way too close to this. You don't know 
what you'll be walking into out there. You're not fit."

No, Mulder thought, I'm not fit. How can anyone ever be fit for 
something like this?


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


FLAGSTAFF INN
MARCH 12TH, 7:10 AM


Jane sat up, reaching out for something on the nightstand as Scully 
opened the door. 

"It's me," Scully whispered.

Jane recognized her and relaxed, put the heavy glass ashtray down. Not 
much of a weapon, but something. Jane wouldn't go down without a 
fight, that was for sure. 

The dull grey light of a snowy morning was seeping through the 
curtains and Scully could see that Jane had Amy in bed with her. It 
looked as if they were both fully dressed. 

"Dana?" Jane was already getting out of bed, her voice shrill with 
long-repressed panic. "Are you okay? Where have you been? What 
happened?"

"I'll tell you in a minute." 

She needed to clean up. Fast. Scully went into the bathroom and 
flicked on the light. 

Too bright too bright too bright. 

The room was upside down and the light was in her eyes, and her blood 
was frozen, her breath stopped. She heard the whir of the drill and 
she would not look down, she would not, she would not. She did 
not want to see what they were doing to her. 

A familiar voice came to her ear, hoarse and gentle, melting the fear 
and letting her breathe again. 

"Dana? It's okay, I'm here."

She forced her eyes open and Penny Northern was gathering her close, 
lifting her from the cold tile. 

-Oh god, what have they done to me, what have they done?

"Dana!" 

A hand slapped her cheek, hard enough to sting, but not hard enough to 
hurt. Scully blinked and Penny's face had become Melissa's. 

-Missy? What...what...

"Dana, look at me! Who am I?"

Scully looked. Not good. Oh god, this was not good. 

"Jane," she managed to whisper. "Jane Hampton."

"Oh, thank god." The room swirled again as Jane's arms tightened 
around her. "You were babbling like I was someone else. Oh Jesus, 
Dana, what happened?"

"Jane, listen." She tried to lick her lips, but there was no moisture 
in her mouth. "If I pass out, if you can't wake me...don't take me to 
the hospital yourself. Just leave me someplace and send an ambulance."

"I'm not leaving you anywhere. Forget it." 

"No. Listen to me. You cannot get caught." She struggled to sit up, 
prepared for nausea, but the room remained gratifyingly steady, Jane's 
face clearly in focus. "Amy's parents are both dead. If something 
should happen to me, you are all she has left. Just take her, go hide 
somewhere and call that number I gave you."

"Dana."

"Promise."

"Okay, I promise, now just tell me -- is all this blood yours?"

Scully looked down to where Jane's hands were tugging at her clothing. 
Her jacket and shirt were marked with spatter and residue from the 
shot, and her slacks were soaked through at the knees where she must 
have knelt in the pool of blood. Her hands, when she lifted them, were 
also stained and spattered and powder-burnt. There would be blood on 
her holster, on her gun, inside the car. She was a forensic team's 
dream suspect, a walking crime scene. She'd left them a dozen points 
of irrefutable evidence on which to convict.

"No, it's not all mine." Scully closed her eyes and leaned back 
against the tub. The pounding in her head was sapping her strength 
with each heartbeat and she was so cold, so goddamn cold. 

"I'm getting you a blanket," Jane said. "Don't move. I'll be right 
back." 

If she sat here like this, she would pass out. Scully struggled to her 
feet, leaning over the sink to look into the mirror. No wonder Jane 
looked so appalled. Her face was the color of ash, streaked with blood 
and dirt, her skin shining with a thin, oily veneer. She shivered at 
her own icy fingers as she parted her hair to reveal an inch-long gash 
at the top of her head, already swollen into a large, ugly lump. 

Right side. Frontal lobe. Scully held her hands out and touched her 
thumb to each of her fingers. Fine motor coordination intact, large 
motor functions working reasonably well. She felt no more clumsy than 
she did anytime she was tired beyond endurance, and surely her present 
level of disorientation was as much the result of two nights without 
sleep as the blow to her head. Her speech was not slurred and her 
vision, moments of hallucination aside, was normal. 

She leaned closer to the mirror, closing her eyes and opening them one 
at time, trying to get an indication of whether the pupils were 
dilating properly. As long as they were, the chances were good that 
Wallace hadn't cracked her skull, though she wouldn't be able to 
discount that possibility for several hours. 

"Dana, you're in shock," Jane scolded, coming back into the room. "Sit 
down, before you fall down again."

"I know what I'm doing, I'm a doctor." 

"If you're a doctor, then you ought to know you're being an idiot." 
Jane threw a blanket around her shoulders. "You are so stubborn," she 
chided, turning Scully around to wrap her up like a child. "Why can't 
you let someone help?"

Scully blinked hard, her throat suddenly too thick for words. She let 
Jane lower her back to the floor, huddling deep inside the blanket 
while the other woman ran the bath. 

"As soon as we've got you fixed up, we need to get out of here," she 
said, when Scully had managed to get undressed and into the hot water.

"Yes."

Jane was looking at the pile of ruined clothing. "What do we do with 
these? Burn them?"

"No. I'm a federal agent, I can't destroy evidence. And I might need 
them to prove self-defense."

"You killed someone." Jane sat heavily on the closed toilet, pale and 
suddenly frightened.  

Scully looked up and saw Jane staring at her body through the water. 
She followed the woman's gaze to her own abdomen, to the fresh scar 
that ran from just below her ribs almost to her navel. The exit wound 
was far uglier than the neat surgical scar, but she sat up anyway, 
hugging her knees to her chest. 

Nothing like waking up in one of your own spy thrillers, Scully 
thought.

"Amy's stepfather," she said at last. "He killed her mother, then he 
tried to kill me. He must have been there when I called. If I hadn't-- 
I don't know."

She leaned her head against the wall of the bath, suddenly nauseous 
again. The hot water was making the headache worse, and not warming 
her at all.

Scully closed her eyes and clenched her teeth as Jane took her right 
hand and began rubbing it with soap. With all the time Scully had 
spent in hospitals in the last few years she should have grown 
accustomed to this, learned to endure the necessary indignity of being 
touched and bathed by strangers, but she never had.

"I can do that," she started to say, but the truth was, she couldn't. 
She was only a few shades of grey from falling into darkness again. 

"Dana," Jane said slowly, moving the washcloth to the other hand, 
"when you didn't come back, I got scared. I called that number you 
gave me."

"Oh, god."

"I'm sorry. I thought--" Jane stopped herself with an audible swallow. 
"The man there, he sounded really upset when I told him where you 
went."

"It's all right. I'll call them."

She managed to open her eyes to see Jane's face as the other woman 
took the shower nozzle down to rinse the blood and dirt out of her 
hair. Her expression was concerned, a little frightened but no longer 
panicked. 

Jane Hampton could take care of herself. She was strong enough to take 
care of Amy too, if it came down to that.

"Close your eyes," Jane said softly, and for the few brief moments it 
took for Jane to wash the blood from her face, Scully allowed herself 
the indulgence of tears. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


They didn't have to wait long at the entrance to the highway. Not much 
threat, picking up two women and a child. The threat, Jane thought, 
was far more likely to be toward them.

"We'll ride in the back," Jane told the driver, an older Navajo man, 
as weather-beaten as his pickup. She'd been expecting a stetson and a 
silver concho hatband, but the man wore a blue t-shirt and a battered 
baseball cap, the insignia so threadbare she couldn't read it. Only 
his long greying ponytail fit her idea of what an Indian should look 
like.

"You don't want to do that," the man said. "It gets pretty cold with 
the wind and all. Not good for the little one."

"It's okay," Scully reassured Jane. She climbed into the cab, leaving 
Jane no choice but to hand Amy up and follow. 

It had been Scully's idea to leave the car in Flagstaff and hitchhike 
out; she'd insisted they'd be safe enough accepting rides from the 
Navajo since the men in black were almost always white. Jane hadn't 
hitchhiked in a long time, but what she remembered from her rebel days 
was that assholes came in every color.

She closed the door and got Amy settled on her lap, watching warily as 
the driver offered Scully a hand to shake. Jane was surprised at the 
lightness of the man's grip when it was her turn -- the thick, rough 
fingers looked like he would have a crusher. 

She sighed and tried to relax. Maybe a federal agent knew an honest 
man when she saw one.

"Where to?" he asked, when the brief formalities were finished and 
they were back out on the highway. 

"How far east do you go?" 

Scully's voice was as worn-down as the truck, a sound which made Jane 
hold Amy even tighter. The woman was obviously in pain, moving more 
slowly than normal, holding her head as still as she could. 

"Oh, I'll stay on the 40 till Gallup," the man was answering, "then 
head back onto the rez. I live in Window Rock, but it's a mess over by 
Ganado. Pony here don't do so good on them dirt roads. Road from 
Gallup's paved, so I got a better chance."

"Gallup sounds good," Scully agreed. "How far is that?"

"Coupla hours." 

The man popped a cassette into a tape deck a good fifteen years 
younger than the rest of the truck and fiddled with the volume. 
'Nights in White Satin' filled the cab with surprising clarity over 
the whirr and clank of the ancient heater. He gave the women a bright 
smile missing two bottom teeth and turned his attention back to the 
road, humming along as they went.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>

ARROW WHEEL MOTEL
MARCH 11TH, 8:25 AM


Waiting was not something Mulder did well. 

He was, however, an excellent observer and after the first near-miss 
he learned that a certain short, high whine meant that Caitlin needed 
the bathroom. He learned that she liked to pat her hands on the 
surface of the water when having a bath.

A quick trip to the convenience store across the street taught him 
that she liked Gerber baby food, even strained carrots, which he had 
to hold at arm's length because he couldn't stand the smell; that her 
attention could be caught by movement, especially of something 
colorful; and though she couldn't hold a spoon, she could grip bigger 
things. The ears of a stuffed rabbit, a plastic ring, a banana -- 
though it was a bit hard on the banana, he conceded, wiping the mess 
off her fingers. 

He had learned one other thing by the time the phone rang, shattering 
the fragile quiet. 

Caitlin Jenkins remembered how to hug.

Mulder picked up the phone, still holding the child with one arm, a 
prayer to no one whispered on his breath. 

"It's Kresge. I'm in. I'm gonna talk fast cause I think I need to get 
out of here soon, but I didn't find her. I'd be hopeful about that, 
considering what I'm looking at."

Mulder tried to swallow, found he could not. "Which is?"

"I'm standing in a crime scene, Mulder. I got a man and a woman, both 
dead. The woman's in the bath with her wrists slit. Dark skin, black 
hair. Looks Indian."

"Shit. That's Jennifer Wallace." He sat down on the bed, shifting 
Caitlin to his lap. She put her head against his chest as if listening 
to his heart, beating hard and fast against her tiny ear. 

"What about the man?"

"Shot just inside the front door. There's a lot of blood here, Mulder. 
Three, maybe four pints spilled. I think they got him in the heart, 
but I'm not turning him over to check. The angle of the shot looks 
extremely low, judging by the exit and the spatter on the walls. They 
might have been struggling for the murder weapon."

"What does he look like?"

"About five-eight, one-eighty, trim. Long hair, dark brown, almost 
black. Can't tell about the face, he's lying on it."

"Jesus Christ. Is he wearing a big silver bracelet?"

"Yeah. You know who it is?"

"I think it's the husband, but he's supposed to be back in San Diego. 
Anything else?"

"Oh yeah. Lots of else. We got a bullet in the door, another in the 
wall, we got something dragged across the living room carpet. We got 
another small pool of blood about three feet from Wallace, and I'll 
bet you good money it isn't his. We got prints all over the place, on 
the walls, the furniture. All over the bathroom, where somebody got 
sick."

Kresge sighed, and Mulder held the child closer, his free hand over 
her ear as if he could protect her from whatever the detective would 
say next.

"I wish I didn't have to tell you this, Mulder, but we've got two 
clear palms on the bathroom floor. Small. About the size of Scully's 
hands."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


SHELL SERVICE STATION, I-40
MARCH 12TH, 9:00 AM


Scully listened to the phone ring, the words from an old song going 
through her mind. Winslow, Arizona was not a nice place to be standing 
on the corner. It was, in fact, a damn ugly town.

Her hand rose self-consciously to check her hat. She hated to have 
anything on her head, but she needed something to hide the wound. She 
was now the not-so-proud owner of a very touristy Northern Arizona 
University baseball cap. Maybe Mulder would like to have it, if she 
ever saw him again.

Scully bit down hard on her bottom lip. Her chances of ever seeing 
Mulder again were getting exponentially smaller by the minute. 

Answer, damn it, she told the phone. How late could the Gunmen sleep?

"Hello?" 

Scully felt an unexpected surge of warmth at the sound of Frohike's 
voice. She cut it off, harsh as her hand strangling the metal-encased 
phone cord. This was not the time to get sentimental. 

"Frohike. It's me."

"Scully? Jesus!" She heard a scrabbling, as if the sound of her voice 
had actually made Frohike fall off his chair. "It's her! It's Scully!" 
he shouted, voice distorted by his hand haphazardly covering the 
mouthpiece. That was followed by more crashing, and a chorus of heavy 
breathing. Byers' voice came into the phone, vibrating with concern. 

"Agent Scully, are you okay? Where are you?"

My god, she'd never thought she could engender such excitement in 
anyone, let alone the reticent Byers. "I'm fine," she assured him. 
"But you need to call me back. I don't have any more change."

"Okay, what's the number?"

"I don't know. There's nothing on the pay phone."

"You couldn't find one with a number?" Langly now. Oh good. Glad to 
know she was entertaining them all.

"I'm lucky to find one that works. Don't you have some hi-tech toy to 
trace your last caller?"

"Yeah, yeah we do," Frohike assured her. "Just hang there, Scully, 
we'll be back in minute."

"Don't go anywhere. Swear to it." Byers' normally quiet tenor was 
breaking like an adolescent. 

"I'll be right here." 

She hung up, hoping that Jane's earlier call was sufficient 
explanation for their panicked reaction. Surely it was too soon for 
them to have heard what happened at the Wallaces'.

Scully pressed her fingers to her temples, but it didn't help 
alleviate the pain. At least the headache was keeping her awake. 
Drowsiness had moved in where adrenaline should have lived, making her 
feel thick and sluggish. She was past exhausted and into the place 
where sleeping forever was beginning to sound like a wonderful idea. 

This was how people slipped, made fatal mistakes. When they were so 
tired that death didn't sound half bad. She couldn't mess up with Jane 
and Amy's lives at stake. She had to stay alert.

"Dana." 

Jane sounded low and controlled, but fear shimmered just below the 
surface. Their '70s-music-loving driver had finished paying for his 
gas and was getting back into his pickup, just as a Winslow cruiser 
was pulling in to the station. 

Scully looked at the cruiser, then back at the phone. 

"It could be a coincidence. It could be nothing."

"It could," Jane agreed, already beginning to back toward the truck, 
pulling a confused Amy by the hand. 

Two cops got out of the cruiser and looked around. Jane swung Amy up 
into her arms. The child had a strange, glassy look to her eyes, as if 
she'd been here before, had felt fear radiating through the body of 
the adult that held her and knew to stay silent. For the first time it 
struck Scully that this morning, Amy had not once asked to go home.

The phone began to ring. Behind Jane, one of the cops had reached 
through the window of the cruiser and was talking on his CB. The 
other, leaning against the car, seemed to be watching their every 
move.

"Dana, get in the truck," Jane hissed, beginning to panic.

The phone rang again. Scully reached behind her and picked it up. 

"The clock is broken. New Mexico."

She hung up before they could say anything else.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 

PART 6

<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 


ARROW WHEEL MOTEL
MARCH 12TH, 9:15 AM


Mulder wondered how many years it took for people to rub off on one 
another. Feeding Caitlin her breakfast, making airplane noises to get 
her distracted attention, he felt like he was channeling Scully. Fox 
Mulder wouldn't know how to take care of this child. 

Finished, he wiped Caitlin's mouth and hands and went to throw the 
towel into the bathroom sink. An inarticulate cry from behind him made 
him turn around again.

Caitlin was making the sound, a desolate wailing, reaching out across 
the table to where Mulder had been sitting, her chubby fists clenching 
on air.

"Hey, there," he said. "I'm right here."

She didn't react, didn't appear to hear his voice. It wasn't until 
Mulder came around the table and leaned over the chair he had been 
sitting in that she seemed to understand he hadn't disappeared. 

"Oh, hey, shh," he crooned, gathering the girl up. The wailing stopped 
immediately as she gave his neck her unique, stiff-armed hug, butting 
his cheek with the top of her head.

Something inside Mulder broke open, spilled over. This was not a life 
that had grown coiled and safe inside her mother's body. Not a child 
made with love. And yet there was love in her. Like grass growing 
through a crack in the pavement, it still reached for the light to 
make itself known. 

"They're not going to hurt you again," he swore, fitting his hand 
around the back of the girl's head. "I'm not going to let them."

Caitlin sighed into his neck, her face hot against his skin. 

This is what I learned from your mother, he silently told her, rubbing 
the wetness from his eyes. Isn't that funny? That I learned to love by 
loving her, when she finds it so hard to let herself love anyone?

Caitlin, of course, didn't answer. 

His cell phone began to ring and Mulder laid the girl down on the bed, 
leaning over to kiss her forehead. It brought forth an opening of her 
mouth that was almost a smile. He let her hold onto his finger while 
he reached over to the nightstand. 

"It's me," Frohike said. "I've got news. Gimme a number."

Mulder read him the number of the room phone, the last four digits 
backward, drumming the fingers of his free hand on the nightstand 
until it rang.

"Okay," Frohike launched in. "She called. She *said* she was okay. 
She's in Winslow -- or she was. I think she's heading east on the I-
40."

"Thank god. What about the other thing I asked you to trace?"

"No go from where I sit. Doc keeps those files the old-fashioned way." 
A pause, then, "She said the clock is broken, Mulder. What do you want 
me to do?"

Mulder bowed his head, gently disengaging his finger from Caitlin's 
hand, replacing it with the stuffed rabbit. She seemed blissfully 
unaware of the difference. 

It was supposed to be him going underground, him running away from 
some terrible danger. Not Scully. Not alone, anyway.

He heard Frohike sigh, a sound very unlike him. "Mulder, these people 
I'll be sending her to...once she's with them it's out of my hands. 
You won't be able to find her unless she contacts you herself."

"Well, she's obviously not going to contact me," Mulder said, "or 
she'd have done it by now."

"She may just be trying to keep you out of it."

"Well, I'm in it no matter what she wants," Mulder snapped. "All 
right, fine, give me the address. I'll catch her there."

"No way, Mulder, I can't do that. You know, there's more to what I do 
than just waiting around for you to call. You show up on these 
people's doorstep and I'm dogmeat out here. I'll lose every contact I 
have. And I'm no help to either one of you then."

"Frohike, she's out there and she's hurt and I don't know what's going 
through her head. At least give me a chance. Let me talk to her before 
she disappears."

Silence. He heard a distant cough and realized that Byers and Langly 
were there, hearing the entire conversation, but he didn't care. 

"Frohike," he pleaded. "Just tell me where you're sending the papers."

"Albuquerque. And that's all I'm going to tell you."

"Okay." Mulder drew a shaky breath, wiping his eyes with the back of 
his hand. He sat down on the bed beside Caitlin, who had rolled onto 
her stomach and was now curled up with three fingers in her mouth, her 
eyes unfocused again. 

"Tell me about the other stuff," he said, calming himself by rubbing 
Caitlin's back. "What have you got decoded so far?"

Chairs scraping. Crisis averted, people sitting down. Business as 
usual now. 

"We had to stop digging around on the mainframe, so we don't have it 
all."

"Why'd you stop?"

A nervous, all around rattle. "We got into some stuff...Mulder, this 
thing, this study they were doing. It links back to another study 
started in 1940, just before we got involved in the war. It looks like 
that was suspended for the duration, then picked up again and 
continued into the early fifties. The one that Scully was part of is 
Phase Two. Which supposedly stopped in 1985."

"Okay, so remember how at first we thought they were testing for 
pilots for the space program?" Langly picked it up. Sometimes Mulder 
wondered if Frohike sat there like a symphony conductor with a note 
sheet, directing their little trio of off-key instruments. 

"Well," Langly went on, "that's because the stuff these kids were 
being tested for is the same kind of criteria they were using for 
potential astronauts. Strength, agility, inner-ear equilibrium. 
Everything right down to how long they could hold their breath. Then 
you have your standard Stanford-Binet IQ, combined with imaginary 
spatial-perception and a whole bunch of problem solving questions. 
Then there's an ethical component. It goes into stuff like if you and 
your best friend wound up on opposite sides of a war could you kill 
him, which is a hell of a lot to throw at a little kid, I think."

Mulder sighed. "Can we cut to the chase, guys?"

Byers came on the line. "There's something else, Mulder. Another file, 
the one we almost got caught trying to hack. The aggregate scores from 
this study, combined with aggregate scores from a bunch of other 
studies done at different times in different places, all cross-
indexed. It's huge. Close to 250,000 entries." 

"But what is it for?" Mulder stressed the last word, running out of 
patience. "And where does Scully fit in?"

"We're working on that," Byers answered defensively. "Mulder, these 
tests are so extensive it's impossible to figure out exactly what they 
were hoping to find." 

"Yeah, the scoring is insane," Langly chimed in. "It looks like the 
freaking Olympics."

"Here's a question I want to ask," Byers continued over him. "Scully's 
mother. Do you know her maiden name?"

"O'Donnell. Margaret Ellen, I think." 

"Okay. And yours?"

"My mother? What does my mother have to do with it?"

"Humour me, Mulder."

"Christine Elizabeth Holt."

"Hang on." 

Mulder listened to the distorted sound of the keyboard clicking. 

"Nothing there," Frohike reported. "Trying O'Donnell." 

"Oh wow," Mulder heard Langly whine. "They had how many kids in that 
family?"

"Nine," Mulder supplied. "Old-time Catholic."

"Their poor mother," Frohike remarked. "Okay, Margaret Ellen O'Donnell 
is not a primary subject but three of her siblings are. They're part 
of the first segment."

"Hey Frohike?" Mulder was hunched over now with his elbows on his 
knees, head hanging heavy on his neck. "Try my mother again, under 
Holtzmann. H-o-l-t-z, two n's."

Another pause during which he barely dared breathe. Then, "Yeah, she's 
here, Mulder. What's up with that?"

"Her father was Jewish, he changed the name in '41. Apparently he was 
a little paranoid about the Nazis attacking the US. I seem to have 
inherited the paranoia along with the nose."

"Well, she must have been entered into the pre-war study, because 
she's listed as Holtzmann. What did your grandfather do, Mulder?"

"I don't know. He died when she was about seventeen. She never talks 
about him. Frohike, what is all this?"

"Weirdness. Mulder, your father and Scully's father? They're both in 
Phase One. And Scully and all her siblings are in Phase Two, but she's 
the only primary subject. Out of a possible aggregate of ten, she's 
listed as a nine-point-six."

"Must have lost a point or two on height," Mulder tried, but nobody 
laughed. "And my family?"

"Well, this is weird. You're a secondary subject. You're down as 
having a female sibling, primary subject, but there's no cross-
reference to your sister's file and she's not listed at all. It looks 
like they purged her record." 

"And by the way," Langly added, "Scully beat you by a mile. You're 
only a nine-point-two."

"What the hell does this all mean?" Mulder asked, getting up and 
beginning to pace. "I never took a series of tests like the ones 
Scully described."

"But you took tests in school, didn't you? Think back, Mulder. You 
must have been tested for IQ. What else? What about Samantha -- she 
was the primary subject, not you."

"Oh, god."

"What?"

"My parents had us in a private school. We both had go through an 
evaluation to get in -- I think we must have been four or five. I 
remember my mother was upset when Samantha had hers because the whole 
thing took twice as long as mine."

"That could have been it," Langly agreed. "Also, Mulder, some of this 
coding we haven't been able to figure out looks a lot like some other 
stuff we got into a few years ago. You know what files I'm talking 
about?"

"The funky poaching?"

"No, Mulder. Before that. Remember our friend who liked Rodin?"

Rodin? The sculptor? Mulder's mind abruptly made the leap: The 
Thinker. The guy who got killed after hacking the MJ files and giving 
them to Mulder on a DAT. The very thing that had sent Scully and 
himself running in the desert the first time. 

Mulder turned around as if seeking someplace to run now. "Are you 
telling me this is it? This is part of that?"

"Maybe," Byers answered. "Mulder, I don't think this has stopped. I 
think Phase Three may be going on right now."

Mulder sat down on the bed again, pulling Caitlin into his lap with 
his free arm. She looked up at him with her vacant smile and shook her 
rabbit. 

"Listen to me, guys. Scully's name was in those other files. I want 
you to try something. Someone got a pen?"

He rattled off the names he could remember. Penny Northern. Edna 
O'Brien. Lottie Holloway, Diane Frazier, Marnette Lawson, Betsy 
Hagopian. There were five more in the group that had been taken with 
Scully, but his mind couldn't summon them. Mulder felt ashamed of 
that, ashamed of the fact that they had never gone back to talk to 
those women while they were alive, to find the truth of what they 
remembered. Not until Scully herself was dying and all but Penny were 
gone. 

We never tried to save them, he thought, rubbing his cheek against the 
top of Caitlin's head. We ignored them because we couldn't bear to 
hear what they had to say. And now I can't even remember who they 
were. 

"Mulder?" Frohike's voice had that note he was coming to dread. 
"They're all there. Primary subjects, nine-point-five and over. Every 
one."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


Scully needed to get off the road. The sun glaring off the hood of the 
truck was piercing her brain even with her eyes closed, every bump a 
small explosion.

Jane had said nothing, but Scully felt the woman's eyes on her, and 
she knew that Jane was scared. There didn't seem to be much Scully 
could do about that. Any words of reassurance she might have spoken 
had long ago dissolved into the white noise inside her head. 

Their Navajo driver popped another cassette into the tape deck and the 
first strains of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' drilled their way into her skull. 
Scully tried not to think about how nice it would be to stop 
somewhere, to take a long bath and sleep until she was herself again. 
Farmington, where Albert Hosteen lived, was not too far north from 
where they were right now. Maybe she could stop there?

No. Albert was an old man, let him live his life in peace. He was a 
known quantity to anyone who might be looking for her out here and it 
didn't seem fair to bring their nightmare to his doorstep again.

Just keep heading east. It reminded her of a very strange case they'd 
had a few months ago, a man who'd needed to be driven west so his 
inner ear wouldn't burst. Scully had the opposite problem -- her head 
might explode if they didn't stop.

What do we do when we run out of east? Do we turn around and head west 
again? 

Frohike would send the papers she needed to Albuquerque. She'd had no 
destination when they left Flagstaff, but that would do for now. She'd 
figure something out tomorrow, when the pain was gone and she could 
think again.

She was drifting now, tears in the back of her throat. Freddie Mercury 
was wailing that he'd killed a man, thrown his life away.

"Please," she managed to say. "Would you mind if we listened to 
something else?"

The driver looked at her, then ejected the cassette, flipped it and 
popped it back in again. 

Elton John. Scully relaxed. 

"Dana?" Amy was leaning over to tug on Scully's shirt.  

Scully looked down and tried to find a smile for the girl. "You need 
to go?"

Amy shook her head. She pointed out the window, to a thin road coming 
down to meet the highway from a beautiful stretch of red and gold 
desert. "That's where Gramma lives," she announced, her head turning, 
trying to follow the road as they passed it. She turned back to 
Scully, her lower lip starting to wobble a bit. 

"Can we go to Gramma's?" Amy whispered. "Maybe Mommy is there."

Scully closed her eyes against the renewed pounding in her head, 
ashamed to have forgotten. Amy still had a family. A great-
grandmother, a woman who needed to be told of her granddaughter's 
death. 

"Do you know how to get to your Gramma's?" Scully asked.

Amy looked doubtful. "You go up and up and around the mountain and 
then down three tires." 

Scully patted the girl's leg. "We'll find it, okay?" she promised. 

Amy nodded and smiled, sitting back against Jane, who fixed Scully 
with a worried look and curled the child closer into her arms.

"Excuse me. You said you were going to Window Rock?" Scully asked 
their driver, interrupting his rather good attempt to harmonize with 
'Rocket Man.' "Could you drop us there, instead of Gallup?"

"Ho," he nodded, immediately picking up the chorus again.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


WINDOW ROCK, ARIZONA
MARCH 12TH, 11:52 AM


Leonora Hattaway looked over the top of her reading glasses as Scully 
and Jane and Amy entered the trailer. 

"You're back. And on your feet this time." 

"Yes. We never got to meet properly." Scully summoned up her official 
smile, that mirthless curve of lips the best she could do right now. 
She reached into her pocket to draw out her badge and held it up for 
Leonora to see. "I'm Special Agent Dana Scully. I'm with the FBI."

"Ah." The woman's demeanor changed, her warmth instantly withdrawn. 
"Well, that explains the silly black suit you were wearing before." 

Scully closed the badge, feeling as if she'd just tripped over an 
invisible rock. "I was hoping you might be able to help me with a case 
I'm on." 

Leonora's thick eyebrow did a reasonable imitation of Scully's own 
this-better-be-good-Mulder one-sided lift. 

"I can't imagine that I know anything that would interest the FBI. My 
area is health and education. I don't involve myself in intertribal 
politics."

"I'm only trying to locate someone. This little girl's great-
grandmother. She lives somewhere on the reservation."

Leonora took a look at Amy, nestled in Jane's arms. Noted the 
porcelain skin, the reddish blond hair, the round blue eyes. She 
shifted her attention back to the sheaf of papers strewn across her 
desk, picking up her pen again. 

"We don't keep track of white people up here. I'm sorry I couldn't 
help."

"Actually, her family is Navajo." 

Leonora looked up over the top of her reading glasses. "This child is 
Dineh?" she asked, disbelief written all over her features.

"Her adoptive mother is, and it's the mother's grandmother that we're 
looking for."

Leonora's eyebrow went even higher. "Well, that's the first case I've 
ever heard of Indians adopting a white kid. Usually it's the other way 
around." 

She took off her glasses and folded them neatly into a beaded leather 
case, regarding Scully with eyes that were distinctly more friendly. 

"I'm not the tribal registry. That's over in the council building. Do 
you know the grandmother's Indian name?"

"Bima," Amy supplied helpfully.

Scully felt a moment of hope. "Is that a common name?"

Leonora's mouth twisted in a half smile. "If you're old enough. It 
means grandmother."

Scully's hope sank heavily into the pit of her stomach, just as a flow 
of incomprehensible syllables came out of Amy's mouth. They all turned 
to look at the little girl, who continued to babble earnestly in 
Leonora's direction.

In Dineh, Scully realized. Amy was speaking Dineh.

Leonora rose, an odd look on her face. She spoke to Amy in the same 
language. Amy nodded and answered.

Leonora looked at the two women. 

"She says the bad men took her away," Leonora translated. "And she 
thinks maybe they took her mother away too, but maybe she went up to 
Grandma's like she does whenever the bad men come. What does that 
mean? Which bad men are she talking about?"

The other two women exchanged glances. 

"I'll take her outside," Jane said. "I think that's better."

Scully nodded. She watched Jane go, murmuring softly to Amy. When she 
turned back, Leonora was still standing. Her expression was still 
somewhat wary, but she came out from behind the desk and walked over 
to the couch.

"Sit," Leonora said firmly. "I think you have a story to tell."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


ROUTE 66, FLAGSTAFF
MARCH 12TH, 12:22 PM


Mulder and Kresge were walking toward a diner around the corner from 
the motel. The sun finally had some warmth to it and Mulder might have 
actually felt good were it not for the sweaty weight of Caitlin, half 
balanced on his shoulder, and the news he was receiving from Kresge. 

"The coroner figures the time of death was about eleven PM. The 
husband appears to have been shot about the same time, maybe a little 
later. Point blank to the upper abdomen. Whoever it was must have been 
wounded in that struggle and spent some time lying in the same place 
before they went to the bathroom to clean themselves up. They're not 
going to have a hard time getting an ID on the shooter."

"What did you tell the local PD?"

"I didn't. I called from a pay phone, then wandered back over half an 
hour later like a curious neighbor. I didn't ask a lot of questions. 
Mostly just stood around and listened."

Mulder held his breath a moment. "What do you think?" he finally 
managed to ask.

Kresge's answer was equally long in coming. "Yeah. I think it was 
her."

Mulder swallowed painfully. "Friends of ours...they swear they talked 
to her this morning. They said she sounded fine." He hugged Caitlin a 
little tighter, taking a strange comfort in her empty presence. Fine, 
for Scully, could describe any number of physical states short of 
death. It really didn't help allay his worry. 

"She may not have been that badly hurt," Kresge agreed, sounding as if 
he didn't believe it much either. "And she is a doctor."

"And the world's second lousiest patient after me," Mulder muttered, 
just loud enough to be heard.

"I'll be honest with you, Mulder. I believe it was self-defense, but 
she's made it questionable by running. I don't know how long I can 
withhold my information from the locals before I'm in danger of 
obstruction. And your own people are all over this. I have a feeling 
they already know it's her." 

"Was there a big bald guy with glasses? About forty-five, built like a 
boxer, probably running the show?"

"Yeah, there was. And Mulder, I've seen him before. In San Diego, the 
day they pulled me from the case. I saw him coming out of my chief's 
office."

"Shit." 

Mulder stopped walking. The implications were impossible to assess. 
Sending Skinner could be merely damage control -- the FBI wouldn't 
want the media to get hold of this story, so of course they would want 
her direct superior out there to look into it. Skinner had not always 
been a solid ally, but he would never betray Scully. Not voluntarily. 
Mulder had to believe that.

Then what was Skinner doing in San Diego, before they'd found either 
one of the girls? 

Mulder shivered in the warm sun, hoisting Caitlin further onto his 
shoulder. 

"Was there an older guy hanging around, chain-smoking cigarettes?" he 
asked. "Or a young one, good-looking, with a fake arm?"

"No, not that I saw." 

"Well, that may be the first good news so far."

"Mulder." Kresge put his hand on Mulder's arm to stop him before he 
could start walking again. "I have to tell you -- if I didn't know 
her, I would believe the scenario they're putting together. They're 
saying she killed the parents using the MO from the case so she can 
disappear with the kid."

"Why would she do that?"

"Because she thinks the girl is hers. They're saying she's snapped."

Fury began to swirl inside Mulder's chest. Here it was, then. A truth 
sandwiched between two lies and this time they were going to shove 
that sandwich down Scully's throat and choke her with it.

"Amy *is* her daughter," Mulder retorted, "But there's no way anyone 
at the Bureau should suspect she even thinks that." 

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because we never told Skinner. We never filed a report. Even if 
someone went through her confidential personnel records and found 
she'd filed a petition to adopt a child, there's nothing on that form 
to indicate that Emily was biologically hers. And the lab guy who ran 
the tests did it as a personal favor. Nothing was ever officially 
logged. Someone is setting her up. Someone who knows exactly what we 
were looking into in San Diego."

"Why would somebody want to take Scully down?"

"To discredit her work. To get her fired, or killed, or land her in 
prison. To split us up for good, without launching a murder 
investigation. I think someone set a trap with that girl, and Scully 
fell right into it. And now the Bureau has legal cause to go after her 
with everything they've got."

Caitlin began an odd mewling, struggling in Mulder's arms as if 
picking up his agitation. He switched her to his right side, making an 
effort to calm down, nuzzling his stubbled cheek against her head. 

"So what do we do?" Kresge asked.

Mulder sighed, rubbing the girl's back in small circles. What do you 
say, Cait? he silently asked her. Do we trade ourselves for Scully and 
your sister? A life for a life, a heart for a heart? 

Caitlin remained stiff for a few moments, then slowly relaxed against 
him again, as if giving her assent.

He said, "Scully took that girl because she knew if she tried to go 
through normal channels, Amy wouldn't be there by the time the 
authorization came through. She's risked everything to save that 
child. Maybe I can explain that to Skinner."

"Okay," Kresge agreed, "but wait before you go clanking off to play 
the knight in shining armor. You go talk to Skinner right now, you may 
be the one walking into a trap, and Caitlin falls back into their 
hands." 

Kresge pulled out his cell phone and hit his own speed dial one. 

"Who are you calling?"

"My partner. Scully had a rental car. Let's see if he can track it 
down while we're getting some food. Right now I'm so hungry my head's 
starting to spin."

Mulder's arms tightened around the child he held. 

"Thank you," he said quietly, and began to walk again.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 

PART 7             

<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 


WINDOW ROCK, ARIZONA
MARCH 12TH, 12:32 PM


To an Easterner born in a small state, the Navajo reservation was 
huge. With 180,000 people spread over an area about the size of 
Virginia, Scully couldn't imagine how it could ever be considered 
crowded.

"Math," Leonora explained, "is different for Dineh." Living space 
wasn't divided among people, but sheep. Twenty-five sheep made a bare 
living for a small family and twenty-five sheep needed a lot of land 
to graze. Ella Boy, Amy's great-grandmother, had -- according to Amy -
- 'alottamany' sheep. And lived in an old hogan. And didn't speak 
English. 

"I figured she'd be on the Hopi Partition Lands." Leonora ran her 
finger up the road Amy had shown Scully, colored yellow on the 
reservation map. "The southern part of the rez is mostly prefab 
housing, but up there most of the people still live traditionally. And 
Amy speaks a dialect of Dineh that's only found on the HPL."

Leonora pointed to a rectangle in the middle of the map. "This is the 
Hopi Reservation. The Hopi live up on the mesas, here around Oraibi. 
This big triangle inside the rectangle is all theirs. We live in the 
surrounding areas, or did, until the government decided to move us 
out. Which helped me find Ella Boy pretty quickly, because the Land 
Commission office has every inch of this area mapped out."

"This here," she pointed now to a small settlement just below the 
bottom of the rectangle, "is Teesto. That's the nearest town. The Boy 
land is about twelve miles further out, behind Star Mountain, on a 
dirt road. You might make it after dark or early in the morning when 
the ground is still frozen, but right now we have snow melting all 
over the place. That means our roads turn into nice oily clay. And 
there's no one out there to help you if you get stuck -- Star Mountain 
area has pretty much been cleared out by relocation."

She handed the map to Scully, who accepted it with a grimace. "You 
want my advice?"

"Please," Scully answered, beating off a wave of both exhaustion and 
despair.

"Go back to Winslow, rent a four-wheel drive, and start out on the 87 
just before dawn tomorrow. You should make it up there before 
everything melts, but you'll have to wait until after dark to come 
back. I can draw you a vague map, but you'll need to stop at the 
chapter house in Teesto -- you can't miss it, it's a big building, 
like a town meeting hall. Ask around there and you should be able to 
find someone who can give you exact directions. My other advice is 
don't wear a suit and don't show your badge. The FBI doesn't have a 
good name in Indian Country no matter where you go, but out there 
you'll scare people to death. They'll think you're coming to impound 
their livestock. If you're just two women and a baby, you'll get a lot 
more help."

Scully stole a glance at Amy, who had found two little wood-and-wool 
sheep to play with, and was sitting on the floor happily making them 
converse in Dineh. It was the first time she'd seen Amy break her 
solemnity and act like a normal little girl. 

"I don't think we can wait another day," Scully said. "Maybe we could 
rent a jeep in Gallup and go tonight."

"No, you can't. First, it would take you four or five hours at night, 
even if you knew where you were going, which you don't," Leonora said, 
brusquely. "Second, it's set to snow again, and I doubt you've brought 
sleeping bags or winter clothing. You'll freeze to death if you get 
stuck or lost. And third, you can't just go knocking on someone's door 
in the middle of the night. We don't do things that way."

Scully walked over to the couch and sat down, letting her head fall 
into her hands. The constant dull throb was making it hard to 
concentrate on anything but how good it would feel to be unconscious 
right now. She was at the end of her rope, for once willing to admit 
it. Even to Mulder, if he had only been there.

God, what she wouldn't give to talk to him, to hear his voice again. 
Whatever his reason for lying, she could forgive him. 

She reached into her pocket, fingertips tracing the outline of her 
phone, but she already knew she wouldn't call. She'd gone too far to 
ask for Mulder's help. She was not going to drag him into this.

"Dana." Jane's voice was soft, almost seductive. "You need to sleep. I 
need to sleep. I can't do five hours in the dark on bad roads tonight, 
and neither can you. It's too dangerous."

"I know," Scully said, rubbing her thumbs against the pressure points 
just below her eyebrows. This time it was no help at all. It only made 
the pain spread deeper into her skull.

Hands closing around her wrists made her lift her head. "You're not 
well," Leonora said, kneeling to look into her eyes.

"I'm okay." Scully made herself smile, though her lips felt stiff. 
"You just keep meeting me on bad days."

Leonora shook her head. She drew the baseball cap carefully off 
Scully's head, wincing as she uncovered the gash. 

"I thought this wasn't quite your style."

Scully reached up and touched the lump at the top of her head. It was 
noticeably bigger than it had been earlier. 

"What happened?" 

"The bad men," came a small, angry voice. "The bad men hurt Dana." 

Scully looked around to see Amy starting to curl in on herself again, 
the wooden sheep clutched to her chest. Jane immediately went and 
picked Amy up, smoothing the child's back until she relaxed and put 
her arms around Jane's neck. 

"I'm all right," Scully said faintly. She had a terrible urge to put 
her arms around someone's neck too, and be carried off to bed. 
"There's been no sign of anything serious. It's just a bump and a 
headache."

"Uh-huh," Leonora agreed sarcastically, taking the cap out of Scully's 
hands and gently replacing it. "You're still not going anywhere 
tonight."

Scully glanced at Jane, who was watching her with real concern. 

"There's brave and then there's stupid," Leonora said, catching that 
exchange. "You're bordering on the second, and I'm not impressed." 

"Why are you doing this?" Scully asked. "You must realize it's 
dangerous."

"My mother taught me if you see what needs doing, do it." Leonora 
slipped one hand around Scully's upper arm and drew her up, her grasp 
light, but unyielding.  Her eyes spoke inarguably of warm dark places, 
and hours of safe rest.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


HATTAWAY RESIDENCE
MARCH 12TH, 2:17 PM


Scully barely managed to stay awake on the short journey to Leonora's 
house on the outskirts of Window Rock. Leonora talked on anyway, 
explaining the land dispute to Jane, sitting quietly in the back seat 
with Amy.

"We're from the HPL ourselves," Leonora was saying as she parked her 
car on a bed of coarse gravel. Scully opened her door and managed to 
pull herself out of the car, gazing up at the house. It was a BIA-
built prefab rectangle, but it stood just below a pine-covered hill, 
hidden from the town, so that it seemed more isolated than it was. 

"I had a sister with rheumatoid arthritis," Leonora continued, coming 
around to Scully's side of the car. "So when the first wave of 
relocation came, back in the '70s, some suits knocked on our door and 
convinced my mother to take advantage and get a modern house with hot 
running water."

She took Scully by the upper arm again, leading her slowly up a path 
made of boards set over the still-soft ground. "My mother didn't speak 
English very well, so she didn't realize she was signing away the 
whole family's land. We have some stubborn cousins still hanging on up 
there. It's a hard life, but it's how they want to live. I'm too 
spoiled for that." 

Leonora threw open the front door, which led right into the living 
room. She paused by a faded La-Z-Boy recliner to murmur something to 
the old woman lounging there, watching 'Jerry Springer' and flipping 
through a worn copy of Cosmo, her feet in stretched-out woolen socks 
comfortably crossed on the footrest. 

"Too much like white people, she'll tell you," Leonora added, patting 
the woman's shoulder. The woman responded in Dineh, calmly licking a 
finger to turn a page. Leonora laughed, but didn't translate.

She indicated the long, overstuffed sofa in the living room. "Make 
yourselves comfortable, I'll be right back."

The sofa faced a huge television in an old-fashioned console, the kind 
of thing Scully hadn't seen since she was a teenager. In fact, the 
whole house, what she could see of it through the living room arch, 
reminded her of her teenaged years, from the boxy layout to the 
oversized furniture to the extra-thin walls papered in a tiny fleur-
de-lys pattern. Government housing was government housing, no matter 
for whom it was intended. 

Scully laid back against the sofa. Not having to hold her head up any 
longer helped alleviate the pain, but not by much. There was a great 
welcoming chasm opening below her feet, a merciful darkness she longed 
for, but she was afraid that if she fell into it now, she would never 
climb out. 

"Not yet," came a distant voice. Scully opened her eyes to see Leonora 
leaning over her. "Let me have a look at you, and then we can decide 
if it's safe for you to sleep."

Scully cast a look at Jane, who returned it with a worried frown. Amy 
was sitting on the floor at Jane's feet, already mesmerized by the 
people arguing on the TV, watching with huge eyes and a half-open 
mouth. 

They would be all right for now. 

Scully allowed Leonora to guide her into one of the bedrooms, and sat 
obediently on the bed as ordered. She was surprised at the feeling of 
relief that flooded her body as Leonora removed the baseball cap. It 
had fit when Jane bought it for her. Could her entire scalp be that 
swollen?

"How long ago did this happen?" Leonora asked, touching around the 
lump with the gentlest of fingers. 

"Sometime around midnight last night."

Leonora felt Scully's forehead and frowned. "You've got a fever. And 
one hell of a headache, I bet."

Her calloused hand felt wonderfully cool and Scully stifled the urge 
to lean into it. 

"Yes."

"And you're worried there might be bleeding beneath the bone. 
Subdural."

Scully tried to hide her surprise at Leonora's ease with the 
terminology. "I think I'm okay, really. I just need some rest." 

"Let's see about that." Leonora picked up a small flashlight. Scully's 
mouth filled with the taste of vague, unpleasant memories as the light 
hit her full in each eye.

"I think you may be in luck." Leonora said, putting the flashlight 
down. "Your pupils are reacting fine. And you seem too coordinated, 
too lucid to have been hemorrhaging since last night. But you do have 
an infection starting to take hold in the wound itself. That's 
probably causing the worst of the headache."

"You sound like a doctor." Scully smiled faintly.

Leonora smiled back, patting Scully's folded hands. "No, but my mother 
had a good understanding of plants and how to heal with them. She 
taught me a lot." 

She pointed to the other side of the bed, to a bookshelf filled with 
medical texts, guides to herbs, a huge homeopathic materia medica. 
"That's the rest of my training. When my sons were little I ran for 
the books and dosed them with something vile every time they coughed. 
Now that they're grown, they'd have to be dying to admit they're sick. 
To me anyway."

She had been moving about as she spoke, making a pallet of folded 
blankets on the floor. Now she came to stand over Scully, her face 
soft with compassion. "This is going to hurt like hell. I can give you 
some whisky to take the edge off, but it would probably be better if 
you could get through it sober." 

"You're going to open the wound and clean it, yes?"

"Yes, but I'll use a sage brew instead of alcohol. It's a natural 
disinfectant. Works better and hurts a lot less."

Scully drew in a shaky breath and nodded. "I can get through it."

Leonora patted her arm. "I'll get Jane to come hold your head. You'll 
need to stay very still."

"Please, no." The thought of anyone else witnessing this was more 
frightening than the procedure itself. "I can lie still."

Leonora regarded her for a long moment. 

"You all think we're so stoic. Indians don't have a problem asking 
people for help."

"I'm not an Indian," Scully answered softly. She laid down on the 
pallet Leonora had made, folded her hands against her waist and set 
herself to endure what she knew was coming next.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


She was lying on her back, the lights bright in her eyes, and they 
were taking something out, they were inside her mind--

"Dana? Hey, Dana, are you with me?" 

Scully opened her eyes to find Leonora's dark face blocking the light. 
"You were starting to move around. Are you sure you don't want Jane 
here?"

"I'm fine," Scully breathed. "I'm fine. I was just drifting away 
somewhere."

"Try to keep your eyes open, then. Keep looking at me." Leonora 
directed the jointed lamp she was using for extra light away from 
Scully's eyes. "Better? Good. Look at me and listen to my voice. 
Okay?"

"Okay." 

"So, long ago the people were camping." She gave Scully an encouraging 
smile and a quick pat on the cheek. Scully heard the sound of scissors 
snipping, her hair being cut away from the wound.
 
"That's Indian for once upon a time. Long ago, First Man and First 
Woman came to Giant Spruce Mountain to hide from the alien monsters 
who had come from the sky and destroyed all their people." 

Scully's sharp intake of breath had less to do with the pain of 
Leonora probing at the infected area than the memory invoked by the words 
she'd just spoken. 

That day on the rocks seemed so far away now. Another Mulder, another 
Scully. Tears slid from the corners of her eyes, and Leonora wiped 
them away with a pad of soft gauze. Scully tried to concentrate on the 
soft sound of Leonora's voice as it wove the story of Changing Woman 
and White Shell Woman, of Sun and Water and the birth of the two 
children who were meant to save the world. 

She was almost drifting away again when Leonora did something that 
sent comet-tails streaking across Scully's vision. She opened her 
mouth to scream, but managed to remain silent. 

"So, Monster Slayer and Child of Water knew that they were born to 
slay the alien monsters, so that First Man and First Woman could have 
children and they could all live safely between the four sacred 
mountains." 

Leonora words came more slowly as she worked, the rhythmic, emphatic 
quality of her voice making a rope for Scully to hold on to as she 
dangled over the abyss of unconsciousness. 

"Now the alien monsters knew that Monster Slayer and Child of Water 
had been born to kill them. So the monsters came and tried to kill the 
children while they were still young and not very strong. And the 
children ran away, so the monsters would come after them and their 
mothers and First Man and First Woman wouldn't be hurt. But they ran 
along the path of the rainbow, which was forbidden to all but the holy 
people. And so they were in great trouble." 

The fire beneath Scully's scalp was slowly being quenched by the warm, 
pungent liquid Leonora was pouring through her hair. 

"This is the sage," Leonora interrupted herself to explain. "It will 
also help protect you from bad dreams, but you probably don't believe 
that." 

"Anyway, in time, the children found Spider Woman and they told their 
story and she believed them. She told them they would have to go to 
Sun, to the father of Monster Slayer, to learn the skills they needed 
to defeat the monsters, but the way was very dangerous and they were 
young and not very strong. So she gave them a hoop to hold out in 
front of them, to protect themselves on the journey. So it was many 
years later when Monster Slayer finally found his father, and they 
were grown men by then, and all their adventures to reach the Sun had 
made them ready."

Leonora lifted Scully's head and removed the low tin bowl that had 
caught the liquid. She wrapped Scully's wet hair in a towel, leaving 
the injured area clear. 

"And so Monster Slayer passed his father's tests, which is another 
very long story. And then Sun gave Monster Slayer his own special 
weapons, and Child of Water was given his own special weapons and they 
were taught the way to defeat the monsters." 

Scully shuddered slightly as she watched Leonora thread a suture 
needle. She had put stitches into people herself, but her patients 
tended to be beyond feeling. She could only dread having it done to 
her, awake.

"So when Monster Slayer and Child of Water had learned all they needed 
to know, they went back to the land of First Man and First Woman and 
were able to slay the monsters. Except the ones that Changing Woman 
told them to leave. Necessary evils you might call them -- and I'm 
going to put the stitches in now so please hold very still." 

Scully spread her hands wide on the carpet and made herself breathe to 
counts of four. 

"So the first monster that was allowed to live was Poverty, because 
without Poverty no one would think of anything new to improve our 
lives and so the people's minds would not grow. And Hunger was the 
second because without Hunger no one would learn to raise and share 
food, and the third was Cold because without Cold the Sun would scorch 
the earth, and -- just one more -- without Old Age there would be no 
need for children. And First Man and First Woman danced in celebration 
and soon there were children among them, and more children and more, 
and these are the Dineh people." 

Leonora put her hands firmly on Scully's cheeks and leaned over to 
smile at her, upside down. "And there. I'm done. You did well." 

"And Monster Slayer and Child of Water?" Scully asked weakly. "What 
happened to them once the alien monsters were gone?"

"They did what we all should do. Find someone to love, and build a 
hogan, and care for the earth and the sheep and the elderlies and the 
children."

She laid Scully's head down and wiped the last tears from her face. 

"Sleep now," Leonora finished, getting up and covering Scully with a 
soft woven blanket. She began to move around the room, clearing away 
her things, singing softly as she worked.

Scully let go of the rope, and found herself not tumbling down into 
darkness, but floating someplace warm and safe, rocked gently in the 
cadence of a strange melody, in a soft breeze of burning sage.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


ARROW WHEEL MOTEL
MARCH 12TH, 6:04 PM


Mulder had learned one other thing during a long, interminable day of 
waiting, a thing he found very surprising. Given a set of six large 
brightly-colored crayons and a pad, Caitlin could draw. He only had to 
remember to stop pacing now and again to change the paper or she would 
continue to draw right over the earlier images. 

Her drawings were no different than one might expect from a child of 
four -- shapes only vaguely discernible as houses, cars, people. What 
was remarkable was that she was able to convey anything at all. 

Mulder spread the pages out on the floor, walking around and over and 
through them. They were Caitlin's words, he realized, a story she 
wanted to tell him, but she was as hampered by her four-year-old 
fingers as by the effects of her illness. It was as if he had to 
explain his life to a Russian, using only the thirty or so words he 
knew of that language. 

One of them, he thought, looking at a balloon-headed figure that kept 
appearing over and over again, might be alien.

He imagined Scully standing there, arms folded beneath her breasts, 
obstinate as ever, telling him that he was just seeing what he wanted 
to see. 

Was this going to be the rest of his life, having arguments with 
Scully in his head?

By the time Kresge came back, Mulder was once again seated at the 
table, the girl perched on his knee. Caitlin was still drawing 
pictures while he stared off into space, pen poised above a piece of 
paper half covered with his scribbled notes. Another dozen or so pages 
sat beneath his elbow.

"That looks homey," Kresge observed, closing the door behind him and 
fitting the chain into the lock. 

Mulder had to blink several times before he could shift his focus onto 
the man standing in front of him. 

"What's up?" the detective asked, coming closer to look at Caitlin's 
work. 

"Picasso is creating masterpieces," Mulder answered. He slid the paper 
out from under Caitlin's hands and replaced it with a blank page from 
his pad. Caitlin stared down at it for a moment, as if envisioning the 
great art she would make, then proceeded to put the worn tip of her 
red crayon to the page and draw an uneven circle. 

Mulder's eyes felt about as wobbly as he looked around and realized 
he'd been sitting in the same place for hours. The street outside the 
window was already growing dark. A whole day wasted.

He looked down at Caitlin again, ruffling his hand through her hair. 
"Pretty amazing, huh?"

"It is," Kresge nodded. He glanced at the floor, littered with dozens 
of similar pages, and back to the pile of Mulder's notes. "What have 
you got?" 

"I've been trying to profile John Wallace." Mulder tossed his pen down 
and rubbed his free hand over his face, up and down as if trying to 
get the circulation going again. 

"Is there a point, now that he's dead?"

"Yeah. First, we haven't begun to figure out the answer to all this. 
How Amy got to the Children's Center. How Caitlin got to the orphanage 
where I found her. Who's behind this whole thing, how Wallace fits 
into it. Second, it's keeping me sane." 

Kresge nodded. That he obviously understood. 

He leaned over and helped himself to a swig of water from the bottle 
sitting open on the table. "Well, I have good and bad news here. We 
found the car. That was easy. Scully apparently phoned the rental 
company and told them where to pick it up."

Good old Scully, ever the law-abiding citizen, even when she was 
breaking the law. "Is that the good or the bad news?" Mulder asked.

"I guess it's the good. The bad is, I took that composite drawing to 
every used car lot and rental agency within five miles of where she 
left it. No one's seen her."

"My people haven't had any luck either," Mulder said. "Nothing on her 
credit cards, no ATM withdrawals. She's too clever to leave a trail, 
she knows exactly where we'd look."

"Well, the silver lining in that cloud would be that if you can't 
trace her, neither can anybody else."

Kresge pulled a newspaper out of his pocket and spread it on the 
table. The Arizona Daily Sun. He pointed to an article right on the 
front page, next to a picture of Amy Wallace and the headline: Hunt 
for Suspect in Double Murder.

"They haven't named her," he said. "Yet."

Mulder stood, swinging Caitlin up with him. She seemed momentarily 
confused at the change of scenery, then laid her head down on his 
shoulder, the crayon falling from her hand as her body relaxed. She 
felt hot, even through his t-shirt, a condition that had been coming 
and going over the last day.

"Mulder, put the kid down for a second," Kresge said. "We need to talk 
seriously here."

"She's fine," Mulder answered mechanically. "She likes the contact." 

Kresge gave an exasperated sigh. "You have this clockwork thing going, 
right? A call window every three hours. Did Scully use that window any 
time today?"

Mulder didn't answer.

"No, I didn't think so. If she's not calling, Mulder, it's only one of 
two reasons. She either can't, or she's chosen not to. My guess would 
be she's chosen not to, and you know why."

Kresge moved closer, his face growing kind and sympathetic now. Mulder 
recognized it as the good cop persona and wondered if Kresge's partner 
normally took the other role. 

"Mulder, I know you want to protect her. Believe me, I do too. But if 
you're going to continue to withhold information, you're on your own. 
I can't help you."

Mulder spread his free hand wide, as if to show it was empty of 
secrets. "What do you think I'm withholding?"

"What's the code she gave to your friends?"

Mulder sighed. "She's going underground. She's picking up a new set of 
identity papers in Albuquerque tomorrow. I'm going to try to head her 
off."

Kresge was doing a slow boil now, holding it in with admirable 
control. "And what? You're going to go with her, disappear into the 
sunset with your twins like some happy family and leave me holding the 
bag?"

"No. That's not my plan. I don't have a plan, but I can't just let her 
disappear." Mulder shook his head, turning away. "I'm sorry. We should 
never have involved you in this." 

"Well, I am involved, Mulder. Up to my eyeballs. It's about time you 
started acknowledging that."

Caitlin began to whimper in Mulder's arms, sensing his distress. He 
laid her on the bed, tickling her stomach until she grew calm again. 
Caitlin rewarded him with her funny, open-mouthed version of a grin, 
her eyes focused on the ceiling. 

He gave the girl her rabbit and turned around, making himself face 
Kresge again. 

The look on the detective's face wasn't quite what Mulder expected. It 
was the same expression that Scully often had when she was turning 
pieces of evidence around in her head, trying to find the edges that 
fit. 

"What?" he asked.

"Scully found some stuff before she disappeared." Kresge licked his 
lips and swallowed some more water. "Information on the families of 
two of the other girls. The parents of this one," he said, indicating 
Caitlin, "were killed a couple of days before Tom Hampton. And the 
other couple, the MacEntyres -- it went to another division, so I 
didn't know about it until Scully dug it up. But it was the same MO. 
Husband shot, wife cut. Same day as the Hamptons."

"A cleanup operation," Mulder supplied, coming back to take the chair 
across from Kresge. 

"Maybe. Maybe Caitlin's parents knew it was coming and tried to run. 
One of the houses Scully and I checked out the night we divided up 
those addresses was closed up like the people had gone away for 
awhile. It was probably theirs."

At last, Mulder felt the spark of a lead ignite his mental engine. "Do 
you have those files? Can we get your partner to check out the 
address?"

"Scully has them. She took it all with her when I was pulled from the 
case."

"Damn it." Mulder spat, starting to pace again. 

"There was one girl we never found," he suddenly remembered, turning 
back to Kresge. "Bethany MacEntyre. Was there something in those files 
about her?"

"I don't know. I never got a complete look at them."

"When I found Caitlin, there was another bed in her room." 

He thought of something then, dropping to his knees, searching through 
the papers he'd tossed on the floor until he found the one he 
remembered. 

Two rectangles, one next to the other, with sticks coming out of the 
bottom, and a flattened red circle at the top. 

"The circle is her, I've figured that much out. But look at this." 
Mulder spread the drawing flat on the table in front of Kresge, 
pointing first to one rectangle, then another. 

"Two circles. Two Caitlins. Or rather, one Caitlin, one Bethany. She 
saw Bethany in that place."

"Oh my god," Kresge said, picking up the drawing and staring at it in 
disbelief. "She is trying to tell you something." 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 

PART 8             

<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 


HATTAWAY RESIDENCE
MARCH 13TH, 8:07 AM


Light, white light.

She could hear whimpering, and hated herself. She couldn't stop the 
soft cries any more than she could stop the hot tears she felt 
dribbling down from the corners of her eyes into her hair.

-Oh God, why? Why are they doing this to me?

A face appeared above hers, a woman's face, gentle and concerned. The 
woman looked grey and worn, as if she too had been subjected to 
whatever was happening to Scully now.

"Shh," she whispered, laying a soothing hand on Scully's forehead. 
"The worst is almost over. There's only one more procedure. Then you 
can sleep."

-Penny?

"It's okay, Dana. I'm here to take care of you."

-What are they doing?

"Shh." Penny's eyes flicked upward, fear freezing her features as the 
other voices began to argue, but the hand on Scully's forehead never 
stopped its rhythmic caress. 

"I don't see the point in waking her. There's nothing she can do."

"She needs to know."

"She needs to sleep."

-What? What do I need to know?

Scully swallowed, paralyzed, hearing her own voice in her ears, not 
certain if she had opened her mouth. 

"Dana, you need to wake up now."

She managed to open her eyes long enough to see Jane bending over her, 
shaking her shoulder. Above them, there was no light. Only acoustic 
tile. A ceiling. A house. Leonora's house. 

Scully filled her lungs with air. She was safe.

"How do you feel?" Leonora asked, as Scully looked around.

She let her awareness drift back to herself, running through the 
ritual she had developed, waking up in countless hospitals over the 
years. Arms and legs, check. Belly -- no pain, no nausea, check. Lungs 
working easily, heart beating at a normal pace. Nothing down her 
throat or up her nose. Her scalp still burned, but the pounding 
fullness of her head was gone. She felt a general lassitude, a blurred 
heaviness she associated with having recently been unconscious, but 
nothing more. 

"Better," she answered, and managed a weak smile.

"Dana?" Jane's voice was quiet, but urgent. "We need to talk. 
Something's happened." 

She was alert enough to catch the warning look Leonora bestowed on 
Jane. "If you think you can sit up," Leonora added.

Scully considered the possibility, thought she might be able to do it. 
She let the two of them raise her up and maneuver her around to lean 
against the headboard. Only then did she notice that she was lying in 
a bed. Leonora's bed, she guessed, judging by the collection of family 
photos sitting on the dresser against the opposite wall. 

Leonora took the opportunity to remove the bandage tied around 
Scully's head, prodding gently around the outer edges of the wound. 

"It's much better. You want to see?" Leonora asked. Scully nodded and 
was presented with a small hand mirror. She steeled herself and 
looked. 

It was excellent work. The swelling was nearly gone now and the cut 
itself looked pink and clean, crossed over with four neat, tidy 
stitches. 

"Sage compress," Leonora smiled, holding up the damp, stained pad that 
had been inside the bandage. "Works every time." 

Jane was staring at Scully's head, unconsciously rubbing at her own 
right wrist. Scully reached for Jane's hand, remembering now that she 
had never taken the stitches out. 

"Done," Jane said, pulling up her sleeve.

"You should have been the doctor," Scully said to Leonora, letting the 
mirror and the hand that held it fall back to her lap. She suddenly 
felt drained in every sense. Even her voice sounded like air blowing 
through a hollow reed. 

Leonora put her hand on Scully's cheek for a brief, warm moment. 

"I'm going make you a nice echinacea tea. It won't taste very good, 
but it will help you get your immune system back up." 

She threw a quick hard look at Jane as she left. "You'd better tell 
her, since you woke her up."

"Tell me what?" Scully asked, when Leonora was gone. She'd closed the 
door quietly, but Scully could sense an anger that wanted to slam it 
hard enough to rock the flimsy house.

"Leonora sent her son out to Ella Boy's place early this morning. He 
just called from the chapter house in Teesto."

"And?"

"And. She's dead, Dana. Remember the snow we saw the night we got to 
Flagstaff? Apparently, up here it was one hell of a blizzard. It looks 
like she went out to find her sheep when the storm came up. She froze 
to death, not twenty yards from her house."

Scully closed her eyes. An old woman got lost in a snowstorm. An old 
Indian woman who'd lived in the same place her whole life and probably 
knew a storm was coming days before it got there. Accidents like that 
happened, surely they did. Was it only paranoia that made her sense 
the hand of someone else?

"We need to go," she said. "They probably haven't tracked us this far, 
but I'm not taking any chances. I don't want these people hurt for 
their kindness."

Her legs, when she stood, were much steadier than she expected. In 
fact, now that she was moving, getting her blood flowing again, she 
almost felt rested. Not for long, she suspected, looking around for 
the jeans she'd been wearing, but long enough to deal with 
Albuquerque. Once she had those papers, everything would be easier. 
She'd be official again, able to move around without worrying that 
every cop out there was looking for Dana Scully. She would be someone 
else.

She looked in the mirror and wondered what it would be like to have 
brown hair. 

"Sit down," said a cold voice. 

Scully turned, shocked to see Jane raising her hand, aiming at her 
with her own weapon. Scully sat down right where she was, her back 
scraping along the dresser. She couldn't have done much else at that 
point; her legs would no longer hold her.  

"I could kill you so easily," Jane said. 

"You could," Scully agreed after a moment. She drew in a careful 
breath, trying to take in this new situation.

"Whatever you have a mind to do," Scully said tightly, "please don't 
involve Leonora. You've got hundreds of miles of desert to shoot me 
in. Don't do it here."

"Why won't you tell me the truth?" Jane asked, the end of her nose 
beginning to go red. She sounded like she might cry at any moment. "I 
will if you will."

"The truth about what?" If Jane only knew how many truths Scully 
hadn't told, she'd probably be lying on the floor dead right now. 

"Who is Amy's mother? And don't say Jennifer Wallace, you know that's 
not what I'm asking."

The gun wavered in Jane's hand and Scully knew that the moment of 
danger had passed. She could take her weapon back, refuse to answer. 
Pick up Amy and leave, get a new name and disappear forever, leave 
Jane to fend for herself. 

Scully let her breath out in a sharp sigh, her head falling back 
against the dresser. She could. If only she were the kind of person 
who would do that. 

"Is it you?" Jane demanded.

"Yes," Scully said, surprised at the relief she felt, finally 
admitting it. 

"How could you just let them take your children like that?"

"I didn't. I didn't give them life. They were created, without my 
knowledge or consent. I didn't know any of them existed until last 
year, until I found Emily."

"So where is she?"

"I told you. She died. Of the same illness Denise had." Scully 
swallowed hard, as the relief quickly turned to something else and 
congealed in her throat. "It's a complicated story. One I'll tell you 
another time. Not now."

They stared at each other. Not a contest of wills between them, Scully 
realized, but a contest within Jane. Truth or dare.

"A man came to me," Jane said, her eyes full now, but still not 
spilling over. "When Denise got sick again. He promised he could make 
her well, they way they did before. He said he would come back for her 
when the treatment was ready. But she died before he did."

So, truth.

"Let me guess. An older man, who smelled like cigarettes?"

Jane nodded. "You know him?"

She gave Jane a grim little nod. Finally, the smoker had reared his 
ugly head. "Had you ever seen him before? Or since?"

"Not before. But he came back later, when I was in the hospital. He 
said the people who killed Tom would come for me again and I should 
ask you to take me into protective custody. He was very specific about 
that. Ask Agent Scully."

"Why me? Why not Mulder?"

"He wanted me to watch you. To stay with you as much as possible. To 
call him whenever I could and tell him what you were doing. Where you 
went, or if you had bad dreams."

Scully's hand flew automatically to the back of her neck. No. It was 
gone. There was no way. The man was making an educated guess based on 
what he knew about the functioning of the chip. Which meant he knew 
that she'd removed it and that after a certain time, her memories 
would begin to seep back.

She put that thought away to look at later.

"And what were you supposed to get out of this? Apart from your life, 
obviously."

Jane raised her head, eyes full of tears. Scully's stomach clenched 
tight. "They promised you your daughter back."

"He told me Denise had a twin, that she'd been taken when she was 
born, and he knew where she was. He said that if I did what he said, 
he would arrange a new life for us. A house and a job, anywhere I 
wanted. He said he'd see to it that we were so well hidden no one 
would ever be able to come after us." 

Her face crumpled, but the tears still didn't fall. "He showed me a 
picture. But it's not the girl in the one you have. And it's not Amy. 
I don't know who it is."

Scully covered her own face with her hands. Fool. She'd been a fool. 
How could she have been so blind? She'd thought she was being overly 
paranoid. She hadn't been paranoid enough.

"Tell me you never told him we were here," Scully said. 

"I, I called him from Flagstaff. When you went to get Jennifer," Jane 
sniffed, wiping at her eyes. "Then I thought you were dead and I 
thought I did it. I thought I killed you."

The tears broke free at last and Jane sat heavily on the bed. Scully 
moved quietly across the room, and reached out to snake a finger 
through the trigger of her weapon, carefully sliding it out of the 
woman's hands. 

"You can shoot me, I don't care," Jane cried. "But I swear to god, 
Dana, I never thought they would hurt you. I'm not a bad person. I 
just wanted Denise back so badly I wasn't thinking straight."

Scully moved away, holding the gun low, her finger off the trigger 
now. 

"Do you have that picture?" she asked. "The one he showed you?"

Jane nodded miserably. She reached into the top of her dress and drew 
out a folded rectangle.

Scully opened it against her hip, still gripping the gun in the other 
hand. The girl in this picture had hair to her waist, parted in the 
middle and growing thinner towards the ends, as if it had never been 
cut. Longer than Amy's. Closer to red than any of the others. 

It was Bethany MacEntyre, the girl Scully had seen when she blacked 
out in the morgue. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


ARROW WHEEL MOTEL, FLAGSTAFF
MARCH 13TH, 8:32 AM


Kresge woke with a start, surprised to find the sun well up. Yesterday 
had been exhausting, fruitless stomping from used car lot to used car 
lot, and he'd fallen dead asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. 
People who thought police work was glamorous watched too much 
television. During Kresge's now abruptly terminated career, solving 
crimes had been about 40% footwork, 50% sitting around shuffling 
papers of one sort or another, and 10% excitement. Some of which he 
definitely could have done without. 

He rolled over and found Mulder sitting in one of the vinyl armchairs, 
holding the girl. 

"I thought we were going to Albuquerque," Kresge said. 

Mulder didn't answer. 

"Hey, Mulder," Kresge repeated, louder. "I thought--"

"Caitlin's sick."

Kresge sat up, staring at the man. 

"She was running a low fever all day yesterday," Mulder went on, 
without inflection. "I checked on her at about midnight and she was 
burning up. She started having trouble breathing a couple of hours 
ago."

"Mulder." 

Kresge rolled off the bed, padding in his socks to where Mulder sat. 
The man must be in shock. Kresge felt like he was looking at himself, 
kneeling by Elizabeth's body, wanting to scream to the heavens to 
bring her back, unable to even open his mouth. 

He looked into Mulder's eyes, sharp and hollow at the same time. Yes, 
Kresge thought, that's what I must have looked like. 

"Let me take her to the hospital," he said quietly, reaching to slip 
his hands beneath the girl's back and legs. 

"No." Mulder held the child closer. "I promised no one would hurt her 
again." 

He stood, adjusting Caitlin so her head was cradled on his shoulder. 
She looked so much like she always had, asleep or simply not there, 
that it was hard for Kresge to feel any grief. Ending that poor life 
could only be a blessing.

"They could keep her comfortable until it's over," he tried again.

"I saw what they did for Emily. It didn't help."

"Mulder, we need to get to Scully. If we miss her now, we may lose her 
for good."

"I know." Mulder moved to the table, where Caitlin's toys were still 
laid out. A stuffed rabbit, some crayons and a thick pile of drawings. 
He selected one of the pictures, a scribbled forest of red with a blue 
sun and a balloon-headed stick figure down in the corner, and held it 
out.  

"You go. Give this to Scully, if you find her," he said. "Tell her 
that there *was* an orphanage. And there was a child. Tell her--"

He cut himself off, shoving the paper roughly at Kresge. "Here. Just 
take it."

Kresge accepted the drawing reluctantly, turning it over and over in 
his hands. "What are you going to do?" he finally asked.

Mulder laid Caitlin down on the bed. Her eyes were fluttering 
open, then closed, in time with her labored breath. He tugged her t-
shirt back into place, arranging her arms and legs before drawing the 
covers up around her and tucking them beneath her chin. The care with 
which he touched the child was heart-rending in its reverence and 
Kresge found he couldn't watch it. 

"I'm going to stay with Caitlin until it's over," Mulder answered, 
"and then I'm calling Skinner."

"Mulder, you'll be arrested."

"I don't care," he answered harshly. "If I can prove what those 
bastards did to her, I don't really give a shit what else happens."

Mulder sat beside the girl again, ignoring Kresge, cradling Caitlin's 
small fist in his huge hand.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


Jane had been sitting on the back porch for the last half-hour, 
watching Amy run around with Leonora's five-year-old grandson. 

For her entire life -- what she could remember of it -- she had been 
fascinated by the similarities of siblings, of parents and their 
children. Until Denise was born, Jane had never known what it meant to 
be part of another person. 

She had never tired of looking at her daughter. It made her feel real, 
to see a few pieces of herself in the shape and color of Denise's 
eyes, in her tiny rosebud mouth. Now Jane knew that Dana Scully had 
those same eyes, that same mouth -- even the same slight, delicate 
curve to her nose that Jane had always assumed came from Tom. 
Resemblances, she guessed, were easy to find when you were so 
desperately looking for them. 

Here, then, was the truth. Denise had never been a part of her. The 
promised child would never appear. And Amy belonged to someone else.

They would go to Albuquerque, Jane decided, and that would be the end 
of her journey. It was as good a place as any to try to start again. 
She had no need for protection now that there would be no child to 
protect. Maybe They would forget about her. And if They didn't, well, 
to whom would it matter? She would pass through the world as if her 
entire life had been a clerical error. No more than that. 

Jane stood and brushed the dirt off the back of her dress. Might as 
well get on with it.

The kitchen was the largest room in Leonora's house, a long bright 
rectangle divided into cooking and dining areas by a waist high-
counter. Leonora was standing over a long table sprinkled with flour, 
working with a fist-sized ball of dough, pressing it flat and spinning 
it over the heel of her hand like a miniature pizza. Scully, perching 
on a stool across from Leonora, had another ball, but seemed to be 
doing little more than rolling it around between her hands.

The two women fell silent as Jane entered, though at least Leonora 
looked up and gave Jane a smile.

"You ever had frybread?" she asked. 

Jane shook her head. The old woman, Leonora's great-aunt, was working 
an old-fashioned loom in the corner of the dining room, and the clack 
of the shuttle sounded like intermittent gunfire in the quiet room.

"Mine's pretty good, I'm told," Leonora said, laying her slab of dough 
down on the table, where it joined the ones she'd already done. She 
pulled another hunk off the big batch sitting in a wooden bowl by her 
elbow. "But my mother's was better."

"My mother makes an Irish stew I've been trying my whole life to 
duplicate," Scully offered. "You can have the exact recipe, it just 
isn't quite the same." 

"The secret of mothers," Leonora smiled. "I bet our kids will say the 
same of us."

Silence fell again, easy from Leonora's side, less so from Scully's. 
Jane reached for the bowl, avoiding looking at either woman. 

"How do I do this?" she asked.

"Flour your hands first." 

Leonora looked up as gravel crunched outside the house. Through the 
dining room window, a shiny green pickup could be seen pulling into 
the yard. She shot a significant look at Scully and left, pulling the 
dishtowel she'd been using as an apron out of the waist of her jeans 
and wiping her hands as she went. 

Scully was still turning the ball of dough around and around in her 
hands, not rolling it out so much as squeezing it in. 

"Leonora has a hogan on the Hopi side of the partition," she said, 
keeping her head down. "She's going to go out there this afternoon. I 
want you and Amy to go with her."

Scully glanced up, then quickly dropped her gaze again. "They're 
looking for two red-haired women and a child. It'll be safer for all 
of us right now if I go to New Mexico alone."

Jane watched Scully's hands flattening the dough, replaying the words 
in her head to make sure she hadn't gotten something wrong. 

"Why would you trust me with Amy?" Jane finally managed to ask. "After 
everything I just told you?"

"Because," Scully said quietly, laying her lumpy attempt next to 
Leonora's thin, evenly stretched circles. "I don't believe you would 
do anything to hurt her. And because you know if you try to disappear 
with her, we will all come after you. Myself, my partner, the FBI and 
whoever wants you dead. You won't stand a chance."

"I would never do that." Jane pressed her hands flat on the table to 
hold them steady, staring at the top of Scully's head, at the gauze 
pad poking out from beneath the bandana she was using to hide the 
bandage. "Amy is your flesh and blood. I would never try to steal her 
from you."

Scully looked up again, fixing Jane with an intense blue stare. "I'm 
trusting you with my life," she said. "If you call that man, he'll 
have me killed."

Jane met those familiar eyes with a strength she hadn't thought she 
could still summon. 

"I know." 

She understood now why something about Scully had always drawn her, 
though the recognition had been subconscious. Part of Denise was still 
here, in this woman whose child Jane had fed from her own breasts. It 
was a connection she couldn't begin to fathom.

"I'll go to Albuquerque and pick up my papers," Scully was saying. "As 
soon as everything is arranged, I'll come back." 

"And what about me?" Jane asked softly. "Where do I go then?"

Scully reached over and clasped Jane's hand. "Just trust me, Jane. You 
will be taken care of."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 

PART 9             

<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 


INTERSTATE 40
MARCH 13TH, 12:02 PM


Robert Hattaway was a tall, stocky 25-year-old, with his mother's 
round face and curly black hair but little of her eloquence. He seemed 
content to listen to the wind blowing through the open windows of his 
pickup as they rode past the trading posts and filling stations that 
lined the highway to Albuquerque. The endless thrum was almost enough 
to make Scully miss their first driver and his faded collection of 
tapes. 

She tugged the baseball cap down over her face and sank into her seat, 
trying not to think about what might be waiting. A package, a squadron 
of police, a sleek dark sedan with men in suits and thin black ties. 

One night, years ago, she had driven down an empty road from 
Farmington, on her way to connect with this very highway. They had 
come from nowhere, jeeps and helicopters and the bright white light. 
If her abduction had left her with any trace of her former faith in 
the government she served, They took it with them that night when They 
took her files, disappearing as abruptly as They'd arrived. And she 
drove back to DC, alone, her hands empty of all but the fear that 
Mulder was dead, that she had somehow failed to protect him.  

She'd been given another responsibility now, not only for him, but for 
two other lives. Whatever she had to do to protect them, she was not 
going to fail this time.

"Could we pull over soon?" she asked, tilting her head up so that she 
could look at Robert. "I need to make a call. And I could do with some 
coffee." 

Robert smiled. He was a man who liked his coffee, she'd seen that at 
breakfast. "Laguna," he offered. "Got a pay phone too."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


LAGUNA, NEW MEXICO
MARCH 13TH, 12:12 PM


Scully stood at the phone booth, hand on the receiver, wondering if 
They would be tapping her mother's phone, if their surveillance could 
really be as thorough as that.

She could just imagine trying the clockwork scenario on her mother. 
Here Mom, I'm going to give you a number. Write the last four digits 
down backward. Now go to a pay phone and dial the number as you wrote 
it. Not as I read it, that's for the mean old men who are listening so 
they can run a trace and drive out to that phone while I'm nice and 
safe somewhere else. Now we're going to do this on the hour, every 
three hours, from 6 AM till midnight, until I can surface again.

Out of the question. By the time Scully got her mother to understand 
what she was asking and worked through the resulting maternal anxiety 
attack, there would be cigarette smoke and someone forcing her into 
one of those featureless black sedans.

"Hello?"

Scully blinked in surprise at her mother's warm, familiar voice. She 
didn't remember dialing.

"Mom? Hi, it's me."

Gone were the days when that might be answered with "Which me?" Scully 
had not thought that she and her sister sounded much alike, but her 
mother had never been able to tell them apart on the phone. 

"Hi, sweetie. How are you? Are you home?"

"No, I'm not. I'm still on a case."

"Bill said you came by to see him. I didn't know you were out in San 
Diego."

Great. Trust her brother to tell their mother everything, and probably 
a few opinions of his own on top of that. It was hard to believe that 
once upon a time they had kept each other's secrets. 

"I wasn't planning on being there." Well at least that was the truth, 
Scully thought, and took a stabilizing breath. "Mom, there's something 
I need to ask."

"Okay." She heard a veil of wariness fall over her mother's voice. So 
light, only one of Maggie's children would pick it up. It was the 
sound of her mother when she knew she was going be asked something she 
didn't want to answer. Mom, how come you're mad at Daddy? I'm not mad 
at Daddy, sweetie, I'm mad at the Navy. Are we moving again, Mom? 
Nothing lasts forever, Dana, only the earth and God's love.

"Dana? Honey, are you still there?"

"Mom, this is going to sound really strange, but...I've been having 
these dreams." Dreams, yes, better than visions. Dreams, Maggie Scully 
understood. Talk to her about visions and her mother was likely to 
haul her off to Father McCue the moment she got home. If she got home.

No, don't think about that.

"Dreams about what?" her mother was asking.

"I've been dreaming...Mom, I don't know how to ask this, but was 
Melissa a twin?"

"A twin?" The veil of wariness lifted completely now, a note almost of 
relief in her mother's voice. "No, Dana, she wasn't. Where on earth 
did you get that idea?"

"But were you awake when she was born?"

"Awake? No, not for Melissa. They did tend to knock us out in those 
days. You, I was awake for. We were having dinner with Admiral Burdock 
-- well, he was still a Captain then -- and we were laughing so hard. 
I guess you wanted to see what all the fun was about because suddenly 
there you were, on your way. And your father couldn't get the car to 
start, he was so nervous--"

"Mom." She didn't need to hear the story of her birth, practically on 
the Burdock's dining room table, one more time. 

"Okay, okay. So, what exactly were you dreaming?" 

Scully could almost see her mother settling back, phone caught between 
her shoulder and her ear, hands wrapped around a nice warm cup of 
coffee. It was a picture she'd seen a million times as Maggie consoled 
herself in new surroundings, talking to friends thousands of miles 
away. It had never really occurred to Scully before how hard her 
mother must have found their life. All the usual agonies of starting 
over in new places, compounded by four kids grumbling and whining and 
their father usually sent straight off to sea. 

"Mom, I love you." The words she spoke so rarely popped out of her 
mouth and she understood that this was really all she had called to 
say. 

"Dana?" Concern now, mother-radar on alert. Thirty-five years old and 
the damn thing still worked. "Honey, is everything okay?"

Scully reached for the phone as if she could reach through it, stroke 
her mother's familiar face. She closed her eyes and bit her lip 
against the words she wanted to say. 

No, Mom. No, it's not okay. I've done everything wrong, screwed up 
with Mulder, screwed up with you, and Bill, and Missy, and if Dad were 
here he'd be reading me the same riot act he read Charlie when he got 
Marilyn pregnant. Responsibility for one's actions. The need for 
family. I did want a family, Mom, but I wanted a career too and now 
all the choices seem to keep making themselves and I don't know what's 
right, I don't know what to do. Like you used to say, the world will 
go as it will and not as you or I would have it. I know you always 
said you looked forward to my children, and I have one now but how can 
I raise a child on the run, how can I not run, how can I stick around, 
waiting for Them to take her, if I were even allowed to keep her after 
what I've done, and I've done things that you and Dad would not be 
proud of, things that can't be taken back, and even if I could, if I 
could just be what I was, then I'm just getting older, and I'm going 
to be alone and I know that you are too, but it's one thing when 
you've had your husband and raised your kids and another when you've 
always been alone and I know you can't live forever, Mom, and when 
you're gone I'll have no one, there'll be no one who knows me, who 
knows the real Dana -- and don't say Bill or Charlie because they 
haven't been part of my life for years and you know it. Or maybe 
there'll be no Dana left after this, I'll just be Scully FBI, I'll be 
like Skinner, like Nancy Spiller, my forensics instructor they call 
the Iron Maiden, all those people who work and work and work because 
there's no reason to go home, there's nothing else in their lives, and 
who am I fooling? I already am one of those people, and I don't want 
to be, Mom, but I don't know how to be anything else anymore, I don't 
know how to be with someone, I waited too long and there's something 
wrong with me now and I tried, I tried with Mulder and I destroyed 
everything that we ever had between us and I don't know if I'll ever 
see him again, and even if I do, I don't know how to make it right, 
and I'm scared, Mom, I'm scared, I don't know if I can ever come home 
and this may be the last time I even get to hear your voice-- 

"Dana? Honey, come on. Talk to me. What's the matter?"

Scully forced her voice into a higher, brighter register. "It's okay, 
Mom. I'm okay. I need to go now." 

"You don't sound okay, Dana."

"I am, I'm just tired. It's been a hard case." She paused, trying to 
gather herself back together. "I don't think I'm going to be home 
anytime soon, so don't worry if I'm not. Okay?"

"You'll call when you are?"

Scully swallowed hard. "Of course."

"You know, Dana, you can call just to talk. You used to do that all 
the time."

"I know, Mom. I've got to go."

She slipped the phone gently back into its cradle, standing before it 
as she'd stood before her sister's casket, unable to turn around and 
walk away.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


CENTRAL POST OFFICE, ALBUQUERQUE
MARCH 13TH, 1:37 PM


He would not have found her, he was certain, if he had not seen the 
short woman standing near the held mail window lift a card to her face 
and squint at it in a way that was suddenly familiar. 

Even up close, Scully was almost unrecognizable. In cheap jeans and a 
grubby t-shirt, her bright hair pushed mostly under a baseball cap 
that didn't suit her face at all, she looked scrawny and waifish. More 
like a strung-out kid from the streets than the well-groomed federal 
agent he knew.

He slipped up behind her and wrapped a hand around her upper arm.

"It's me, Dana. Please. Don't run."

Perhaps it was the fact that his voice carried a plea and not an order 
that stayed her feet. "I'm not here to hurt you," Kresge said. "I just 
have a message from Mulder."

Her body relaxed a little, enough for him to believe that it would be 
okay to let go. At last she looked up and he could see what the days 
had done to her. She was not insane, not in the way he or Mulder would 
understand it, but something inside her had definitely cracked. This 
was not the same woman who stood in his living room a week ago, rising 
on her toes to kiss him. Not even the one who was so strange and 
distant over breakfast two days later. This was Scully stripped down 
to her bare essence, running on nothing but fierce determination.

He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and drew out the paper 
Mulder had given him. Scully spread it open between her hands like a 
king's proclamation, her face unreadable, her eyes flicking sharply 
from image to image.

"What is this?" she demanded at last.

"There was an orphanage, Scully. And there was a child. Her name is 
Caitlin."

"Oh, god." 

She closed her eyes and swayed. He stepped forward without thinking, 
catching her around the waist and pulling her to lean against him. She 
did not hug him back, but she made no move to break away either. 

"Let's get out of here," he said, bending his head to pitch his voice 
only for her ears. "We have a lot to talk about."

She didn't answer. 

"Scully?"

He moved back to see her face, and she slid to the ground.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


She was on the grey plain, featureless but for a dim shape on the 
horizon. Scully hurried toward it, urgency moving her across the vast 
expanse of nothing in giant, level steps. 

At last she was close enough to see the shape for what it was -- 
Mulder, sitting in an armchair, cradling a child. 

Scully took the last steps and knelt at his feet, gazing upward into 
his face. Something cracked open inside her, everything she had hidden 
for so long spilling out, sending the grey mist whirling wildly around 
them. Mulder and her daughter, so beautiful together, his hand 
cradling the back of the child's head, slender fingers softly rubbing 
at her scalp. 

For a moment, she was certain he saw her and she whispered his name, 
reaching for him, but her arms would not bridge the distance. Mulder 
closed his eyes, holding the child closer, tears spilling from beneath 
his lashes. 

And there were hands at her shoulders, moving her away. Melissa took 
her place, bending to lift the child from Mulder's arms. She moved in 
the direction from which Scully had come, whispering something that 
was lost in the wind.

-Melissa?

Her sister turned, face wan with disappointment. The girl yawned and 
stretched and looked around, rubbing her eyes as if waking from a long 
sleep.

"This is Caitlin," Melissa said. 

-No. No, Missy, I tried.

"That's not it, Dana. This is right." She indicated the girl in her 
arms. 

-Then what was it about? If they were all meant to die, what was this 
all about?

"Look inside yourself, Dana. Feel yourself. Feel your heart."

-My...?

She turned around, but Mulder was gone. There was nothing left but a 
great heaviness in her chest. And then she was moving through space at 
a sickening speed. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


At last her eyes flew open. She saw whirling, opened her eyes again 
and saw the bottom of a man's chin, needing a shave. She wondered why 
she had bothered to notice something so mundane when Kresge looked 
down, and all motion stopped. 

"Dana?"

He was carrying her, she realized. Carrying her and walking as fast as 
he could with her limp weight in his arms. 

"Just lie still," he said, hitching her up higher. "I've got you, 
you're safe."

She swallowed and breathed, trying to force air into her stiff lungs. 
"You can put me down," she answered, her voice rough, but strong 
enough to carry. "I'm okay now."

"The hell you are," Kresge retorted, but he set her back on her feet, 
holding her against his side as they slowly walked to his car. 

Kresge dug in his pocket for the keys, got them out and unlocked the 
passenger door. "You don't move," he ordered, putting his hand on her 
shoulder as she lowered herself into the seat. "I'm going to get you 
some water. I want you here when I get back."

She nodded, still disoriented. Water sounded like a wonderful idea, 
the clear coolness of it running down her throat, washing away the 
last of the sediment lodged in her chest. 

Scully reached up and felt her head. The hat was gone, fallen off she 
guessed, but the bandana she had tied over the gauze bandage was still 
in place. She flipped down the mirror and adjusted the blue cloth, 
making sure the bandage was completely covered, frowning briefly at 
the awful picture she made. 

The papers, thank god, were still in her back pocket, where she had 
stuffed them after Kresge grabbed her arm. They were a bit bent now, 
but that only contributed to their authenticity. Birth certificate, 
driver's license, Visa card, social security, all in the name of Mary 
Margaret Wilson. The documents were clipped neatly inside a passbook 
for a savings account containing $5,000. 

Scully thumbed through the papers quickly. It was all as she'd 
expected. The only thing that had not been there when they put the 
package together years ago was the extra birth certificate. Mary 
Wilson now had a daughter -- Sarah Louise, father unknown. 

It was Frohike's blessing; the name of his mother, many years gone.

Scully blinked away her tears and shoved the documents back into the 
package, pulling out a small blue envelope. It contained a postcard of 
the Washington monument. On the back, where the address should be, 
Frohike had written 'Truth or Consequences'. 

She was still trying to puzzle that one out when Kresge returned. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


Truth or Consequences, Scully finally remembered, was a place, not a 
challenge. A small town on the highway heading south from Albuquerque, 
toward El Paso. 

"Just the place for me to retire, eh, Scully?" Mulder had said, and 
she had laughed. She was driving, god knows where, and he was playing 
his favorite road game, pulling strange names off the map. 

"Hey, Uravan! Urabus, Uracar! Loveland, now that would be the place. 
Flasher, where all the old men go." 

Scully stared out the window as the road wound south, but the scenery 
didn't change and her chest ached with missing him.

She and Kresge arrived at the post office just before it closed. This 
time she showed Mary Wilson's driver's license when she was asked for 
ID. The clerk glanced at it, nodded, and handed over another blue 
envelope. Scully put it in her back pocket without looking at it.

"This is where we part," she said, rejoining Kresge, who was leaning 
against his dusty car, arms folded as he stared off down the quiet 
main street of the town. 

"Dana, I'm not leaving you here alone."

"John." She let herself move closer, touching her fingertips to the 
hair that fell over his forehead. She dropped her hand as he looked 
down at her, a curious hurt written in his eyes. 

"It's all been arranged," she said. "I'm not alone." 

"What do I tell Mulder?" he asked, his eyes still searching hers for 
clues. 

She held her expression carefully neutral. "Just tell him I'm safe. 
That he should do whatever he needs to do to save himself."

"What about saving you? Scully, if you disappear now, it's like 
admitting that you're guilty. Forget about Mulder, about your work. 
What about your family? Do you want them to believe you went crazy and 
started killing people?"
 
"No, I don't," she said heavily, "but I'm beyond believing that the 
truth will save me. These people will make sure that the evidence I 
need to prove the truth disappears. They'll have Amy and I'll be a cop 
doing life in a maximum security prison. Exactly how long do you think 
either one of us will last?"

"Can you live like that? Without any of the people that love you? 
Lying every single minute of your life?"

She closed her eyes as a wave of despair broke over her head. 

Just put one foot in front of the other and keep on going, she heard 
her sister say. You'll know where you are when you get there. 

Despair ebbed, then disappeared. "If it keeps Amy alive and out of 
Their hands, yes," she answered. "Yes, I can live like that."

She rose on the balls of her feet and touched her lips to Kresge's 
cheek, surprising both of them. "Thank you for trying," she murmured. 
"You've been a good friend."

She turned then, and made herself walk away from him.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


ARROW WHEEL MOTEL
MARCH 13TH, 5:58 PM


The motel was a slight cut above their usual fare, fancy enough for a 
paper strip over each towel, assuring him of its hygienic cleanliness. 
Mulder ran a washcloth under cold water and pressed it against his 
swollen eyes, wishing for Scully in yet another way, wishing to see 
the satisfied little smile she sometimes gave when his choice of 
accommodation actually showed a bit of taste. 

The irony of it was unbearable. Six years he'd spent bringing a 
beautiful woman to one motel after another and never making love.

He straightened abruptly and stared at himself in the mirror. Four 
days unshaven, eyes rheumy, his uncombed hair sticking up on one side 
of his head -- he looked like he was living in hell. He had illegal 
custody of a child who was never meant to exist and Scully was out 
there somewhere, possibly wounded, possibly dead herself, while he 
stood here like an idiot thinking about taking her to a motel. His 
capacity for brain farts in the face of disaster was truly disgusting.

He threw the washcloth back in the basin and retraced his steps to the 
bed where Caitlin lay. Mulder wished he had some faith, some ritual to 
guide him through what he had to do now. He drew the blanket up, but 
he could not bear to cover her face. All he could do was fold it 
beneath Caitlin's arms, lay her hands upon her chest. After a moment, 
he reached over and picked up the rabbit, already grey around the 
ears, and tucked it in the curve of her elbow. 

They would cut her up now, poke and prod and test. She was no longer a 
child, a life, however stunted. Only a body. Evidence. 

Mulder walked away from the bed and yanked the curtains open to the 
sunset, his eyes stinging with bitterness. Watching Caitlin's dim 
light fade out, he had begun to understand Scully at last. Where was 
there to put a rage so huge that it left no room to breathe, no room 
to think? Give him a target right now and he would lash out, unburden 
himself through violence. Scully, having a gentler soul, had directed 
it inward, stamping her anger down until it had coated everything with a 
thick black tar, leaving her no ability to feel anything else.

The cell phone ringing in the pocket of his jacket effectively 
derailed his train of thought. He couldn't remember if he'd left it on 
after making the call to Skinner. 

"Mulder, it's me."

For a moment, he couldn't breathe, stunned as he was to hear her soft 
alto on the other end. In that moment he knew he'd given up the hope 
of ever hearing her voice again.

"Scully," he crooned, unable to hide the relief singing out of him. 
"Scully, are you all right?" 

"Fine. It's going like clockwork."

He looked around frantically for a pen. Saw nothing. "Okay, give it to 
me. I'll remember."

"505-575-8982."

He repeated it back and hung up, then dialed from the motel phone, 
reversing the last four digits. 

"Hi," she answered. 

"Hi." A moment of silence, while he tried to assemble his thoughts, 
tangled inside his brain like a pile of pick-up sticks. He extracted 
the first, the most important. "How are you?" 

"I'm fine." 

Yes, of course she was fine. What else had he expected? Next question. 
"Where are you?"

"It's okay, everything's fine."

"Scully..." He listened to the silence, imagined he could hear her 
breathe. "Scully, the Wallaces are both dead."

"I know."

He let that thought sink in, followed it to its end. If she knew, 
she'd been there; if she'd been there, the blood was hers; if the 
blood was hers, she was not fine. Ergo, if she knew, she was not fine. 

He was proud of himself, able to pull such clear logic out of the mess 
inside his head. 

"Mulder," she was saying. "Listen. I can't talk. I just wanted you to 
know, whatever they tell you, whatever they try to make you believe -- 
I always knew what I was doing. Always, Mulder. Everything."

Her use of the past tense sent him hurtling into panic. He gripped the 
bedspread as if it were her hand, desperate to hold on to that fragile 
connection. 

"Scully, please." He was begging now, a violation of her dignity as 
well as his own, but he didn't care. "Let me come with you."

He heard her sigh, a long, shaky exhalation. He could picture her 
face, pale as plaster and just as lifeless. Except for her eyes. She 
could blank her face, but she could never blank her eyes. 

"No, Mulder. That would make you an accessory."

"Damn it, Scully, do you think I care about that?"
 
"Mulder...Mulder, you know how you once said that lines had to be 
drawn? Well, it's my turn to draw one, for you. You've always had your 
holy grail. This one is mine."

"Scully--"

"Please, Mulder. This time you have to let me go."

She took a breath, as if there was something else she wanted to say, 
then there was a soft click, and she was gone. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 

PART 10             

<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 


TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, NEW MEXICO
MARCH 13TH, 6:10 PM


Scully had been sitting in a nice little mom-and-pop diner, pushing 
around an order of baked chicken and potatoes while her watch ticked 
inexorably toward 6pm. Then the waiting was over. 

It was as her father had taught them. Never leave a place without 
saying goodbye to everything you'll miss.

She had tried to say goodbye, but there was so much else she had not 
said. Words that wanted to tumble from her mouth and fall on him like 
thick snow, covering the ugliness of the past days with a blanket of 
crystalline beauty, each flake unique and radiant. 

She could not say even one without breaking apart.

Scully turned from the phone, hands shaking as she pulled the blue 
envelope out of her pocket. The postcard this time was a picture of 
Alice in Wonderland. On the other side, it said only '1872N12.' 

"Your friends are weird," she remembered telling Mulder, after she'd 
met the Gunmen for the first time.

"No," he had answered. "You just have to understand their tiny little 
minds."

She paid her check and asked the woman at the register if she knew 
where she might find North 12th Street. 

"Oh, sure," the woman answered, taking Scully to the door of the diner 
and pointing down the road. "Third corner, then make a left." 

Scully smiled a goodbye and tried not to let her weary feet shuffle as 
she walked down the street. She knew the woman would be standing at 
the door, watching to make sure she took the correct turn. It was the 
kind of gesture her mother would have made for a tired stranger lost 
in Annapolis. 

Around the corner, Scully let herself slow down. She doubted she'd 
been followed, but she kept an eye out for any cars or pedestrians 
that looked out of place in this casual, working-class neighborhood. 
She couldn't afford to relax. Not yet.  

Number 1872 was a plain adobe house two blocks down the quiet street. 
Whoever lived there was at home in the desert -- unlike many of the 
houses she'd passed, there were no water-wasting attempts to create a 
lawn or grow flowers that were native to the more humid areas back 
east. This front yard sported a rock garden holding a dozen varieties 
of healthy-looking cactus and a carved wooden bench beneath a tall 
juniper tree.

Scully made herself climb the porch steps, but she couldn't lift her 
hand to ring the bell. Instead she turned around, staring at the first 
reddish hint of sunset tinting the clear blue of the sky. Night 
encroaching upon the day, as Mary Wilson would encroach upon her now, 
but Dana Scully would not rise again with the dawn.

The door suddenly opened behind her, revealing a middle-aged woman 
wearing hiking shorts and a loose t-shirt. Straight, greying hair fell 
to her shoulders in a feathered bob, a style that looked like it had 
been her haircut of choice for the last twenty years.  

"I thought I heard someone out front," she said, looking Scully over 
with narrowed, slightly suspicious brown eyes. 

The picture on the card suddenly made sense. Thanks, Frohike, Scully 
thought. And goodbye.

"I'm looking for Alice," she said, stepping forward and extending her 
hand. 

The woman's face broke out into a smile that radiated from the corners 
of her eyes right back into her hair. "I was beginning to worry about 
you," she beamed, ignoring the hand to pull Scully into a quick hug. 
"Come right in, you look like you need a rest."

She led Scully through a darkened living room, the last light painting 
the floor with thin golden stripes through the bamboo blinds. The 
kitchen at the back was obviously the place Alice lived; a room 
painted in soft desert tones, stacked with books, papers and 
magazines, the table doing desk duty for an old IBM Selectric. 

Alice dished up bowls of hot vegetable soup, content to eat in 
silence. Scully was grateful, both for the food and the lack of 
questions. She wasn't up to lying, and the truth was beyond 
explanation.

"So you're a friend of Melvin's," Alice said as they were finishing. 

Scully's mind had gone foggy from lack of sleep and warm tasty food, 
and it took her a moment to remember that Melvin was Frohike's first 
name. 

"I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head slightly to clear it. "Yes."

"He's a nutcase," Alice grinned. "But a good-hearted one."

Scully smiled, still surprised to think that Frohike would consider 
her a friend. He'd always seemed to be a guy's guy, not well-versed in 
the company of women. Too obsessed to be interested in anything else 
but work. Like Mulder. 

Like herself. 

Her smile faded. "How long have you known him?" Scully asked, chasing 
the last piece of broccoli in her soup. The nerves that had ruined her 
appetite in the diner were gone now, and she was actually hungry 
enough to eat another bowl.

"Oh, years and years. We go all the way back to the Jane network. They 
arranged safe abortions, before it was legal."

"I've heard of it. Frohike was involved in that? It doesn't seem his 
style."

"Peripherally." Alice lifted her bowl to slurp the last liquid down. 
"I don't know what happened to him in Vietnam," she continued, wiping 
her mouth, "but when he came back he joined a group that was helping 
boys evade the draft. Our paths used to cross now and then. I took 
some boys across the Mexican border for him, and when I came across 
women who needed to run away from someone, Melvin would help us forge 
papers for them." 

Alice set her bowl back on the table. "So, this is how it works. I 
take you to El Paso. The Alice there will take you across the border, 
to Lucero. We have a safe house for you to stay in until things calm 
down. Then we'll see about a permanent location back in the US."

Scully nodded, beginning to have trouble keeping her eyes open. 

"You've got time for a nap," Alice offered. "We don't have to be in El 
Paso until midnight. "

"I'm going to have to request a change in plans," Scully said, forcing 
herself to sit up. "I had to leave my daughter with some friends on 
the Navajo reservation. I need to go back and get her before I can go 
anywhere else."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


COCONINO COUNTY JAIL
MARCH 13TH, 10:32 PM  

It had been a long time since Mulder had seen the inside of a jail 
from this side of the bars. Long enough that he'd forgotten what his 
mind could do when he had nothing to focus on but the hard bench 
beneath his ass. 

"Hey, Mud," snapped the sergeant, a porky, sweaty guy with a Brooklyn 
accent that was almost comically incongruous in the Wild Wild West. He 
rattled the keys to Mulder's cage invitingly. "Got someone wants to 
talk to youse."

"Charmed," Mulder replied, standing and holding his hands behind his 
back, wincing at the slap of the cuffs. 

"Take those off," Skinner said harshly, from somewhere behind him. 

Mulder turned slowly to face his boss. The twittering in the pit of 
his stomach was the same as he remembered from a sharp November night 
twenty-seven years before. It wasn't so much fear of the authority he 
was about to face, as it was knowing that he had done nothing and 
everything wrong.

"Come with me." Skinner turned on his heel and led the way to one of 
the interrogation rooms.

The room, Mulder noticed, was cinderblock on all four sides. No 
observation window. Skinner sat on one side of the collapsible table, 
gesturing for Mulder to take the only other chair. He saw no tape deck 
anywhere, no place for a microphone to be hidden in the seamless 
walls. The room, in fact, was so small that Mulder wondered if they'd 
cleared out a storage closet especially for this. 

He sat and folded his hands on the table, staring at Skinner with a 
blank countenance that was probably being mistaken for defiant. 
Defiance was actually the last thing on Mulder's mind at the moment. 
Defiance required a kind of energy he no longer had. 

"You look like shit," Skinner said at last. He rubbed a hand over his 
bald head, an odd gesture that might have been left over from the 
years when he'd had hair. Mulder waited. This was Skinner's show now; 
he was just here to answer the questions.

"I had a look at the girl," Skinner said at last. 

He looked away, out a nonexistent window, his jaw moving from side to 
side the way it always did when he couldn't say what he felt and 
couldn't find an adequate substitute. 

"Does Scully know she's dead?" Skinner finally asked.

"No," Mulder answered. "Not yet."

"I don't understand!" Skinner exploded, slamming his hand down on the 
table. "Why the hell did the two of you go off on your own with this?"

Mulder waited until Skinner had tugged his tie back into place and 
retrieved the temper that had skittered away from him.

"It was private," was his quiet answer, and to his surprise, Skinner 
seemed to accept it.

"These five girls," he said, leaning forward with his hands clasped on 
the table. "You have absolute proof that they're genetically Scully's 
daughters?"

Mulder nodded. 

"Where is she, Mulder?"

Mulder looked him straight in the eyes. "I don't know. At this point, 
I wouldn't tell you if I did."

"Why not?"

Rage pushed its way upward from beneath his ribs. Mulder tried to stop 
himself, but he didn't have the energy to hold his tongue, and to tell 
the truth, he didn't care. "Because, sir, we're still wondering if 
someone is using you, or if you deliberately threw Scully into a snake 
pit."

The color draining from Skinner's features gave Mulder the answer that 
he needed. 

"Is that what she thinks? That I did this?"

Mulder sat back, relief making his limbs twitch. 

"Does Scully think I set her up for this?" Skinner demanded.

"We weren't sure. I took a chance. That's why I've turned myself in." 

Skinner folded his arms and settled back in his chair. "You said you 
had a story to tell. I'm ready to hear it."

"Amy Wallace was taken from her parents. Scully found her in the 
Children's Center in San Diego. I don't think the people at the Center 
knew what was going on, but once having found her, Scully was afraid 
to take the chance of leaving Amy there. We'd already had other 
important evidence disappear."

"What happened out at the Wallaces'?"

"I'm not sure," Mulder admitted. "I wasn't there. But I think when the 
forensic evidence has all been examined -- provided it isn't tampered 
with -- you'll find it points to Wallace having murdered his wife 
before Scully even got there."

"Her blood was found in the bathroom as well as through the house," 
Skinner said. "And Wallace didn't have Jennifer's blood on his 
clothes, or on his hands."

"Get me out of here, sir. Give me access to the scene, let me see what 
I can find. I won't run. You have my word on that."

Skinner sighed, once again looking for a window to the ordinary world, 
one that didn't exist. 

"Do you think she's all right, wherever she is?" he asked, and Mulder 
was grateful for the real concern in the question.

"Yes," he answered. He had to believe that.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


WAGON TRAIL DINER, FLAGSTAFF
MARCH 13TH, 11:23 PM


Mulder slid into the booth across from an exhausted Kresge, accepting 
the waitress's offer of a cup of bitter, lukewarm coffee. 

"How you doing?" Kresge asked, his low tenor kind and sympathetic. 

"I'm fine." 

Great liar you're not, Mulder thought, hearing the words come out of 
his mouth in hollow tones. He had always understood Scully's 
reluctance to speak about things just after they had happened, but it 
seemed incredibly strange to be sitting across from Kresge while 
hearing her words coming out of his own mouth. 

Mulder shrugged, wishing the man wouldn't look so damned concerned. 
"Skinner's already having the autopsy done as high priority. They're 
keeping her body under lock and key until she's cremated." 

He looked away, unable to keep a grimace from passing across his face. 
"Damn shame nobody took such good care of her while she was alive."

"You did," Kresge said. "She died in the arms of someone who loved 
her. How many of us get to do that?"

Mulder nodded, accepting that small bit of comfort. 

"So what happened at the hearing?" Kresge asked, changing the subject.

Mulder sighed, bringing his attention back to the matters at hand. 
"Released into Skinner's custody, pending investigation. I'm on a 
short leash, but at least I'm out."

"And you've still got a job."

"For the moment. Tell me about Scully." He took a tentative sip of his 
coffee, shuddered, and put the cup down again. "Did she seem okay?"

Kresge sipped reflexively at his own coffee, obviously too tired to 
taste it. Either that or he considered it decent compared to the awful 
brew he'd gotten used to drinking back in San Diego. 

"I don't know," he said slowly. "I don't know how to categorize it. 
She's hanging on by her fingernails, you can see that, but she also 
seems very calm about it all. Very determined."

"Do you think she's--" Mulder stopped, unable to say the word.

"No," Kresge said firmly. "Not if you accept that the delusion she's 
operating under is true."

"What delusion is that?"

"That everyone is out to get her."

Mulder managed a tight smile. "Did you give her the picture?"

"I did." Kresge hesitated, wrestling with some kind of decision. "She 
said to tell you she was safe, and you should do whatever you need to 
do to save yourself."

Mulder turned his cup around and around in his hands, staring into it 
rather than drinking any more. The handle appeared and disappeared and 
he could hear Scully's voice, strained with nerves. 

Truth is perception. 

"We still don't know who kidnapped Amy Wallace," Mulder said, "or if 
They're going to believe that the body they have is Amy's and stop 
trying to get her back."

He pushed his cup away, lost in the memory of holding Caitlin hot 
against his chest, feeling the green nodule that had grown on the back 
of her neck in the last hours of her life pulsing against his 
fingertips. 

If this is what we'll do to save ourselves, Mulder thought, humanity 
shouldn't exist. He pushed the heels of his hands into his scratchy 
eyes, willing himself not to cave in.

"You know," Kresge said loudly, "I've been thinking about Jane 
Hampton."

Mulder looked up and nodded, grateful for the distraction. 

"Scully showed me something, the last day," Kresge continued, running 
his hand back and forth over his hair in a way that Mulder had learned 
meant he was far more upset than he wanted to show. "Something no one 
caught on one of the prior murders. Elaine MacEntyre's wrist tendons 
had been severed. Both of them."

Mulder nodded. "So she couldn't have cut the second hand."

"That's right. Which got me to thinking about the Hamptons."

"I thought the evidence pointed to the same MO used on the 
MacEntyres," Mulder said, leaning forward in his chair. "And there are 
some pretty striking similarities to what happened to the Sims and to 
Jennifer Wallace."

"I thought so too. I think I was thrown off by the fact that Jane 
Hampton didn't have any hesitation cuts, which was the first thing 
that Scully pointed out last year when she said Roberta Sim was 
murdered. Then I remembered something on the drive back up here. 
Jane's tendons weren't severed in either hand. Whoever did it didn't 
use the same amount of force as was used on Elaine MacEntyre."

"You think Jane has something to do with the other murders?"

"No, based on the way we found her, I think she honestly meant to 
kill herself. Which leads me to believe that she may have actually 
killed her husband. I think Jane found out what was going on, that her 
husband was somehow involved in Denise's illness. You followed the 
mysterious men, so we have no way of knowing if Hampton was dead or 
alive when they left."

Mulder blinked for a moment, then stood up, signaling the waitress for 
their check. 

"Where are you going?" Kresge asked. "You said you were on a short 
leash."

"I found something very interesting at Tom Hampton's back in San 
Diego. Let's go see what little souvenirs John Wallace might have 
kept."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


WALLACE RESIDENCE
MARCH 14TH, 12:07 AM


They entered the house quietly, lifting the yellow crime scene tape 
and pausing before the brown stains on the carpet near the door. 
Kresge let Mulder go first, his own mind replacing the taped outline 
of a body with the bloodied corpse he'd seen before. 

Mulder knelt on the carpet, squinting upward at the blood spatter on 
the wall. "She's not that short," he said distantly. "With the 
trajectory of the bullet, for the spatter to be so high she had to 
have been on her knees, with him leaning over her."

"Ballistics isn't in yet," Kresge said, thumbing through the thick 
file Mulder had handed him before they started. 

"She was lying here, on her side," Mulder continued, oblivious to 
Kresge's presence, his hand tracing the air as if caressing the 
contours of Scully's body. "And then she got up. Here."

He pointed to the smeared handprint on the wall beside the door. 
Wallace's body was in the way, or would have been if it were still 
there. Mulder followed the handprint, then veered off to his right, 
staggering as if drunk. 

"Here she fell again, but she must have stayed conscious because she 
kept going."

Mulder followed the trail of smudged bloodstains past the fireplace 
and around the corner, down to the bathroom. 

"No prints on the door," he observed. 

"If she was crawling on her hands and knees, the carpet would have 
wiped off most of the blood."

"But not all." Mulder pointed to the handprints on the bathroom floor. 
"The door was open. Would you kill yourself naked in the bath with the 
door open?"

"I don't know. Probably not."

"No," Mulder agreed. "Suicide is a private thing." He turned to 
Kresge. "You were first on the scene at the Sims' and at the 
Hamptons', yes? Were those bathroom doors open?"

Kresge rubbed at his head. The Sim murders were too long ago to 
remember right now, after midnight, after hours spent behind the 
wheel. "I don't know," he admitted. "I'm not at my best at this hour. 
I think it was at the Hamptons'."

"Sometimes when you're overtired your brain makes the intuitive 
connections you miss when you try to get too logical," Mulder said, 
craning his neck around the door, trying to see the entire layout of 
the bathroom without going in.

"Yeah, Mulder, and sometimes you just start hallucinating things that 
aren't there."

Mulder turned to him for a moment, one side of his mouth lifted, the 
other pulled down. It was the saddest excuse for a smile Kresge had 
ever seen.

"You sounded just like Scully for a minute." Mulder held the half-
smile a second longer, then his eyes seemed to cloud over and he 
turned away again. "Were Jennifer Wallace's tendons severed?"

"Is this what Scully does? Keeps your facts?" Kresge asked, getting 
annoyed with the Dr. Watson role. 

"Yes," Mulder murmured, not turning around. "Keeps them and sorts them 
and makes the world make sense."

Kresge sighed, annoyed with himself now. The guy was upset, with good 
reason. A great deal of slack needed to be cut.

He thumbed through the pages until he found the coroner's preliminary 
report. "No. They weren't severed."

"So, it might be possible that Jennifer killed herself. Though highly 
unlikely, since Scully wouldn't have come out here unless she'd talked 
to Jennifer first and why would the mother of a kidnapped child kill 
herself ten minutes before the kid comes home?"

"I'm missing something here. Are you saying that Jane didn't attempt 
suicide either?"

Mulder moved past him, down the hall. "You said the door was open. She 
struck me as someone who would do that sort of thing in private."

"But if her husband was--"

"Even so," Mulder interrupted, opening another door. It appeared to be 
Wallace's study. 

He turned to nod at Kresge. "Jackpot."

The walls in this room were painted a deep gold, hung with two 
original ukiyo-e paintings. Set in the deep windowsill between them 
was a tiny juniper bonsai.

"What do you mean, jackpot?"

"You ever read a book called 'Ceremony', by Leslie Marmon Silko?"

"No, can't say that I have."

"A young Navajo man is sent off to fight the Japanese in World War II, 
but he can't kill them because they look too much like his own 
people." Mulder moved into the room, examining the contents of 
Wallace's shelves. "Terrific book, you should read it."

"What does that have to do with this?" Kresge asked, feeling like an 
idiot, but too curious to give up. 

Mulder turned to him. "John Wallace wasn't Navajo. He was Japanese."

Kresge looked around the room. "You say that based on what? A couple 
of Japanese paintings and a bonsai tree?"

"No, I'm basing that on an illogical intuitive connection. The proof 
is in this room, someplace." 

Mulder took a stack of papers off Wallace's desk and seated himself on 
the floor. 

"Here," he said, dividing the stack and holding half out to Kresge. 
"Let's get to work."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


I-40, ARIZONA - NEW MEXICO BORDER
MARCH 14TH, 3:07 AM


Scully marked the towns that they passed, the journey rewinding. 
Albuquerque, Laguna, Gallup. In another two hours they would be back 
in Winslow, and there she would take a right-hand turn, onto the 
reservation and into motherhood, into someone else's life. 

She had wanted to get out of the car, had she not? Now the car would 
stop forever in a small town across the Mexican border, and the world 
would have to live or die without Dana Scully. 

Don't overestimate your importance, she chided herself. Your family 
will get on with their lives. Mulder will work himself into a frenzy 
whether you are there or not, trying to stop what could never be 
stopped. Not by two fragile people. We could no more change the future 
than we could stop a train with a couple of handguns and a car parked 
across the tracks. 

Scully sighed, leaning her head against the window. Hard as it was to 
stay awake, the effort was preferable to falling asleep and treating 
Alice to one of her technicolor nightmares. The more tired she was, 
the more intense the dreams always were. At this point she was so 
exhausted she would probably wake screaming her head off.

"Sleep if you like," Alice said, rolling down her window to release 
the smoke from her newly-lit cigarette. "I'm a night owl, I won't have 
any trouble staying awake."

"Not that I've been supplying much scintillating conversation," Scully 
apologised. She had, in fact, been silent almost the entire way 
through New Mexico. 

"No problem." Alice smiled in Scully's direction. "You're not here to 
be my entertainment."

They passed the border into Arizona, the highway cutting now through 
one corner of the reservation. It was illogical as hell, but it made 
Scully feel better to be out of New Mexico. 

"Did Frohike tell you anything about me?"

"Nope," Alice answered congenially. "And you don't need to. We don't 
ask."

Scully looked out the window, where the Martian castle mesas were 
black silhouettes against a planetarium sky. 

"I've been given a choice," she said. "A gift I never expected, in 
exchange for everything I used to have. A relatively normal life in 
exchange for someone I--" 

She swallowed around the sudden roughness in her throat and made 
herself say it: "Someone I love."

Once spoken, the words didn't seem so overwhelming. They seemed 
merely...right. She conjured that dearly familiar face behind her 
closed eyes, and wondered how she had managed to avoid admitting it 
for so long. 

"Sounds hard," Alice agreed.

Scully opened her eyes and sighed, letting the image dissipate. "The 
thing is, I don't know if I really do have a choice. I don't know 
what's right or wrong anymore or even what's best. I don't know if 
anything is truly the way it appears."

Alice reached over, surprising Scully by taking her hand. "Then do 
what your heart tells you is right. When all else fails, that's the 
only guide we have left."

Scully smiled sadly, squeezing Alice's hand.

"My heart wants it all. And that's the one thing I know I can't have."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 

PART 11

<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 


WALLACE RESIDENCE
MARCH 14TH, 4:22 AM


Kresge had finally given in to fatigue and passed out on the couch in 
Wallace's office, but Mulder refused to allow himself that luxury. The 
answer was here, somewhere. He was as certain of that as he was of the 
need to find it as soon as possible. It might not bring Scully back, 
not if she intended to make a new life for herself with Amy, but 
Mulder could not let her go as a wanted criminal. If he could do 
nothing else, he could at least clear her name. Her family would need 
that.

Wallace's desk had yielded nothing out of the ordinary. Bills and 
correspondence, none of it containing anything of interest. The phone 
bills he put aside to be thoroughly analyzed later, but his cursory 
exam revealed no discernible pattern of calls, and nothing 
international. If Wallace had been doing business on the black market, 
he hadn't been doing it from home. 

He flipped on the computer, stacking the mess he'd made into piles 
while he waited for it to boot up. Kresge began to snore loudly and 
Mulder wadded up an old take-out pizza menu, making a basket right 
onto the man's chest. He rolled onto his side, batting the ball of 
paper away.

A bit childish perhaps, but at least the snoring had stopped. Mulder 
sat down behind the desk and clicked the 'My Computer' icon on Wallace's 
desktop. 

Half an hour later, he had still found nothing. He'd opened Wallace's 
browser and clicked through his bookmarks, but nothing caught his eye 
and the cache had been dumped. E-mail was no more interesting than 
anything else, all the history folders were empty and so was the 
recycle bin. 

Hidden files? Mulder checked the folder settings, selected Show Hidden 
Files and went through the hard drive again. Nothing. 

"Bastard must have cleaned it out," he muttered aloud, shoving the 
mouse across the desk.

He sat back, arms folded across his chest. The point of the night 
where he might be able to make spooky leaps of logic appeared to be 
over. He was still on an adrenaline high, clear-headed though he 
should have been exhausted, but nothing was coming. No ideas. 

Mulder pulled the empty drawers out of Wallace's desk. Nothing taped 
to the underside or to the back. Kresge had already gone over the rest 
of the house and found no secret boxes, no hidden safe. He got down on 
his hands and knees, feeling inside the footwell, in the hollow space 
where the drawers had been. 

Do you even know what you're looking for, Mulder? said Scully's voice 
inside his head. 

No, he answered her, as he had a hundred times before. But I guarantee 
I'll know it when I see it.

He stopped for a moment, one hand across his eyes. God, if this is 
what he was like now, what was going to happen when he got back to the 
office? Would he find himself actually talking to Scully out loud, 
before he remembered that she wasn't there?

Mulder stood and poked around on the top of the desk, looking for the 
lighter he'd seen before. He found it beneath a stack of household 
bills and crouched down again, illuminating the interior where the 
drawers had been. 

There, at the back. Marks on the cheap pressboard, two square areas 
where the top layer had been pulled off. 

Something had been taped back there. A small packet. A disk perhaps, 
or a CD. 

Something Wallace had taken with him to San Diego? Or something that 
had been removed later, the night he was killed?

Mulder dove for the file lying by Kresge's dangling hand. Serology 
report, serology report -- there. 

All the blood samples taken from Wallace's body were B positive. 
Scully's type, as well as Wallace's. A small further proof of Mulder's 
theory -- B was the most common blood type among Asians, and the least 
common among Native Americans.

DNA analysis was still underway, but Mulder was sure it would prove 
that all the B positive blood on Wallace was his own, apart from a 
smear along the thigh of his jeans. That would be Scully's, as well as 
the blood on the handle of Wallace's gun. He cold-cocked her and she 
fell against him. Easy. 

But where was Jennifer's O positive blood? If Scully had interrupted 
Wallace in the act, Jennifer's blood would have been somewhere on him 
-- his hands, perhaps a drop or two on his shoes. Either that or the 
forensics team would have found a pair of gloves. 

Wallace didn't have Jennifer's blood on him because Wallace didn't 
make the cuts. 

Mulder closed his eyes, imagining the scene. A man snapping on a pair 
of gloves, hauling the drugged Jennifer into the tub, slicing her 
wrists. The sound of the front door opening. Wallace, having heard of 
the abduction in San Diego, putting two and two together and getting 
back ahead of Scully -- barely. The mystery man hides, maybe here in 
the office. Wallace finds his wife's body, then Scully arrives. They 
tussle, she kills him, is knocked unconscious herself, perhaps 
presumed dead by the man in the house who then takes the information 
he came for and leaves before she regains consciousness.

He shook Kresge's shoulder. "Wake up."

"What? What?" Kresge shot into a sitting position, his eyes puffy with 
sleep. 

"John Wallace didn't kill his wife. And neither did Scully. There was 
someone else in the house."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


PARTITIONED LANDS, HOPI/NAVAJO RESERVATION
MARCH 14TH, 6:22 AM


They drove up a packed dirt road which Leonora had affectionately 
called Big Mountain Boulevard, to a thinner road, to a two-track that 
wound seven miles across the open land. Scully held the map Leonora 
had drawn, ticking off the landmarks as they passed. 

The snow had been gone for a day or two, and though deep gouges marked 
the places where people had gotten stuck, the track was hard and dry 
now, easily passable. A small amount of worry lifted from Scully's 
aching shoulders.

"There it is -- the infamous fence," Alice remarked as they passed 
through an opened gate. "We're on the Hopi side of it now." 

Scully looked out the dusty window and saw nothing very spectacular. 
Just the kind of three-stringed barbed wire fence often used for 
cattle. 

"Couple of bits of wire stuck on some poles." Alice shook her head. 
"Not much for what it's done dividing people in half, huh? At least 
the Germans got a bona fide wall."

She lit another cigarette, unfazed by the dryness of the land and the 
way the car was bouncing and squeaking on its wheels. "Something I've 
noticed up here, I've never been able to explain. You know, I'm not 
one of those new-agey crystal-wielding Earth mothers. But if you stay 
a while, you really start to feel the land. Like you want to dig your 
toes in and root yourself. I've never felt that anywhere else."

"You know this place?" Scully asked.

"Not this particular homesite, but I've been in and out of Big 
Mountain for about fifteen years. There was a big group of us in the 
mid-eighties, when it looked like they were going to come in with 
tanks and haul all the grandmas out. A lot of people came and stayed 
up here, figuring the Feds would be afraid to do anything that violent 
with a bunch of white witnesses around. Worked pretty well. It got 
quiet for about ten years, then a couple of years ago Congress wound 
it up again."

"What made you get involved in something like that?" Scully asked.

"The same reason I get involved in anything. Because it's wrong. I may 
not stop it, but I do what I can. One kid that doesn't get shipped to 
Vietnam, one woman who doesn't have to use a coat-hanger or whose 
husband isn't going to beat her up again. One nuclear dump that 
doesn't get built. One grandma up by Red Willow Creek who's still 
hanging on to her hogan."

They drove past a windmill water pump, still and silent, and continued 
on up to the sheep camp just below the ridge. Alice parked beside a 
dilapidated one-roomed octagonal house, its door standing open to 
receive the first rays of the sun.

Leonora came out of the hogan, shading her eyes. A bright smile broke 
across her face. 

"Jane! Amy! She's here." 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


ARROW WHEEL MOTEL
MARCH 14TH, 7:03 AM


Mulder dragged himself awake to answer the door, his back sore from 
falling asleep at the table, face-down in his evidence. 

"Your boss is in the diner," Kresge greeted him tersely, barging past 
Mulder and into the room, putting two cups of coffee on the table. "He 
wants to meet with you at eight. He wants to know what you've found."

Mulder ran his fingers over the stubble on his cheeks, days old now. 
No longer stubble, really, what he had was a full-fledged beard, 
something he hadn't allowed to happen since he was a psych student at 
Oxford. 

"I'll get in the shower," he mumbled, heading in that direction. He 
probably stank too, now that he was thinking of it, and he was sure 
his hair was doing its best dead hedgehog impersonation. Not exactly 
keeping up the professional front. If Scully could see him--

She's not here, he reminded himself. That's why you look like this. 

"Hang on a minute," Kresge said. "You wanted something run through the 
NCIC database? Guy at the front desk just stopped me and handed me a 
fax." 

Mulder took it, settling himself on the edge of the bed to read. 
Thirty seconds later, he jumped up and shoved the fax at Kresge. 

"Did you see this?" 

"I know," Kresge answered calmly, sitting at the table and opening his 
cup of coffee. "Wallace's fingerprints match a John Wakawa, Japanese-
American, born in San Francisco, 1962." 

He looked up to shoot Mulder a tired grin. "I'm impressed. Your late-
night hallucination panned out. I'll have to try it next time I'm 
stumped. If I have a job left to be stumped with. At. On." Kresge 
sighed, tossing the lid onto the table. "Whatever." 

Mulder took the fax back. "Listen to this: in 1985, Wakawa was 
indicted on six counts of trafficking in stolen medical merchandise. 
He turned state's evidence and was entered into the Witness Protection 
Program as John Wallace." Mulder looked up from the fax to see 
Kresge's reaction. "And we know he continued his little side business 
while finishing his doctorate in biochemistry at UCSD. He was thrown 
out of there for the same reason, but no charges were ever filed."

Mulder sat down at the table, opening his own cup of coffee. "I think 
Wallace posed as Navajo, courted Jennifer after her husband was 
killed, and married her to get control of Amy. He probably brokered 
the first deal for her bone marrow. I guess he got a little greedy 
with the second."

Kresge nodded in agreement. "So someone took Amy to stop the deal." 

"But where They placed her...They had to know that eventually Scully 
would find her there. Maybe that's exactly what They wanted."

"Why?"

"First, it stops the Project. Second, They give Scully what They think 
she wants most in the world -- a child of her own. What better way to 
control her, and through her, me? How could we work with the threat 
that her child might be hurt or taken if we stick our nose in the 
wrong place? That's the end of the X-Files. We're neutralized, at 
least in terms of this line of investigation." 

"I thought your theory was that They meant for her to do exactly what 
she just did? Break the law, look like she's gone crazy."

"What if there's more than one agenda at work?" Mulder pressed his 
fingertips to his temples and closed his eyes. Trying to solve this 
case was like trying to catch currents of air. 

Truth *was* like air, according to Albert Hosteen. Not something that 
could be held, but it could be known.

"Talk it out," Kresge suggested, settling back in his chair, coffee in 
hand. "Let's see what we have."

"Well, we know that Sim, MacEntyre, and Hampton used to work together. 
If we had Scully's files, I bet we'd find some connection between 
them, and Jenkins, and Amy's adoptive father, Paul Mason. Wallace is 
the wild card in the pack, the replacement for Mason, but the original 
five all appear to be have been working on different aspects of the 
Project."

"And the Japanese connection?"

"Hirotake wants in on the Project, but they're being kept out. Maybe 
they placed Wallace to snare Jennifer, more likely Wallace approached 
them. The girls start getting sick and Hampton tries to broker a deal 
-- he'll steal the research Hirotake wants for the marrow to save his 
daughter, which Wallace controls. Amy is taken by a rogue group who 
want to stop the Project, Denise dies, the whole deal goes sour. 
Hampton warns the others. The Jenkinses' take off and are caught by 
the people who started this, the ones that want to protect the 
Project. The second group -- Hirotake -- kills Hampton for revenge. 
Now it's all going to hell and by that point Scully and I are out 
there, poking around. The Project group goes to retrieve the last 
girl, Bethany -- that's why Elaine MacEntyre's cuts were different. It 
was someone else copycatting what happened at the Hamptons'."

"So if Hirotake cut Jane, then they also cut Jennifer Wallace."

"That would be my guess, if they knew Scully had Amy and was bringing 
her back. Then they wouldn't have to deal with John Wallace. They 
probably would have killed him themselves, if Scully hadn't saved them 
the trouble." 

"You said something was taken from Wallace's desk. Wouldn't that be 
Hampton's stolen research?"

Mulder's stomach twisted as the entire landscape of the case changed 
beneath his feet. 

"That means Hirotake is in now," he said. "New players on a wide-open 
field."

Kresge leaned forward, grabbing Mulder's arm. "You said you knew these 
people, that they didn't want to kill either of you, but Mulder...to 
Hirotake, Scully is nothing but in the way."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


HOPI PARTITIONED LANDS
MARCH 14TH, 7:23 AM


They had arrived in time for breakfast -- bowls of oatmeal sweetened 
with cinnamon and honey, and strong, black coffee. Scully couldn't 
begin to eat it. Her entire body was thrumming with nerves, making 
coffee redundant and the prospect of trying to choke down the thick 
oatmeal almost more daunting than anything else she would have to do 
today. 

It should have been a lovely breakfast. Amy was nuzzled warm against 
Scully's side at the scratched Formica table, happily sharing the last 
of her oatmeal with her wooden sheep. Leonora was having a great time 
getting acquainted with Alice. They sounded oddly like Frohike and 
Langly -- trading war stories, talking about conspiracies between the 
energy companies and the tribal councils and members of the US 
government. 

Everyone seemed content. It was only the sight of Jane, sitting 
silently across the table in front of her own uneaten breakfast, that 
reminded Scully how far this was from finished. 

She put a hand on Amy's head. "You want to show me around?"

"Sure," Amy grinned, though Scully noticed that she looked to Jane for 
permission before getting up. Jane nodded, pointing to her own face, 
making a little circle with her forefinger. Amy licked the last of the 
oatmeal off her lips, wiping her wet mouth with her hands, and her 
hands on her none-too-clean sweatshirt. Jane sighed and shook her 
head, giving Amy a tiny exasperated smile as she left. 

Scully followed the girl up to 'the good place,' over the top of the 
hill and past the point where the power towers marched across the 
reservation, steadfastly ignoring the little hogan below. Here the 
desert fell off sharply into sandstone mounds and canyons, the red 
earth where they stood just beginning to be colored by a multitude of 
tiny green plants. Out in the distance Scully could see a thin wash 
filled with runoff from the snow melting on top of the higher 
mountains. Beyond that, a battered blue pickup was just passing the 
filling station at Rocky Ridge. 

Everything in its place, Scully thought, sitting on an outcropping of 
rock and drawing Amy into her lap. The water comes and the desert 
drinks it and gives it back to the air so it can come again. The sun 
will rise and set, rise and set, the children will grow and have 
children of their own. 

World without end, amen. 

From her perch high upon the rocks, Scully could see the desert 
stretching for miles. It gave her the closest thing to a sense of 
peace that she'd felt in a very long time. 

Amy seemed content be where she was, straddling Scully's lap, arms 
wrapped around her waist. Scully let her fingers run through her 
daughter's hair, watching the light play through the reddish-gold 
strands. 

"My mommy wasn't my real mommy," Amy said, after a while. "I'm not a 
real Indian."

"I know." Scully nodded, stroking the girl's hair. "But you speak your 
mother's language. She raised you to be Dineh because you were her 
daughter, even if you didn't have the same blood." 

"Leonora says when people die, they come back in the rain. Then they 
can be part of the land. Is that true?"

Scully thought about that for a moment. "Yes, in a way, I think it 
is," she answered, though it surprised her to hear herself say it. "I 
think if you love something or someone very much they're a part of you 
and you're a part of them and you never really leave each other. Just 
like your mommy will never really leave you."

She turned the child's face upward, looking into those eyes that still 
surprised her by being her own. "Do you understand that? Your mother 
loved you, Amy. Very much."

Amy nodded. "Mommy said my real mommy loved me too, but she couldn't 
keep me." Her small fingers twisted over Scully's. "Do you know my 
real mommy?"

Scully blinked hard. "Yes," she said, when she thought she dared speak 
again.

"Is she nice?"

"Yes," Scully answered. "I think so. She tries to be nice." 

"Is she coming to get me now?"

Scully drew the child close, letting herself drown in the soft baby 
smell of Amy's neck, in the feel of the tiny heart beating against her 
own. Out on the wind she thought she heard horses again, as she had 
standing up on the rocks with Mulder, and she remembered her sister's 
words. 

It's time to know what you know. It's time to stop pretending. 

At last, Scully knew what she had to do. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


It was there that Jane found them, rocking close together. 

Scully and her child. 

It hurt far less than Jane had expected. Perhaps she was glad to see 
them together, the way she had been glad to see the joyful reunions of 
other adopted people on daytime TV shows. Good to know that it 
happened to someone, even if it would never happen to her. 

She came up beside them and put a hand on Scully's shoulder. 

"Alice is asking when we'll be ready to go."

"Okay," Scully answered, her voice muffled against Amy's shoulder. She 
hugged the girl tight for one more moment, then sat up. 

Jane's breath caught in her throat. Amy's face was red and swollen, as 
if she'd been crying nonstop for hours. Scully just looked destroyed.

She gently rubbed Amy's back. "Go on down to Leonora, okay?" Scully 
said, her voice hoarse and trembling. "I'll be there in a few 
minutes."

Amy cast a woebegone look at Jane, holding her arms out. Jane took her 
from Scully's lap, settling the girl on the ground, not at all sure 
what was going on.  

Amy flung her arms around Jane's waist. "Go on," Scully repeated 
softly, and the girl turned and ran down the hill. 

"What happened?" Jane asked, when the child was gone. 

Scully was staring out across the desert. "I told her who I am," 
she said, just when Jane had begun to wonder if she was ever 
going to speak again.

"And she took it that badly?"

"No," Scully answered. "Not at all."

She reached into her back pocket and drew out a thick envelope, 
running the fingers of one hand along the edge. At last she let her 
breath out in a slow, heavy sigh and handed it to Jane. 

"This is for you."

Jane took it, her own hands beginning to tremble as she reached inside 
and pulled out a small wad of documents. A plastic card fell to the 
ground and she bent to pick it up. 

It was a driver's license belonging to someone named Mary Wilson. 

Jane looked at the card more closely. For a moment she had thought 
it was a picture of herself.

"This is you," she said, holding it up. 

Scully nodded. "It was made for me a long time ago, in case something 
like this happened."

"So these are for you."

Scully turned to her at last, eyes burning with unshakable purpose. 
"They're yours now. I want you to take Amy and go with Alice."

Jane stared at her. 

"No," she said finally, stuffing the papers back into the envelope and 
thrusting it at Scully. "No way."

Scully shook her head, refusing to take it. "You have to, Jane. I have 
to know she's safe."

"And what happens to you?"

"I have to go back."

"Dana, you can't do that. They'll kill you, they'll throw you in jail, 
they'll--"

"I have to go back. I thought I could run, but I can't. It's not who I 
am."

"Even for Amy?"

"Especially for Amy. Jane, there are things I need to do, things that 
are more complicated than I can explain right now, but those things 
are about keeping Amy safe. I can't do that if she's with me. She'd be 
a pawn in Their game and I won't have that. I won't let her be used."

"But why would you want me to raise her? After what I've done?"

Scully smiled, an odd contrast to the expression in her eyes. "Because 
I know you would lie and cheat and steal and probably kill to protect 
her. For this particular child, that's exactly the mother she needs." 

Jane turned the envelope over and over, her hands seeking to bring 
reality to the impossible through touch, since she could not possibly 
believe what she was hearing. 

Scully climbed down from the rock and laid a burning hand against 
Jane's cheek. "And you'll love her. I have no doubt about that."

She withdrew her hand, stepping back as if embarrassed to suddenly 
find herself standing so close.

"I'm not giving her up," Scully said, speaking now with an effort. "I 
told Amy who I was because she has a right to know. I want her to be 
able to contact me, even if we have to go through other people. I want 
her to know that I'm still there for her, that maybe one day we'll be 
able to--"

Scully's eyes and nose suddenly grew red. She threw a quick look at 
Jane, who understood that silent plea for a moment alone. 

Jane turned and stumbled down the hill, everything about the day 
different now. She was sure that the sky was richer, the sun warmer, 
the air clearer and easier to breathe.

There, standing by the camper shell that served as a woodshed, a small 
girl waited, hitting the side of the shell with a thin stick. 

Jane walked over and knelt beside her. Amy had a fierce, stubborn 
expression on her face that Jane had seen often enough on Denise. It 
was exactly the same expression she had just seen on Dana Scully. 

Mine, Jane thought, dazed with wonder. She reached out to touch the 
girl, as if she had never seen her before. The thin arms and soft 
round cheeks, the baby-fine hair. Mine, Jane thought again, 
astonished, as it began to feel real. 

"Amy," Jane said softly. The girl threw the stick away and looked at 
her with mournful eyes. Jane gave Amy an encouraging smile, brushing 
the hair back from her forehead. She lifted the delicate chain that 
was now around Amy's neck, letting the tiny cross rest on her finger. 

"Dana gave me that," Amy whispered, beginning to cry again. "So I 
remember that she's with me and I don't have to be afraid of the bad 
men any more." She threw her arms around Jane's neck, sniffling 
quietly into her shoulder. 

"We'll see her again," Jane promised, her own eyes welling up and 
spilling over. Amy nodded against her shoulder, her arms tightening 
around Jane's neck.  

Not mine, Jane amended. Ours. This child is going to need both of us. 

It was a strangely wonderful thought.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


ARROW WHEEL MOTEL
MARCH 14TH, 8:17 AM


It was unlike any other debriefing in which Mulder had taken part; 
Kresge in Scully's customary place, Skinner on the other side, sitting 
on the edge of the armchair Mulder had occupied the long day that 
Caitlin died.

"I'm waiting," Skinner said, looking from one man to the other. His 
gaze tended to slide away from Kresge as if he too were more 
comfortable imagining Scully still sitting on Mulder's left side.

"Several years ago, a man who called himself The Thinker hacked into 
the defense department and retrieved something called the MJ files," 
Mulder began. 

Skinner's jaw clenched. "I think I would rather not be reminded of 
that."

"It's important, sir," Mulder continued, glancing at Kresge, who was 
once again out of the loop and looking like he was going to have very 
little patience with that. 

"We got a DAT tape of the files, but it was encoded in Navajo," Mulder 
said, quickly filling the detective in. "We never got it cracked. I 
went looking for something in the desert and some black ops came and 
lifted the paper copies off Scully while she was driving back to 
Washington. The tape disappeared."

"Of course," Kresge nodded, trading Mulder a wry little smile for that 
information.

"And you're telling me that all of this somehow has something to do 
with that?" Skinner asked. 

"In those files was a list of names," Mulder answered, turning back to 
his boss. "Scully's name was in there, along with Duane Barry's. We 
never found out the context. Maybe now we have."

Skinner leaned back in the chair, needing only a pen to tap on the 
table to look like he was still in his office.

"A few days ago," Mulder continued, "we got some information 
containing references to at least three interlocking tracking programs 
based on the same criteria that were used to choose the original test 
pilots for the space program. Only these studies appear to have been 
testing kids. Specifically, the children of high-ranking military and 
government personnel."

"Go on."

"I had people do some basic background checks. Did you know that Duane 
Barry's father was a Lieutenant Colonel stationed in North Africa 
during World War II?"

Skinner grimaced. "No. I didn't."

"Well he was. Penny Northern, a woman we believe was abducted in a 
test group along with Agent Scully, was the daughter of a Major Alfred 
Northern, who was attached to several classified defense department 
projects before his untimely death in a single-vehicle traffic 
accident in 1967."

"Mulder, what are you trying to say?" Skinner snapped, growing 
impatient. "And what does this have to do with what you found at the 
Wallaces'?"

"I will get to that, sir, but first you need the background. In 1969, 
the children of Captain William J. Scully were entered into a study 
sponsored by the US military. So were a number of other children. As 
far as we can see, over 250,000 US citizens were tested and classified 
during childhood under a variety of surveys, some disguised as school 
evaluations. People including Duane Barry, Penny Northern, Agent Scully 
and myself."

Mulder stopped, waiting for both Skinner and Kresge to absorb that 
information. 

"I remembered something my father told me, around the time that he and 
my mother were divorced. He said that at the beginning of his career, 
it was suggested to him by a very high-ranking member of the State 
Department that it would be in his best interest to marry within his 
own circle. The next weekend that man invited my father to a cocktail 
party at his home, where he was quite specifically introduced to my 
mother."

"I don't see where--"

"The original files have now been deleted from the mainframe where 
they were found, so the chances are very good that we'll never know 
exactly what this thing was for, or how big it was. But I can tell you 
what it looks like."

"What?"

"A breeding program."

There was a moment of silence.

"Mulder." Kresge now, frowning at him in disbelief. "You're kidding, 
right?"

"No, I don't think so. I believe that certain people with top scores 
were encouraged to marry to produce superior children, children whose 
families would have a tradition of service to the country."

Skinner leaned forward and slammed a hand on the table. "Mulder, this 
is beginning to sound insane and you know it."

"Sir, I know it *sounds* insane, but is it? Or is it a logical 
hypothesis based on illogical evidence? Scully comes from Navy 
families on both sides, my father and his father were in the civil 
service, and she and I were both sought out by the FBI, an 
organization neither one of us had thought of joining before that 
time."

Skinner's face changed, took on the pensive look that told Mulder the 
advantage was his to press. 

"Do you believe Agent Scully would steal a child and kill a man in 
cold blood, or do you believe someone set a trap, using a child she 
didn't even know she had as bait? Is Scully behaving like a paranoid 
schizophrenic, the way the local PD is characterizing her, or is she 
responding rationally to psychotic circumstances?"

Skinner stared at him and sighed.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


HARDROCK CHAPTER HOUSE, NAVAJO PARTITIONED LAND
MARCH 14TH, 8:38 AM


They left the land together, Jane and Alice in the car, Leonora and 
Scully in Robert's truck. Scully remained silent during the short 
ride, her face buried in her daughter's hair, every atom of her being 
trying to absorb those last few moments. 

She shook hands with Alice in the parking lot of the chapter house, 
Amy still clinging to her neck. If Alice was surprised that she was 
taking away a different Mary than the one she had brought, she had 
either the grace or the experience not to comment. 

Scully knelt to set Amy down, wishing that this goodbye didn't have to 
be said in public. 

Child of my heart, Scully thought as Amy stepped away and nodded, as 
if agreeing that they had already said everything they needed to say 
to each other in private. Amy walked across the three yards of red 
earth separating Scully from Jane, head high, and did not look back.

Scully turned to Leonora as Jane bent to settle the girl in the back 
seat of the car. That much, Scully could not watch. 

"You probably don't believe the earth is alive," Leonora said, 
pressing a small red stone into Scully's hand. "So, think of this as a 
comfort object. You can pray with it, or think with it, or just use it 
for patience. I'd tell you it will help protect you, but you probably 
won't believe that either." 

The stone felt cool and warm at the same time. Scully held it between 
her fingers the way Leonora had, tracing the faint indentation where a 
thumb had circled over and over. Years of thought and prayer had worn 
the unpolished surface to the texture of velvet.

"Whatever you believe in," she told Leonora, "whatever ceremonies you 
have for protection, I think you should use them."

"Oh, I will." 

Scully offered her hand for goodbye, but Leonora used it to pull her 
into an embrace. 

"Come back if you can," she whispered into Scully's ear. "I want to 
see with my own eyes that you made it."

She nodded, releasing Leonora just as Jane ran up and thrust something 
soft into her hands. 

"Take this," she said fiercely. "It's all I have."

The two women held each other tightly. "Jane," Scully said softly, 
"there's one last thing, something I almost forgot."

Jane moved back to look at her, and Scully let her vision blur for 
just one moment, let herself see her sister standing there. She wanted 
to wrap a thick hunk of Jane's hair around her hand, the way she had 
often done when she and Melissa were small and close, cuddled in one 
bed. 

"What?" Jane asked, the wary cast to her features destroying the 
illusion. Scully blinked, pushing Jane's hair back over her shoulder 
instead. 

"Your orphanage," Scully said. "It was real. Mulder found it. The 
stories you made up, the details -- they must be things you didn't 
realize you remembered."

Jane shook her head, eyes wide with tears. 

"You have a past, Jane. It's there, somewhere inside you."

The woman threw her arms around Scully's neck. "If I ever had another 
family, I would want it to be you," she whispered, hugging Scully one 
last time. Then Jane let go, and she was alone.

She kept her eyes closed until the silence told her that both cars 
were gone. Only then did she look down to see what Jane had given her. 

Scully wiped her eyes, stuffed the azure dress into her laptop bag, 
and began to walk up the empty road.  

The chapter house was just above the last rise, a cinderblock 
rectangle on the Navajo side of the partition fence. It was a 
combination meeting hall, cultural center and district office, but 
Leonora had promised that there were enough white strangers coming in 
and out that one more hanging around would not attract attention. 

Scully's cell phone had died at last, and she took it as another sign 
that it was time for this journey to come to an end. She paused before 
the pay phone inside the hall, holding her money just at the edge of 
the slot, her heart slamming painfully against her ribs. 

She thought of her father, the stern face he put on whenever one of 
his children had done something wrong. Mistakes had been forgiven in 
the Scully household if honest amends were made. It was not owning up 
to one's mistakes that brought forth punishment and lectures, that 
brought the thing Scully had always most dreaded hearing -- her 
father's sad voice telling her she had disappointed him. 

I've made amends, Scully said to the face behind her closed eyes. I've 
fixed what I can. And I will face the rest, like you taught me. For 
you, and for Mom, and for myself. 

She let the money drop, and dialed. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


ARROW WHEEL MOTEL
MARCH 14TH, 8:42 AM


Skinner had still said nothing and Mulder was beginning to wonder if 
he was merely being given enough rope to hang himself. 

"The mapping goes back to our parents' generation," he went on, 
regardless. "If They were hoping to breed superior humans in the 
1940s-- a goal that was all the rage in those days, I might add -- 
skip ahead to the 1990s. Technology has now produced what the Project 
needed: the ability to fertilize human ova in a test tube, to tinker 
with DNA, to re-implant an engineered embryo into the womb of a woman 
who didn't conceive it. No need to hope top women will breed with the 
correct top men. Just extract the top women's ova and you can make as 
many babies as you want, without interference." 

"So you think--"

"All of the women in Scully's group were top scorers, all of them were 
single and childless, all past thirty, and all were barren after their 
return. I think the Project gave up waiting for nature."

The ringing of Skinner's phone stopped him. 

"Yes," Skinner said tersely. 

His expression suddenly changed. 

"Yes," Skinner barked. He got up quickly, a finger pointed at Mulder's 
chair. You stay there. You do not follow. 

"Yes, fine. How do I get there?" Skinner was asking. 

No, Mulder silently wailed, watching Skinner's face. He turned 
anguished eyes to Kresge, who was obviously walking down the same 
cold, logical trail of thought. 

"We've got her," Skinner said, clicking off the phone. "She called the 
Flagstaff police and turned herself in. She's on the Navajo 
Reservation, at a place called Hardrock. They've alerted the tribal 
police to pick her up and detain her until we can get there."

Mulder shook his head. This was not happening. No. 

"No," he choked. "It won't be the tribal police."

"Hirotake," Kresge agreed. "They'd be monitoring the police bands. 
They'll know where she is."

Skinner still stood in the middle of the room. "Mulder, what are you 
talking about?"

"Argue with me on the way," Mulder begged, grabbing Skinner's arm. 
"Just get us a chopper. Now."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


HARDROCK CHAPTER HOUSE
MARCH 14TH, 8:53 AM


Scully was staring at the bulletin board in the front hallway, trying 
to keep the words in focus. Impoundment notices for livestock, 
meetings of various sorts: AA, church and Sunday school, strategy 
sessions for resistors. 

She put a shaking hand out to steady herself against the wall, closing 
her eyes to try to regain her equilibrium. 

It was over. They would pick her up and she would sleep and when she 
woke she would know if she had any kind of life to go on with. When 
she woke, perhaps Mulder would be beside her, as he had been so many 
times before. 

The darkness made it worse, spun itself around her. She opened her 
eyes again, panting for breath.

The adrenaline she'd been running on for days was gone. She needed to 
find someplace to sit. Through an open door she saw a room at the back 
of the building, where a meeting was going on. Scully dragged herself 
down the hall, praying for an empty seat.

Inside, it was mainly grandmothers, tiny brown-skinned women dressed 
in richly-colored velvet shirts over wide skirts and running shoes. 
One or two heads turned Scully's way as she slipped into a chair by 
the door, but no one stopped her. No one asked who she was. 

Better. She rested her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, 
staring at the floor between her feet. Big in, little out. Slow. 
Oxygenate the blood. She had forgotten about the altitude, moving too 
quickly for her tired body to adjust. 

It will be all right, she promised herself, trying to slow the 
desperate clenching of her heart. It will all be over soon enough. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


Skinner had believed him, thank god, and they were in the air now, 
buckled in tight and screaming over the roar of the blades.

"It's a Japanese contingent," Mulder shouted. "Maybe new, maybe just 
moving into power."

"What makes you so sure these people would want to kill Scully?"

"We're useful to the smoker, that's why he keeps us alive. But these 
people don't know the X-Files. We don't have any use to them. They 
just want in and they don't want any competition. That's why they were 
killing the parents."

"But Scully isn't one of those parents."

"Of course she is!" Mulder cried, exasperated. Could the man not see 
what was right in front of him? "She's the mother! They may not have 
known about her before, but they do now. And if there is some kind of 
territorial thing going on, then They all know where she is now, and 
They're all going to come after her, because everyone thinks she has 
the thing that everyone wants."

"What's that?"

Mulder looked at Kresge, sitting silent and tense beside him. 

"Amy Wallace."

"But Amy Wallace is dead," Skinner shouted. "I saw her body myself."

"No," Mulder admitted. "She's not."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


Scully was sure she saw hands reaching for her but each time she 
glanced around, there was nothing there. No one was paying any 
attention to her at all. 

Don't fall asleep now, she cautioned herself, but it was so hard to 
summon her guard back up, now that she had let it down. 

She tilted her head against the wall and tried to listen to the people 
telling stories of harassment, of their sheep being taken away and 
their hogans falling down because an act of Congress had forbidden 
them to make repairs. Scully couldn't quite grasp the idea that if 
things had been a little different she might have found herself up 
here in an FBI jacket, hauling these people off their land.

She tried to listen, but the words began to blur and she could no 
longer tell which was English and which was Dineh. The room took on a 
clarity she found distantly mesmerizing -- the dark-skinned women in 
their colorful clothes and striking turquoise jewelry, the men in 
cowboy hats and baseball caps and worn flannel shirts. She saw her 
daughter in a child in the row in front of hers, peacefully asleep 
with her head on her mother's leg; the mother another version of 
Jennifer Wallace, a young woman in jeans and a t-shirt, her black hair 
spilling over her shoulders. 

It was all so beautiful, a world she had never seen. 

It took her a moment to register that it had disappeared, that the 
peaceful meeting had suddenly turned into a beehive of frightened 
people, not knowing where to turn. 

"What?" she asked the old man sitting beside her, but he shook his 
head and moved away.

People were standing now, talking in excited voices, words that made 
no sense. Scully reached across the chairs to the woman she'd seen, 
catching her by the arm as she gathered up her child.

"Please," Scully asked. "What's happening?"

"Tribal police are coming up the road," the woman said, shifting her 
sleepy daughter onto her shoulder. "A lottamany police."

"No, don't," Scully cried, as people began to head for the doors. 
"Don't go out there."

No one was listening. Terror seized her, the awful knowledge that she 
had miscalculated horribly, that she had thought only of herself, her 
own safety, by waiting in a public place. 

"Stop!" Scully cried, her voice at last cutting through the melee. 
"FBI! Just stay where you are!" 

The authority in her voice brought the room to a total standstill. A 
hundred frightened eyes turned toward her, toward the badge she held 
above her head. 

"They're not here for you," she announced loudly, in calm, practiced 
tones. "No one here is in trouble. Just stay in this room and 
everything will be okay."

She turned towards the woman with the child. "Do you speak Dineh?"

The woman nodded. "Please," Scully said, in a more normal voice. 
"Please tell the people it's all right. Tell them they don't need to 
be afraid, but they have to stay inside."

The woman nodded again, turning to the people closest to her, 
murmuring in their soft language. The words spread quickly across the 
room as some of the older people began to take seats again.

Scully picked up the laptop case and slung it over her shoulder, 
almost toppling under the weight. In the distance now, she could hear 
the whine of a dozen sirens, the beat of a helicopter's blade. 

She had been wrong. Fatally wrong. She and Mulder might once have 
been valuable pieces on the board, but they had forgotten that the 
game could change. 

Scully slipped through open the door, closing it firmly behind her. This 
was the way she had felt upon receiving the news that her cancer had 
moved into the terminal stage. There were no more decisions to make 
now, no more avenues to try or wild hopes to hold out. There were only 
the final steps to be taken, toward an ending she was determined to 
meet with grace.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


Mulder clung to the strap by his seat, his head half out the door, trying 
to see. This what what he had always feared most, the worst nightmare 
he could imagine. It was Scully on the answering machine, screaming 
that she needed his help, it was him all but killing himself to reach 
her -- too late. 

Mulder closed his eyes, atheist in a foxhole, and prayed. 

He started at a tug on his arm, turning to see Kresge pointing outside 
the chopper. They were circling now, over a parking lot rapidly filling with 
police. 

"Oh god," Mulder moaned. 

He turned around, screaming at the pilot.

"Land us! Land us now!


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


"Dana Scully!"

The amplified voice seemed to rock the building on its very 
foundation, echoing inside her head like the voice of God. 

"Stay inside," she ordered, waving a hand at the vague shadows at the 
edges of her vision, forcing her legs to move. She was walking beneath 
water now, every movement an act of pure will, the doors to the 
outside wavering and bending as she fought her way down the endless 
hall. 

She struggled to breathe beneath the weight of the ocean, her heart 
pounding sparks behind her eyes. Another grandmother grabbed a small 
boy and held him tight against her as Scully passed. 

"It's okay," she murmured through frozen lips, shuddering as something 
slithered out before her. 

A hand. Hers. 

The solid handle of the door pressed against her palm. She pushed it 
open and walked outside, into the blinding white light. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


Mulder had his straps off before they were even near the ground, 
nothing but Skinner's strong hands keeping him from throwing himself 
out the door. 

They were all there, every 'They' that he could think of. Navajo 
Nation police. Arizona sheriffs. A series of open, unmarked jeeps, the 
late sun glinting off the barrels of a half dozen rifles. Another two 
helicopters landing on the other side, disgorging a stream of men in 
military garb. 

All for one small woman who stood, disheveled and disoriented, 
blinking in the hot sun as if all the monsters of the world had 
suddenly appeared before her eyes. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


Light

--and the voice from above and the great pounding inside and the order 
to put her hands above her head as she turned and saw-- 

Light

--flashing through the blades of a chopper touching down--

      hail mary full of grace the lord is with thee 

--and Skinner stepping out and--

Light

      blessed art thou among women and blessed

--Mulder behind him stumbling face blank with panic--

Light

-no dear god no don't let him see this no don't let Mulder see this 

--wrestling himself out of Skinner's grasp-- 

Light

     is the fruit of thy womb jesus 

--slamming jolt as her knees hit the ground and--

Light

      holy mary mother of god 

--Kresge running toward her, mouth open in a soundless scream and--

Light

      pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our

--sharp crack of a gunshot echoing inside her chest and--

"SCULLY!"

--darkness.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 

PART 12             

<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 


-Is it finished now?

Melissa laughed, lifting Scully from the ground. "Trust you, the quiet 
one, to come up with such a spectacular ending."

Scully let her head fall to rest heavily against Melissa's shoulder. A 
great sense of peace washed over her, taking the strength of her 
limbs. She closed her eyes and relaxed against her sister's body, 
Melissa's arms warm around her, like a protective shawl. 

Like the quilt Missy had given her years ago, when she'd first left 
home. The one she kept by the couch and wrapped herself in on the 
nights when she was so lonely she didn't want to be anywhere near her 
gun.

-Oh, Melissa, I've missed you so much. 

"I know, Day. Me too." She drew back and lifted Scully's chin. "Now. 
You know what Dad always made us do, before we left someplace."

-I don't need to look back. I'm ready to go. 

"Dana, listen to me. I chose the role I had to play in your life and 
how I had to leave it. And this is what you chose. But for you...there 
could be more."

-I've done what I had to do, Melissa. Let me sleep now.  

Melissa tightened her hold. "I know you're tired. But you have to look 
back. You have to see where you've been before you can go on."

Scully turned and looked. In that moment she felt the pain howling its 
way from deep in her gut, almost blinding her with its force.

His pain. Not hers.

She looked and saw herself lying in the dirt with Mulder straddling 
her body, crying her name as he tried to make her heart beat again; 
she saw Kresge, blood soaking through his jeans from a wound in his 
thigh, tilting her head back to breathe into her open mouth. 

Something cracked open inside. She gasped in agony--

--and felt him above her. 

"Scully..." The weight of Mulder disappeared, became hands softly 
touching her shoulders, her face. He brought his mouth close, brushed 
his lips against her ear. 

"That's good, Scully, breathe. Just breathe. Just...stay."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


She was swimming in memories. She was in a boat on a lake; on a table 
in the light. She had cancer, she was dying. Mulder knelt by her 
bedside, holding her hand, weeping in silence. 

She knew he was there, but she could say nothing. She was so weak she 
could not even open her eyes. 

And then it was dark; it had been dark for so long and there was 
something in her throat, tape on her wrists, hands holding her down-- 

She fought and the fight brought the pain, searing her with it until 
the needle entered her arm, until waves of dizziness overwhelmed her 
and she fell back and back and back, knowing she could do no more, she 
could not save herself. 

Then there was Mulder, whispering in her ear, whispering that it would 
be all right, that she was safe now. 

She held onto that, and let the darkness close over her head.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


FLAGSTAFF MEDICAL CENTER, CARDIAC CARE UNIT
MARCH 15TH, 4:20 PM


The footsteps were familiar, but Mulder did not turn. He kept his 
eyes on Scully's bruised face, one hand pressing hers to his cheek, 
his other running up and down her forearm, as if hypnotizing them 
both into quiet. Deja vu kept spinning him around whenever he let 
go of her, and so he didn't. He didn't care who saw. Not anymore.

Too many hospitals in their lives, too many respirators, too many tiny 
electrodes hooked up to too many machines, trying to map whatever 
energy remained.

"How is she?" Skinner asked. 

"Still unconscious," Mulder answered, as if that couldn't be seen.

"Mulder, there appears to have been a problem earlier--"

"They put her in restraints." 

"Because she tried to tear the ventilator out."

"You can't tie her down. That will only make the dreams worse." 

Mulder turned to glance at Skinner, seeing a face not much more rested 
than his own. "I'll be here. I'll watch her. She doesn't need to be 
restrained."

"You need to sleep."

"I'm fine," Mulder spat, turning away.

"Mulder. Not sleeping is why Scully is on a ventilator in the first 
place. She ran herself into the ground and it's not going to help her 
if you do the same."

"I'll sleep when she wakes up," Mulder answered. "As soon as I know 
she's okay."

"Mulder, she's out of danger. She just needs a good long rest. Which 
she will get." He heard Skinner sigh, shifting his weight from foot to 
foot. "You're both suspended indefinitely, with pay, pending 
investigation." 

Mulder nodded. That was to be expected, though it was a nice 
conciliatory touch that the forced vacation would be paid.

He heard the scrape as Skinner pulled up a chair beside him. "Her 
doctor's laid down the law to OPR. No hearing for at least fourteen 
days and then only if he thinks she can take the stress. You, I'm 
afraid, are another story. They want you back on Friday. Bright and 
early."

Mulder nodded again. "If she's awake by then, okay."

He heard Skinner lean back and sigh. 

"Mulder, I didn't order the cavalry in. No one knows who did. And I'm 
grateful to you for making me chopper up. I fully understand that we'd 
be sitting by Scully's grave right now if we hadn't."

"And Kresge?"

"Who?"

Mulder turned for the first time and fixed Skinner with the blank 
stare he knew his superior hated. "Detective John Kresge, San Diego 
Police Department, Southeastern Division. The guy who took the bullet 
meant for Scully. Who is doing much better today, thank you for 
asking."

Well, at least he has the good manners to be embarrassed, Mulder 
thought, as Skinner's jaw began to work. 

"Needless to say, everyone's extremely grateful for his--"

"Put your thanks where your mouth is, sir. Make sure he keeps his job. 
It means a lot to him."

"Agent Mulder." 

Mulder heard the warning note in Skinner's voice. Yeah, yeah, he 
thought, I've gone too far. You're right, I have. Right over the edge. 
And you know what? I don't give a shit. The only thing I care about is 
right here, in this bed.

"Sir," he said tightly, "I believe that you did not knowingly betray 
Agent Scully. But I still want to know who told you to put us on that 
case. And until I do know that, and why, please understand that I 
cannot consider you anything but a possible threat."

Skinner sighed, smoothing back his nonexistent hair. "I do understand 
that," he answered, rising to set something down on the small table by 
Scully's bed. "This was in my care. I have to fly back to Washington 
tonight. Please give Agent Scully my best." 

Mulder looked at the small funeral urn and nodded. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


FMC CARDIAC CARE UNIT
MARCH 18TH, 6:28 PM


Kresge had not expected to be the one sitting by the bed when Scully 
finally woke.

"Hey there," he whispered, rubbing the unbruised side of her face with 
the back of his hand. "Wakey, wakey."

"Hey," she managed to answer, her voice dry and gravelly.

He sat on the bed and held her head up so she could sip water through 
a straw. 

"Mulder?" 

Kresge smiled, putting down the water. Of course that would be her 
first question. 

"Passed out, finally," he answered, slipping a pillow behind her head. 
"He's been sitting with you for the last four days."

She tried to get up and he pushed gently at her shoulders, pressing 
her back down. 

"Not yet. You did a good number on yourself, Scully. You're not going 
anywhere for a while."

"I feel all right."

He shook his head. "Well, you're not."

Her hand moved feebly across her chest, looking for bandages. 

"Was I shot?"

"No. Your heart gave out. You came in at 220 systolic, plus severe 
exhaustion. They had to put you on a respirator for the first twenty-
four hours. You didn't even have the strength left to breathe for 
yourself."

She was quiet for a moment, then admitted, "That's pretty bad."

"Uh-huh. So no getting up until your blood pressure comes down. No 
running around for a while. No stress."

Her gaze shifted down to his leg, bandaged and stretched out beside 
the bed.

"You're hurt."

Kresge smiled. "Only flesh. I was released yesterday. I'm just keeping 
Mulder's place warm until he gets back."

"John..."

"Shh," he whispered, leaning over to kiss her forehead. "No stress. 
You woke me up, Scully, and I needed that. If I can return the favor, 
then it was a good thing, wasn't it?"


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


I've done this too often, Mulder thought. Too much sitting in 
hospitals, waiting for the news to turn better. Too many trips to the 
gift shop, wondering which flowers she'd like. 

Even now, he didn't know. He had never asked, as if asking would mean 
that he would need to buy her flowers again.

The door to Scully's room was open and through it he could see Kresge 
sitting on her bed, his injured leg stretched forward. He was bent 
close, his weight supported on one forearm while her hand lay curved 
around his waist.  

They were talking so softly that Mulder couldn't hear what they were 
saying. He didn't need to hear it, really. The intimacy of their 
posture told the story. He couldn't say that Kresge didn't deserve 
this, but Mulder also couldn't pretend, even to himself, that he 
didn't care. 

Kresge leaned the rest of the way forward, kissing Scully softly on 
the mouth, and Mulder quickly backed several paces down the hall. He 
reached the door to Scully's room again just as Kresge was limping 
out.

"Mulder, hey!" 

Mulder smiled perfunctorily, seeing only the image from moments 
before. 

"She's awake," Kresge grinned, gesturing towards the open doorway. 
"Asking where you were."

I'm sure, Mulder thought dryly. "Glad to see you on your feet," he 
acknowledged. 

Kresge's grin spread wider. "I'm on my way home. Your boss put in a 
good word or ten, I guess. Apparently, I'm still employed."

A real smile broke across Mulder's features. "Congratulations. I'm 
glad to hear it."

"And Scully's all right." Kresge's smile slowly changed, grew serious. 
"That's all that really matters."

"Is it?" Mulder asked, searching the man's eyes.

Kresge looked as worn as they all did, but his was the open face of a 
man who had no secrets. "Yeah, Mulder. It is," he replied. He patted 
Mulder on the arm and started to limp away.

"Hey. Kresge." 

The man turned and Mulder held out a hand. "I don't really know how 
to--"

Kresge surprised him by throwing a rough arm around his shoulder, 
cutting off his words. 

"I had my reasons."

Mulder nodded, giving the man a brief hug in return.

"Go on," Kresge smiled, thumping Mulder on the back. "She's waiting." 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


She was not surprised at the way her heart sped up when she heard his 
footsteps. She only wished that they had disconnected the monitor so 
the little green dot would not betray her thoughts. 

He walked up to her bed, wearing the same concerned, sheepish 
expression he always had when she first woke and saw him again. This 
time, a full beard was the mute testimony to what he had gone through 
on his side of their separation. She'd never seen him go unshaven for 
so long. 

He gave her a shy grimace and held up a bunch of daffodils, looking 
around for around for something to put them in.

Speak to him, Scully told herself, as he settled for sticking them in 
her water glass, the way he usually did, but she couldn't find a way 
to start. There was so much to say that the words seemed to have all 
turned sideways, creating a logjam in her throat. 

"Good to see you awake," he began. "How are you feeling?"

"Better," she answered. A moment, then the conversation immediately 
fell into the chasm between them. 

"I saw your MRIs," he said, looking at her at last, a smile finally 
gracing his lips. "There's no tumor. But your EEG is showing some 
abnormal activity. Less now than when they first brought you in, but 
they want to run some more tests. They're worried you may have 
sustained some neurological damage, either when Wallace hit you, or 
when you were...while you--"

"While I was in cardiac arrest."

He looked away and she could see his throat work as swallowed down 
some unpalatable thought. 

"Mulder," she said, "I know what--"

He shook his head. 

She looked over at the bank of machines. The spikes remained steady. 
"I'll need to have a look at the readouts myself," she said, trying to 
return to the original subject, "but I think I know what the 
abnormality is."

"What?" 

She looked back and caught relief flitting across his face, though it 
was hard to tell if this was because she had an answer, or because 
they had found something marginally safer to talk about. 

"About a year after I removed the chip for the first time, I started 
having nightmares. I never remembered what they were about, I would 
just wake up in a panic. Then I was diagnosed with cancer. I guess I 
assumed the nightmares were somehow connected, either caused by the 
tumor or by some intuitive sense that something was wrong."

Mulder nodded. "That would have been my assumption."

"They finally disappeared around the time I went into remission." She 
shifted in the bed, trying not to let her face show the pain of the 
rib he'd cracked. "I took the chip out a little over a year ago. What 
if its effects take about that long to wear off?"

His face immediately went blank. "You mean, the remission is ending?"

The monitor skipped as her heart gave an odd, hollow beat, and she 
looked up to see him staring at that green dot, his eyes blind with 
fear.

"I didn't say that," she tried to assure him. "I meant the nightmares. 
I think the nightmares are my memories coming back."

He was silent for a long time, so long that she felt herself slowly 
drifting away again. The conversation, brief as it was, had drained 
the small amount of energy she'd recovered.

"Scully," he whispered, leaning over her much as Kresge had earlier. 
"Scully, I have to go back to Washington tonight. I have to testify in 
front of OPR."

"Okay," she whispered back, though she kept her eyes closed so he 
could not see the need that clenched her stomach. 

"I'll come back as soon as I can. Your doctor says you shouldn't fly 
for a while. I promised your mother--" 

Scully looked up in time to see Mulder's eyes fill with tears. He 
stood, blinking furiously, and moved away. 

"I promised your mother I would bring you home."

"The other thing," she asked, desperate to change the subject. Mulder 
crying was not something she could bear right now. "The things I 
sent?"

He looked over at her, his tears having given way to a kind of strange 
wonder.

"Yeah," he said, a question in his eyes. "They arrived."

A smile stretched her cheeks, waking the pain on the side of her face 
that had been bruised when she fell. Even that felt good for the 
moment, the ache in her cheek telling her she had not forgotten how to 
smile, the sharp stab in her chest reminding her that no matter what 
she asked, he would never let her go.

This time, the thought was beautiful. 

Jane and Amy were safe, and Mulder was still here, awkwardly patting 
her foot as she closed her eyes.

It was enough to know, for now.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 

PART 13             

<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 


HOPI PARTITIONED LAND
MARCH 25TH, 11:18 AM


A woman came out of the hogan, into the sunlight.

Her face was bare of makeup, warmly freckled, the mole she always 
tried to hide showing plainly. The sun lit her hair with a dozen 
shades of gold and orange, a bright halo framing clear turquoise eyes. 
Her eyes matched the long, light dress she was wearing, a soft woven 
cotton that caught the gentle breeze, outlining the curve of breasts 
and hips.

He barely recognized her. 

"Leonora said you were supposed to be picked up today," was the excuse 
he offered for his intrusion into her retreat. "I talked her into 
letting me do it."

She nodded, moving closer toward him. "I'm glad to see you," she 
murmured, her voice husky from disuse. Five days she'd been up here 
alone, according to Leonora. The thought of it had terrified him when 
he heard. What if she went mad in the solitude? What if she became ill 
again?

Scully didn't look either mad or ill. She still seemed tired, but 
there was something else beneath the weariness, a kind of lively spark 
in her eyes that he hadn't seen for a very long time. 

"Nice dress," Mulder blurted, not knowing what else to say. 

She took up a handful of the thin blue cloth, peering at it as if 
she'd forgotten what she was wearing. 

"Jane gave it me. Good thing -- I lost everything else." 

He nodded. "I brought your suitcase back. The things you left at the 
motel."

She slipped her hand into his, her whole hand, squeezing gently until 
he let himself curve his fingers around hers. She had never held his 
hand like this before; it had always been two or three of her fingers 
clasping two or three of his. 

He let her lead him away from the hogan, up the hill and over the top 
of the ridge, to the sandstone rocks on the other side. 

Below them, in a well created by a tiny valley between the hills, was 
an old horse paddock made of twisted juniper trunks hammered into the 
ground. Thin branches had been nailed to the upright poles and strips 
of bright cloth were tied around them here and there, blowing 
forlornly in the wind. 

"This is where I come every day," Scully said. Her voice was more 
alive than it had been in the hospital, but still too deep, too 
hollow. Mulder let himself absorb the feel of her hand in his, warm 
and trusting. He didn't dare look at her. The empty paddock was one of 
the saddest things he'd seen in a long time, something made for a 
purpose, waiting in vain for the horses who would never come back to 
make it live again. 

She squeezed his hand a little tighter. "I've been trying to remember. 
Trying to put the pieces together."

"And have you?"

"Some. Enough to build some theories. To think about where we need to 
look next."

Scully stepped back from the edge, tugging on his hand to make him 
back up as well. He went, not knowing what else to do or what to say 
to her. He did not expect her to turn toward him, instead of away as 
she always had.

She was looking up at him now, her face lined and bruised. A blue 
bandana held back her hair, neatly covering her newest scar. It hurt 
to look at her, to see her so battered, but he made himself do it. He 
knew it would hurt her more if he turned away. 

She took one step closer and laid her head against his chest. A moment 
later she slipped her arms under his jacket, holding him loosely 
around the waist. Mulder stared at the empty paddock, his hands 
clenching and unclenching at his sides. It was exactly how he had felt 
when she tried to hold him in the ashes of their charred office. If he 
touched her right now he would crush her to him so tightly she would 
break.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


She let him go when he didn't hug back, and he slid up onto the rocks, 
high enough that his knees were now in the vicinity of her shoulders. 
High enough that she could not reach for him again. 

"Seems like this is kind of where we started," Mulder said, his gaze 
unfocused, his face turned out toward the land.

"No, it's not," she said gently. "This isn't the same place and I'm 
not the same person who came out here." She raised her head to look at 
him, shading her eyes from the sun. "And neither are you."

"Don't let the beard fool you," Mulder answered, avoiding her eyes. 

She let the silence unroll, watching his lashes as he blinked, the 
rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathed. Beneath his chin, she 
could see a pulse and she longed to press her mouth to it, to feel his 
life beating against her lips. 

"Did the hearing go badly?" she asked.

He looked down at her, his face blank. "Skinner's been a busy boy. 
Flagstaff agreed that Wallace was self-defense and the Children's 
Center in San Diego agreed to let it be handled as an internal matter. 
They're not going to file criminal charges. What OPR will do is 
probably another story."

"What about you, Mulder? They're not going to try to hang any of this 
on you, are they?"

He shrugged. "To be honest, I'm not sure I care. I'm not sure my 
heart's in it any more."

"Mulder." She started to reach for his leg, then thought better of it.

"When is my hearing?" she asked, sighing. 

"April first." That at least wrung an ironic smile from his grim face. 
"Somehow it seems like an appropriate date."

"Good. Then we still have a few days."

"For what? You're not going back out there, Scully. Not right now. I 
don't care how fine you say you are." 

"I meant a few days here." She pushed off from the rock she was 
leaning against. Too long standing in the sun, and she would burn. Too 
long with Mulder in this kind of tense, edgy mood and he would wear 
her out, outweigh the fragile balance she'd finally achieved. 

"It's a good place, Mulder. Sit and listen to the quiet for a while. 
Maybe it will help you, too."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


He sat up on the rocks until his rear end ached, until the sun was 
nearly gone and he was chilled through. He understood now why Scully 
had picked this as her thinking place. There was something about the 
endless enduring patience of the empty paddock that made him feel 
better. Calmer than he had been since leaving her in the hospital a 
week ago.

The hogan was aglow with warm light from a kerosene lamp set in the 
window, as if Scully had left it there to guide his way home. She was 
fast asleep on the small sagging bed, head on the mattress, wrapped in 
a thick woolen blanket. 

Her laptop was on the table, though without electricity he doubted it 
had been useful to her for very long. Some bureaucratic oversight had 
allowed her to keep the files she had gone away with, and they were 
spread out across the small Formica table, her notebook face down on 
top of them. Next to it, a pen and her glasses, lying as she always 
left them when she'd only stepped away for a moment, opened up and up-
side down.

Working, still, always. 

He knelt by the bed, lifting a lock of her hair from where it lay 
against the sheet, rubbing the soft strands gently between his 
fingers. She didn't stir and he couldn't bring himself to wake her. 

Mulder shivered and got up to put more wood in the fireplace, a sawed-
off oil drum in the middle of the eight-sided room, its stovepipe 
extending upward through a hole in the ceiling. The fire pit itself 
was no more than a shallow indent dug into the dirt floor of the hogan 
and Mulder had to lie on his stomach, blowing into the cut-out door to 
get the coals to flare up again. 

"Indian Guide, my ass," came a sleepy voice from his right. 

He looked up to find Scully smiling at him, still curled peacefully 
under her blanket. 

"Eastern Indians, okay? We had things like forests. Twigs and leaves 
and tinder."

"And matches. And lighter fluid."

Her teasing tone took him by surprise, as much as her quiet beauty in 
the soft light.

"There's another little door on the other side. Open that, and it's 
easier to get the fire going again," she said, making no move to help. 
Instead, she rolled slowly onto her back, rubbing at the center of her 
chest.

"Are you all right?" he asked. 

"Mmm. Just being lazy." She punctuated the statement with a careful 
stretch, drawing the blanket back up to her shoulders when she was 
finished.

"It's funny," she said, looking upward so that he was graced with her 
elegant profile. "My sister was always telling me to listen to my 
heart, but I never would. I guess it finally decided it had to go on 
strike to get my attention."

Mulder held his breath for a moment, not sure what to do with that 
revelation.

"So, what was it trying to tell you?" he finally joked. "Eat at Joe's? 
Don't invest in Microsoft?"

"That I love you."

She said it calmly, as a matter of well-known fact, her eyes still 
fixed on the ceiling. 

Mulder said nothing. He had just lost the facility for thought, for 
language. 

She turned her head and fixed him with large eyes, sea-green in the 
golden light. Mulder did the only thing he could think of to do under 
the circumstances. He burst into tears.

She was there in a moment, kneeling beside him, her fingers lightly 
running through his hair. 

"Don't..."

"I won't. I'm not." One last hiccup racked his body as he gave in to the 
overwhelming need to touch her, to caress her face, to feel her skin 
beneath his hands. 

She bent her head and kissed him until the light seemed to flow 
between them, not banishing the darkness, but illuminating the twisted 
shapes within. Reducing them to their ordinary contours, the way a 
child's nightlight turns the monstrous shadows back into a chest of 
drawers and toys left on the floor. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


She woke him in the night, not thrashing with nightmares, but alive 
with excitement. 

"Come with me," she whispered, tugging him out of the bed she'd tucked 
him into just a few hours before.

She made him put a t-shirt and jacket over his sweatpants, wrapped a 
blanket around him and led him to the door.

"Close your eyes," she said, and he did, trusting her to guide him up 
the road. 

The ground was cold beneath his bare feet, but the dirt was so soft it 
made him want to dig his toes into the packed earth. Scully led him a 
few yards up from the hogan, until he felt wool beneath his feet and 
she told him to lie down. 

He heard a soft whoosh of air as she laid down beside him and snuggled 
against his side. Mulder unfolded the blanket she'd wrapped him in, 
enough to wrap her up in it as well. 

"You can open your eyes now," she said, and he did.

Above him lay the entire universe, a canopy of stars so dense the sky 
seemed to be more light than darkness. There was no moon at all and 
the Milky Way stood out clearly, directly above their heads. 

Mulder's gaze traveled across the heavens as he sought to orient himself 
by the constellations, but there were so many extra stars, so many 
more than he was used to seeing, that it was hard to pick out the 
familiar patterns. 

"Do you see that?" She pointed to a particular set of stars, three 
across, set close together.

"Orion," he acknowledged. He turned to look at Scully, surprised to 
find her already looking at him. Her face was somber again and it made 
him ache to think that she had looked like that for so long that he'd 
begun to consider it her normal expression. 


"My father taught me the constellations when I was a little girl," she 
said, tracing star patterns on his chest. "He taught us all that kind 
of thing. But I could never accept that Orion was a boy. To me it was 
a woman in a long dress, arms out, trying to encompass the whole 
universe."

He smiled at her, delighted in the confidence. 

"That was science for me, Mulder. To be a scientist meant that I 
could, one day, know everything. Or so I thought."

"When you were a child."

"Until I came to work with you. And was confronted with the 
impossible, the unexplainable, right from the start. You cracked my 
smug little world wide open, Mulder." 

"I'm not sure that deserves thanks."

"It does." She lifted herself up, a slight wince flashing across her 
features as she settled on her elbow. "But what I've missed, 
Mulder...had already missed, long before I met you...was what everyone 
else seems to have had a dozen times by our age."

"The flu?" he quipped, not sure if he wanted to hear what was coming.

He didn't need to see her face to know that once again, he'd screwed 
up. "I'm sorry," he said quickly, reaching for her as she rolled onto 
her back and turned her face away. "Please, Scully. I'm not good with 
this kind of stuff."

"This isn't easy for me either, Mulder."

"I know it's not. Believe me, I know." He lay down again, tugging her 
gently back to her place in his arms. Her palm slid beneath his shirt 
to rest flat against his chest, and he reminded himself that she would 
never touch him like this if she didn't want to. For that he had years 
of proof, years of Scully touching him with only the tips of her 
fingers, if at all. She had let him touch her, sure, perhaps even 
liked it, but she had so rarely returned the gesture that he had come 
to believe she had no desire to touch him at all. 

"Scully," he said softly, playing with the baby fine wisps of hair at 
her temple. "I have to ask. Why did you come back? Why didn't you just 
take Amy and make a life for yourself somewhere?"

"Because it wasn't the right thing to do." 

"But what if it turns out that our theory is true? That they tracked 
us, and recruited us, and put us together for a purpose?"

She sat up, the millions of stars illuminating her face as clearly as 
a full moon. "Does it really matter, Mulder? Could they make us do 
what we're doing right now?"

He ran a finger down her neck, to the place where her cross used to 
lay. "There's so much more you should have had."

"No," she answered. "Listen to me. I'm not my mother, happy to stay 
home with a pack of kids, waiting for my man to come back from 
protecting the country. I'll never forgive Them for what was stolen 
from me, but I can make peace with the idea that I've chosen not to be 
a normal parent. I can't do what we do with a child in my daily life. 
And I've come to believe that you and I were meant to do this."

"Monster Slayer and Child of Water?"

A reluctant smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "Child of Water 
was a man, Mulder."

"Hey, it's the '90s," he said, and for once in this long, strange day, 
the joke did not fall flat. 

"We should go in," he added, negating his own words by pulling her 
back down into his arms. "You need your rest."

"I am resting," she answered. "I sleep out here every night." 

She lifted her head and smiled her rare, bright smile.

"What a girl has to do, Mulder, to get you into bed."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


She was making tea when she realized that something between them had 
finally changed. 

"What?" she asked, feeling his eyes on her, even with her back turned. 

"You look so different, Scully. I feel like I don't even know you," he 
answered.

She tried to laugh it off, imagining how strange she must appear with 
her untamed hair, swimming in the sweatshirt she'd borrowed to put 
over her dress, the sleeves rolled twice and the bottom hanging almost 
to her knees. A far cry from the prim and proper Agent Scully. "At 
the moment, I don't even know me," she answered, pushing their work 
aside to clear a space on the table for her mug. "Don't worry, I'm 
sure I'll be recognizable once I clean up and put a suit back on."

"You're beautiful, Scully, just as you are."

She looked down at him, at the almost unbearable tenderness in his 
eyes and reached over to draw one finger down his nose. 

"So are you."

A breathless moment passed and then he laughed, scratching his fingers 
through his beard. 

"Even with this?"

She bent over and kissed his upturned face. 

"I like the beard," she said when she was finished, feeling the first 
flush of arousal coloring her cheeks. "The beard can stay."

"Maybe we should never leave this place," he said, no longer laughing. 

Scully shook her head, taking the seat across from him. "I know this 
isn't really us," she said. "Me in this dress, you with that beard. 
But it is us, Mulder. Would you rather go back to the way we were?"

"No," he said quickly. 

"Me neither. And that won't change when we get back to DC." 

She sipped at the hot liquid, Leonora's gift. Hawthorne, good for 
strengthening the heart. Little did she know, Scully thought. And then 
wondered if Leonora, looking at them from the outside, had seen 
exactly what was going on. 

"So." Mulder got up and went to the propane stove, taking the lid off 
the pot of soup he'd made for their lunch. A rich waft of potato and 
leek filled the air and Scully's stomach gave a healthy rumble.

"What else haven't we gone over? Jane Hampton?" He cast a quick look 
at her over his shoulder, wooden spoon in hand. "What do the RFLPs I 
brought tell you?"

"Nothing conclusive except that we don't have the same mother. Humans 
share over 99.9% of their DNA with each other. Without a DNA sample 
from my father, or a very expensive procedure to subtract the 
mitochondrial DNA from ours and compare what's left, we're not going 
to get a definitive answer." 

He turned to look at her, his face shadowed. "And you're okay with 
that?"

She thought about it a moment, surprised to find out that she was. "I 
think to know absolutely either way...maybe some truths don't need to 
be known."

He accepted that, turning back to stir the soup. She watched the 
muscles in his shoulders move under his t-shirt, and was struck by how 
much pleasure it gave her just to sit here and let herself look at 
him. 

"Mulder," she said softly. "Tell me about Caitlin."

His shoulders went stiff before he shrugged and resumed his deeply 
concentrated stirring. "You've seen the MRIs."

"No, Mulder. Tell me about her."

He stilled again. 

"I wouldn't know how to start," he finally answered, in a voice that 
sounded as if he were clutching it in both hands. 

She came up behind him and slipped her arms around his waist, pressing 
her forehead into the hollow between his shoulderblades. 

They didn't fit. They were ridiculously mismatched. And yet, when he 
turned in her arms, their very disparity had its own erotic 
attraction. Here, the still-soft bulge of Mulder's half-erection 
snuggled comfortably against her belly, while her small breasts found 
a hollow to fill in the dip just beneath his ribs. Her head did not 
quite clear his shoulder with her heels on the ground, but that only 
gave him room to tuck her neatly under his arm and spread his hands 
across her back.

She could remember Daniel, the first time he had held her like this. 
How his arms had gone all the way around her and he'd said she felt 
like nothing, like he was holding himself. 

I love you, Mulder, she thought, because you've always made me feel 
like I was something, even when I was something you were angry with. 

She looked up and his eyes flared wide. She realized that her breath 
had begun to speed up, that she was wet with wanting him, and he could 
see it in her eyes. 

"Shh," she said, before he could speak, and twined her fingers in his 
hair, drawing him down so that she could reach his mouth. 

This was different than the other times they had kissed. Where before 
the kiss had been the main event -- and had lasted, on one memorable 
occasion, for what seemed like hours -- she felt it this time as a 
prelude, like the bow and curtsy before a formal dance. 

He moved her backward, around the blazing stove, then gently pushed 
her down to sit on the edge of the bed, wadding up the pillows and 
blankets for her to lean against. She watched from her place of honor 
as he sank to his knees and slowly slid the dress up her bare legs.

Had she been unconsciously aware that this would happen today, that 
she was ready for it? Was that why she had insisted they both bathe 
this morning, despite the fact their water was running low? 

She shivered as his hands moved up and down the insides of her thighs, 
holding back the desire to twine her fingers in his hair and guide him 
down. He would find his way himself; she just needed to be patient. 
Had he not been patient with her these last three days? As if she were 
a wild pony that needed to be gentled, he had waited for her to get 
used to his presence, to come to him. 

He parted her legs further, rubbing his bearded face against her skin 
and she threw her head back, giving herself over to the strange 
sensation. His mouth came at last and she caught a low moan before it 
escaped from her lips. She was aware of Mulder tugging her to the end 
of the bed, aware of him draping her legs over his shoulders, but it 
seemed to be happening in an erotic dream, the kind she had on her 
loneliest nights, when she imagined her faceless, dark-haired lover 
and tried to pretend that her fingers were his.

No more dreams, she thought, opening her eyes. No more nightmares. She 
was alive, pleasure coursing through her body, waking every nerve. 

He made love to her with his mouth and hands, and then she to him, 
until both of them were flushed and sweating, their discarded clothes 
crushed beneath them, and she closed her eyes as she slowly lowered 
herself down onto him. 

There was no pain this time, no awful memory exploding inside her 
head. Just something opening, expanding. She moaned softly, unable to 
stop herself. She was full of him, full to bursting, overwhelmed and 
close to tears. 

"Scully, stay with me." His hands on her face were gentle, his thumbs 
tracing the curve of her lips. "Look at me, Scully. I'm here."

She looked. At first, it was just one more thing to add to the 
overload -- the depth of his eyes and the expression within. She had 
it on her lips to say stop, it's too much, when he smiled and she 
melted against him, burying him still deeper. The boundaries she had 
guarded for so long shifted, expanded to encompass him. 

"When we dead awaken..." she whispered, and he laughed; a low, 
delicious sound. 

"Only you, Scully, would quote Ibsen in the middle of making love." He 
laughed again and she joined him, her own rusty with years of neglect. 

Was it, in the end, just this simple? Two warm, willing bodies and the 
mundane, everyday glory of this act? 

They spoke now in half sentences and whispers, in soft cries she no 
longer tried to suppress. Slowly, she began to tighten around him. 

"Butterfly," he whispered, reaching up to stroke her battered face. 

"Mulder..." His name was a wonder now, an astonishment. 

"I'm here." 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


He had forgotten the feel of a woman in the grip of orgasm, the 
absolute and undying rapture of it. He watched Scully's face change as 
she closed her eyes and gave herself over to sensation, let her body 
take her into another dimension, a realm of light and heat and 
pleasure. 

He kissed her as she returned to him, eyes still shining with 
revelation. Her hand found its way to her ribs, pressing against the 
discoloured skin between her breasts. 

"I'm sorry," he said immediately. 

"No," she breathed, the soft smile never leaving her lips, "I forgot 
about it."

He began to withdraw and she used her weight to stop him. 

"I'm all right, Mulder." Her eyes gleamed at him, heavy-lidded. Her 
smile turned wicked as she raised herself up, then slid slowly back 
down, making him groan with pleasure.

He began to move again, and she bit lightly on his ear. 

"Shh," she whispered. "Let me."

She leaned against him, arms around his neck, stroking his chest with 
the tips of her breasts, taking him deeper inside her, deeper than he 
would have dared. A delicious agony began to build as she moved, so 
slow he wanted to scream, so unbelievably giving. Scully making love 
was a whole new Scully, a lush uncharted territory, one he had 
obviously never allowed himself to adequately imagine. 

A slow, sensuous smile spread across her face as she felt him 
beginning to gather within her. He couldn't stay still any longer, 
couldn't stay quiet, he needed his arms around her, needed to feel her 
heart beating against his.

She opened her eyes as he drew her down to him. So much love swimming 
in those rich blue waters, so much sweetness. It was the trigger he 
needed, the catalyst for his release. Their embrace tightened as his 
movements became faster, suddenly growing desperate. Her name on his 
lips, his lips in her hair, he gave it all to her, everything that he 
was, all of the good and all of the bad, hope and fear and dream and 
nightmare pouring out of him in a wild rush while she held on, 
dauntless, and took it all in. 


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


Now, she thought, as Mulder pulled the blankets up around them, her 
body cradled in the hollow of his. Now, if we were legend, I would 
conceive the child that had been prophesied, the one who would grow to 
save the world.

There would be no child, not from this union or any other. 

A wave of sadness washed over her. "Are you all right?" Mulder asked. 
He tried to move, to look into her eyes, but she held him in place, 
her arms over his.

"Scully?" 

"Shh." She rubbed her cheek against his arm, letting the sorrow come. 
It was right to have loved him, just as it was right now to mourn what 
they would never have. Scully floated gently in the sea of her grief, 
but he was her raft, he kept her from drowning. He had always been 
there, but she had forgotten.

This she would never forget, no matter what happened now. 

She pulled Mulder's arms tighter around her. The monsters would wait 
another day. They watched the sky darken outside the door of the hogan 
and after awhile, they slept.


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 

EPILOGUE             

<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>> 


MARYLAND COAST
MARCH 31ST, 4:50 PM


Mulder stood on the cement walk and watched Scully make her slow way 
towards the ocean. 

The east coast was cold, grey, a drizzle threatening within the hour, 
and the turbulent water seemed to be a reflection of whatever had been 
going on between them all these years. Pulled by unseen forces, at one 
moment inexorably drawing closer, until the forces released them and 
they receded, back to wherever they began. 

He wanted to believe that was over now.

Scully had taken off her heels, leaving them like two small black 
creatures, forlorn and forgotten, half buried in the sand. Mulder's 
hands clenched the metal railing separating him from the beach as she 
walked straight into the sea, never once flinching as the cold waves 
rose and covered her feet. Deeper still she walked, until she was up 
to her knees and Mulder was poised to vault over the rail, the knight 
in tarnished armor off to save his beloved from herself.

She stopped then, just in time to keep him where he was. Surely she 
knew that he was watching, knew he could only give her so much privacy 
for whatever she had come here to do. He was Mulder in hover mode, 
half of him wishing that she would finally go ahead and shatter so 
they could get on with picking up the pieces, the other half praying 
that the peace they had found out in the desert was not another 
cleverly constructed facade.

She was kneeling in the water now, head high, her back straight as a 
mast. The coat billowing behind her as the hem slowly sank made her 
look like a child's stick-and-leaf sailboat, ready to blow away on the 
stiffening breeze. 

Mulder jumped the railing, angling outward across the sand to approach 
Scully from the side, rather than from directly behind. He had the 
sickening fear that he had gotten his wish at the worst of moments, 
that the salt water was undoing all the glue as he watched, that he 
would begin to see pieces of her floating away, too far out for him to 
reach. 

Her head bent slowly over her clasped hands and he realized she was 
praying. 

Mulder stopped, water swirling around his shoes, the laces already 
damp and caked with sand. Scully's prayers were private. He should not 
even look, yet he dared not take his eyes off her, afraid that if he 
didn't go on watching, she would slip beneath the waves and he would 
lose her forever. 

One hand moved from her lap into her pocket, and the wind brought him 
fragments of her voice, only the most delicate of sounds, no clear 
words to discern. He watched, paralyzed, as Scully opened one of the 
vials they had taken from the lab and poured its contents into the 
sea. She reached into her pocket again, and again, each of the five 
vials receiving this small ceremony, while her voice whispered and 
wept on the wind that filled his ears. 

She was finished, motionless when he reached her, staring with 
reddened eyes toward the horizon. He put a hand on her shoulder, 
shaking her slightly. Her distant focus didn't change and his throat 
closed in panic, wondering if her spirit had gone out there, never to 
return.

"I'm all right," she said after a moment, her voice thick and hoarse. 

He opened his own mouth to say something, then found he had no words. 
This was the place in the script where he usually went away, his cue 
to leave her alone with her thoughts. He had never gone beyond that 
moment. He had respected her too much.

Respect, or...or what? 

Cowardice, he told himself. You're a coward. You were grateful for her 
stubborn pride, relieved when she took her baggage back and shut the 
door in your face. It hurt because she didn't trust you, but you were 
glad too, because you didn't want to watch her go through it. You didn't
have the strength.

He was not going away. Not this time. He wondered if maybe she had 
never wanted him to go, but hadn't known how to ask him to stay. 

"Those were my children, too." He had no idea where the words came 
from, but the moment he said them he knew it had been the right thing 
to say. 

She turned at last and looked at him. 

"Yes," she answered, her damp hand cold against his burning face. She 
lifted his arm and slipped beneath it, nestling herself against his 
chest. Her face was soft and open, and for the first time he could 
remember, she made no attempt to either hide her tears or to stop 
them. She simply wept, quietly, calmly, and he thought, with a sudden 
swell of hope inside his chest, that maybe this time she really was 
going to be fine.

Shivering now, they helped each other to rise, slowly picking their 
drenched, bedraggled way back up the beach. They stopped to pull 
Scully's shoes out of the sand and the sky took that moment to open 
over their heads. 

Scully stepped back, looking upward to the angry heavens. "Isn't it 
strange," she said, wiping her wet face uselessly with her free hand, 
"that every time something important happens between us, it happens in 
the rain? Have you ever noticed that?"

He smiled as he remembered her standing in a cemetery in Oregon, 
laughing hysterically with the rain streaming down her face. He knew 
now that he began to love her as long ago as that, had wanted to catch 
her up in his arms that night and whirl her around, crying "YES!" to 
the stars so they would know he had received their gift and was happy 
with it. 

She had aged a hundred years since then. They both had. And so 
he only drew her close, his heart whirling as her arms slid easily 
around his waist and she rose against him. Her lips were wet and cold, 
but her mouth was warm, her tongue speaking its own language against 
his. She wrote poems inside his mouth until he had to pull away, 
clutching her close as the rain pounded on their heads, whispering his 
gratitude at last, in one simple word. 

"Scully."

He smiled down at her and she was smiling too, her own smaller and 
more wistful than his. He wondered how many times he could fall in 
love with the same woman, if he would experience this same 
rollercoaster thrill of exhilaration every time he held her, for the 
rest of his life. 

"Mulder," she answered, giving it the twist of a question.

He followed her gaze, looking over his shoulder to the hill high above 
the beach, where an elegant two-story structure overlooked the roiling 
sea. 

"What are you looking at?" he asked.

"A hotel. A very nice hotel, actually."

"Yes, it is," he agreed.

She looked at him again, and the color of her eyes reminded him of the 
sky in Arizona, just before all the insanity began.

"Your mother is expecting you," he said.

She smiled at him, a wide radiant smile such as he had never seen from 
her. "You're going to use my mother as an excuse?"

He smiled back and shook his head.

"One more night," she said, turning serious again, reaching up to 
stroke the pale skin that marked the place his beard had been. "One 
more night before we have to go back and face them all. But as 
ourselves."


<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>=<<+|+>>


FBI HEADQUARTERS
APRIL 1ST, 7:58 AM


They moved down the corridor, a unit unto themselves; a tall man with 
an oddly handsome face, and a small, delicate woman, matching him 
stride for stride. The man's hand lay firmly in the curve of the 
woman's back. She didn't seem to mind.

Scully shot Mulder a quick look as they took their seats across from 
Skinner and the rest of the review panel. She knew he would have liked 
to reach out, to squeeze her hand, but it was not possible under the 
circumstances. Instead, he held her gaze for a moment, reassuring her 
with his eyes. 

"Agent Scully," Skinner began. "The panel understands that you became 
very ill as a result of this investigation. We'd like to ask if you 
now feel ready to begin the review process."

Scully looked at the faces on the other side of the table and knew 
that most of them would be against her. She could only tell the truth, 
and then it would be in God's hands.

She wished she could reach over to touch Mulder's arm, to tell him how 
strong she felt. A strength unlike the desperate holding together of 
broken parts that had characterized her for so long; what she felt 
this morning was a clear, steady light, like a candle lit for prayer.

What she felt was the echo of Mulder inside her, the promise that 
whatever happened here, they would find a way to make a future, not 
only for the world, but for themselves.

"Yes," she answered, her voice filling the room. "I'm ready now."


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END OF BOOK TWO

Put a little gas in the car: fialka62@yahoo.com

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Author's notes:

Hi <waving>. Fialka here. 

If, after 750k of this, anyone is still here (and if those who were 
reading as I posted have forgiven me <eg>), I'd just like to say a 
word or two of thanks. 

First, all the eclairs on the planet to the monster-beta team, without 
whom this story would have been a good deal fuzzier, badly punctuated, 
and Britishly spelled. 

This was a hell of a story to write, not just for me, but for those 
who took any part of that bumpy car ride, which went through three 
complete drafts and umpteen revisions. Over a year and hundreds of 
pages later, some of my betas are even still speaking to me <g>. 

The big thanks are in Book One, Part 0, but another word is necessary 
here: 

There are three people who patted my cheeks, sharpened my prose, and 
betabetabeta'd their little cotton socks to shreds through the final 
revisions done during these two weeks of posting. For beta services 
above and beyond and around and a hundred miles past the call of duty, 
please give a huge round of applause and virtual goodies to MARASMUS, 
JET and LYSANDRA. Any errors, inconsistencies or lapses of logic that 
slipped through are not only entirely my fault, but probably a result 
of my ignoring their good advice.

Second, but very close to my heart, the issues brought up by the 
character of Leonora are all too real. Anyone interested in knowing 
more about the so-called 'Navajo/Hopi Land Dispute' will probably be 
able to make a good start here:

Fourth World Documentation Project http://www.halcyon.com/FWDP/
Bob Dorman's Activist Page http://www.plix.com/~users/redorman/

Last, but never least, to everyone who has or will read this -- thanks 
for coming along on the ride. It's been a pleasure sharing it with 
you. 

Fialka
1 October 2000