Legally: The interesting characters in this story belong to Chris Carter, 1013 and Fox as brought to life by DD, GA and the XFiles writers.I've borrowed them for fun not profit. This story: I'm happy for the story to be circulated uncommercially, intact and with my name still attached! This one's a Xfile, with part one setting the scene. It's no more violent than the show. If you are particularly sensitive about fringe religions and cults you may prefer not to read it. Joann =============================== Beliefs and Believers - Part 1 of 4 Skinner stood at his desk trying to get the last few words in with his fast retreating Agents. "So you will be at the dinner tonight, Agent Mulder?" "I don't think so, I was.." Mulder tried to think up an excuse fast. What was Skinner up to? Skinner knew he never went to social events. "Maybe you misheard. So you will be at the dinner tonight." "Yes." Once safely on their way back to the basement Scully turned to Mulder. "What was that about tonight, I thought you and he had an understanding?" Mulder shrugged slightly before responding. "Maybe his date ditched him." Scully spluttered out the mouthful of coffee she'd just sipped and tried to look annoyed. -------------------------------- He sat sprawled back in his chair, feet resting on the desk. Dana Scully knew better than to be taken in by his apparently relaxed posture. The fingers that held the phone were flexing and unflexing slowly. He was saying very little, just the odd word. Then finally, he jotted down a few notes on the pad in front of him. "I don't think there's much point in us continuing this call." Scully wondered what the voice at the other end of the line was saying. Mulder spoke again, a little more edge to it this time. "Something to do with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Which bit do you think I have misunderstood?" Scully shuddered. Scully had spoken to the Prosecutor from the DA's office earlier that morning. She had been told in no uncertain terms that unless the investigating team changed their view that physical access to the victim's room had been unnecessary for the attacker, the case would be dropped. "Yeah. I'm sure you are. Have a nice day." He dropped the phone gently back on the hook. Mulder carefully pulled the case files together, attached his latest note to one of the folders, put them in a box and dropped the lot into the paper recycle bag. "The prosecutor?" "Correct for ten points. Now will you get the bonus points as well?" "She's dropped the case because you insist that the victim was killed during the time when its known the accused was on the other side of town." "Excellent. Now you've got a lot riding on this last answer." "You told her if you were asked about time of death, you'd answer the question instead of saying that you couldn't be certain." "Perfect." "Well, I guess we knew that once those witnesses decided to change their evidence that we'd be in trouble." The witnesses had seen the woman through the window. The woman had apparently been thrown around by an invisible attacker before falling to the floor choking. She had died of strangulation. "The witnesses had visits by everyone from social workers coming round to check their kids were safe with them through to National Inquirer trying to get interviews. Of course they changed their minds. The Witness Protection Scheme doesn't cover harassment due to witnessing strange phenomena." "Even if you had said that we weren't sure about time of death, the Defense Attorney's would have ripped it apart. We still wouldn't have anything to fix the killer to the crime scene." "I know that, you know that, even the DA's office probably knows that. It doesn't stop them trying to throw the moral blackmail at me, like its my fault we can't bring that maniac to justice." "At least he's locked up in that hospital." "Locked up? He can kill at half a mile. It's not even a secure unit, he'll just walk out of there one night.' He paused, lifted his feet off the desk and stood up. "I'm going home. If I've got to show up at that Dinner tonight then at least I can go and eat some real food beforehand." He dragged the case folder back out of the recycle bag and threw it in the corner of the room. "Later." Scully didn't really believe in killing by astral projection. But she certainly agreed with Mulder about the time of death, the eye witness reports, the cause of death and the identity of the killer. One day she'd work out exactly how the murder had been done. ------------------------------ Mulder hovered by the buffet hoping that Skinner would get whatever it was over with. The day had left storm clouds blowing across his mind. The AD wandered across to the table followed by a small entourage of ambitious young brown noses. "Good evening, Agent Mulder, pleased to see you here. You're usually out of town on these occasions. If you don't mind talking shop for a few minutes, there are a couple of details on the Wisconsin case I wouldn't mind checking over with you." "Of course, Sir. No problem." Skinner maneuvered him away from the other Agents. "Actually, I wanted to talk about one of the files that I sent down to you." "Which one?" "The Family of the Light of Revelation." "The cult. There was nothing in there to suggest any crime had been committed." He couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice. "And I'd have thought that even if the rest of the Bureau don't know what we work on, at least you would know that most of the time we're looking for killers." Skinner hesitated. Mulder watched the pause and restarted the conversation. "Is something missing from the file?" "They take people's children. Some of them vanish from the place." "Unless I misread, they recruit young adults, old enough to vote, get married, join the army. And the ones whose disappearances have been investigated have just gone to some foreign mission. The only actual children are the children of cult members." Skinner shuffled uncomfortably. Of course Mulder was right. There was nothing in the file. The AD took a deep breath and continued warily. "Look. One of the recruits is my niece, she was pregnant when she went to them, her parents haven't spoken to her in six months, they can't get in to see her. I went there on Saturday ready to do a bit of ID waving to get to talk to her and I couldn't get through the front door.' "Presumably they were non violent, else you'd have called the police. And I guess you didn't have a warrant or any just cause to enter the building." "I don't mean someone stopped me. I mean I couldn't get in. The door was open, other people walked in and out. I walked up to the door and got stopped, like I had walked into a brick wall." "A glass door?" "Not funny Mulder, I'm serious." "So why wasn't your report in the file." "If someone else read it. It'd get photocopied and faxed to every notice board in the FBI." Mulder tried to visualize it. < AD bangs head on invisible door while trying to free niece from cult. > "So you don't mind reading my reports, but you wouldn't want your own name to appear on that sort of crap?" "Any other Agent, I'd view that remark as insubordination." "Any other witness, I'd view your remarks as withholding evidence." Mulder looked at Skinner properly for the first time that evening and saw the lines of worry on his face. He dropped his irritation. "Sorry Sir. It's been a bad day." "I know, I got a call from that Prosecutor you spoke to." "Really?" "I told her attempting to coerce a Federal Agent to lie under oath was a serious offence." Mulder nodded gratefully. "Tell me what the thing that stopped you felt like." Mulder leant forward slightly and concentrated on listening. "Initially a jolt, like an electric shock. But when I reached out I didn't get any more shocks but I still couldn't get in." "Did you hear anything. Any voices, any other sound." "A voice, but it sounded like," Skinner hesitated, "not like a real voice." The AD's words trailed off and he looked nervously at his drink. Mulder swallowed slightly. No wonder Skinner was worried about what had happened. "Don't think about how it sounds, just tell me everything you remember. You don't need to edit it into whether or not it has an easy explanation. I should be able to tell you more about that after the investigation. Just stick to what happened, how it seemed, the way it felt." They talked until Skinner had told Mulder everything that he remembered. After he'd got through his story, Skinner looked relieved and the tension lines in his face had relaxed. "Well they say confession's good for the soul. You should go into business as a therapist. You could charge a couple of hundred dollars for a counseling session like that." "That's all right, it's my night off." "Sheesh, three hundred dollars then." "You know. Normally, if my boss told me I should go into therapy and that I need to start charging the people I interview, I'd be offended." Skinner relaxed into a smile. Mulder continued. "We'll fly out tomorrow. I'll let you know as soon as we've got anything." Mulder wandered over to his partner. Scully quizzed him. "What happened? I looked over there and I thought Skinner was going to hit you. Then, when you finished up I thought he was going to give you a goodnight kiss." "Pure charm. I want to fly out to Indianapolis as soon as I can get us flights. I'll leave the details on your machine. I'm off home now. I need to do a bit of data gathering before we go." "I'll leave too. I can just imagine getting in at 2 and listening to a message saying we're on the 5am flight." "Leave the party together? There'll be talk." "No more than usual." END of Part 1 of 4 =========================================================================== From: jhumby@mail.rmplc.co.uk (joann) Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: REPOST: Beliefs and Believers - 2 : 4 Date: 22 Feb 1996 21:33:21 GMT Legally: The interesting characters in this story belong to Chris Carter, 1013 and Fox as brought to life by DD, GA and the XFiles writers. I've borrowed them for fun not profit. ============= Part 2 of 4. On the flight they read the material that Mulder had grabbed from the various Cult Information databases the night before. Scully looked across at Mulder. "I don't know, as cults go this lot seem pretty likable. They don't even get the kids to demand money off their parents. I understand them worrying, but I don't see the crime." "So maybe we're just investigating an interesting new door security system. We can fly back tomorrow night if we don't get anywhere." Two hours drive from the airport and they were in the town of Weedspoint. Mulder turned to Scully. "We'll start at the Sheriff's office. See what he knows about them. I'll give them my < it's not my fault, it's these Washington politicians > act if he wants to know why we're here." They were surprised by the enthusiasm of the Sheriff's welcome. "That was good timing, we've just picked up the body of the missing guy." "The missing guy?" "Oh. I'd assumed he was the reason you came out, he was ex-FBI. He's been rescuing kids from cults for the past couple of years apparently. He was supposed to be watching the place yesterday but never went back to his Hotel. The people he was working with got anxious about him, went out to the ranch where the cult live but they couldn't get in. Claimed the doors were open but they couldn't get in, electric shocks or something. Anyway. We found his body in the railroad siding this morning." "Cause of death?" "Looks like electrocution. There's a lot of high voltage stuff in the yard. " "Any sign of a struggle?" "Well we've not done the autopsy yet but first pass I'd say no, clothes aren't damaged, no obvious bruises." The Sheriff frowned and then carried on. "Look we've had no trouble with the Family of the Light in the past. We get more trouble with the 'rescuers'. So you know, I think it's just some coincidence. I've heard people say they've got some weird security system but I've never paid much attention. I've never had any trouble when I've visited. I was just about to drive out to chat to their leader when you two showed up." The Sheriff looked at Mulder waiting for some big City put down, he was surprised when it didn't come, so he continued. "Yeah, I know it sounds dumb, but we don't get much trouble out here apart from barfights. And the cult certainly don't get involved with them." The Sheriff paused again, then restarted. "You're going to tell me this could be another Waco siege and I should leave it to professionals." Dana Scully asked the Sheriff for his approval to her joining the ME at the autopsy. He eagerly agreed and smoothed the path with the clinic. Mulder started to quiz the Sheriff on the cult and in particular on its leader Kyle Raddaitch. No reports of violence towards either members or outsiders. Lots of talk about people joining who were unhappy or in trouble, a particular fondness for recruiting young single women with babies on the way. Lots of talk about brainwashing. But, just talk, nothing actually proven illegal. The Sheriff described Raddaitch as weird but charming and charismatic. Mulder nodded. "I'd like to meet Raddaitch but I don't want to scare them into some kind of reaction. You've visited them before, could you get him to come in to see us here? If it isn't just a coincidence about the man who died then wading in without backup could be," he picked his word carefully, "embarrassing." The sheriff did his phone call, but Raddaitch wasn't at the cult's ranch and wasn't due back until evening. Mulder asked the Sheriff to find out who had visited the group in the last month so he could talk to them. The Sheriff immediately introduced one of his men and sent another to track down some people. The Deputy had tried and initially failed to get in to see Raddaitch a few days earlier on a routine inquiry about an allegedly unwilling new recruit. Mulder turned his attention to the Deputy. The Deputy had already had enough time to come up with a rational explanation for what had happened. "Yes Sir, I walked into an electric fence in the doorway, the sort they use with livestock." "Where was the wire?" "Across the doorway, about knee height." "You couldn't just step over it?" A pause. "No, there was another line at chest height." "Why didn't you see them?" "The doorway' s dark, I was wearing shades, came in out of that bright light, you don't get time for your eyes to adjust." "I've talked to another witness who bruised his head, sounded solid, not like a cattle wire." "No, like a wire." "How'd you get the mark on your forehead." The Deputy fidgeted, put his hand to his chin. "Just being dumb, I was so fazed when I got back to the car I banged by head on the doorframe." "Did you hear any voices while you were in the doorway." "No. Nothing." "Did you see anything." "Nothing special." "No brilliant light." "No, nothing like that." The Deputy swallowed and played with his chin some more. "Look. I'm trying to get information so I can work out how we tackle this. If that man died because of the cult, I need to know. If they are violent towards outsiders, I need to know. If the leaders are unstable I have to stop this turning into a siege. If I screw up, and we get unlucky, I could have a lot of people on my conscience. And if I screw up because you didn't tell me what I needed to know, then their blood will be on your hands too.' The Deputy looked around the deserted room. Then back to Mulder. The Deputy asked the next question. "You taping this?" Mulder hit the stop button. "Not now." "OK, but I don't want this on my file." "Sure." The Deputy poured out his story. He told Mulder about the brilliant light that had surrounded him in the doorway. The voice that asked him if he was ready to come into the light. Then the voice telling him that he wasn't yet ready to join his new family. That he should go in peace and return when he was ready. Mulder paused to digest the interview. It was very similar to Skinner's report. < Even down to it not being on the record > he mused. Scully returned from the Autopsy. Mulder looked up and Scully answered the unspoken question. "Electrocution, nothing fancy. Enormous voltage though, hit him at a point contact straight through the forehead. Like he had been stood in the gap of a spark plug." "Enormous spark plug." --------------------- Accompanied by the Sheriff and a couple of his Deputies, Mulder and Scully went out to the railroad yard where the body had been found. Mulder stared intently around the track. Well, it was true enough that there was plenty of high voltage wiring around, but there was nothing that looked like you could just walk into it by accident. There was nothing that would have targeted the charge against the victim's forehead. He turned to Scully. "I assume death would have been instantaneous from that voltage?" "Yes, he wouldn't have walked away from where he was killed." "So he was dumped here. I've seen two people now with what I thought were bruises on their foreheads, Skinner and that Deputy. They both got those marks when they tried to visit the cult. My guess is that the victim died at their ranch and then got brought over here to be found." "Could be. I don't see anything here that could have killed him." As they turned to walk away, Scully pulled Mulder to one side out of range of the Sheriff. "If it is something to do with the cult, it could turn nasty fast, we may need backup." Mulder nodded but didn't really agree. He had already been thinking about another Waco. He only called AD Skinner because he knew he had to. An incident team would come out on standby from Indianapolis in case the situation developed. ---------------------- Mulder interviewed more of the people who the Sheriff's team had found. People who had visited the group and who had gone in. Visitors who had tried and failed to get in. People who had left the group. Even a couple of members who happened to be in town handing out leaflets. A few hours later and he reckoned he had done enough listening. Scully finished the autopsy report and turned her attention to interviewing the colleagues of the dead man. They had come to find a nineteen year old girl called Sally Carlisle. Her would be rescuers had been to the ranch before but hadn't been able to get in. They had also felt the shocks in the doorway and been turned back by the voice and the bright light. The rescuers had discussed Sally Carlisle with the leader of the cult, Kyle Raddaitch. He had told them that Sally had no desire to leave and would only speak to them on the phone. The dead man had been watching the ranch to see if there was an opportunity to get to Sally and talk to her in private, away from Raddaitch's influence. Mulder and Scully met in the Sheriff's office over a couple of cups of coffee. They swapped notes from their interviews. Scully thought over what she had heard. It sounded like someone had attacked the dead man at the ranch using the same machine that had simply given shocks to the other visitors. She wasn't sure if it was an accident or deliberate. She wasn't sure if the killing was by an individual or ordered by the leader of the group. She was quite sure the killing wasn't paranormal or inexplicable. She wasn't ready to give her opinion. She turned to Mulder and asked him what he thought. "I think someone has wired up a trap in the door. Maybe a combination of electric livestock wiring and something like a cattle prod. But run at high voltage. Adjustable voltage, so it can surprise you, stop you in your tracks or kill you. All at operator discretion. Retractable so when its not needed it can just pull back into the door frame. People don't see it and just walk into it because their eyes aren't dark adapted and they go straight into the shadows from the sunshine." "Quick, wake me up. It's got to be a dream. I don't believe you said that." "Well, if you'd just let me finish." He sighed melodramatically. "I think it's normally used to trap people in the doorway so that the leader, Raddaitch, < Father of the Light > can do a quick mind scan on them and check if they are suitable for admission." "And just when you were doing so well. Mind scan, you believe that do you?" "Well remember the visitors see bright lights, hear a mysterious voice and they think the voice can tell what they are thinking. Telepathy, mind scan, it makes sense." "It might make sense if there was such a thing. But an easier explanation would be spot lights and a loudspeaker in the doorway." "No, because then people stood immediately outside the doorway would see the bright light and they don't." "Mind scan?" "Wish I could do it, save a lot of time during interviews." END of Part 2 : 4 =========================================================================== From: jhumby@mail.rmplc.co.uk (joann) Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: REPOST: Beliefs and Believers - 3 : 4 Date: 22 Feb 1996 21:40:18 GMT Part 3 of 4. ============= Kyle Raddaitch stood framed by the doorway of the Sheriff's office. In the dark of the entrance with the blaze of the office lights behind, it looked as if he was wearing a shining halo of light. Scully turned around and felt a tingle of shock as she looked at the figure. Raddaitch looked carefully at Scully. She tensed, then turned suddenly away. As Mulder turned to look at her she had adopted her most business like manner. The Sheriff did the introductions. "Mr Raddaitch." Dana Scully opened the questioning. "Please, most people call me Brother Kyle or Father." "Thankyou for coming to see us. We are investigating the death of a man found earlier today." Raddaitch nodded, the Sheriff had told him about the body. The interview rolled forward. Scully asked questions about the security system. At first, Raddaitch seemed unwilling to acknowledge that they had such a device but then claimed its role was an alternative to violence. They had felt threatened by previous rescuers and rather than physical confrontation had wanted something that could stop intruders. "So why have a device that kills if you were avoiding violence?" "It doesn't kill." "We'll need to get a closer look at it." "You're welcome to visit." "We'd like to interview your people individually." "You're welcome to visit." Mulder intervened for the first time. "Are we?" Scully looked across at Mulder, then turned back to Raddaitch. "Can we get you a coffee or something Mr Raddaitch?" "No thankyou, no stimulants. A drink of water perhaps." "Of course." Scully and Mulder left the room. She spoke quickly. " We can't go up there. He as good as admitted that their machine killed that man. If we go in, it could be as hostages." "And you call me paranoid." "I'm not going to quote standard operating procedures at you but you know how quickly this could escalate if they feel threatened. " "Threatened by us?" "Threatened by getting caught." "Not innocent until proven guilty then." "I'm nervous of them and you should be too." "Why?" "Half the kids look like zombies. Their leader looks like he came out of the twilight zone. And his minders look like they were extras in Reservoir Dogs." "But that's not what worried you. You felt him reading you when he came in, didn't you?" "No." She said the word louder and sharper than she had planned. He shrugged and let it drop. He changed the subject to focus back on the interviews that had been done with Raddaitch and the others. "They don't have a death wish. Nothing in the interviews indicates a desire for martyrdom. If they wanted to kill they would have killed the other people from the rescue team when they visited the ranch. " "That was when they thought they could cover it up." "Raddaitch didn't kill anyone and didn't sanction the killing." "How do you know?" "The same way you know." Scully turned her face away. Mulder decided again to let it drop. He was sure that she'd heard and felt the same things from Raddaitch that he had, but if she wanted to deny it, there was nothing he could do. He continued. "Look, I'll get him to bring the members here for the interviews. But unless we go to the ranch soon and get access to the machine that killed that man we may not have any physical evidence. We could be relying on getting a confession." "They may have already dismantled the machine.". "They may have." Mulder tried to think what Scully wanted him to say. She was blocking all his ideas but wouldn't put anything forward. It was as if she was waiting for him to guess what she thought should happen. Maybe she had some bad feeling about this and didn't want to make a mistake. "So do you think we need to get everyone out of the building under the watch of the Agents coming in from Indianapolis before we search?" Scully's shoulders started to relax. "Yes." Raddaitch was surprisingly open to the idea. He suggested he get people to move to the schoolhouse while the search was done. Mulder couldn't see the difference between thirty people barricading themselves into a schoolhouse and thirty people locking themselves in a ranch but said nothing. --------------------------------- A small flotilla of Bureau cars and vans started to arrive. Mulder introduced himself to Stuart Gallagher the operational commander and explained the interviews that he and Scully had done and the information they had gathered so far. Mulder told Gallagher his theory about how the doorway was wired. He also told Gallagher that he didn't think the cult planned to harm anyone else. Neither inside nor outside the building. "So why did they kill that man? That's what they did when someone went to get one of their members. What do you suppose they'll do when they see us as a threat to their whole community." "I think it was a one off, either an accident, or an action by an individual disturbed cult member." "An individual disturbed cult member? They're all disturbed as far as I'm concerned." "But they aren't all potential killers. If they were, you'd have to ask how come they didn't hurt the other people who went up there after the killings. All of those people agreed that though they couldn't get in, they didn't feel in any danger." "What they felt and what's real are different things. I need the facts." They would handle the next bit of the job in the morning. They asked Raddaitch and his friends to spend the night in town. ------------------------------------- The following morning, the ranch was a flurry of activity as Gallagher supervised the movement of the cult members, checking them for weapons as they went from the main house to the school building. Scully watched as Gallagher's Agents divided the people into smaller groups for interview. Scully decided to talk first to Sally Carlisle, the girl who the dead man had come to find. Mulder went over to the ranch house with a group of Gallagher's Agents. The heavily armed unit swept the building to check it was clear before letting Mulder and the Scene of Crime team look at the machine. The doorway was wired up pretty much as Mulder had visualised it. A couple of wires running across and a probe that could dip down to head height. The whole contraption losing itself in the folds of the doorway when not wanted. A group of Gallagher's Agents walked through the ranch house to the room where the controls were located. --------------------------------- Dana Scully sat and listened to Sally Carlisle. Sally was a committed member of the Family of the Light. She said it was where she wanted to be. She referred to the people with her in the Family of the Light as her real family, the ranch as her real home. Scully asked Sally what she knew about the dead man. Had she seen him before? Did she know that it was her he was looking for when he came to the door? Sally's next remarks disturbed Scully. Sally started to talk about another Family member, Michael James. Michael was in love with her. When he'd heard that someone had come to take her from the group he'd been horrified. Michael had promised her that no one would be allowed to get to her. Michael had not joined the other members in the schoolhouse. Scully tried to phone Mulder. No service. She called up the police radio car that was waiting outside the ranch. ------------------------------------- Mulder stood outside the ranch house distractedly staring at the doorway. He was trying to think about why the system had killed and who had done the killing. He'd read Sally Carlisle's history as supplied to the team that had come to get her and unless she'd changed a lot, it offered no indication that she would have killed. The Family leader, Kyle Raddaitch had told him that it was not a community action. Mulder walked back outside the ranch house to where Raddaitch was standing with a couple of his black suited heavies. He drew Raddaitch to one side. "Did you let Sally have a husband, a boyfriend or something?" "We don't order our members to marry." "But they ask your permission to date. Right?" "A young man did ask my permission, I said it was Sally's decision. He seemed an unhappy young man, but with the love of the Family we knew he could become whole." "His name?" "Michael. Michael James." Mulder picked up his phone, but it was flashing no service. He walked over to the police car as a call from Scully came in on its radio. The officer handed the microphone to Mulder. "Michael James isn't over there? So the chances are that he's still hiding here. See if we can get any family history or medical records on him." Mulder told Gallagher the news and turned to walk back into the ranch to warn the other Agents. As he started to go in he was stopped by noise from the building. He looked again at the doorway and could see that the trap was back in position. He heard the shouting from the back of the building. A group of Agents had entered the control room and now they couldn't get out. The doors and windows of the control room were electrified. A voice boomed out from loudspeakers. "I've got them. Don't switch off the power, I've wired explosives to fire if the power goes down." Mulder kicked at the ground in frustration. They had all been so wrapped up in the idea of the collective threat of the cult, they'd forgotten the particular threat of the individual who'd actually done the killing. So keen to assert their authority over the group that they hadn't actually looked for the perpetrator until it was too late. Gallagher had an excuse, after all he'd only just got here and had waded in the way he saw best, Standard Operating Procedures, by the book, the way he'd been trained. Scully was nervous of the cult and more especially of Raddaitch, her judgement was bound to be affected. Mulder couldn't think of an excuse for himself. Gallagher went to the store house that he had commandeered to be his team's temporary command centre and hastily emptied the building and organised a search. It looked as though James wasn't hiding in the store house and there were no signs of any electrified traps. But, there was no way of knowing if explosives had been set. He moved his people back outside. They gathered to work out who was accounted for. They had six Agents missing, four of them heavily armed, but apparently in a position where no amount of weaponry was going to help. They suspected that Michael James was still in the ranch house and therefore was as much a prisoner as their Agents, but they couldn't even be sure of that. Gallagher called Skinner to tell him about the escalation and explain that they now had six Agents held hostage trapped somewhere in the ranch house. And that they were under threat of a bomb going off if they tried to take any action. Scully arrived and made her way quickly to Mulder's side. She had spoken to Michael's parents. Michael James was a very sick young man. Childhood hobbies included building machines and killing neighbours' pets. "Nice kid." James had only become violent towards himself and other people during his teenage years. The drugs that Michael James had taken to keep a measure of control had been forgotten when he found his Family of Light. Gallagher handed Skinner's phone call over to Mulder. Skinner asked for an update from Mulder. Mulder described the killer. Skinner asked for recommendations. "I think we need to get Raddaitch to help us. We should get him to talk to James, he's more likely to get through to him than anyone else." Skinner pointed out that Gallagher had already said they didn't know where Michael James was hiding and that they had been unable to open a communication line. They could blast it out, nice and loud, through a megaphone, but if the kid was that much of a mess that would be risky. Mulder said tentatively that he didn't think Raddaitch would need a phone. AD Skinner paused to take in the remark and asked Mulder to put Gallagher back on the line. Skinner told Gallagher that it was Mulder's case. Gallagher's team was to be for backup only. Skinner told Gallagher that if he wanted to override any of Mulder's recommendations he would need approval from Washington. END of Part 3 of 4 =========================================================================== From: jhumby@mail.rmplc.co.uk (joann) Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: REPOST: Beliefs and Believers - 4 : 4 Date: 22 Feb 1996 21:55:20 GMT Legally: The interesting characters in this story belong to Chris Carter, 1013 and Fox as brought to life by DD, GA and the XFiles writers.I've borrowed them for fun not profit. Help! Help! Help! If you've read the first three parts and have decided to read some more, I can't have bored you completely yet. So, I've got a request. I need a volunteer to read my stories before I post, to point out any obvious examples of me lapsing into UK English. I'm not worried about spellings (I don't mind if they drift between UK and American) its the lorries versus trucks sort of mistakes I'm after. Please. Pretty please. Email me on - jhumby@rmplc.co.uk Part 4 of 4. ============= Gallagher turned red faced towards Mulder. "So its your call. I've got twenty people waiting for your orders and six men trapped with a psycho." Mulder was as surprised as Gallagher about the word from Skinner and reacted almost as sharply. "I don't need this and I didn't ask for this." Then, he remembered what he was doing and let the snapping tone drop from his voice. "I assume you'll want to prepare for the worst and set up a new command center. I think you need to expect a wait." "Think I'm up to organizing it?" "I think you need to do your job and let me do mine." Gallagher spun on his heel and walked away. Mulder leant back against the car and looked around for Raddaitch, Scully had been talking to the people who'd been involved in the search, she made her way back to Mulder. "Hi Scully. You look, err, perplexed." "Frostbite. How did you manage to get Gallagher that pissed with you that quickly." "I didn't. Skinner did." He explained the background. "So it's up to you." "Hey, I've got a partner you know, let's try the us word." They looked over at the ranch house and watched for a minute the groups of people who were stood around, waiting for something or nothing, in the yard. Mulder fidgeted restlessly. He reckoned he'd already screwed up once today by not thinking straight. He knew he'd fallen into the trap of looking at the cult purely as a collective not seeing the individuals. He decided he couldn't afford to do it again. He called Raddaitch over. "Thankyou Mr Raddaitch." He turned to look at Raddaitch's companions. "I don't think you need your colleagues present, I just need to talk to you." Raddaitch dismissed his heavies and studied Mulder. "Can you communicate with Michael James?" "You mean from here?" Mulder nodded. Scully breathed in quickly. "It's easier if I'm closer to him. I can sense him from here, but I can't be sure to get through to him." "You know where he is?" "I think so." "You need to persuade him to give himself up, switch off those traps, disarm the explosives." "He's very frightened. I may not be able to get him to agree." "You have to. You let him set up those traps. You might not have anticipated that they could kill but you are still responsible for them. People will die unless he gives himself up. He will almost certainly die if we have to go and pull him out." "I need to get closer to him." "Let's go." Scully grabbed Mulder's arm and whispered sharply. "You can't go. You can't trust Raddaitch and even if you could.." Mulder looked apologetic but said quickly that he had to do it. Scully spoke a little louder. "What was that stuff about us deciding, I thought you described us as partners back there." Mulder knew she was right. But he also knew that he was right. He tried to find the words but couldn't. He shrugged, straightened himself and said nothing. He turned to Raddaitch and waved for him to lead them to James. The two men headed to the door of the ranch. They stopped in the doorway and after a couple of minutes walked in. Scully could tell that the trap in the doorway had been turned off. She wondered if she should feel relieved but she just felt numb. Gallagher came and stood at Scully's side. "What does he think he's doing? He's donated himself and Raddaitch as the seventh and eighth hostages. If, of course, Raddaitch is going to be a hostage." Scully said nothing, so Gallagher continued. " Well it was his choice. You can tell Skinner that it certainly wasn't my idea." Mulder could feel the hairs on the back of his hands tingle as he walked through the doorway back into the ranch house. He thought of electrified exits and primed explosives and knew that here he was walking into it, on a hunch that Raddaitch could control a maniac through telepathy. He tried not to think too much about it. He had taken the decision. Now he had to live with it. Mulder looked over to Raddaitch. Brother Kyle, Father of the Light looked almost as worried. "Where is he? Can you reach him from here?" "He's above the control room, there's a little store up there. I can feel him but he doesn't want to talk to me." Mulder stood in silent hope and waited. ------------------------- Scully watched the ranch house though she couldn't see any figures moving around inside. She had felt the same shiver of fear as Mulder turned away from her that she had felt when she first met Raddaitch. Maybe not fear, she tried to name it, maybe it was something between dread and awe. Perhaps in Raddaitch, she was seeing a man with a rare ability, maybe a unique skill. She pondered on where the gift had come from. She wondered if it was just the product of her own imagination. She knew that Mulder seemed to have experienced it as well. But it didn't seem to bother him, he just seemed to accept it. So had some of the others who had visited the cult. But Scully knew that the whole point about mass hysteria was that it was so much more potent, more realistic that just the delusions of one individual. That didn't mean it was real. The thought that Raddaitch really could have the ability to read minds and put thoughts into them, just wasn't worth contemplating. -------------------------- Mulder turned to Raddaitch who seemed to be locked into a light trance. Raddaitch turned to him and told him he was in contact with Michael. What to do first? "Ask him to close down the electrified doors and windows and let the other Agents leave." Raddaitch went back to his trance. Mulder watched Raddaitch intently, wondering if he could sense what made Brother Kyle special. Was it pure intensity of thought? Could anyone do it? Melissa Scully had known a thing or two about auras, would she have been able to see it, sense it? Mulder tried to relax and pick up Raddaitch's vibrations. He nearly laughed with disappointment as he realised that all he had become aware of was his own breathing. Raddaitch turned back to Mulder. "Michael is very scared. He's thinking, he wants to do what we ask, but he's very frightened." Mulder studied Raddaitch and spoke quietly. "Michael should be very frightened. If he doesn't surrender, the chances are that he'll be dead soon. Maybe he can take some other people with him, but I doubt that will make it any easier." Raddaitch nodded. "You aren't like your friend, your colleague. She doesn't trust me, but you have faith in me." "I have faith that if anyone can talk Michael into giving himself up, it's you." "You don't have any problem believing in my powers do you, but you don't see any meaning to them. You look at me like I'm a laboratory specimen waiting to be dissected and analysed." Mulder smiled. If they got out of here, he had already decided to ask Raddaitch if he could come and visit to ask some questions. He wanted to know about when he had acquired his telepathic skills, what range they had, who they worked on. Lots of questions that had to wait. Raddaitch spoke again. "But Miss Scully, she felt the power and didn't want to believe." "Agent Scully has strong beliefs of her own, real faith." "So, for her, my power would have to come from the devil." "You're good at this." Raddaitch straightened suddenly. "Michael's ready to let the others go, but he insists that we stay in here." Mulder nodded. A few minutes later the six Agents who had been trapped in the ranch were making their way out past Raddaitch and Mulder, half walking, half running, just glad to be alive. One of them stopped and spoke. "Thanks, Mulder." Mulder was surprised by the gesture. "That's OK, it's Mr Raddaitch who's doing the work." The ranch house fell quiet. Mulder asked Raddaitch to try and get Michael James to come down to the hallway so they could talk. --------------------------------------- Gallagher had become increasingly frantic since Mulder and Raddaitch had walked into the building. The freeing of the six Agents originally captured by Michael James had cheered him, but it also boosted his adrenaline level up to breaking point. "Now we've got him. There's only one of ours we have to keep track of. Provided we can get someone to grab Mulder we've got no worries." Scully felt a shiver run down her spine. For all Gallagher's provisos about protecting Mulder, she couldn't help feeling that somehow now, in a game of numbers, her partner was expendable. Gallagher wanted a rapid conclusion before anything else went wrong. Gallagher started to prepare an assault team. Scully felt another shiver. She turned sharply to Gallagher. "You will need to talk to Skinner before you take action. This is still my case and Skinner said if you wanted to override our instructions you needed his approval." Gallagher almost laughed. "Your case? It's your head case of a partner's case and he's in no position to dish out orders. Skinner's instructions didn't say I had to listen to you." "Mulder's did. Now call Skinner if you want to go against me." Gallagher glared back at her for a long moment, waiting for her to back down. She didn't. "So what's the master plan then? Care to share it with us provincials?" "You give Mulder time to talk his way out of there." Gallagher's look was of pure derision. "Yeah, right. What's a couple of hour's overtime. OK so we'll end up having to go in after dark and it'll up the risk of accidents but what the hell, you know best. Run a lot of sieges have you? No, I thought not." Scully's eyes remained locked on his. Gallagher scowled one last time then walked quickly away. Dana Scully tried to see into the ranch again. Night was falling and now with the lights on inside the ranch house, she thought she could see three men in the hallway. ---------------------------------- After a long silence Michael James had decided to come down to the hallway. The sticking point had been that Michael had insisted Mulder discard his gun before he would join them. Mulder had flatly refused, but had promised Michael that he wouldn't use it unless lives were in danger. Raddaitch had tried to convince Michael that Mulder was telling the truth. Michael had finally entered the hallway carrying a remote control device, the sort used for running model cars. He assured Mulder that the remote would fire the explosives he had set around the ranch. Mulder had no way to know if this was true or a bluff. But, Raddaitch's look told him that the threat was for real. Raddaitch had spent hours talking without words to Michael James. Mulder only had to look at Michael to know that Raddaitch was right. The kid was still terrified. Mulder started to talk. "You have to give yourself up Michael. You have to." Michael pulled his knees up to his chest and shivered. "You have to let Brother Kyle walk out first. You can follow him. I have to follow you. You'll need to show them that you pose no threat. They'll need to be able to see your hands, so they can tell you aren't holding a weapon. I'll show you. They won't hurt you." "They might not hurt me while Brother Kyle's there but then they'll take me away and lock me up. Fill me with drugs so I can't see the light." "You killed that man, I don't think you wanted to. I don't think you want to kill us. I don't think you want to kill yourself. You have to come out with us. Brother Kyle and the others from your family will be able to come and see you while you are getting well." They kept talking. Raddaitch feeding soothing words and thoughts to Michael's brain. Mulder gently insistent that they had to leave and leave soon. Michael hung his head in despair. Raddaitch looked at Mulder. Mulder whispered to Raddaitch. "I don't know how long it will be before they decide to send in a team to get us, but I do know that they won't feel any qualms if they have to kill Michael to get this over with." Mulder suspected they would happily risk killing all three of them, but decided he didn't need to say that out loud. Raddaitch fixed onto Michael for another attempt to persuade. The room was silent. Eventually Raddaitch turned to Mulder. "Michael's ready. What does he have to do?" Mulder told Michael to disarm the explosives. Then he got him ready to go outside, reminding him not to try and run away or do anything that might surprise the waiting sniper team into a reaction. The evacuation and Michael's arrest went through without a hitch. --------------------------- Mulder stood and watched as Michael James was driven away. As the car faded into the distance he turned slowly to Dana Scully. Eventually he spoke. "I had to go in, it was the only way." "The only way of doing what? Rescuing those Agents or watching Kyle Raddaitch in action?" "Both." He said the word guiltily, almost inaudibly. "Gallagher was going to send in a team." "You stopped him, didn't you?" She looked away. "I think you're going to have a tough time defending your actions either in terms of Standard Operating Procedures or in terms of corroborated evidence. If Gallagher complains about you putting yourself and Raddaitch in jeopardy, the only defence you've got is that it worked out without any new casualties." "Sounds like a defence to me." "You could have been killed." He felt his heart jump. She was right of course. She was usually right when she let fly at him, not always, but often. He had no reply. Sure, he could attack her for choosing to ignore things she'd seen, felt, but that didn't make her any different to just about every other witness he'd interviewed on this case. Even Raddaitch would stay strictly off the record on the telepathy. Brother Kyle wasn't going to advertise a skill that would either brand him as a stage magician or attract attention from someone who thought they could use him. At the end of this case there would be two reports. An official one with no explanations. An unofficial one for Skinner. Mulder shrugged, maybe he wouldn't put his report in writing either. Scully stared at him, waiting for him to reply. He didn't say anything, just looked at the ground. After a long pause she reached out and gently touched the back of his hand and told him it was time to leave. END (Beliefs and Believers) Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading it. Joann