Date: 09 Jun 1998 16:05:30 GMT From: Snowrider5 Subject: Goodnight Newton, by Rachel Howard (NC-17/MSR) (1/14) GOODNIGHT NEWTON, by Rachel Howard. *NC-17*, MSR, (1/14) Classification: XRA Rating: NC-17 for blood, guts, violence, and consensual adult sex. Spoilers: Season 5, especially "Emily, Christmas Carol." Keywords: MSR; mythology Summary: A bizarre case in Las Vegas leads Mulder and Scully deeper into the Consortium's secrets than they've ever gone before. Author's Introduction: I think the X-Files is arguably the most original television series in production right now. At its best, nothing else can touch it. BUT -- and this is a =biggie= -- sometimes an episode screws with the characters and the mythology so horribly that I want to go strangle the writers and anyone else at 1013 that I can pin the blame on. In my opinion, the "Christmas Carol/"Emily" two-parter was the perfect example of this kind of debacle. So why did I write this? Doing my best to clean out the Aegean Stables, that's all. Enjoy. Disclaimer: Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Walter Skinner, Melissa Scully, Emily Sims, the Bounty Hunter, Cancerman, Alex Krycek, Bill Scully and any other tangentially mentioned characters created by Chris Carter remain his copyrighted property, as well as the copyrighted property of 1013 Productions and Fox Television, a unit of 20th Century Fox. The author believes that the use of copyrighted characters in the forum known as "Fan Fiction" is protected under the "Fair Use" statutes of US Copyright law. No infringement is intended. _________________________________________ "Goodnight Newton", Chapter 1/14 Looking at the young agent standing in front of his partner's desk, Mulder shook his head disgustedly. A fifteen-year old girl could see through a stunt like this. It was only Scully's innate politeness that was allowing the charade to go on. He spat a sunflower seed into an empty styrofoam cup with an audible splat and enjoyed the nervous look that Stimmler shot in his direction. Pathetic. Looks like he's trying to work up the courage to ask her to the prom but chickened out and started a conversation about his biology homework instead. Mulder decided to cut Stimmler off at the pass. Literally. "So what makes you think these guys, what'sitsname --" "Galaxis." "Galaxis -- were anything other than exactly what the program said they'd be, aerialists?" Mulder accompanied the question with a munching sound as he bit down on another sunflower seed. Suck on that, Stimmler. Dimly, Mulder wondered why it was irritating him so much watching this jerk try to put the moves on Scully. "Did I mention that my mother's brother is a trapeze artist?" Mulder sat up and looked at the kid, feeling a slight flicker of interest. "No. No, you didn't. So you actually know something about this stuff?" Stimmler shuffled his feet, and Mulder restrained an urge to slap him. "Uh, yeah, sort of. Enough, anyway. It wasn't that strange to see them working without a net -- that's a pretty common gimmick, especially for the less interesting acts. You know, to spice it up a little. Make it look dangerous." "So what was different about this act?" Stimmler still looked uncomfortable, but he looked at Mulder when he spoke, and for an instant, Mulder considered the possibility that the kid might have come into their office for some reason other than hitting on Scully. Nah. "Well, like I said, I've never seen some of those moves before. Ever. Not all of the act was on trapezes - some of it was done with ropes and platforms. And these guys, I asked my uncle, and he'd never heard of them before. That's pretty weird in and of itself -- it's not a really big business, you know. Most of these guys know each other because they've worked together before, or trained together, seen each other's acts. Something like that. And," Stimmler added, "at first I figured these guys, Galaxis, had to be tied off to something -- you know, that they had a wire attached to the roof, to be able to do some of their tricks. But they didn't." "How do you know?" Mulder was getting interested, in spite of himself. "When they shine a spotlight on the performers, you can see the wire reflecting the light. But I looked, and they weren't tied off." Scully still had the politely interested look plastered firmly on her face. "When you said you'd never seen their moves before, were you referring to anything in particular?" Stimmler nodded. "They weren't the most coordinated team I've ever seen -- it takes years to perfect a good toss and catch." Scully raised an eyebrow, and he added, "That's what a pair does on the trapeze - when they execute a trick, one person, usually a woman, is in the air, and her partner, usually a man, catches her. Well, these guys weren't very smooth. I saw a couple of catches that happened way off of the apex of the trick, which is where you're supposed to make the catch. And some of them =should= have missed, they were so far off. And then the same thing happened a couple of times during their floor act." "So why didn't they miss?" Stimmler hesitated, and then said, "It looked almost like they were hovering at points. At the apex of a jump or a toss. Like they were suspended there, waiting for the catcher to get to them. That's why I looked for wires or ropes. It was incredible." Mulder asked casually, "Wouldn't have taken advantage of any of those free cocktails they offer gamblers there, would you?" The young agent reddened and Mulder couldn't help hiding a smirk. It disappeared when Scully rose to her feet, flashed a devastating smile at Stimmler and said, "Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I'm going to make a couple of phone calls and try to get some more information about the performers so we can determine if this matter warrants further investigation by the X-Files division." Mulder and Stimmler both goggled at her but Stimmler found his voice first. "Really?" "Really." She was ushering him firmly towards the door, Mulder noted with satisfaction. But she still had that utterly fake smile stuck to her face and Stimmler was eating it up, smiling back at her like a puppy who just figured out that peeing on the papers would earn him a pat on the head. Great, Mulder added mentally. Now he's gonna come back in here with a Bigfoot sighting next week. After Scully closed the door on their visitor, he said, "Gee, Scully, I think he's kinda cute." She gave him a look of total disgust and asked, "Couldn't you have handled that a little better?" "What?" "Mulder, I realize it was a fairly ridiculous story but you could have been a little nicer. Agent Stimmler's pretty green and having you on his case --" "I was NOT on his --" " -- isn't going to help. I'm sure he was hoping to make a good impression on you and he seemed genuinely -- " "On ME? Scully --" "Let me finish, Mulder. You were a rookie once yourself, and I'm sure you took some pretty strange ideas to the senior profilers at VCS hoping to make a good impression. How would you have felt if they treated you like that?" Mulder stared at his beautiful partner. She clearly meant every word of it. "Scully, you amaze me. Don't you get it? He didn't come down here to talk to me." "Of course he did, Mulder. He was hoping you'd get interested in this ridiculous story about flying acrobats and open an X-File on it." He shook his head, bemused. She really didn't get it. "Scully, I'll bet you five bucks that he asks you out within a month. Or at least asks you to have lunch with him in the cafeteria to talk about a 'case.'" She frowned at him for a minute. "You think...No, Mulder." "Yes, Scully," he mimicked. "Come on. Five bucks." "Then was that a big-brother impression you were doing?" He winced. Ouch. Better avoid that one. "You afraid of a little bet, Scully?" "Because you've got nothing on Bill and Charlie. They would have totally humiliated Stimmler. You just made him extremely uncomfortable." "Five bucks. Or one lunch at Greenberg's Deli. Take your pick." She sighed, exasperated. "Mulder, he was not coming on to me." "Kinda reminded me of Pendrell," he teased. Watching her, he added, "Sorry." She didn't answer him, just turned back to the paperwork she had been working on before Stimmler made his appearance. He swore silently at himself. Poor fucking Pendrell. He had forgotten for a minute just why the little lab rat's irritating fawning over Scully had stopped. After a minute, he asked, "Aren't you going to make those calls?" She looked up. "What calls?" "I was guessing to the hotel's personnel office. That's where I'd start. They probably have a resume or brochures on these guys, or at least a W-2 form." "Are you talking about Galaxis? Mulder, you're joking. I only said that to make Stimmler feel better." "I am not joking. Come on, Scully, there's at least a slim chance that this could turn out to be something worth checking out." She put her pen down and regarded him steadily. "Mulder, you just said yourself that the only reason Stimmler came down here was to...talk to me. You can't really," and her voice trailed off. She covered her eyes with one hand and rubbed her temples wearily. "You =are= serious. Mulder, I am =not= calling the Magnifique and asking if their new circus act can really fly." "Okay, I'll do it." He reached for the phone, ignoring his partner's soft groan. Fifteen minutes later, he hung up the phone and scurried out of the office. Glancing at his departing back, Scully sighed with resignation. She could practically smell his excitement. Which meant she could count on boarding a plane bound for Las Vegas in the near future. Her partner reappeared within minutes, waving a sheaf of paper in her direction. "Their W-2's. Get this: their social security numbers are all exactly the same except for the last digits." Scully pricked up her ears in spite of herself. "Brothers?" "Looks like it. They're listed as Gary, John, Greg and Thomas Newton." She shook her head, watching him paging through the rest of the paperwork. "But unless they're quadruplets, they couldn't have been born close enough together for those numbers to make sense. Are they?" "Not according to the birthdates they gave on their W-2's." "Which means they're probably fake social security numbers, and we ought to alert the SSA and maybe the INS." "Which I'm about to do." She watched him dial. When he got an SSA administrator on the phone, he recited his badge number and asked for the detailed records on each number, his eyes gleaming in anticipation. She sighed and began filling out the 302. Yup. Hello, Las Vegas. He hung up and asked, "What's that?" "Our 302." He tilted his chair back on two legs and grinned at her, a huge smile that lit up his entire face and made her wonder briefly if he had lost his mind. "Scully, you're a gem." "Please shut up, Mulder. I'm sincerely hoping that Skinner takes one look at this, howls with laughter and tells us both to have our heads examined." "Then why are you doing the paperwork?" She didn't answer him. Because we could really use this, she thought. Because after a few months of serial killers and conspiracies and dying children, levitating acrobats sound like a Sunday picnic. Because I can't remember the last time I saw you smile like that. *********************************** They lucked into a pair of exit row seats for the flight to Vegas, and Scully watched her partner stretch his long legs out in front of him and sigh happily. Admittedly, the case had begun to look more interesting by the time the paperwork got to A.D. Skinner's desk. The acrobats' social security numbers had turned out to be real ones after all, but the Social Security Administration had no explanation for their seemingly impossible similarity. At Mulder's request, the disgruntled administrator who had pulled up the records also checked the background information on the first three digits of the records. Every other social security number she found with a 647 prefix belonged to Americans with birth dates from October 1995 to June 1996. She had no explanation as to why four men whose records listed birthdates from the mid- 1950's to '60's would have the same prefix. That was all Mulder had needed to go into high gear. Posing as a talent agent, he called the references listed on the men's resumes. None of them had checked out, although as Scully had immediately pointed out, the Magnifique had probably hired them based on an audition. "Right," Mulder responded. "They didn't bother arranging better phony references because they knew no one would bother checking them -- they'd get an audition, or not. Hotel management -- by the way, the guy who books all of their acts is called the 'resort entertainment coordinator' -- said that they occasionally look at new acts based on a talent agent's recommendation, although mostly they choose them through word of mouth, or steal them -- my words, not his -- from other casinos." "Where did they find Galaxis?" "That's just it -- he can't remember. He says he remembers signing the contract with them, which I got a copy of, which is totally uninteresting, but he can't remember how he found these guys." "Which means?" "Nothing in and of itself. But I called the rest of the major casinos in town, and no one else in Vegas has ever booked them. And no one can remember seeing them perform anywhere else." "So he probably got them because of their agent." "Except that no agent's name appears anywhere in these documents. It's as if they appeared out of thin air, Scully." She replied archly, "Now =that= would be a good trick," and Mulder rolled his eyes. So they were on a plane headed for Las Vegas, and Mulder was already buried in some dubious looking reading material with pictures of people sailing off trapezes. She shut her eyes, hoping that the flight would allow her to catch up on her sleep. But the dream crept up on her, as it always did these days. The light from the church windows high above her head striped the coffin lid with hard candy colors: red, blue, purple, yellow. At first, the sight had filled her with a dull ache, the pain of hopes unfulfilled and promises broken, and when the dreams began she had opened the coffin with sorrow. But she had been dreaming for so long by now that she knew the scene by heart, and although she could not stop her hand from reaching slowly to raise the coffin's lid, the gesture was accompanied by a rush of fear. Inside, there were no ashes. A pool of viscous green liquid lapped cooly at the white satin lining the coffin. Dana heard footsteps behind her, echoing hollowly in the empty chapel. "Mulder," she whispered, but he didn't answer. Four fetuses, their skin translucent and brains half-formed, floated in the green depths. And as Dana watched, they flexed their tadpole limbs slowly and turned their faces toward her. The coffin was bottomless. Their inhuman eyes opened and they stared at her until she turned to run, slowed by the sludgy horror that coats nightmares. "Mulder," she gasped. But it wasn't Mulder standing behind her. Emily, wearing a white dress stained with green streaks, stood holding Melissa's hand. "Go to her," Melissa pleaded, and Dana saw, that like Emily, Melissa had begun to ooze a slow trickle of green fluid from the corners of her eyes, from her nostrils, her mouth. As Emily opened her mouth, Dana saw it was already filling up with green fluid. "There are more of us," Emily choked out. And from underneath the pews, from the tops of the walls, the green liquid poured down like blood. The blue, purple, red panes of the stained glass windows were slowly turning green. Like an ocean, it crept up to the tips of her shoes and lapped over her feet. She tried to run, but the soles of her shoes were being eaten up by the green tide and the smell of acid filled her mind. "Scully!" Mulder, eyes wide, hands cupping her face. She took a great, gasping breath. "Scully, I'm here. It's all right." He flipped up the armrest separating their seats and wrapped an arm around her, pulling her awkwardly into his side. She tried to focus on her breathing, and found that her heart was still galloping wildly, making her gasp slightly. Gradually, it slowed, and she was able to take deeper, cleansing breaths. Mulder was still holding her tightly, one hand stroking her hair. Dana wondered what she had said in her sleep, and as if he had read her mind, he murmured, "You called my name. Twice. What was the dream about, Dana?" She pulled away from him without a second's hesitation and completely missed the pain that creased his face. She punched the call button, and when the smiling steward arrived, asked for a glass of water. "I'm fine. I'm sorry I scared you." "You know, in addition to having a doctorate in this stuff, I've got some pretty extensive personal experience with nightmares." He smiled grimly. "Kind of like the Hair Club for Men. Not only am I the president, I'm their best customer!" He waited, but she didn't even smile. "Scully?" "Drop it, Mulder." The tone of her voice brooked no arguments. He dropped it. ********************************** Picking up the payphone, he scanned the busy street one more time to be certain he hadn't been followed, that there were no familiar faces from the Bureau passing by. Nothing. He dialed a number that he knew by heart. "They left this morning, as scheduled. Due into Las Vegas at four-eleven." Without waiting for a response, George Stimmler hung up the phone and slipped into the flow of pedestrian traffic along Michigan Avenue. CONTINUED IN CH. 2 ************************************************** "Goodnight Newton", Chapter 2/14 For disclaimer, see chapter 1. Las Vegas was a balmy seventy degrees, but the hotel was over-air-conditioned and stank of cigarette smoke. Scully wrinkled her nose when she stepped off the moving walkway in from the parking lot, but followed Mulder to the reception desk without comment. He was mildly hurt that she hadn't mentioned the quality of their accommodations. The Magnifique was one of Vegas' newer hotels, and Mulder had justified the expense of the rooms by the fact that the act they were investigating was right there and travel costs would be higher if they stayed someplace off the strip. Watching his partner wrinkle her nose as she inspected the slot machines decorating the lobby, he guessed that a cheap motel would have done just as well. These days, it seemed like there wasn't a lot that he did that really pleased Scully. Thankfully, he had remembered to ask for non-smoking rooms. Dropping his luggage next to the rack, he surveyed the decor and decided that it was definitely a step up from their usual. Relatively tasteful sand-colored damask bedding, king- sized bed, roomy bathroom. Nice. And they had a few hours before Galaxis did their first show of the evening. Mulder grinned, wondering how many agents could charge tickets to a Vegas floor show to their expense accounts and keep their jobs. Yeah, their job came with a few perks as well as quirks. So he had enough time to get some food and try to get his partner to tell him what had left her twitching and gasping for breath as she whispered his name in her sleep on the airplane. He frowned, remembering her terrified face. Scully had never been particularly forthcoming, but lately... Lately things had been pretty bad between them. Terrible, actually. So bad that sometimes he wondered if he had dreamed the last four years with her. Lately, he felt as though they had begun all over again, and he was stuck in a role he had never wanted, trying to draw her out, make her trust him. He pulled his tie loose and dug a pair of jeans out of his suitcase, remembering. Had it been like that for her when Blevins had assigned her to him? Had he brushed off her friendly overtures towards him because he thought she'd been sent to spy on him -- in spite of the fact that from Day One she'd been fair to him? He hoped not. They needed to try to reconnect, fix their partnership -- their relationship. Somehow, though, while he was recognizing how bad it had gotten between them, she had drifted further away from him, keeping him firmly at arm's length while she grieved over Emily, dying in a hospital bed. Much as it had hurt him, it had been quintessential Scully, and he had understood on some level that her refusal to let him comfort her had not been a personal criticism of him but a reflection of her independence. Scully had always been a very private person. But then Robert Modell had made an unwelcome reappearance in their lives, and everything had gone to hell. Scully had never gone along blindly with his theories. But she had always trusted his intuition, and her refusal to consider the possibility that he might be right about Modell's innocence had cut him to the bone. It meant that the growing distance between them had crept into their working relationship. And without that, what did they really have left? It was about time for a talk. He finished hanging up his suit, tucked his shirt into his jeans, and knocked on the connecting door to Scully's room. No answer. He knocked again, then tried the knob. It was locked. He backed up and sat carefully on the edge of the bed, flopping back to stare at the ceiling. They had started requesting adjoining rooms years ago. When they were on the road, it made sense to be within easy reach of each other, so that they could share files, ask a quick question without picking up the phone. And at some point it became an unwritten rule: they kept the adjoining door unlocked. He wasn't sure why, since he would never walk into Scully's room unannounced, but somewhere along the line, they had gotten into the habit of unlocking the connecting door when they checked in. He had done it today, flipping the latch while he dropped his luggage. But she hadn't. And it hurt badly, worse than any of the other small barriers she had erected over the last few months. He closed his eyes and thought back to their first case together, in Bellefleur. They had barely known each other, but she had turned to him when she found the marks on her back that had turned out to be mosquito bites. Five years. Long enough for them to become inseparable, but far enough down the line for her to turn away from him when he offered help. He was tired, and for a minute he mapped out the pattern that he and Scully had drawn over the years; moving together, then apart, like a neon road map in his head, as clear and as intangible as the image of the lamp next to the window, burned onto his retinas. When he drifted off it was without a clear sense of falling asleep. Instead, he felt himself sliding along one of the neon lines in his mind, following Scully down a glowing road that he had not consciously charted. In the room next door, Scully sat in a rapidly chilling tub of clear water. She was shivering. ************************************************** It was a very elaborate show. Most of the casinos had some kind of entertainment; the more upscale places often advertised heavily and mounted Broadway-style productions. The Magnifique had opted for a kind of cabaret, with musical numbers, a huge chorus and a troupe of dancers, and a couple of magical acts. Galaxis was the only set of acrobats, but that wasn't the only reason they stood out. From the back of the second section of seats -- the best Mulder had been able to get on such short notice -- the four men looked like bodybuilders, with massive shoulders and chests. Weren't acrobats supposed to be wiry? The scant literature that he'd managed to find on trapeze artists had implied that trapeze tricks, when done in pairs, were usually done in male/female pairs. And the accompanying pictures had featured short, wiry people hurling through the air. They appeared twice, once before the intermission, once after. During the first act, a segment of the floor rotated out from behind the curtain. Two trampolines and four long upright poles topped with smaller platforms swung out to the edge of the stage. The four men climbed nimbly up the poles and took turns swinging their bodies first up onto the high platforms, then down onto the trampolines. They executed a complicated-looking series of jumps where they leapt in pairs and then simultaneously from the trampoline to the platforms. It was gracefully done, obviously took skill, and Mulder felt slightly depressed. So far, nothing that could even remotely qualify as an X-File. He snuck a look at Scully and saw that she was engrossed in the show. Or was she? Her eyes weren't tracking the acrobats' moves. And she looked tired. The white light reflected from the stage threw the puffy circles under her eyes into stark relief. Suddenly her eyes opened wider and she hissed, "Did you see that?" "What?" Feeling like an idiot, he turned back to the action on the stage, but nothing seemed out of place. Leaning towards him, she whispered, "He stumbled, Mulder! He didn't have both feet under him when he hit the trampoline, but somehow he bounced back up anyhow, in the right direction! There's no way -- " "Which guy?" "On the right, in the back -- now he's jumping -- Left hand side, front platform." Mulder looked, but the acrobat was already launching himself into the air again. He landed on the trampoline and hurled himself neatly at one of the vertical poles, catching it with both hands and turning his momentum into two revolutions of the pole. Around twice, then he shimmied up to the top again. The act was over. The four men bowed from atop the small platforms, shimmed down and ran off the stage accompanied by a round of applause. "He stumbled, I =saw= it. He wasn't stiff when he hit the trampoline, but he bounced as though he was. I can't describe it, Mulder, but what I saw - he shouldn't have been able to recover like that." She shook her head in frustration. "So now you think there's something supernatural going on?" he teased. She rounded on him. "How did you miss that?" Taken aback, he resorted to honesty. "I was looking at you." Her lips pressed into a thin line. "They're coming on again later. Watch more carefully next time. There =is= something strange going on." He watched the rest of the first act in silence. At the intermission, Scully excused herself and disappeared up the aisle. Moodily, he watched the audience mill around. Sure, they could expense tickets to a show, but they couldn't sit and enjoy it like normal people did. Like the rest of the people around them tonight. He heard a male voice behind him hiss, "That's enough, Stacey. I don't want to hear it again." And a woman's shrill voice, "I don't give a shit what you want. Tell me the truth, dammit. How much =did= you lose before I got here?" "I said I don't wanna hear it." There was an ugly low growl to the man's voice now, but the woman didn't seem to hear it. "I oughta just leave you here and go back home but you..." "Mulder?" Scully was back and his legs were in her way. He stood and she slid gracefully past him and into her seat. Mulder turned to peek at the arguing couple, trying to look casual, but the seats behind him were empty. The lights were dimming, and all he could see were two backs retreating up the aisle into semidarkness, the man in front, the woman trailing angrily behind him. Her heels were very high and she stumbled a little as she followed him. He sat back down. The second act brought back one of the magicians, a new set of dancers, a complicated drumming act with twelve separate drums including a huge central drum that was supported by four dancers, and Galaxis. This time, they were on trapezes. He tried to remember childhood trips to the circus, visits to the Ringling Bros.'s big tent. What was this supposed to look like when it was done well? He watched the men pump the trapezes in the air to gain momentum, like children on swings, two to a trapeze. Then one dropped down until he was hanging by his knees, swooped up, released. At the apex of the trick, a man on the other trapeze caught him and they swung down together. The crowd applauded. It looked perfect. They did it again. The other pair dropped down, into action, describing graceful arcs. Perfect arcs. Again. And then, a body rose into the air, towards the ceiling. Another rose to meet it, but the catcher was behind. Mulder saw it. So slight you'd miss it if you blinked. If you didn't blink, you'd think you imagined it. Unless you were watching for it. For the first man hung in the air a nanosecond too long to satisfy the logic of gravity and falling objects. Then the second man reached him and the moment was over. Mulder spun to face Scully, and he saw instantly that she had seen it, too. "That can't happen, Mulder. It can't." She looked incredulous. "It just did." They sat and watched the rest of the show in silence, listening to the applause. When the lights came up, they drifted out with the rest of the crowd, into the clatter and smoke of the casino. He looked at his partner and saw she was shaking her head in disbelief. "You were a physics major, Scully. Explain it." "I can't. Not with anything I learned in school." She looked tired and bewildered and defeated and it frightened him. Scully wasn't supposed to give in. Rigid Scully, level- headed Scully. Scully was supposed to argue with him about this. "Are you all right?" For a minute, she didn't answer, and he felt like the bottom had dropped out of the casino, leaving him with nothing to hold onto but smoke and flashing lights. Then she straightened her spine and replied, "No, I'm exhausted. And so are you. No matter what we =thought= we saw in there, we were mistaken. That was a cabaret act, Mulder. This is Las Vegas. They specialize in illusions here. Either we saw a very clever fakery designed to add some spice to what was essentially a standard circus act, or else our overtired, jet-lagged eyes were playing tricks on us." He felt relieved and disappointed at the same time, and suddenly he laughed out loud, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. "What's so funny?" "Me. I don't make any sense." "I've noticed." She gave him a faint smile, and he felt immeasurably better. "All right, we'll argue about it over breakfast. What do you say we call it a night?" When they got to their respective doors, he hesitated briefly, then walked in without saying good night. She was buttoning her pajamas when she heard him knock on the connecting door. He was standing there with a file folder in his hand, looking faintly defensive. "Thought you might want to look at some of this." It was the information on trapeze acts. "I want to interview them tomorrow." She nodded and took the file from him. "I'll read it before I turn in." He left the door on his side ajar. He listened carefully but never heard the bolt on her side click home. He smiled and began channel-surfing. Her eyes were scratchy and dry from the smoke and exhaustion. She read a few pages of the file Mulder had given her, and gave up. She slept, and dreamed. This time she heard the foundation of the church creak under the onslaught of the thick green tide. Emily and Melissa stood before her in matching white dresses, pleading silently, the viscous green liquid running from their noses, eyes, mouths, swallowing them whole. It lapped heavily over the toes of her shoes and she began to sink, screaming. And Mulder was there, arms wrapped firmly around her, keeping her from sinking any further, pulling her close to his body, murmuring her name. "Scully. Scully. Sshh, it's okay, you were dreaming. Shh." He was stroking her back gently, and she felt her nails digging into his bare skin. She opened her palms but did not release him, and he kept up the steady stroking, shushing her. The warm familiar smell of him was keeping her grounded and she could not let go. With one hand, he tucked her head more securely under his chin and kissed her hair. She had awakened enough to be faintly alarmed now, and she waited for him to ask her about the dream. But he didn't ask. He lifted a hand to her temple and delicately brushed the hair away from her face. He shifted, straightening out the leg that he'd had curled underneath him, tugging her closer so that she was cradled within his arms, sitting in the vee made by his outstretched legs. Then he began stroking her hair with the same gentle rhythm he had used to rub her back earlier. Mulder, she thought clearly. Mulder's holding me. She tipped her head back to look up at him but the tiny crack of dim light from between the shades wasn't enough to show her his face. Finally, he spoke. "Same dream?" She considered not answering him, but that was ridiculous, and there was no challenge in his voice. "Yes." But the faint sense of alarm -- Mulder's holding me, I'm in his arms -- grew stronger until she heard herself say, "I'm thirsty." He unwrapped himself from around her without moving her at all, graceful as a cat picking its way through a china cupboard. The bathroom light made her blink. When he came back, he handed her the plastic cup and put her pillows back into place while she drank. The water tasted chalky-bad, but it was very cold and she drank greedily. When she was done he took the cup away and asked, "Okay if I leave the door open?" "Okay." Then he was gone. Through the open door she heard the bed in his room creak under the weight of his body. Dana laid back down and adjusted her pajama top. Gravity, she thought. There were no more dreams for her that night. *********************************************** The small apartment on Cheyenne Avenue was miles from the Magnifique, but the four individuals within its unadorned walls were resting, too. Oddly, one of them was also dreaming of a green sea. While like Dana, he was entirely at the mercy of his unconscious, what his brain had conjured that warm night left him smiling in his sleep, remembering primeval succor, held captive but unresisting in memories of origins foreign to the place and time that found him now, waiting for release. CONTINUED IN CH. 3 ************************************************ "Goodnight Newton", (3/14) See chapter 1 for disclaimers and other information. Through the shades, Mulder squinted his eyes against the early morning light. The haze choking the skyline was already visible. He wondered what the city was like in August, when the blinding heat of the desert sun magnified the dirty haze and the smells of the city. As bad as D.C., or worse? There were no clocks in the room and he suspected that this was because the hotel management was interested in discouraging awareness of such temporal matters among its clientele. The casinos, after all, were open around the clock. He shook his head, bemused. Vegas. Not a good place for paranoid conspiracy theorists. Mulder walked noiselessly through the plush carpet to the open, connecting door to steal a look at Scully sleeping. Her hair fanned out across the pillow. Her arms and legs were stretched out extravagantly across the bed, her five-three one- hundred-fifteen pound frame eating up most of the space in the king-sized bed. Impossible, but there it was. He grinned at her, although her face was turned away from him and she was still breathing deeply and evenly, and went to take his shower. When he emerged, she had disappeared, and he could hear the water running in her bathroom. Both doors were still open, and he considered shutting his before getting dressed, but discarded the idea. Instead, he stood where he couldn't easily be seen through the open doorway, and put on his clothes. He read the complimentary paper that had been waiting outside his door, paying moderate attention to the sports page while the sounds of Scully's hair dryer whining, zippers whishing and snicking closed, briefcase snapping open and papers rustling orbited around him. This must be what marriage sounds like, he thought absently. Every day, hearing these things. She knocked on the door frame to alert him of her presence, and said, "Morning." He tossed the paper aside. "Coffee?" "No, latte. I saw a shop downstairs. And I fell asleep before I could finish reading the file, such as it is." They went down to the small cafe in the lobby. It was optimistically decorated with small tables and a tile floor, with a massive espresso machine in the back, gleaming with brass and copper, redolent of Italy. Still, even here, the ching! of the slot machines permeated, along with the smell of stale smoke. She read the file and sipped her latte while he demolished a pastry and a double espresso. Finally, she put the file down and regarded him over the steaming cup, one eyebrow raised in query. He took a deep breath. "Scully, how long have you been having trouble sleeping?" Instantly, her face closed off. It was like watching a door slam shut. He pressed on. "Scully, please talk to me." She raised her cup again and sipped deliberately. "Mulder, I just don't want to discuss this with you. I appreciate your concern, but I just don't. All right?" "No, it's not all right." He was calm but certain, and it infuriated her. "Since when do you have the right to demand information about my personal life, Mulder?" "You're my partner. Don't you think we should be past this, Scully? Of course it matters to me when something's affecting you." His tone was mild, even conciliatory, but she wasn't having any of it. "You seem to feel like it's perfectly okay for you to keep things from me when it suits you, even if they're things about =me=, things I need to know, but I'm supposed to just tell you everything you want to know about me, no matter how personal it is?" He was still perfectly calm, and he asked, "Is that what this is about? You're angry at me because you think I was holding out on you?" "Wouldn't YOU be? How would you feel if I revealed something very personal and painful to a =judge=, in =front= of you..." She could see his patience was beginning to falter, and it pleased her. "I told you =why= I didn't tell you about it before. You were so sick, Scully -- " She set the cup down with a clatter. "It still isn't much of an excuse. I'm not a child, Mulder. And I'm not some defenseless -- " His cheeks were flushed with anger, but he said steadily, "No, you're not. I know that. You're mad, and maybe you have a right to be. But you're shutting me out when all I want to do is help you. Don't do that, please. Be mad if you have to, but let me help you." Staring down at the muddy dregs in the bottom of the cup, she said, "I don't need your help." He didn't answer her. When she finally risked a glance in his direction, she saw that he was looking down into his espresso, clinging to the handle on the small white cup. His face was lined and he looked older than his age. She felt an unwelcome wave of empathy and pushed it down to the place where she stored such things. He pushed his chair back from the little table and said, tonelessly, "We should interview those acrobats." She nodded and got up, gathering up the file. She watched his back as they left, saw the way he held himself straight as they walked across the lobby, through the automatic doors, into the vast, bright parking lot. The sun was fully up now and the light was intense, uncomfortable. He put on a pair of sunglasses and she was a little relieved, because they hid his eyes and that was a good thing; the distant hurt in them would lacerate her if she could not avoid them. When they got into the car, he handed her a folded piece of paper and explained, "Directions." He drove where she told him to while she read off the creased paper, and neither of them said anything else. When he parked, they were in front of a dingy concrete building in North Vegas. Mulder got out of the car and walked around the building. Trailing four steps behind him, Scully saw him stop at a side door that had a small sign next to it reading, "IRON MEN." "According to the hotel entertainment manager, they work out here in the mornings," Mulder explained. She followed him in. It was poorly lit and it smelled like sweat and dust. A bored-looking young man sitting behind a dusty desk asked to see their membership cards, eyeing Scully uneasily, and raised his hands in a gesture of mock surrender when Mulder pulled out his ID. "Is there a problem?" he asked, his attention now firmly fixed on Mulder. "No problem. We'd like to talk to a couple of your members, though. Is Gary, Greg, John or..." "Those guys? Yeah, sure. They're downstairs. You can go find them if you want." He waved towards the stairs. The agents headed down the narrow flight of stairs. The sounds of barbells thudding to the ground and metal plates chiming together indicated that they were heading for the weight room. Scully remembered the sign and thought to herself, Not very PC. Wonder how many women work out here. They walked into the weight room and she instantly deduced the answer: none. At a quick glance, she decided that of the ten or twelve men in the room, Mulder was easily the slightest and smallest. Not that that's a =bad= thing, Scully mentally noted. Wonder if any of these guys AREN'T taking steroids? Then she looked more carefully at the four men in the corner and gasped. She knew the face of the man on the bench press. His spotter glanced at her and she saw that he too looked frighteningly familiar. But it wasn't -- "Jesus," Mulder muttered next to her. "That guy looks just like --" "They ALL do, Mulder. All four of them." She could hear the blood roaring in her ears. They hadn't been close enough to the stage last night to see the faces of the acrobats clearly. But now, at close range, several things were immediately apparent. The four men with birthdates spread out over a nine-year period looked so similar it was impossible to believe that they weren't quadruplets, as she'd first guessed when they were discussing the improbable closeness of the men's' social security numbers. And that was in spite of the fact that their hair and eye coloring were different. Examining their faces more closely, Scully saw that there were other differences, small things like the shape of a nose or the thickness of their eyebrows. Plastic surgery and cosmetic changes, she reasoned. Because the likeness was almost eerie. But that wasn't the most disturbing thing about the four men. She had seen them before. Or rather, one of them. All four were dead ringers for the man Mulder believed to be a bounty hunter. An alien. The man who had held her at gunpoint for hours and nearly killed Mulder. The four men calmly returned the incredulous stares they were getting from the two agents. Finally, one man took a step towards them and said, "We have a message for you." It was the bounty hunter's voice, Mulder thought in disbelief. He remembered watching this man fall off the edge of a bridge with his arm firmly around a struggling woman's neck, a woman who looked just like Sam -- Clones, he realized. They're clones. They have to be. The man approached Mulder as casually as if he were coming to ask for the time. He stopped and looked down at Scully for a long moment, then back to Mulder. "You know who we are." It was a statement, not a question. "We are everywhere, Mr. Mulder. You will not stop us. You have no proof, and none will be found. And what was returned to you can be taken away." Scully, Mulder thought. Samantha? "Your friend is dead," the man added coolly. "Friend?" Scully asked. He turned one unblinking eye towards her, then the other, a trick so inhuman that Mulder shuddered. "Yes. Dead. His affection for Mr. Mulder had become a liability." "Who?" "You didn't know his name?" Was he sneering slightly, or was she imagining it? "Our =friend=?" The big man was still looking at her. "Go home, Dr. Scully. Take your partner with you. Find a safer line of work while there is still work left to do." He turned his head and nodded at his three companions. They came forward together and walked past Mulder and Scully as if they weren't there. The fourth man shouldered past Mulder and they all walked slowly out of the room. Scully looked up at her partner and found that he was pale as a ghost. "Mulder." "Bastards," he whispered. CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 4 ************************************************** "Goodnight Newton," (4/14) See chapter 1 for disclaimers and other information. They sat in the car. Mulder had put the key in the ignition but hadn't turned it yet. He had watched the four men leave without further comment, and now he sat, gripping the steering wheel, staring at his hands. "Why now?" she asked, slowly. "Why would They do that now?" "It was a setup, Scully." "Well, obviously. Think Stimmler was in on it?" He shrugged. "I don't know. Probably. It doesn't really matter." He looked over at her. The silence stretched out until he said, "We need to talk." Seeing the guarded look return to her face, he added, bitterly, "About =this=, Scully. The case. And They could have bugged the car. Or our rooms. Or both." She cocked an eyebrow at him but said nothing. He looked at her for another long minute and seemed to come to a decision. He started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. "Where --" She stopped herself from finishing the question, thinking about the possibility of surveillance devices. Mulder was probably being excessively paranoid, but she would find out where they were headed when they got there. Mulder looked over at his partner and thought grimly, At least she trusts me that much. He headed south on the freeway. The mountains on the skyline grew closer and the sun continued to rise overhead. The haze still hung over the skyline, but as they drove farther from the congestion of the Strip, it got harder to see. We're not getting away from it, Scully reminded herself. We're only going where we can't see it. But it was beautiful in the desert, and she let the part of herself that could still appreciate things like mountainscapes and cacti take in the view. Ninety-nine parts Special Agent, one part tourist. It was one way to see America. When they passed a sign informing them that the Hoover Dam exit was a quarter mile away, Mulder signaled right. She gave him an incredulous look, which he returned with a shrug and a half-smile. Tourist attraction, she reasoned. The crowds will make it hard to keep track of us; hard to listen to what we're saying if we are being watched. Shotgun mikes are tough to use in crowds. He wasn't kidding around, then. Scully wondered what her partner wanted to discuss that needed this weird, relative privacy. What else could they do to keep from being overheard? "Got any pens on you, Mulder?" He was briefly confused, but his expression muted into approval when she silently tapped a finger against one of her ears. The last time they'd been under constant surveillance, she'd found a tiny listening device inside a pen. Methodically, he went through each pocket and handed her its contents. He wasn't carrying a pen -- typical Mulder, who relied on his photographic memory for nearly everything while she took notes -- but he handed her his wallet, a roll of Lifesavers, his watch, some loose change, and -- no, there was his pen, stuffed into the spiral binding of a small reporter's pad. She took it apart carefully, but found only an ink cartridge inside. "Watch?" She turned it over and examined the back. "Has it been out of your possession lately?" "Showering, sleeping." She nodded and put it in the glove box. What else? His wallet? Could there be a recording device that tiny? How would They have gotten it in there? He saw her looking at it and said, "Take a look. Can't hurt." She felt along the seams but didn't find any suspicious lumps. She flipped it open and checked the seams on the inside, but they seemed okay, too. Finally, she thumbed through its contents. A couple of credit cards. His driver's license, with a photo that looked like he hadn't shaved for a week when it was taken. Video store membership card, phone card. No photographs, she saw with a odd mixture of what -- relief and sadness? Not that she carried any in her wallet, either. The pictures of her nieces and nephews stayed on the refrigerator, tucked under magnets. A Washington D.C. public library card. Since when had Mulder become a reader? She pulled it out of the plastic casing and looked at it. Heavy. Thicker than a credit card. Something was wrong. She held it up to the light and studied it. His name and the name of the issuing branch were printed on the front, along with a bar code. Along the back, a half-inch wide shiny metal strip reflected her wide eyes staring down at it. A bar code AND a metal strip. Something was very wrong. She looked up and saw her partner shaking his head. He mouthed, "Not mine." Scully reached for her purse. She rifled through it. There was way, way too much in here to examine quickly. She pulled out her wallet and began going through the cards. She found her library card and pulled it out, studying it. The design on the front was just like Mulder's, but the back had no metal strip. She put it back into the plastic sleeve and began pulling out the other cards. Scully stopped when she came to a credit card for a store she knew she had never patronized in her life. It, too, had a shiny metal strip on the back, and it was thicker and heavier than the other cards in her wallet. She held it up wordlessly so that her partner could see it while he drove. His eyes flicked over to the small object, and he nodded grimly. "We're almost there." He pulled into the big parking garage, found a space and cut the engine. He reached over and took both cards from her, turning them over in his big hands, examining the metal intently. He looked at her and mouthed, "Leave them here." She nodded. She had never seen a recording device that looked like this before, but she wasn't going to argue. Something was very, very wrong. She quickly emptied her own pockets, and stepped out of the car. They walked down the stairs, out of the garage, and crossed the road to stand on top of the Hoover Dam. It wasn't truly crowded, but there were enough tourists passing by that it felt like a busy boulevard. Brass plaques detailing the names of the engineers who had built the dam lined the walk. The one-one hundredth of Scully that paid attention to the view took in the curving lines of the signs on the walkway and the doors, and made a mental note: Art Deco. Very nice. She trailed Mulder out to the center of the structure, beside the road that led over the dam. "DO NOT LEAN" was stenciled in black on the top of the wall overlooking the massive structure. In unison, they leaned over the side of the dam, looking down. It was massive, curving outward towards the bottom, and dark water swirled out far below. Damp patches marked the smooth sand-colored facade. "What do you think they are, Mulder?" "I don't know. I want to send them to the Lone Gunmen and see what they think. But I don't see how they could be recording devices. As far as I know, you have to have some kind of microphone to capture sound. Do you remember what Byers said about twenty-dollar bills?" "I remember the time he tore up my twenty-dollar bill." "He said that the thin metallic strips in the bills, the ones you said were designed to prevent counterfeiting, were really used to track movement through metal detectors. What if those cards we found in our wallets are some kind of tracking device?" "How did they get into our wallets, Mulder? And why would anyone go to such lengths? Why now?" She paused, and added, "How long could they have been in our wallets?" He finally stopped staring down the flaring wall of the dam and turned to her. "Scully, I can't wait any more." She stared at her partner. "What are you talking about?" "I need to know how much you believe. That's why I wanted to come out here." He rubbed a hand across his eyes. "It's not really a case any more, is it? As far as I'm concerned, they just threw down the fucking gauntlet." "Mulder --" "Let me finish. I guess there =would= be a case if there were any doubt in our minds if those guys can actually levitate or not." "Isn't there?" "Please, Scully, just hear me out. Let's assume for the moment that we weren't hallucinating last night, that what we both saw is essentially true; those near misses we saw last night during the trampoline and the trapeze act were instances where those men really did defy gravity. Just for the sake of the argument. Okay?" She nodded. "Okay. And when we saw them today, we both saw that all four of them were dead ringers for the bounty hunter." "Who you think is an alien. And Mulder," she held up one hand, forestalling his protest, "yes, I'm with you so far, so keep going. I'm just saying that I'm not convinced =that= man isn't a completely human hit man." "You =saw= him morph --" "I =thought= I did, yes, but please remember that what I saw immediately preceded my being thrown through a glass table, and hitting my head. Hard." She winced at the memory. "So I can't be sure of that." "Okay. But you agree that those guys looked just like him." "And you think they're clones." He took a deep breath. "Yes, I do, Scully. Before you --" "I think you might be right." He stood blinking owlishly at her, and she wanted to laugh. Teasing him gently, she added, "What's wrong, Mulder? Never thought you'd hear me say that to you?" He smiled tentatively and said softly, "It's just a lot more credit than I was expecting to get." "Oh." Had she been that hard on him lately? Scully considered the question seriously. Maybe she had. "All right." He still looked slightly off balance, but pleased. "Yeah, I think they're clones of him. The bounty hunter. Even if you're not convinced that the guy's from another planet. And you think so, too?" "Well, I think it's a possibility. It would explain his extraordinary resemblance to the four acrobats. Either that or they're quintuplets, which is not only statistically unlikely, it's weird." "Is that an acceptable diagnostic term, Dr. Scully? Weird?" She knew he was teasing her, but it felt nice, so she let it go. "It's weird that if they're really quints, that they would have surgically altered themselves to look less alike. And it's not at all farfetched to assume that the technology existed to create clones thirty years ago. I'm beginning to think that they're thirty years ahead of us on just about every medical advance." She winced again, and this time he did, too. It was all too believable that the Consortium already had a cure for AIDS, stored in a warehouse somewhere. She continued, "So, yes, I could accept that hypothesis. But you're not done, are you?" She looked up at him quizzically, the wind catching her hair and dragging it in messy tendrils across her face. "No. I think that not only are they clones of the 'hit man', as you referred to him --" "Bounty Hunter will do," she interrupted. "Keep giving me rope, Scully, and I just might hang myself with it." "I'm counting on it. Go on." "I think that the Bounty Hunter =can= morph. Shapeshift, if you prefer that word. It wasn't from having a concussion, Scully. You would never let some guy into your hotel room thinking it was me...oh, never mind. My point is, if this guy really can morph, and they cloned him, maybe part of his ability comes from being able to reduce his mass at will. And maybe the clones have that ability too, and that's how they can levitate." Politely disbelieving, Scully asked, "How far did you think I was going to follow you on that one?" "I don't know," he admitted. "I figured I was lucky to keep you with me on the cloning part." She looked up at him with wry amusement, and he reached out to brush an errant strand of red-gold hair away from her face. "And now the good part: you get to try and find some proof for this ludicrous story." "The good part," he said softly, "isn't proving I'm right. It's when you listen to me, Scully." She didn't acknowledge his comment. The vague pleasure she had found in listening to his outrageous theory vanished. She had never stopped listening to him. He had just stopped talking to her about the important things. Looking down the canyon she said, "Look how far below us the water is." "Must have been a beautiful canyon," he said sardonically. "Too bad about the dam blocking the view." "Mulder, the power from this dam keeps millions of people supplied with electricity," she said matter-of-factly. "Not all of man's creations are good, Scully." he said, earnestly "It can be a great feat of engineering and still be a great mistake." "Is that what you think?" "I think that some products of science are evil, yes." He started to say something else, but she interrupted him. "Mulder, how can you take a conversation about the Hoover Dam and twist it into a commentary on how science is evil? This isn't the atom bomb we're standing on, here." She sighed. Sometimes the urge to punch him was so overwhelming. "Can we get back to the case, please?" "Yeah. Look, I think these guys can levitate. I think they do it using the same principles that the Bounty Hunter uses to morph himself. When he does that, he can change himself to where he at least =appears= to have less mass, right? When he went from resembling me to resembling himself again, he =looked= like he had more mass when he was done, right?" She shut her eyes for a second to follow her partner's dizzying train of thought. "So where does the extra mass go?" "I don't know what =he= does with it, but I think the acro- boys turn it into energy. They convert mass to energy in incredibly quick bursts and that's how they levitate." "Now you've metaphorically hung yourself." "All right, that's a detail we don't need to agree on. But I know what I saw, Scully. Those four can do something that human beings have wanted to be able to do since the beginning of time. They can defy gravity." He shook his head in admiration. "In a way, the trapeze artist thing makes a brilliant cover story. Las Vegas is the perfect place to put four guys who can float in midair. People are =expecting= to see weirdness here." Scully gazed up at him. It was never shades of gray with Mulder; he either believed or he didn't. "So what do we do now? The men we're talking about also just delivered a veiled threat from some people who are known to follow up when they make veiled threats." "And I think I know why they did it." He hesitated, looking down at her with a strange mixture of determination and sadness in his eyes. "Ah, Scully, I'm so tired of handing you bad news." She blinked. "Just when I think I'm following you, you come out with something like that and I feel like I missed a fork in the road." She saw that he was scrubbing his face with his hands again. "What is it, Mulder?" "I've been trying to find a way to tell you about this since we left San Diego." She swallowed but remained silent. "It's just so hard, Scully. All I've ever brought you and your family is bad news." He looked at her despairingly. "I can't even blame Bill for hating my guts. If I were your brother, I'd hate me, too." "Mulder --" "Please, =please= let me finish, Scully. I've been wanting to tell you this since we left California, but we -- we don't talk any more. Jesus, I sound like a 'Dear Abby' letter." He bent down a little to be closer to her face, her set jaw. "I don't know what's happened to us. I went out there because I thought you needed me and all you did was push me away." She began to turn away from him, and he caught her upper arms, gently turning her back to face him. "We can't do this any more, Scully. It's killing me, and I think it's killing you, too. You look like you haven't gotten a decent night's sleep in months. Whatever you're dreaming about is waking you up screaming and you won't even talk to me about it." "Fetuses," she said quietly, without looking up at him. "Floating in a coffin." He was so still that finally she did meet his eyes. Stunned, he murmured, "God. I forgot that you...Scully, what I needed to tell you was," and he took a deep breath, "There might be more Emilys out there. At the old folks home, where I found Anna Fugazi -- I saw a packing list. They made more, Scully. More embryos. I =saw= more." "Where?" Her throat was so dry she could barely speak. "There. At the home. In big tubes." He thought for an instant about the vial that he had stolen, and pushed the memory aside. She was pale as milk, eyes wide. "Why didn't you do something?" she whispered. "I tried, Scully. But by the time the SDPD got in there with a warrant, the place had been cleaned out. I'm so sorry, Scully. I'm so fucking sorry." With a distant sense of wonder, he realized that he was near tears, although she was dry-eyed and still as stone. Emily's brief memorial service had been held on a clear day, postcard perfect weather. Leaving with Mulder, Dana had been content to settle into the thin cocoon of shock, and let the details of their departure and the journey back East flow by her like a scenery through a car window. At the time, she had believed herself to be emptied out, a dry socket. Even the reminders that passed by -- Matthew's smooth baby skin under her lips, a view of the cemetery diminishing through the rear window -- only whispered faintly to her of pain and lost possibilities. But now, with Mulder's spaniel eyes watching her with a kind of fearful resignation, she felt the last of her detachment giving way. "I can't," she whispered. The part of her that knew better reached for handfuls of Mulder's wool suit jacket and buried her face in his crisp white shirtfront. His arms went around her immediately, as secure and comforting as they had been in the darkness of the hotel room. She cried out her sorrow and fear into the smooth absorbent cotton of his shirt, tissueless because the vigilance of their enemies had left her with empty pockets for fear of surveillance. The sound of her sobs was lost beneath the steady hum of the light traffic, footsteps of curious tourists passing by, and the wind sweeping over the top of the dam. She felt wet trickles sliding from the top of her head, where Mulder had buried his face, and realized that he was crying with her. His tears cooled in the sharp air as they traveled down her forehead and temples to mingle with hers. She finished crying before he did, but she kept her arms wound tightly around her partner, feeling his chest hitch under her cheek, until he was still, too. She wiped her nose on her sleeve surreptitiously, remembering the packet of Kleenex in her purse. Although he kept one arm wrapped around her, she heard Mulder sniff noisily and she lifted her head to watch him wipe tears and mucus off his face with one hand. The only time she could remember Mulder ever carrying a handkerchief was during her bout with cancer. She had ruined countless numbers of his snowy-white squares of linen; all from Brooks Brothers, and he had never said a word about it, simply offering them up like small sacrifices every time she got a bloody nose in the field. "I'm sorry it took me so long to tell you." Instead of answering, she reached up and tenderly cupped his jaw in her hand, feeling the damp traces of his tears under her fingers. He turned his head to kiss the center of her palm softly. "Mulder, what are we going to do?" "I don't know yet. We'll think of something." He took her hand and she laced her fingers through his, not letting go until they reached the car. They made the drive back to the hotel in silence. When they got to the lobby, he said, "Let's ask for different rooms to be safe. Then we check every damn thing we brought with us. I'm going to call the Gunmen and ask them to sweep both of our apartments." The desk clerk was politely accommodating, finding them adjoining rooms on the nineteenth floor. They moved their luggage themselves. Mulder ordered room service, and they ate limp caesar salads and club sandwiches while they kneaded and poked every square inch of clothing they had brought with them. They found a small microphone hidden in the lining of Mulder's suitcase, and another in the plastic trim on the bag that held Scully's laptop. He swore under his breath as he carefully crushed both devices under the heel of his shoe. She picked at the remainder of her salad while he went downstairs to mail both of the metal-backed cards they had found to the Gunmen. When she heard the knock on the door, she wondered how Mulder had forgotten his key. The man on the other side of the door was not her partner; it was one of the acrobats. The distortion produced by the fish- eye of the peephole on the door was more convincing than any explanation Mulder had to offer about the origins of the four individuals who she had watched on the Magnifique's stage last night. In the fluorescent lights of the hallway, through the lens of the peephole, she felt something turn over in her stomach when she looked at the face on the other side of the door. Alien. It was alien. Her logical brain rejected the conclusion without comment, but her skin prickled with goosebumps. Her ganglia were humming the truth, reacting to the presence on the other side of the door with an instinctive certainty older than fire. Then there were two faces. Mulder had slipped into her field of vision behind the otherman, and the gleam of his weapon next to the acrobat's head convinced her to open the door. Mulder shoved the acrobat hard in the middle of his back, but he barely stumbled as he stepped across the threshold of Scully's room. Mulder motioned him over towards a chair, and Scully reached for her holster slowly as the man sat down. He was as calm as he had seemed earlier at the gym. If that was him, she reminded herself. If Mulder was right, it could be easily be another clone, not one of the ones we saw earlier. "Talk," her partner said tersely. "What were you doing outside of Scully's door and how did you know where we were?" Their visitor still looked calm. "We have found ways of accessing the hotel's records. I looked up your room numbers." "Why? You gave us our 'message' already." "That was not me that spoke to you this morning, it was Gary. I came for another reason." "What do you want from us?" Scully spat out. For the first time, something human flickered in the clone's eyes. "Asylum." CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 5 ************************************************* "Goodnight Newton, (5/14) See chapter 1 for disclaimers and other information. The acrobat's announcement did nothing to reduce the tension in the hotel room. Scully lowered her weapon, hoping that Mulder wouldn't have a Clint Eastwood moment and just shoot the guy, then ask questions later. "Asylum? From what? You're the ones threatening =us=!" Mulder growled. The acrobat replied, "I came alone for a reason. My brothers don't know that I'm here." Without re-holstering her weapon, Scully ordered, "Explain." She backed towards the edge of the bed and sat down. Never taking his eyes off the acrobat, Mulder dragged a chair around and sat down, too. He looked uncomfortable and Scully realized that he needed a place to put his elbows. They were in the same positions they usually assumed when interviewing witnesses, minus the bare table and acrid coffee that police stations generally provided. "Your name?" "Greg Newton." "Why should we believe you?" Scully snapped. He blinked, and reached behind his back, a gesture that resulted in both agents thumbing the safeties off of their guns. He stopped, eyes widening, and protested mildly, "I have ID in my wallet." "Featuring a fake social security number. Skip it," Mulder said. The acrobat looked slightly annoyed. "I should warn you that shooting me is likely to prove fatal to both of you, as well." Noting Scully's expression of disbelief, he added politely, "If it would put you at ease, you could arm yourself with that ashtray. A heavy object that doesn't break the epidermis is the best..." "Patronize her again and you're taking one to the back of the neck, you stupid fuck," Mulder grated. "Why are you asking us for protection and from who?" "Because my further usefulness to those who created me is in doubt. You know quite well to whom I'm referring, Mr. Mulder." His tone was still even but sounded strained. "I came to you because I have some information that you might find useful. I am willing to trade that information in exchange for immunity from persecution and assistance with my disappearance." "You want us to get you into the Witness Protection Program?" Scully asked, frowning. He made a sound that might have been laughter. "Agent Scully, were I to enter the program, I'd be dead within a week. I need to =disappear=." "Let me see if I've got this straight." Mulder was still bristling, but there was a gleam in his eye that Scully interpreted as guarded curiosity. "You're offering us information in exchange for protection from a crew that just threatened our lives and our jobs. We're talking about the group that I believe conspired to abduct my partner, if they're not actually the responsible parties outright. What the hell makes you think we can help you when we can't even help ourselves?" he finished, bitterly. Scully knew that he was in interrogation mode, that the tone and substance of his little speech were designed to get more information out of Newton, but there was an undercurrent of honesty in his questions. She was puzzled but intrigued. Common sense to the contrary, her investigator's instincts were telling her that Newton wasn't lying. Then again, she amended, the witnesses we interview are generally =human.= Newton's eyes did not flicker. He returned Mulder's hostile stare and said, evenly, "I don't have many options. You're the only ones I know of who would understand what I'm running from who are in a position to help me. And the information I have isn't worth nearly as much to anyone else. Agent Mulder, do you remember Kurt Crawford?" For the first time, Scully saw Mulder relax slightly. "Very well. Haven't seen him in awhile, though." He cocked his head questioningly. "He's dead. All the Kurts are dead." Newton spoke matter- of-factly. "And I have reason to believe that the four of us will be dead, soon, too." "You keep coming back to that. If that's true, why are you here alone?" "My brothers are optimists." He spoke without noticeable irony. "I didn't inherit that characteristic." "What are you?" Scully finally asked. "You look like -- we don't know his name, but you know who we mean. Are you," she silently chastised herself for asking the question out loud, Mulder would never let her forget it, "a clone of that man?" "No. I don't know his name, either," Newton admitted. "They always called him 'our adversary.' My brothers, and others like us -- the Kurt Crawfords -- call him the Hunter." "If you're not a clone, then why do you look like him? And how the hell do you do that anti-gravity trick that we saw last night?" Newton grinned, and the expression looked as strange on him as it would have looked on a fish. "So you noticed. The resemblance is familial, but not in the way you were thinking. I am a hybrid, a combination of the Hunter's genetic material and a human's." "Whose?" Scully gasped. He looked at her. "Not yours." "How do you know?" "I know who my 'mother' is, and she's not you. If you'd like to do a DNA test, you're welcome to, Agent Scully. Part of the information I'm offering you is inside of me. My genetic material, for whatever it's worth to you. Run whatever tests you'd like to do." His eyes darkened. "I doubt if they could be any worse than the ones I've already had." Scully felt a completely unwelcome flash of sympathy for Newton. Tests. "At least you can remember what was done to you." He said nothing, just looked back at her coldly. "I assume that if you're here talking to us, that means that this room isn't bugged," Mulder said. "I can give you no such assurance. I came to you when I did because I dared not wait any longer. I feared you would leave after hearing what Gary had to say this morning." "Great. So anyone could have heard all of this. Assuming that we buy this story." Mulder's eyes flicked to Scully. One of his eyebrows cocked upwards in a question that would have made her laugh if she had ever watched herself in the mirror. Do you believe him? Long ago, Mulder had found an informant, a man that she had scathingly referred to as his Deep Throat. The moniker had stuck, mostly because they had never known his real name. She had resented the older man for his ill-concealed admiration of Mulder, partly because it never seemed to extend to her, and mostly because Mulder had listened to the man at a time when he rarely heeded her words. In the shadowed recesses of an empty warehouse, Deep Throat had informed her bluntly that alien-human hybrids existed and were being killed because they were evidence of the Project; that if tests were ever done on them, that it would be clear that they were not fully human. And at the time, she had not believed a word that he said. She closed her eyes wearily. So help me God, I believe Newton. She looked at her partner and gave him an almost imperceptible nod. I believe him. But what does that mean, she asked herself silently. Does that mean that I =believe?= Which was what Mulder had been trying to ask her that morning on the busy road that crossed the dam. No, she answered herself stoutly. It doesn't. I just believe that he isn't consciously lying to us. There are still plenty of holes in this story. But I think the time may be coming when I will ask forgiveness of a dead man. Mulder said, "Fine. We run some tests on you, it turns out that you're half-Reticulan." His description seemed to amuse Newton, whose mouth quirked slightly. "Which is great, and obviously I'd like to see the test results, but it doesn't do us a lot of long-term good if you decide to vanish afterwards. When you're gone, so is our credibility. Again. Not even Jerry Springer is going to do a story on test results from a half- alien guy who just happens to be hiding out from shadowy forces in the US Government and is therefore unavailable for comment." Mulder tilted his head questioningly. "What --" "Mulder," she cut him off. "Anyone could be listening." "Right," he muttered. He reached for the complimentary pad of paper that the hotel had thoughtfully provided. He wrote in big block letters, then held it up for both Scully and Newton to see. DOWNSTAIRS WHERE THEY CAN'T HEAR US Scully had a general idea of what Mulder was planning when she trailed him out the door, Newton following her. It was the same principle they had followed that morning. In a crowd, no one can hear you very well. The busy casino would serve nicely for that purpose. When they got off of the elevator, she headed for the casino floor with Mulder and Newton behind her. She felt Mulder's hand settle at the small of her back, and with the slight tingle of awareness that always accompanied his touch, she wondered how long it had been since he'd done that. Too long. She looked up at him, meaning to smile at him, let him know that she liked feeling his hand there, but her gaze was drawn to the silvery half-globes mounted at intervals on the ceiling of the casino. Surveillance came in many guises. Just because those cameras were there so that the management could watch the gamblers and the dealers and the pit bosses, make sure that no one was cheating the house, didn't mean that they couldn't be put to other purposes. She nudged Mulder and pointed at the ceiling. He grunted in acknowledgment, steering her toward a craps table. Newton looked slightly ill at ease, but he followed them without comment. It was only early evening, but the tables were already busy. A noisy group ringed the table Mulder had chosen, but when he steered Scully towards the rail, the gamblers made a space for the newcomers. A tall woman with long brown hair sweeping the padded shoulders of her short dress flicked her eyes over Mulder and Newton, then knowingly, down at Scully. *************************************** Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, he thought, and grinned wolfishly. Then he stopped smiling. The room in which he sat housed a few other men who kept one eye on the monitors while they carried on an animated discussion about the upcoming NFL draft. They ignored him; from time to time, someone would want to use the Eye in the Sky, as they called the cameras in the ceiling, for purposes that didn't bear examining. Better not to ask. So their visitor hardly disrupted their business at hand, or their conversation. Except that something about this particular man was unsettling. Not enough so to cause a break in the conversation, and certainly (never) enough to provoke comments, even whispers, but every so often one of the men at the monitors would cut his eyes towards the visitor. And nearly all of them had to keep themselves from starting visibly when the man slammed his open palm down on the countertop and hissed. The talk about football continued, but every man listened as the visitor dialed a cellphone and said into it, softly, "Newton's with them. Get down there and find out why." When the visitor left, moments later, every eye in the room tracked his movement, but he did not seem to notice. ************************************************** What the hell was Mulder doing? Her partner stood directly behind her, resting one of his arms on the rail edging the deep table. Newton fell in beside them at her left elbow, crowded close to Scully. Mulder pulled out his wallet and threw three twenties down on the table. The croupier picked them up swiftly and pushed a stack of chips at Mulder. Mulder split the stack evenly into three and handed four chips each to Newton and to Scully. Suddenly, Scully understood. The noise and the motion of the gamblers would cover the substance of their conversation better than the casual traffic out on the floor. All they had to do was drop their chins when they spoke, and the cameras above them would make it nearly impossible to eavesdrop, even for a lip-reader. She unsuccessfully fought a grin. Only Mulder. The croupier called out, "Coming out, ladies and gentlemen. Coming out." Mulder and Newton both reached down and dropped a chip apiece onto the table's green felt surface. Both chips landed on a line labelled, 'Pass.' Totally at a loss, Scully mimicked the two men. Her chip fell onto the line above theirs, labeled 'Don't Pass.' Immediately, Mulder leaned down, his arm circling around her, his hips pressing intimately into her backside. He moved her chip to rest on the 'Pass' line between his and Newton's, and murmured in her ear, "Always bet with me, Scully, not against me." She flushed. "It would help if I knew the rules of the game," she whispered back. Her partner chuckled, but his eyes were restlessly scanning the crowd, looking for a tail. From her place by the rail, hemmed in by Mulder, Newton, and the other players, she couldn't see a thing beyond the table, and it irritated her. A thin man smoking a cigarette shook the dice, then threw them energetically at the far wall of the table. The dice landed with muffled thumps and the croupier called out, "Seven." A friendly murmur went up around the table, and Scully watched the dealer place another chip next to each of the ones they had already laid down on the table. She looked up and Newton met her eyes. "We won," he said, economically, and scooped up one of the chips. Mulder followed suit, so she did, too. The croupier extended a long rake and deftly maneuvered the dice back to the thin man. The man held the cigarette laconically between his lips, hands engaged with the dice. He did not squint against the smoke as he shook them vigorously, and Scully saw that he had quite a few stacks of chips lined up in front of him. Mulder was still right behind her, and she felt rather than heard him ask Newton, "What other information do you have?" "Seven again," the croupier called out. The happy murmur was repeated and Scully thought, We just each made ten dollars in less than two minutes. This time Newton left both chips on the pass line and Mulder took both of his away. Scully scooped hers up, too, without a moment's hesitation. "I know where they are keeping the ones that have not yet been born." Mulder was completely, utterly still. Scully's hand clenched tight around the chips she held until the edge of the plastic bit into her palm, but her voice was low when she spoke. "Take us there." Newton shifted slightly beside her. "I can't do that. They would be looking for me there. I can tell you where." "No." Mulder's voice was equally low but insistent. "You come with us. Show us." "Eight, hard eight," cried the croupier, and a large brass disc was placed on a painted square marked EIGHT across the table from Scully. Mulder dropped two chips onto the 'Pass' line and pushed two towards the uniformed assistant who stood behind the disc. "Six on six," he instructed, and the man placed some chips on the six and pushed two silver coins back at Mulder. Newton left his chips where they lay, and Scully wordlessly handed two of hers to Mulder. "Hers, too," he said, pushing them towards the man behind the disc. Newton said, "It's not close to here. And they'll be watching for us to leave. They have someone at the airport." He was sweating lightly, and it reassured Scully strangely to see that he was human enough to perspire when he was afraid. "Eleven," the croupier called out. The tall woman said "I =knew= it." in an exasperated voice, and flipped her long hair over her shoulder. The thin man was nearly to the end of his cigarette, but he made no move to put it out, letting it burn dangerously close to the filter he held between his lips. The brass buttons on the croupier's red jacket flashed as he reached out to adjust one of the stacks of chips that lay before him. "Come with us," Scully repeated, low and urgent. "We'll drive. You said you wanted us to protect you. We will." "Drinks?" asked a waitress in a tight bolero jacket and a short skirt. Her hair was teased into a frosted-blonde cloud, and she eyed Mulder approvingly. He shook his head in the negative. Newton was staring unseeingly at the chips he had placed on the 'Pass' line. The waitress handed a short, dripping glass to the man on Newton's left and looked inquiringly at Scully, who shook her head. The man at the end of the table threw the dice again. "Three," sang out the croupier. Newton was still staring at his chips. Scully thought of Emily, and of the faces in the coffin she had dreamed of for so many restless nights, and swallowed hard. The arm that Mulder had left resting on the railing dropped to her side, and his hand settled lightly, comfortingly, on her hip. She wondered irrationally if he had sensed her thoughts. He shifted again behind her, and she could almost feel the heat of his skin through his clothes. The thin man was shaking the dice again, and Scully saw with relief that the stub of his cigarette was gone. He flung them away and she could not see when they landed. But the croupier sang out, "Six," and pushed some chips in their direction. Mulder picked them up and handed some to Scully. Newton leaned down and said, "All right. But we have to leave tonight. After seeing me with you, they're going to have questions." Mulder heard him and said something to the croupier's assistant. Scully picked up the chips that he pushed towards her, but Mulder and Newton left the chips they had placed on the 'Pass' line, and she did likewise. The deal was done and the urgency she felt in the air had nothing to do with the tense dance of the dice on the table, or the watching gamblers leaning toward the source of their disquiet. The thin man threw the dice and a collective sigh rose from around the table. "Seven," the croupier said, and in a moment all the chips left on the table were gone, swept away by the nimble hands of the uniformed man. "Half an hour," Mulder said. "Back here." Three players backed away from the table. The woman was staring at the chips that shone dully in her hands. The tall, lean man looked pale but composed, while their heavily- muscled companion seemed ill at ease, restlessly looking around the casino. They looked as lost amid the sea of gamblers as rowboats caught in a monsoon. Aloof and nervous at once, they did not speak to each other as they walked away. A careful observer would have noted that they held their winnings loosely and thoughtlessly, and that they did not stop to cash in their chips before they left the floor. CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 6 ***************************** "Goodnight Newton, (6/14) See part 1 for disclaimers and other information. He ran as soon as he got the phone call, but he was too late. The threesome had already walked away from the craps table, and now they were leaving the floor. He saw that one of the men and the woman were heading for the elevators, and the third man was walking away, towards the front door, the one that led to the Strip. But that couldn't be right; he was no more than an hour from showtime. Sweating, he considered his options. A roll of the dice. Better to make the call, then. He pulled out a slim cellphone and punched the first number on the speed dial. When the voice on the other end picked up, he explained. "Watch the doors. Get help if you need it. Just make sure we know when they leave, and if they leave alone." "Should I stop them?" "No. Just call back when they leave." He ended the call, and looked thoughtfully at the double glass doors. It was already night. ********************************************* They didn't check out, hoping that it would be assumed that they were still at the hotel, although as Newton pointed out while they swiftly made their way to the parked rental car, in half-an-hour's time the point would be made when he didn't show up for Galaxis' first performance of the night. Newton carried only a small knapsack. He looked nervous, and Scully felt another pang of sympathy for him. She scanned the parking lot as they pulled out, but couldn't spot a tail. Newton twisted around to look back at the hotel as they eased onto the heavy traffic on the Strip. Mulder asked, "Where to?" Newton replied, "San Francisco." *********************************************** The man leaning against the wall next to the door leading to the Magnifique's south parking lot had a briefcase resting between his wing-tips. He pulled out a cellphone, dialed and said, "They're gone." And then he was, too. *********************************************** Mulder headed for Highway 15. He looked over at his partner and saw she was nibbling lightly on her lower lip. That little habit always evoked two distinctly different reactions in Mulder. His professional, logical side recognized it as one of Scully's nervous habits; it meant that she was either dissecting a problem or worrying about something. However, it also made him notice her perfect, tempting lips. But he had years of practice at squelching the second reaction, and he did so quickly "That was awfully easy," she murmured. "Too easy. They went to a hell of a lot of trouble to keep track of us up 'til tonight. And by now they know that we found the mikes and those cards." He made a sudden decision and swerved left sharply enough to make the car lurch, pulling into a convenience store parking lot. He got out of the car and jerked open the passenger side door. "Get out." Newton got out, leaving his knapsack in the car. Scully was already halfway around the car, and he reached in for it, then tossed it to her. "Check it," he said. He put one hand on the big man's shoulder and spun him so that he faced the car, and began patting him down. "Mulder?" "Should have done this before we left," he said, cursing himself for his inattention. Couldn't be paranoid enough. Newton remained silent while Mulder searched him thoroughly, only looking over his shoulder once with a faintly disgusted expression on his blandly handsome face. He looked at Scully, and saw that she was frowning, thoroughly kneading the seams of a pair of oxford cotton boxers. He fought a grin; trust Scully not to get flustered while examining a strange man's underwear. "Anything?" She looked up. "No. Were you expecting something? Because I wasn't." He stopped completely for a long moment. It was more than likely that Newton was a spy. He hadn't even taken the time to discuss the issue with Scully while they threw their belongings back into their suitcases at the hotel, working on the assumption that his skeptical partner would never have bought the man's story. But apparently, she had. He examined his partner's logic while finishing the search. Of course the acrobat =could= be telling the truth. But it was far more likely that he had been sent to lead them on a wild goose chase, possibly even into a trap. But if that was true, why San Francisco? Why drag them across the country? Was it to be a clandestine execution by the side of a dark highway, maybe after spiking their tires? He spun the man back around and locked one hand firmly around his wrist, pulling his unresisting captive into the alley behind the store. The lone streetlight in the alley was fitted with a cheap, orange fluorescent bulb, and it shed a sickly glow over the faces of Scully and the acrobat. "Show us." "Show you what?" "Your little trick. What you do on-stage." Mulder didn't know exactly why he was asking, but Newton didn't seem fazed. With a sidelong glance at Scully, Newton inclined his chin slightly and his feet left the ground. Mulder heard Scully gasp. It was amazing. Newton hung in the air, a foot off the ground. He rested on the infirm cushion of the air as easily as if it were solid ground, hanging above them like a Halloween creature in the strange light. And it looked entirely natural, as if any man could defy gravity on a whim, as if Mulder and Scully could join him effortlessly. After a few seconds, he came down, his weight settling lightly onto first his toes, then the balls of his feet, then his heels. He looked inquiringly at Mulder. Mulder looked at Scully. She was gasping slightly with each intake of breath, her face slack and shocked. In that moment, he realized that Scully had just been given what she wanted and feared most of all: proof. "God," she whispered, and it sounded like a question. "How do you do it?" Mulder asked. Newton looked at him calmly. "How do you walk? How do you breathe? I have no idea, Agent Mulder. I just do it." Scully shook herself visibly and rapped out, "Let's go." They all got back into the car and no one said anything until Mulder turned the nose of the car toward the onramp. "Don't we want 15 North?" "Not tonight," he said, with a brief glance at Scully. She was looking out the window, and didn't acknowledge his reply. Her query had sounded like an afterthought, he decided. Scully was still back in that alley, learning that Newton's law was not an absolute. Newton. He looked in the rear view mirror. The acrobat was staring out the window, too. "Did you choose your own name?" "Of course. We all do. It seemed appropriate." Mulder snorted. "I don't agree, and I'll bet Sir Isaac wouldn't have, either, but we'll let that go for now. How many hybrids are out there?" Newton shrugged. "I don't know. Hundreds, maybe thousands. I would guess only in the hundreds, though. They learn a great deal with each evolution." "How long ago were you...evolved?" Mulder hated how the word sounded as soon as it was past his lips. Evolution had no part in the process that had created the thing in the back seat. The lights along the highway scattered bars of light across Newton's face, flicking past his even features rhythmically. "Four years ago. We were trained to be laboratory assistants -- most are -- but we weren't well suited for the work." His face tightened slightly before he continued, "The trapeze act was an afterthought, but it seemed like a logical choice for Vegas." "So you've spent four years in Vegas?" "No, only about eight months. It was some time before a suitable alternative could be found." His eyes were distant. "And at one point, there were three more of us." "What happened?" "The others...didn't respond as well to the therapeutic alternatives made available to us." Scully stirred. "What are you talking about? What was wrong with you?" His eyes were still fixed on the passing landscape. "Most of us aren't considered finished products when our gestation is complete -- and in this case, the aging process complicated matters considerably." "Yeah, I thought you seemed awfully well-developed for a four-year old," Mulder deadpanned. Scully frowned disapprovingly at him. "Go on, Mr. Newton." He flicked his eyes in her direction. "You can call me Greg," he said, almost shyly. Mulder's dislike for the creature notched upwards slightly. "Some of us are aged when our gestation is complete. The idea is to study the success or failure of whatever variation has been made on the prototype at different phases of its development." Newton sounded like he was discussing case studies out of a science textbook, Mulder thought with a wave of disgust, but Scully seemed fascinated. "How?" "How does the aging process work? I don't understand it very well." I'll bet you don't, Mulder thought. "It involves injecting doses of free radicals into our bone marrow periodically, plus a combination of medications. We spent a fair amount of time in stasis tanks, and I know that was an element of the procedure, too. None of us are ever given complete information about any one procedure, for security reasons." "Is your resemblance to us, to humans, natural or planned?" Scully asked the question as easily as she would ask someone the time, but Mulder felt his heart speed up. Humans. She said humans. "Natural. We have a great deal of human DNA, Agent Scully. And the rest of our genetic material comes from a race that isn't all that dissimilar to your species." "And the rest of the 'therapeutic alternatives' you mentioned? What were they for?" "All of the hybrids developed so far have had flaws. One set had trouble with the atmosphere here -- the oxygen mix was too rich for their lungs. Things like that. Most of the flaws are treatable, to a degree. Ours were." "Then what happened to the other three of you?" Mulder broke in. Newton's eyes were fixed on the landscape again. "They declined to participate in the therapy." "And what happened?" "They died, Agent Mulder. In our case, one of the flaws was fatal without treatment." "They chose to die? Or they were deliberately killed?" "Their choice. They were not supposed to die; they pretended to be following the drug schedule until the end. Until it was clear to everyone that they hadn't been. Members of the Project were not happy; I think it's one of the reasons they watched the rest of us so closely, and I think it's also the reason why they didn't require that we remain in the lab. They were afraid the rest of us would follow suit." Scully was quiet, and Mulder knew she was thinking of Emily, who hadn't had any choice. The section of highway they were traveling was dark and straight, with an occasional animal carcass littering the shoulder. In Mulder's experience, most of Nevada's highways were straight and mind-numbingly endless. You could drive ninety miles an hour all day and not get through the wide part of the state. But this was the spearhead at the bottom of the state, and they would be in California in a couple of hours. Then they would head north to San Francisco. It wasn't the most obvious path, but that was why he'd chosen it. He was still troubled by the ease with which they had made their retreat from Vegas. Someone should have been watching Newton, if any of what he'd told them about the Project was true. And he and Scully had clearly been under surveillance for some time. Mulder wondered what had triggered the new surge of interest in their investigations. Generally, when they were onto something big, hidden microphones and other detritus would begin popping up in their apartments and their office. But they'd never gotten such an open threat before. Probably it had something to do with Emily. He glanced at Scully again. She was chewing her lower lip almost savagely; it looked swollen and irritated. They had been on the road for several hours when he noticed that the temperature gauge was all the way into the red. Cursing himself for not looking at the gauges earlier, he checked the speedometer. He had been sticking to a demure seventy-five miles and the car only had thirty thousand miles on it. So why the hell was the engine overheating? He was getting a bad, itchy feeling. Scully was dozing, her head back against the upholstery, her lips parted slightly. Newton appeared to be asleep in the back seat. Both woke up when he pulled over onto the shoulder, the wheels barely sinking into the hard earth and loose gravel. "What's wrong?" He pulled his gun out of his holster before getting out of the car. "Cover me." Now Scully was wide awake, getting out on her side, back to the car, her gun out, scanning the highway, lit by their headlights, and the vast, dark country beyond. "What's going on, Mulder?" "Engine's overheating. Something's wrong." She stood in front of him, her back to him, squinting into the darkness, while he peered under the hood. She didn't ask any more questions, and he was grateful, because he didn't have any answers. Pointing his flashlight into the guts of the engine, he swore out loud. The water pump was pulsing and flexing like a giant plastic heart. Through the translucent walls of the pump, he could see the water inside was boiling merrily. "Fuck," he snarled, restraining an urge to kick the tire. He glanced through the windshield and saw Newton unbuckling his seatbelt. "Stay there, dammit." "Can you tell what's wrong?" "The fucking water pump is what's wrong. The water's literally boiling and it looks like the fucking thing is ready to blow. I guess it could be the thermostat, but it's way too hot to stick my hands in there and explore." "Do you think it's just a coincidence?" He knew what she was really asking. Was it sabotage? "I don't know, and we're not staying here to find out." He looked up and down the highway. It was still as death and pitch black out. Stars shone like beacons in the inky sky and the slender crescent moon did little to illuminate the desert. No approaching headlights. No other engine sounds aside from the thin hissing coming from the guts of the rental car. The perfect silence of the open highway was oddly reassuring. It was possible that their mechanical problems =could= be sheer coincidence. He looked at the hood. A Ford Tempo. He grinned wryly; Fix Or Repair Daily, wasn't that what they said? Night had brought a chill to the air, and Mulder could see goosebumps rising on his partner's white skin in the glow from the headlights. The water was boiling less vigorously now. He made a fast decision. "Look, we just came up a hill. It should cool off when we're on a flat section. I bet we can limp along a little farther like this. We'll stop in the next town and get motel rooms, then get it checked out in the morning. I'm ready to hitchhike to San Francisco if that's what it's going to take." "Okay. Let's get out of here." She put her weapon away and got back in the car. As he buckled up, she twisted around in her seat and explained the change in plans to Newton. It took them an hour to negotiate the next forty miles, with two tense stops at the top of hills to let the engine cool off in the night air. Occasionally, a truck would pass them with a rush of stale exhaust, but the highway was nearly empty. They saw the lights up ahead long before they reached the town. Grafton, California, Pop. 238. "One of those two-hundred-thirty-eight people better be a damn mechanic," Mulder mumbled. He bypassed the chain motel just past the off-ramp in favor of a mom-and-pop place two blocks from the highway. He kept a surreptitious eye on Newton while Scully rang for the desk clerk. The small sign at the desk informed him that Dan and Valerie Hearon were the proprietors, and that they hoped he had a nice stay. The narrow windowsill was littered with an assortment of brochures advertising jeep rides, casino packages, and the Word of the Lord. A graying, weathered-looking man who was reasonably polite considering he had obviously just woken up took their money and produced two keys. There were no adjoining rooms available, which Mulder didn't much like, but they got two rooms on the same corridor. He and Newton plodded down to one, while Scully let herself into the other. Mulder took a last look at his partner as she slipped through the doorway. Thinking fleetingly of her nightmares, he fervently hoped she'd sleep peacefully. The patterns in the crazed ceiling tiles entertained him long after Newton's breathing in the other bed had become regular and deep. Guess they need to sleep, too, he thought. He laid there, staring at the ceiling, listening for something that he couldn't identify. The sounds of trucks on the highway reached him faintly through the thin walls, past the quiet streets of the town. Finally he drifted off and dreamed of dark highways and gleaming metal. He woke to pale light and pounding at the door. Scully was there, dressed in jeans and a blue windbreaker. The desert wind had whipped her hair into a tumbled mess. "We have a problem." She handed him the rolled-up newspaper she carried and pushed past him into the dimly lit room, her eyes dark and worried in the pale oval of her face. He absently moved to the window, scrolling back the blinds. Newton sat up in the other bed, blinking, but Scully paid no attention, her eyes fixed on Mulder. It was a Barstow paper. On the front page, above the fold, a bold headline screamed, "THREE KILLED IN BOMBING OF LAS VEGAS ABORTION CLINIC." In smaller letters, a subhead explained, "Three Sought for Questioning; Federal Agents Are Prime Suspects." Next to the columns of text, three sketched faces stared accusingly up at him. The likeness of Scully was somewhat vague, but the resemblance was still there, her fine features captured by the artist, although the sketch didn't do justice to her delicate beauty. However, the sketches of Newton and himself were nearly dead on, his long nose and weak chin rendered in unforgiving detail. "Damn right we have a problem," he echoed glumly. CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 7 ************************************************** "Goodnight Newton", (7/14) "What's going on?" Newton asked. He was sitting up in the bed, shirtless. Mulder handed him the paper, noticing how well-defined the hybrid's abdominal muscles were. He looked like a poster child for a health club. "Well, the good news is that we seem to have avoided pursuit. The bad news -- just keep reading." The story was brief and devastating. Around eleven-o'-clock last night, the front third of the Women's Wellness Clinic in Las Vegas had disintegrated, blown to bits by an explosive device. The police were withholding details about the device pending arrests. No one had taken responsibility for the bombing, but several witnesses had observed three people fleeing the scene. Descriptions from the witnesses and certain physical evidence retrieved from the scene -- again, withheld by the police for now -- had led the LVPD to issue warrants for the arrest of Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully of the FBI, and one Greg Newton of Las Vegas, Nevada, a member of Galaxis, a troupe of acrobats. The other three members of the troupe were wanted for questioning but their whereabouts were currently unknown. The final paragraphs of the story were bleak. The bodies of three men, burned beyond recognition, had been found in the wreckage. Police were at a loss to explain the extreme disfigurement of the bodies, since the fire that had started after the explosion had been extinguished quickly. Possible connections to organized crime were being investigated. The Las Vegas FBI field office was cooperating with the investigation; the FBI had no official statement about the warrants outstanding for two of their agents. When Mulder's cellphone rang, he cringed. There wasn't much doubt about who was on the other end. "Mulder." "Would you care to explain just what the fuck is going on, Agent Mulder? I just got off the phone with the ASAC at the Las Vegas field office. I've got messages from our media relations department, the White House PR flunkies, and God only knows who else. The ATF wants to take over the investigation, and your asses --" "Sir, we didn't do it." Skinner's growl was audible five feet away from the receiver. "I'm not done. I'm not even close to done. However, a significant portion of what I have to say shouldn't be said on a cell. Get to a land line and call me back. NOW. Have Agent Scully with you." The click on the line indicated that this stage of the conversation was over. Mulder tossed the phone down on the bed. "Why," he asked plaintively, "does he always call ME? You've got a cellphone, too." "He wants us to call him back from a land line?" Mulder nodded. "Just hang on a sec, Scully. Let's talk about this for a minute before we call him back." He turned toward Newton, and stopped dead. The hybrid was staring into his lap. Tears were coursing silently down his face. He didn't look at Mulder, but his shoulders twitched slightly when Mulder made a shuffling gesture in his direction. He said, "They killed them. Because I left. Because of me." What do you know, Mulder thought, distantly. Remorse. How very human. Scully brushed by him and laid a gentle hand on Newton's bare shoulder. "You don't know that. Those might not be their bodies." Her rationalization rang hollow, and they all heard it. She hurried on, "You left because you were afraid that something like this would happen. They probably had this planned before you approached us." The hybrid looked up at her with an expression so wistful, so childlike that for the first time, Mulder thought about the aging process that Newton had described. A four-year old trapped in the body of an adult. Even with education and free radicals, a half-lifetime of experience was missing. He watched Newton struggling to accept Scully's reasoning. She still had her hand on his shoulder, and her fingers flexed, then loosened as she added, "Greg, let it go." Newton gazed at her with wide, guileless blue eyes. "They were my family." She repeated, softly, "Let it go." His eyes dropped to his hands, twisting aimlessly in his lap, and Scully smoothed her thumb over his shoulder. The slight caress triggered Mulder's voice and he managed to get out, "We need to call Skinner." She looked up at him. "Did you have a strategy that you wanted to share with me?" "No," he mumbled. "We have to tell him about Newton." "Greg," and she used the name as punctuation, "can stay here while we make the call. If Skinner needs proof, he can talk to him." It was a good idea, and Mulder found he had nothing to say. He dialed. "Is Agent Scully with you?" "Yes, sir." Scully sat on the edge of the bed next to him, and the mattress dipped slightly under her weight. He held the phone to his ear loosely so that she could listen in. "She's right here." "You two are in a hell of a lot of trouble. The LVPD actually think you blew up that clinic, do you realize that? And it took a good twenty minutes for me to convince Tom Arbaszewski at the Vegas field office that you two were being set up. I'm still not sure how I'm going to get ATF to back off; it's probably going to take a call from Justice before they agree to let me handle it personally." Not until he felt the muscles in his sternum uncoiling did Mulder realize that part of him had been afraid that Skinner would think they'd done it, too. "Would you care to explain to me how the hell this idiotic case -- what was it that you were going to look into, a bunch of gymnasts? -- could have led to the two of you coming under suspicion of, let's see -" Mulder heard the AD rustling papers "- arson, willful destruction of property, murder and racketeering?" "Racketeering?" Mulder repeated stupidly, his head spinning. "Yes, racketeering," Skinner replied, impatiently. "Organizations in which individuals ally to wage terror campaigns are now being prosecuted under RICO. You =know= all of this already, Mulder. The bomb was similar enough to the ones used in the Birmingham bombing and the Atlanta bombings that they think you're affiliated with the Army of God." The Army of God? His mental Rolodex whirred. Anti- abortion right wing extremists. Not good. Mulder found his voice again. "What kind of evidence was found at the scene?" "It was an extremely professional job. Hair and footprints were recovered from the scene that match yours and Scully's. One of the two witnesses they found works at the Magnifique - he remembered seeing you two check in, and says he also saw you fleeing the scene with Newton. What did you find out about the acrobats that was worth getting into this kind of trouble over?" Scully had been listening intently, her warm breath washing over his chin and the hand that held the phone, and now she beckoned impatiently for him to give her the receiver. He did so with a palpable sense of relief. "Sir?" "Agent Scully?" Skinner's voice sounded tinny and faint from where Scully held the phone, but even so, Mulder heard the AD's voice soften infinitesimally. Skinner had a soft spot for Scully. He leaned closer to her, trying to hear better. "Sir, there's some evidence that the acrobats we came out here to interview are the product of genetic engineering; technology that's not been made available to the mainstream medical community." That was the world's biggest understatement, Mulder thought with a grin. "There's also a chance that the three bodies found at the scene are three of the four acrobats." "I see. What happened to the fourth?" "He's with us." "Would you care to provide some details on your theory about their genes? Because the LVPD is having a hell of a time ID'ing the bodies. Anything they should be trying?" Scully grunted and reeled off a string of instructions that Mulder didn't even try to follow. He heard Skinner writing frantically, though, and it made him grin again. "But if they're really badly burned, I don't know if it's going to help much. Have they checked dental records yet?" "They're working on it. You have the other man in custody?" "Yes." She didn't waste any time on details. "He has some information that may be of use to us. And sir, we think he may be in jeopardy -- if those three bodies do turn out to be the other Newtons --" "Who do you have with you?" "Greg. If those are his -- his brothers, then the people who killed them are probably looking for him right now, and his life is in danger." "Do I need to set up a safehouse?" Mulder shook his head at her, and she waved her hand at him impatiently. "No, sir. Not yet, anyhow. He's helping us with -- a case." "Well, getting your names cleared is going to take some time. And right now, you're not going to be able to offer much help. Understand that the physical evidence is pretty convincing. If I didn't know better, =I'd= think you'd planted that bomb." The AD's voice was half-annoyed, half-uncomfortable, and Scully beat him to the punchline. "You want us to stay out of sight for a few days." Skinner sighed. "Yes. Assuming that I manage to keep ATF off the case, I'm planning on taking it myself. I have Special Agents Arthur and Rasch ready to go to work on it with me." Mulder nodded curtly. Good choices. "The fact that we have Greg Newton with us --" "Will go no further, Scully. I want you two to report in -- on a land line -- twenty-four hours from now. Until then, stay out of sight." A steely note crept into the AD's voice. "Make certain that Agent Mulder and your...associate do, too. I hope to have the DOJ backing me up on this before you call in tomorrow." "So do I, sir. We're currently in --" "No," Skinner cut her off. "I need to call media relations. I do =not= want to know your location." Mulder grinned again. That way, Skinner could truthfully tell the public relations hacks, and they could tell the press, that the whereabouts of the missing agents was unknown. Deniability was a beautiful thing. "Twenty-four hours, Scully. Stay out of sight." The AD hung up. Scully replaced the receiver and Mulder rubbed at the crick that had developed in his neck while he listened to the conversation. "Could have been worse." "Mulder, we're wanted for murder. Define 'worse.'" "He could have thought we'd really done it." "True," she admitted. "I thought you trusted him these days." "I do. And now we have at least twenty-four hours to check out this place in San Francisco." He turned to Newton. "I don't want to rush you, here, but if you don't mind -- just where are the, ah, specimens being kept?" Newton's face was still drawn, blasted. "A gynecologist's office in Haight-Ashbury." Scully lifted her head slowly. "A gynecologist?" "I guess so. It's called the Center for Women's Health." Scully groaned. "Jesus. That's not just a gynecologist's office, Greg. That place has been open since the early seventies. Operation Rescue used to throw rocks at women who tried to go in. They perform abortions there, too." She stood up and paced over to the window. "By now, every abortion provider in the country has doubled their security and pasted our composites up on the wall. We have about as much chance of getting into that place without being noticed as we have of breaking into the fucking Pentagon with flare guns." "The plot thickens," Mulder murmured. "That explains why they picked that particular target." He grinned toothily at Scully. "This could be fun." Staring at him, she said, evenly, "Your sense of 'fun' is going to get us killed one of these days. I only mention this because that day may be coming sooner rather than later." "So you still want to take a drive up to San Francisco, Scully?" "You realize that the only reason that Skinner didn't expressly deny our request to investigate the Center for Women's Health is that we didn't give him the pleasure of doing so." "=You= didn't give him the pleasure. As I recall, you had taken over our end of the conversation at that point." She snorted. "You wouldn't have told him the details of our investigation, either, Mulder, so don't try to make a issue out of this. The point is, I don't see how we're going to do this without a, drawing attention from unwanted parties -- as in everyone -- and b, getting caught." "But you still want to go." The lines on her face were visible in the clear morning light; lines that hadn't been there when she walked into his office five years ago. She walked over to the window and stood with her back to him. "Yes." Her head was bent forward, exposing the downy, short hairs along the ridge of her neck. In the white light of morning they stood out, painfully exposed. He took the four long steps across the room to her before he knew that he had begun to move. Standing behind her, he said, uneasily, "Scully?" When she turned her eyes toward him, he was quite sure that it wasn't him she was seeing. "We'd better get going." "Okay." In spite of her proximity, he had a childlike urge to tug on the sleeve of her windbreaker and demand her attention. He shook himself slightly and belatedly turned to the hybrid. "Newton? Still with us?" Expressionless again, Newton replied flatly, "Yes." **************************************** The local yellow pages listed dozens of mechanics, and Mulder was pleasantly relieved until he flipped back to the cover and realized the directory was from Barstow. Shit. Barstow was far enough from Grafton for the car to die on them while they tried to get there, and that would be a serious problem. Not to mention the fact that there was probably an APB out on them describing the damn rental car. He slapped the phone book shut with a thump. "We gotta buy a car." Newton looked confused. "What? Isn't there a mechanic in town?" "It doesn't matter. I should have thought of this before. They're going to be looking for cars of this make and model carrying three people matching our description. We've got to be smart about this." Scully came back into the room, shutting the door behind her. "The car?" "Yeah. And," he looked at her judiciously, "we need to do something about your hair, Red." She looked miffed. "You'd better be talking about disguises, because I swear, I washed it this morning." He laughed, absurdly relieved that she was joking with him. "Yeah, disguises. I don't want to hang around here much longer, not long enough for you to dye it, anyway. So we're gonna have to pick up a hat for you somewhere. The car is the real fucking problem. We need a new one, and using our credit cards sounds like a pretty bad idea -- too easy to trace. So, somewhere we're going to have to come up with some cash." "How much cash?" asked Newton, startling them both. "Enough to buy a car that runs well enough to get us to San Francisco," Scully clarified. "As long as we're trying to stay out of sight, that means no using credit cards or cash cards -- they can be traced --" "I have four thousand dollars in my bag," Newton offered, guilelessly as a child surrendering his piggy bank. Mulder blinked. "Oh. Okay, that's great. We'll reimburse you later." Newton tossed the covers back and climbed out of bed, stretching unselfconsciously in his boxers. "Fine. I'm taking a shower." Mulder turned back to Scully in time to see her staring at Newton's backside as he headed for the bathroom. She caught him catching her doing it and added, hastily, "I got a local paper too -- it's a weekly, but I'll bet there are some used car listings. Why don't you get packed and I'll find us a car." "Can I take a shower in your room?" She was already thumbing through the paper and handed him her room key without looking up. "Make it fast." "Right, boss," he mumbled, scooping up a pair of jeans. Scully was, predictably, already packed. Mildly disappointed that he wasn't going to get a chance to peek into her toiletries kit -- he'd done so on a few occasions previously and it was fascinating, full of creams, lotions, her special shampoo that smelled like some exotic flower, and various female items that he couldn't identify -- he stepped into the shower. The floor of the shower stall was still damp from Scully's shower, and when he picked up the soap, it was wet to the touch. He stood there with the water coursing over his head and back, wondering when his life had become so empty that simply holding a bar of soap that had recently touched Scully's body was slightly arousing. When he returned to his own room, he found Scully sitting on one of the beds and Newton on the other. She was leaning across the space that divided them and talking to the hybrid in low, soothing tones. She sat up and asked Mulder, "Ready? I found a few that might work." "Good. Let's get out of here. I'll get us checked out." The same gray-haired man sat behind the desk in the small motel office, and he was watching a small television that blared organ music as Mulder dropped his keys on the counter and reached for his wallet. He kept his face down, trying to ignore the prickling at the back of his neck. There was a good chance that this guy didn't read the papers, anyway, and the television coverage probably hadn't carried their composites. Except when he looked up, he knew he'd made a grave mistake. The man was staring at him like he'd sprouted another head. "You're the fella they're talking about on TV. I =knew= it." Mulder was already shaking his head, desperately trying to think of something to say, when the man's creased face broke into a wide smile. "Yes, you are. Son, don't you worry. I'm pleased to meet one of the Lord's soldiers. Dan. Dan Hearon." While Mulder tried to shift gears and absorb what the man had just said, Dan turned his head and bawled over his shoulder, "Val! Get in here! Someone I want you to meet!" "Sir, I think you've mistaken me for someone else," Mulder managed to gasp, totally at a loss, but Dan cut in, "Don't you worry, I know you're skeered I'm gonna turn you in, but, son, I just want to shake your hand." He reached over the counter and grabbed Mulder's limp right hand, pumping it vigorously. A birdlike little woman in a pale pink sweatshirt that read "Jesus Saves" emerged from behind the office. Dan gestured at Mulder and said, excitedly, "Val, this here's one of them that bombed the baby-killers in Vegas." He regarded Mulder with a mixture of suspicion and glee. "Bet your name's not really Fox Mulder, neither." "Uh, no," Mulder managed. This was too weird. "S'all right, I don't need to know." Val stood with her head tipped slightly to one side, beaming and making encouraging noises. "You all had better lay low, now. Your pictures are all over the tee-vee and the papers." "Great," Mulder sighed wearily. "We've =got= to do something about the car." A light was dawning in his tired brain. This could actually turn out to be a stroke of luck. "You wouldn't happen to know of anyone locally who has a good used car for sale, do you? We need to --" "You bet," Val chirped out happily. "Elaine and John got one for sale. A Datsun. Used ta be their son's, but he went and bought a truck and they don't want it no more. Want me to give em a call for you?" "Now, wait here, Val," Dan interrupted. "They could take the Dodge. We don't use it no more." "Yeh," she agreed, but with considerably less chirpiness. "There's that. But, Dan --" "No, listen, Val, these kids are in trouble. And they just saved who knows how many babies, blowing up that butcher shop like that. It'd be doing to Lord's work to help them out." Mulder held his breath, not daring to say anything. Finally, Val nodded, and brought her hand down on the counter with a thump. "Okay. I'll go get the Dodge. It'll just take a minute," she explained to Mulder. "Now Dan, you see what else we can do for them." Mulder gulped, entirely unable to believe what had just happened. "Wow. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this. Can I give you something --?" Dan waved magnanimously. "Nah. It ain't new, but it'll get you away from here all right. Put oil in it a few months ago." He leaned over the counter and squinted at the parking lot, where a few other cars and trucks were parked on the asphalt. "That's a rental car that you got with you, right? Just park it aways from here. Anyone asks, we never saw you." Nodding, Mulder said, "Thanks. I have one more favor to ask you." Twenty minutes later, Mulder pulled a different car into the space outside of the motel room. Scully and Newton came out, and stared. Mulder held the keys to a pale yellow station wagon of undetermined vintage in one hand, and a dainty, wide- brimmed straw hat in the other. Looking at Scully, he grinned. "You are not going to BELIEVE the story I have to tell you." "Mulder, where did you get that car? Don't tell me you used your credit card, because..." He was laughing, and he tossed the hat at her like a frisbee. She caught it one-handed. "Relax, Scully, and put the lid on. Go on, try it on," he wheedled. She put it on without taking her eyes off him. He whistled. "Hey, nice. Kinda sexy, in a Sunday-school- teacher way. All right, let's get out of here." They got in and as he peeled out of the parking lot past the motel office, he rolled the window down and waved at the older couple standing in the doorway. They were waving back. "God bless," Mulder shouted, and they turned towards the onramp. CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 8