DEA EX MACHINA - The Collector's Edition
by pusher <pusher@unforgettable.com>

RATING: R, with some NC-17 parts (Violence, Sexual Situations)

CLASSIFICATION: XA

SPOILERS: US4, up to, and including Elegy.  Anything after that never 
happened in this zip code.

SUMMARY: A string of murders, several killers, cancer, ghosts, psychics, 
impending madness, black gooey things and deadly sacrifices.  Buckle 
up yer seatbelts 'cause it's gonna be one hellacious ride for Mulder and 
Scully.

DISCLAIMER
Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Walter Skinner and the whole X-Files shebang 
belong to me, and I can do anything I wish with them.  Then I wake up 
with the realization that I am _not_ Chris Carter, 10-13 Productions, or 
Fox Network and affiliates.  So I write fanfic.  Oh well.




DEA EX MACHINA

*    *    *    *    *
O    N    E
*    *    *    *    *

An Apartment in
Greenwich Village, New York


It was as if they had just stumbled into an Anthony Burgess novel.

Four female calves, clad in red stiletto heels tilt upwards precariously 
balancing the inch-thick glass of the coffee table.  A torso, 
resplendent in shiny plastic glory sits up on the counter surrounded by 
the faint stink of rotting milk and permanently set Java rings.  Other 
limbs -- hands, feet, arms, thighs fill the room embracing cushions or 
prop a half-dozen dusty copies of Reader's Digests up against each other 
in elegant symmetry.

"Three guesses where the inspiration for this cheery scenario came 
from," the tall, lanky one drawls, as he moves through the room with the 
languid, liquid dexterity innate to predatorial creatures.  Perhaps that 
is why his parents have named him Fox, even though he hates that moniker 
with a vengeance.  He easily melds into the shadows of the bathroom 
doorway, disappearing into the darkness without so much as a scuffle of 
footsteps.

"A Clockwork Orange?"  His female companion murmurs as stops in the main 
room to inspect the studio's decor.  She is not as graceful as he is, 
but has the gift of perception.  Pushing an errant lock of hair away 
from her face, Dana Scully kneels and prods at solid calf knowing 
instantly that every leg of the coffee table, every piece in the room is 
different.  They will find no casting molds for these sculptures.  Only 
flesh buried beneath layers of meticulously applied shellac.

"I'm impressed, Scully,"  the baritone voice rings from the hollows of 
the other room moments before its owner steps out to reclaim it, 
holstering his Glock 17.

She glances up at him, searching his guileless, handsome features, 
waiting for the punch line to tumble forth from his lips -- a joke, an 
allusion, or even innuendo, but he disappoints.

He merely smiles and randomly flips through copies of the mini 
paperbacks, instantly memorizing pages of "Laughter the Best Medicine" 
and fuzzy pet tales.

Looking back down, she bites back a stinging retort.  He has, in fact, 
given her yet another polite and honest compliment, ordinarily not a 
problem, except that it is wholly uncharacteristic of Special Agent Fox 
Mulder.

Somewhere inside she wants to throw up, to scream, to drive the heel of 
her three-inch pumps straight down into the instep of her partner's 
Italian leather loafers.  She almost wishes for a nosebleed just so he 
can lose that phony, pleasant expression from his face in an unguarded 
moment of panic.

"Required reading, sophomore English,"  Scully offers, rapping her 
knuckles absently against the hardened shell.

Mulder nods and pauses as his thumb stops in the middle of the December 
'96 issue.  A compact disc buried snugly between "Quotable Quotes" and a 
weight-loss article captures his attention.  Turning it around, he sees 
that it is an album by Nine Inch Nails.  The killer has deliberately 
left this for him.  He slips the disc into the pocket of his coat and 
replaces the paperback before sauntering off into the kitchen.

Appraising the torso on the counter, he waits for inspiration or a 
revelation to whisper from the shiny, well-endowed plastic breasts 
hovering in front of his face, their glassy sheen reminding him not of 
sex, but of snow globes and glass-and-shit paperweights.

Nothing comes.

For the thirty-seventh time today, Mulder's eyes reflexively wander to 
Scully and watches her attempt to raise the heavy glass from its fleshy 
base.  Wordlessly, without thinking, he crosses the floor in two long 
strides and takes command of the tabletop.

A brief flicker of irritation runs across her face at the unsolicited 
display of chivalry, but she damps it down behind the veil of chin-
length tresses.  Preoccupied with the dismembered leg, she sees neither 
the twitch in his eyebrow nor his fingers tighten on the glass as he 
steps away.

"Now why is it that if _I_ do that, I get slapped with a lawsuit?"  He 
retreats into the sanctuary of gallows humor, his last refuge in the 
line of defense.

Ah, G-man has a pulse after all.

"Your innate ability to harass inanimate objects defy explanation, 
Mulder," she counters.

Despite her rotten mood, despite his stupid joke, her lips involuntarily 
twitch into a faint smile.  In that moment, she feels the tension ease 
its breathless grip ever so slightly and drift upwards, floating towards 
the ceiling.

Back to the consummate professional, she turns the limb on its side, and 
strikes it against the ground several times until the shellac coating 
cracks.  Flesh clinging to chunks of acrylic tear away from the 
underpinning grey muscles, as small, pale fingers remove the broken 
pieces away.

"So that confirms it."

"Should we be start asking people if they've seen someone wearing a 
bowler hat and long underwear with a jockstrap on the outside?"  The 
intonation of her voice emphasizes her raised eyebrow.

"In any other circumstance, Scully, I'd be inclined to say so," he gives 
her a lopsided grin, "But this is Greenwich Village."



An Autopsy Bay
St. Luke's Hospital -- Roosevelt Division


It hums like possessed pizza cutter in the unfaltering hands of Doctor 
Dana Scully.  Satisfaction comes in the sound of high powered steel 
meeting hardened gloss as the power saw croons in metallic ecstasy 
against the dismembered torso.

Fox Mulder stands silently in the background, a half-empty cup of 
lukewarm coffee clutched in his left hand as he adjusts the headphones 
to a more comfortable position with the right.

He has been listening, nonstop, to the same cd from the previous 
evening, searching for any clues, any hints that might gain a sliver of 
insight into his adversary's mind.  He does not particularly like Nine 
Inch Nails, and were he actually in practice, would probably recommend a 
steady Lithium diet to the angst-ridden author.  Of course, he feels the 
same way about Rachmaninov.

Three cross-cuts on the X, Y, and Z axis.  The coat is removed from the 
body in an even, methodical way, the sucking sounds not unlike an orange 
being peeled, and Doctor Scully clicks on the tape recorder to begin her 
autopsy.

Although the volume is cranked high enough to make Mulder's eardrums 
bleed, her voice still cuts clearly through the distorted electronic 
riffs.

Intertwining paths, but diverging minds.

"Female torso, from external observation, approximate age is between 20 
and 30..."

(A young man.  Charming, not necessarily handsome.  Confident in his 
ability to attract both sexes.)

"...clean, sharp margins in the cuts, lack of bruising at the edges, no 
deep bridging in the tissues..."

(He seeks perfection, preserving it in death.)

"...lack of hemothorax rules out any great vessel damage, likewise for 
hemopericardium..."

(They follow willingly, blindly.)

"...which leads me to believe the victim most likely was exsanguinated, 
but until the head is found, results are inconclusive..."

In a rolling litany, he begins chanting.

"First one.  Arms severed at the shoulder, ball joint dislocated to make 
the cut neat."

Her head jerks up, but he is focused somewhere else.

"Next come the legs.  Severed at the knees and pelvis."

"Mulder..."

"Second one.  Legs and hands."

"Mulder..."

His breath comes in short pants lost in the dizzying rhythm of his 
clipped words and industrial noise.

"Third one."  He locks on the torso.  "Arms.  Legs.  Neck is last."

She pushes the headphones off him.

"Mulder!"

He closes his eyes for a moment, as the deafening silence rushes in, 
willing for his heart to stop jackhammering.  Opens to see her face 
inches from his.  He blinks, wondering how she has managed to teleport 
across the room.

"I'm all right, Scully."

He now knows why the music was left for him.  The killer wants to share.

"Care to tell me what happened?"

"Just pleasant jaunt through a madman's mind."

Silence.  Then,

"I'm going send out for a toxicological report on the body, then I'll 
take you back to the motel."

He shakes his head.

"You won't find any poisons. He doesn't want to contaminate the flesh."

"You're saying they just sat there and let him hack away?"

"I'm saying exactly that."

"I don't--"

His impatience intrudes in on her.

"He seeks out his targets, not only for their parts, but also their 
susceptibility to hypnotism.  Mind control, Scully."

"Another case of the whammy?"

He smiles grimly.

She sighs.

"What's wrong?"

"Somehow, I expected you to come up with an outlandish theory detailing 
how aliens are now using abuctees as bad art sculptures in a conspiracy 
to siphon off NEA funding toward their own secret projects, but not only 
have you given me something totally prosaic, it's also completely 
plausible to boot."

"Don't be ridiculous, Scully.  It's a widely known fact Reticulans 
prefer watercolors."


2:35


The corridors of the hospital echo with their footsteps.  Something 
gnaws at Mulder, as though somehow, something is missing in the picture.  
Glancing askance at Scully, he notices she is oddly withdrawn and 
silent.  The silence jars him uncomfortably, being used to the way she 
usually chatters happily about the recent autopsy findings, excitedly 
describing the anomalies in fluid composition or viscera with enough 
graphic detail to make his internals squirm.

He looks at her questioningly, but her eyes are downcast.

Then it hits him.  The hospital.  The dead and dying.

Shit.

"Did you see...?"

Her eyes flicker dangerously to him, challenging him to finish his 
question.  When he hesitates, they turn back down to peruse the tile 
lining the floor.

"I'm fine, Mulder.  Just tired, that's all."

She will be the first to admit that she is a coward.  She does not want 
to see them.  This, like the random nosebleed, is another insistent 
reminder of her mortality, the whispers of death pulling her closer to 
her grave.

Her father's ghost, Nurse Owens could be dismissed as figments of her 
imagination, released by trauma and other games of mental tiddlywinks 
her abductors have played with her body and mind.  But this, the 
precognition of death, she can not explain with science or dismiss as 
simply delusion.  It is another stone ever so roughly yanked out from 
under her ever crumbling mortar of safe skepticism.

She has stopped flinching at every apparition that bares its presence, 
hiding behind the mask of apparent indifference and silence.  But 
Mulder, that irritatingly nosy, perceptive bastard, still knows what 
that tiny movement of her throat, her eyes widening ever so slightly, 
her withdrawal, means.

Somehow, Scully feels as if she should be slightly ashamed of herself 
for shoving him away again, but she is too tired to deal with the 
overprotective basket case that is her partner at this moment.  So she 
pushes him away again, again distancing herself from him.

And because it is his nature to be passive, he can only accept what she 
says with reluctant complacency, never questioning her constant avowals 
of "I'm fines," even if his eyes show he doesn't believe a word of it.

She wonders what she would do if her partner were to one day break out 
of his pattern, to not accept her own assurances of her health, which to 
even her own ears grow more ridiculous day after day, anymore, to demand 
to be let in...

But today, like all days, Mulder is true to form, saying nothing, making 
no issue out of it.  He merely nods and retreats into his familiar aloof 
shell and continues down the hallway, slowing down until he is nearly 
behind her, watching her retreating figure like an omnipresent guard 
dog.

They make the rest of the trip back to the motel in silence.

*    *    *    *    *
T    W    O
*    *    *    *    *


"You let me violate you/ You let me desecrate you.
You let me penetrate you/ You let me complicate you.
Help me, I broke apart my insides/ Help me, I've got no soul to sell.
Help me, the only thing that works for me/ Help me get away from myself."
--"Closer" by Nine Inch Nails


It is her vision that has brought them here to this stinking armpit of 
North America called New York City.  Big Apple, his ass, it's the 
goddamn anus of the United States.  The subways stinking of hot piss in 
the sweltering heat, garbage, human and refuse littered through the 
streets, and the people, crowds and crowds of perennially rude and angry 
bodies rushing everywhere, shoving, shouting, spitting, cursing, milling 
like an immense herd of stampeding cattle glutting the streets like huge 
pieces of fat clogging a whimpering artery.

Special Agent Fox Mulder was becoming cranky just by association.

In all retrospect, they should have just flown back to D.C., even if he 
had to cough up the extra fare, but she'd insisted on taking the scenic 
route back.

When was he going to say fuck it to all reason and argument and just 
listen to his gut?  He always did.  At least until Dana Scully came 
along.  She had a remarkable propensity for making him do things he 
didn't want to.

Like getting a cell phone.

Or giving her a spare key to his apartment.

Or signing that living will of hers, even though the thought of it at 
the time made his testicles shrivel.

In the end, he let her decide, because quite frankly, she could become 
very unpleasant in a remarkably short period of time, especially when it 
came to flying, and a big part of him didn't really want to be anywhere 
near her when she started to white-knuckle the armrests and bitch and 
moan the entire way back.

That and she gave him one of those blue wide-eyed, liquid lambent, 
vulnerable looks complete with knitted brows and that oh-so-slightly 
quivering lip, that he knew was totally bogus, but still nevertheless 
made his brain drop right out the back of his head.

Jesus.  And he thought _he_ knew how to manipulate people.

So he relented and rented a car instead.  Of course due to the evil 
cosmologic forces beyond their control feeling ultimately obligated to 
piss once more on their karma, it was not their fate to get through any 
sort reasonable distance without stumbling upon some sort of trouble.

Fox Mulder had never considered himself to be a particularly lucky guy, 
but Dana Scully wouldn't be buying lottery tickets anytime soon, either.  
With their combined luck, it was little wonder that normal, healthy 
people (at least people who wanted to stay that way) avoided the Spookys 
with a vengeance.



She was leaning back in her seat, eyelids heavy and fluttering slowly 
into oblivion, despite the glaring lights and obnoxious horns of 
impatient drivers, when she suddenly leaned forward and grabbed the 
steering wheel from his hands, jerking it to the side and nearly sent 
the car spinning sideways into back of a tractor trailer.

He jammed on the brakes and screeched onto the bank, slipping and 
sliding on the gravel, staring wide-eyed at the traffic careening by, 
and heard the door open even before the car came to a complete halt.

"Jesus, Scully!"

She was outside before the second word even left his mouth, looking 
frantically around the hood, under the wheels, and then ran back down 
the bank, searching for something.

"Scully!"  he shouted, running after her.

"He was here, just here!"  She was shaking violently, adrenaline 
coursing through her veins, heedless of the oncoming vehicles.

"Who was?"

"That man.  The one you hit!"

"I didn't see anybody, Scully."

"He was right in front of you!"  She was shouting, unsuccessfully trying 
to quell her rising panic, as the lifting wind whipped through her hair.

He stared at her.

She turned to run further down the bank, but he grabbed her shoulders, 
turning her back to him as she looked up at him, pupils dilated until 
only a thin ring of blue shone around them.

He opened his mouth hesitantly, then closed it.  Licked his lips 
nervously.

Then, not ungently,

"Are you sure, what you saw, was a person?"

His words, though soft, struck Scully as if he had physically slapped 
her.  He felt her shoulders droop under his hands at the implication, 
nearly causing him to stagger forward at the sudden shift in weight.  
She brushed his hands from her, and quietly made her way back to the 
car.

They found the poor bastard half a mile away, propped against the wall 
of a public toilet, dressed in fatigues, with a bullet in his head.

Count a perfect score for psychic Scully, bitter thoughts flew, as he 
watched her study the corpse of the marine that might have very well 
have stepped out of a rice paddy in Vietnam.

Her face was impassive as she studied the scene, but her figure trembled 
ever so slightly, perhaps remembering the image that flashed in front of 
her, comparing notes, images, details, hoping against hope, that what 
she saw leaping before her on the street was merely a hallucination, an 
aberration of unconscious thought.  As his eyes continued to study her, 
she took a shuddering breath, he knew this one, like all the others, 
wasn't.

And he wondered what kind of a sick fuck deity she worshiped could so 
callously strip her of her strength, her beliefs, and give her such a 
horrific and unwanted gift of such sight.  He swallowed hard, wanting to 
rip that little gold chain off her neck and stomp it unmercifully into 
the ground, cursing it's undeserved faith she had placed decades of her 
life into.

No wonder he was an atheist.

He called Skinner, told him that they would be delayed for a week.  The 
AD seemed almost amused they had managed to embroil themselves in 
another situation in record time, but had granted them the extension 
after Mulder mentioned Scully's interest in the case.

Clues and several missing persons reports led them to the apartment of 
one of the victims two days later, where they found the charmingly 
ghoulish furnishings and Mulder had thanked whatever fate had granted 
Scully a respite from seeing the apparitions of this particular horror.

To the police, the two murders seemed unrelated, merely a couple of 
sheets to be filed away in the overflowing cabinets of hundreds of other 
unsolved homicides.  But somewhere, spinning 'round and 'round in the 
complex (if sometimes squeaky) gears of Fox Mulder's brain, he felt a 
link.  A hunch.

A very long stretch, but the only thing they had to go on.



Room 10
The Starlight Motel


Another fucking nosebleed.  One minute she's talking about the case, 
happily tossing her theory of obsessive-compulsive art students against 
his about homicidal English majors and the next thing he knows, blood is 
gushing out her nose.

In her usual pattern, Scully puts her hand to her face to staunch the 
flow, tells Mulder she's fine, and then runs to the bathroom, leaving 
him feeling totally helpless and stupid.

Staring at the blotches of red on the bed so recently vacated, he stands 
there, hovering between a compulsion to clean up the sheets and an even 
stronger urge to run.

Away.

As far and as fast as he can.

Each attack of hers is a punch to his gut, every drop of blood another 
part her spirit slowly sapping away.  He wonders how much of her has 
been captured in the seemingly endless supply of stained kleenexes.  He 
would have to be dead not to see how much thinner she has grown these 
past few months, the angles in her face sharpening, until they are 
nearly painful.  She attempts to hide her wasting figure in shapeless, 
baggy coats, but they only make her look more diminutive, her shoulders 
seeming to barely be able to hold up the burden of her clothing.

Despite her fervent defenses of science, her need for uncontroverted 
proof, Scully is remarkably unrealistic about her fate.  She does not 
want to believe that all the activities she would have been able to 
easily perform in less than a year ago are tiring her out much quicker.  
She does not want to believe that she will go the way of her other 
deceased companions.

She wants to believe she is fine.

("I'm fine, Mulder.")

He hates that phrase.  It pisses him off.  To him, it really means "Fuck 
off, Mulder," or "None of your damn business, Mulder," or...

He shakes his head and cranks up the volume on the television which, 
until now, has been serving as a background distraction, randomly 
flipping through the channels to distance himself from his thoughts.

News.  News.  Adult.  News.  Sports.  Music.  He pauses, watching an 
actor splash and sing his heart out behind the Technicolor tube.

"Mulder, I had no idea you had a thing for musicals."

He looks up to see her standing there, arms crossed, with a piece of 
toilet paper wedged indelicately up her nose.  He would laugh if it 
weren't so fucking tragic.

"Do you want me to take you back to the hospital?"

"No, this one's different."

He feels his stomach tighten, but forces his voice to remain neutral.

"How so?"

"Normally, the bleeds are relatively small, usually following a small 
pressure headache behind the soft palate.  Since none of the symptoms 
were present, I can safely assume that this," she tilts her head back 
for a second and removes the plug of tissue, "Is a genuine normal 
nosebleed.  Most likely caused by the sudden change in humidity."

He relaxes slowly, allowing himself to silently exhale.

She tosses the tissue into a wastebasket, washes her hands and turns 
back to see her partner deep in thought.

He is concentrating on the TV with an intensity usually reserved for 
dissecting falsified UFO photographs or studying the centerfold of skin 
magazines for airbrush marks.  But he is watching, completely absorbed 
with, of all things, Gene Kelly chirping happily away at an old song 
that blares out through the crummy speakers.

'I'm singing in the rain....just singing in the rain...what a wonderful 
feeling...'

"There was a film made of A Clockwork Orange, wasn't there?"  he finally 
says.

"Starring Malcolm McDowall.  Stanley Kubrick directed it, I think."

"And I thought you were only good for cartoon trivia."

He picks up his jacket.

"Where are you going?"

"To find a video store.  Pizza okay?"

"Mulder, it's eleven-thirty."

"Pepperoni it is, then."  He gives her a wave before shutting the door.



3:54 AM


The remains of an open pizza box and several cans of soda litter the 
floor of the motel room, as "Full Metal Jacket" warbles forth from the 
glowing TV, casting a harsh blue light on Fox Mulder's features from 
three feet away.

He looks back to the bed as Scully gives a breathy sigh, shifts, and 
falls back to her regular breathing pattern.  Despite giving a good 
school effort, the lull of sleep was too strong for her, her eyes 
drooping ever-so slowly with each advancing scene, finally succumbing 
sometime during "Dr. Strangelove."

He turns back to the movie, opening his third can of Diet Pepsi.

His eyes narrow at the scene flashing before him.

Pausing the VCR, he plays the scene over.  And over.  And over again.  
Finally he freezes the picture, jumps up from the floor and crosses to 
his partner, gently shaking her shoulder.

"Hey, Scully."

"Hmm?"  A yawn.

"Scully, check this out."

She rubs her eyes and glances sleepily at the picture on the TV.  The 
scene comes into slow focus and she awakens immediately, sitting up 
straight.

Snapping on the lamp at her nightstand, she reaches for the case folder 
and digs through the stack of reports, finally pulling out the 
photograph from the first crime scene.  A match.

"Put in the other tape, Mulder."

He nods, ejecting the tape, and drops in 'Clockwork,' as she searches 
for the second photo, though they both know what they will see.

"Guess he's not an English major."

As the tape shuts off, the television resets itself to its usual early-
morning syndicated cheese.  An infomercial advertising "Psychics Now!" 
blares throughout the room, boasting stunningly accurate results and 
expert soap-opera actor testimonials.

She rolls her eyes and grabs the remote to snap off the offending 
images, resisting the urge to hurl yet another phone at the hapless 
Trinitron.

"So, what's your theory, Mulder?"

"Television is bad for you?"

"If you're stumped, you could always ask Dionne," she purrs sweetly.

He gives her a withering look.

"Even I have standards, Scully.  Besides, I can find better ways to 
spend $2.99 a minute."

"I'm sure you can."

"What about you?  You ever "experiment?"

"With phone sex?"

"Smartass.  With other types of hypnotism.  Finding out what's buried in 
your unconscious."

"Unlike you, Mulder, I like my mind the way it is.  In one coherent 
piece."

He plows further, unfazed by the jibe.

"Is that why you aren't actively trying to recover those three missing 
months anymore?"

"The regression hypnosis didn't work, Mulder."

"So you just decided to stop trying."

She sighs.  Like every other time they discuss this, he is going to be 
impossible.  She isn't ready to go burrowing into the inner sanctum of 
her unconscious mind again.  She doubts she will ever be.  Perhaps it is 
fear of finding out, not wanting to go through that pain again.  Perhaps 
it is denial and false memories.  Or perhaps at this point in her life, 
where death hangs above her, looming like a breathless shadow, finding 
out the answers has become, simply, irrelevant.

"In my junior year at Maryland, I stayed at the dorm during spring break 
to study for the MCAT's.  My sister," a shadow flickers across her eyes, 
then passes,  "Dropped by and managed to convince me to waste a few 
hours with her.  She not only managed to drag me to a psychic fair, she 
pulled me into a show as well."

"Not the Stupendous Yappi, I hope."

He wiggles his eyebrows in a remarkably accurate imitation.

"No, not that bad.  His name was Stan, and I think he was "Magnificent" 
or "Mystical," or something like that.  Anyway, Melissa managed to get 
us with a group of people on stage while he performed his amazing feats 
of magnetism for the audience."

"And?"  He leans towards her on the edge of the bed like some office 
gossip straining for the latest tantalizing tidbit.  "Did he manage to 
get you to reveal your deep dark secrets?  Do something embarrassing?  
Come, on, don't leave me hanging, Scully."

"Needless to say, his little act, while amusing, didn't work on me.  I 
wasn't surprised when the regression hypnosis didn't turn out well, 
either.  Whatever you call it, I'm just not susceptible."

Unwilling to discuss this any further, she carefully orchestrates a 
yawn, blinking sleepily at her partner.

Lousy liar.  But he decides to let it go.

"I'll let you get some rest.  I'm going running for a bit."

"In New York?"

"I'm armed."

"So is everyone else."

"Call it motivation.  Who knows, I might even set a few landspeed 
records."



He runs furiously, ignoring the burning in his lungs and calves, running 
to release the endorphins, to get rid of the dark thoughts and 
destructive impulses that assail his brain on a regular basis.  The dull 
throbbing that entered his cranium back when he first stepped into the 
freak mannequin set has settled, like all the other headaches, somewhere 
in the back of his head, to be categorized and then ignored.

As the wind shifts direction, Fox Mulder feels it, subtly, in his 
bloodstream.  A whisper in his mind tells him of changes to come soon, 
of renewal, of a promise made that would be ultimately fulfilled.

He shakes his head, damping out all thoughts as he makes his way back to 
the motel, listening only to his breathing and the regular beat of his 
shoes against the pavement.

Right now he wants nothing more than to solve this case and get the fuck 
out of dodge.

*    *    *    *    *
T    H    R    E    E
*    *    *    *    *

Parrot Gasman loves the movies.  All kinds of movies.  Comedy, action, 
sci-fi, drama, hell, even those sappy, stupid chick flicks that draw 
hordes of misty-eyed women & their reluctant boyfriends in by the 
gaggle.  He loves the dark expanse of theaters, the sixty-foot screens, 
the flicker of the frames slipping steadily through the projector in a 
brilliant combination of light and digital Dolby sound before a hushed 
and breathless audience.

This was the reality, this was the experience.  Not that inferior RGB-
tubed, videotaped-before-a -live-audience sitcom with a stupid laugh-
track or pseudo-dramatic cinema wanna-be vulgarite shit they call 
television.

The feeling of being immersed, of being there in the picture, now that 
was paradise, to be lost in the grand explosions and special effects, 
snappy dialogue and sizzling love scenes.

And Stanley Kubrick, the Stan-man, he was the biggest, baddest deity in 
Parrot's little corner of Eden.

He has seen every one of his films at least thirty times, memorized 
lines from the scripts, written endless reviews, letters of praise, sent 
dozens of copies of his resume and offers to work with the man, none of 
which were ever answered, but that was only because Stan was such a busy 
guy.  But he knew who the Parrot man was, and where he could always find 
his best buddy and greatest fan in the whole-god-freakin' wide world and 
he would surely call him in to be his cinematographer for their next 
masterpiece together.

He had been afraid at first, never thought he could follow through with 
those urges.

Until now.

An impulse, a whisper in his head had explained to him just how easy it 
was, had explained how life and death was immaterial in the noble 
pursuit for true art.  It was a simple push, a nudge, really stumbling 
from the world of mediocrity and banality into the realm of true genius, 
and once he did it, he needed no further encouragement.

Art is purity, and the drive towards it the ultimate quest for nirvana.  
He is the Baptist, the first apostle.  He has the power and the word.  
He is a god.  Like Kubrick.

He had done this all for Stan, the sets, the actors, the lighting.  
Proof he could be as brilliant as the man, share his vision, his genius 
and intensity.

And he will be rewarded for his faith one day.



Room 10
Starlight Motel


"Scully, would it be in bad taste to say I'm looking forward to seeing 
the '2001' set?"

<Crack.>  Agent Mulder noses through the Village Voice, munching noisily 
on a sunflower seed, then spits another wet hull onto the gradually 
accumulating pile beneath his chair.

In some awkward, impossible contortion that would have made Dr. 
Blockhead proud, his partner somehow manages to juggle a phone, scribble 
in that ubiquitous notebook of hers, search through a phone directory, 
and take a sip from her cup of coffee at the same time.

"Bad taste has never stopped you before."

He turns to the arts section, searching the through the filmography 
section and pages of listings for theaters.

"I called up several video stores in the area to see if there were any 
multiple rentals on their logs.  Unfortunately, there are over three 
hundred video stores in Manhattan alone."

<Crack.  Spit.>

"I don't think he rents out videos.  I think his primary fixation is 
with the cinema, the theaters themselves.  There's a fundamental 
difference between the cinema experience and sitting at home watching 
the boob tube."

She hangs up the phone, scribbles another note, then sits back on the 
bed, rubbing her neck to ease out the kinks.

"Thanks for telling me after I called a dozen shops."

<Crack.  Spit.>

"Do you know why they call television a medium?"

"Because it's neither rare nor well done."

"Brains, brawn, and a working knowledge of Kovacs," he looks up to leer 
mildly at her before returning to his paper.  "You've met my mother 
right, Scully?"

She rolls her eyes at her partner, happily buried away in the paper, and 
munching away at his seeds with that frazzling "crack" echoing 
throughout the small room with the regularity of a freaking metronome.

Unconsciously her eyes are drawn down his form, from his face focused on 
the page to his shoulder, to run in a smooth motion down his torso and 
legs, until they finally rest, revolted, at the pile of shells clustered 
around his feet.

"Mulder, you do have your own room, right?"

<Crack.  Spit.>

"Right next door."

"Then why are you spitting shells onto _my_ carpet?"

"Because you actually tip housekeeping."  He pauses, scanning the page 
in one quick glance and locks onto one section.  "Take a look at this."

He hears her close the distance behind him, her face appearing next to 
his as she bends down to read the paper over his shoulder.  A few 
strands of Scully's hair brush his neck as he takes a long, silent 
breath, inhaling the curious combination of soap, shampoo and the light, 
yet inexorable presence of gun oil.

"Stanley Kubrick film festival at Tisch School of the Arts," she 
murmurs.

"Venture a guess at what played this past Monday and Wednesday?"

She straightens up, taking a step back and crossing her arms in that 
old, familiar pose.

"The next one's at 8:30 tonight."  She notes, wryly, "I never did care 
much for 'The Shining.'"

He drops his head over the back of his chair faced screwed in mock 
horror, as he takes in her upside-down form.

"How could you not like such a classic?  And one with Jack to boot."

"I've always found it too long-winded and dull."

He says nothing, manfully attempting to contain the amused look 
threatening to burst out over grave features.

"Not a word, Mulder," she warns.  Then seriously, "You think he'll be 
there?"

"He wouldn't miss it for the world."



Art Auditorium
Tisch School of the Arts


He turns on the projector, feeling a familiar thrill in his groin at the 
warm hum of the motor and light rumbling through the monster in which 
his brilliance is delivered.  Checking the lens and carriage once more, 
Parrot makes sure everything is in place, gears oiled, capstans clean 
and running flawlessly for tonight's performance.

Tonight he will make a set worthy of an Oscar.  He has his acceptance 
speech memorized, a tux rented, and a case ready for his gold statuette.  
He imagines himself and his idol among the throngs of cheering actors 
and actresses, knee deep in celluloid and Hollywood trash celebrating 
their victory in a cascade of vintage champagne and paparazzi glitz.

'For the Academy's consideration.'



Room 11
Starlight Motel


She stands in the doorway of his motel room, gazing in awe at the record 
time in which he has managed to accumulate so much garbage.  Magazines, 
napkins, newspapers, notes buried among mini-hills of sunflower seeds 
and candy wrappers strewn about with empty cans of iced tea and diet 
soda and take-out boxes with chopsticks sticking straight out of a 
sculpture of solidified rice.

Watching his deliberate, fluid movements as he checks his holster, Dana 
Scully forces her teeth to let go of the inside of her lip and takes a 
deep breath, finally blurting out what has been on her mind the entire 
afternoon.

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

He freezes in the motion of putting on his coat.

"Why not?"

"If our killer is looking for people susceptible to hypnotism, there's a 
good chance you might be targeted."

She remembers Modell.  He has never forgotten it.

"But I know what's in his mind.  I'll be able to recognize him."

"I don't want you running that risk, Mulder."

(She doesn't want you pulling your gun on her again.)

He fights that irrational thought, the tweak of anger suddenly flushing 
his face, and though it makes him feel suddenly light-headed and 
nauseous, he manages a weak grimace.

"Are you trying to ditch me, Scully?"

"Now you know how I feel.  Oh, don't give me that look."  She rolls her 
eyes at his soulful, downtrodden gaze usually reserved for hijacking her 
Powerbook to play Tetris on.  "You would have been on your own with this 
if he were a Russ Meyer fan."



Art Auditorium
Tisch School of the Arts


Victims.  All of them.

Fat, complacent, mindless drones staring in slack-jawed, vacant-eyed 
wonder at the screen, cramming endless handfuls of popcorn, hot dogs and 
sodapop into their perpetually open maws, giggly, stupid co-eds hiding 
their eyes behind fingers and screaming inappropriately at scenes 
they've already seen before, but do anyway because they think it's 
fashionable, wanna-be geeksters who try to impress their phenomenally 
bored dates and friends with stupid irrelevant trivia about the film and 
it actors.

Yet not one worthy of his masterpiece.

He is displeased with the cattle call, the whole bloody bunch a colossal 
waste of precious time and carbon mass.

Then he sees her walk in.

Not much in height, but carries herself as if she were much, much 
taller. Her black coat swirls around her body as she moves, nearly 
blending into the shadows of the auditorium.  But those features, a 
lovely ivory complexion, fine cheekbones, a determined set to her jaw, 
those features contrast sharply against the swallowing darkness as 
incidental light from the aisle  plays off the highlights in her hair, 
flashing tantalizing tones of yellow, amber, and red.

She scans the room silently, surveying the audience like a hawk, her 
gaze dropping on every single person in the audience, contemplating, 
searching.

When she finally lifts her gaze up to the projection booth, squinting at 
the shadowy figure inside, Parrot guesses her eyes are blue.

He feels himself wanting to reach out to her, to touch her and 
communicate that bond of sculptor and stone, of Pygmalion and Galatea, 
he wants to mold her, to shape her into his magnificent creation.  She 
will make a stunning masterpiece.

But something is wrong.  Her mind is tightly closed to him.  Rather 
amusing, considering he has felt a tingle of something about her, 
something forcefully hidden, pressed suffocatingly into a grip like some 
psychological fist, but refusing to be smothered.  It seeps out of every 
pore, spilling out like sparks of sunlight inexorably bursting through 
cracks of a tightly closed door.

He wants to see more, but she breaks the contact, suddenly distracted, 
and turns away to answer her cellular phone.

Ah.  Now he recognizes the presence.

He decides to leave her be.  She already walks among the dead.



Room 11
Starlight Motel


Still dressed, with his holster on, he paces around the room, looking at 
his watch for the eighteenth time in forty-five minutes.  Five steps 
across the room, turn, five steps back.  Five steps across, turn, five 
steps back, five steps across...

Anxious, agitated.  Stir-crazy.  Fox Mulder wonders if this is what Dana 
Scully feels like when he ditches her, and vows never to do it again.  
Well, maybe never.  Only when absolutely necessary.

Five steps across, turn, five steps back.

He turns to his cellular sitting on the table in forlorn, yet smug 
silence.  Focusing on it, he concentrates, willing it to ring and 
feeling rather foolish, like some fucking giddy teenager waiting for a 
date, but of all the times he's gone and left his partner high and dry, 
he's at least had the goddamn courtesy to call.

Five steps across, turn, five steps back.

He stops again glare at the Nokia.  Resisting.  For a nanosecond.  Then 
snatches it from table and hits the redial button.

An exasperated whisper answers him on the third ring.

"What now, Mulder?"

"Just checking in.  Did you find anything?"

"Not within the last...eight minutes, no."

He hears a scream in the background, an ear-piercing shriek that nearly 
congeals his spinal fluid.

"What's happening out there?"

"The movie, Mulder."

"I was just thinking, the guy is most likely someone who works there, 
perhaps an usher."

"This is an art auditorium, Mulder.  There are no ushers."

"Well then, the ticket taker, then manager, anyone else."

Pacing once again, five steps across, five steps back, in double-time.

"I was planning to question the projectionist."

"What are you waiting for then?"

"If you would stop calling me, I'd get some work done."

"Maybe I'd better head down there."

"No, Mulder."

"Why not?"

Dana Scully brings her hand to her forehead and sighs, fruitlessly 
trying to fend off another partner-induced migraine.

"We discussed this matter and agreed on it, Mulder."

"No, you discussed it."

"If you're just calling me to argue about this, I _will_ shut off my 
phone."

"You would do that?"  Stricken.

A muffled laugh drowned out by the background music.

"I have to go, Mulder."

"Wait--"

"People are staring at me, Mulder."

"But-"

"Goodbye, Mulder."

The click cuts him off, and he stands there looking at the phone, 
resisting the sudden urge to pound it into the wall in frustration and 
to follow it with his forehead head until he reaches mindless oblivion.

Because, to top it all off, that goddamn headache has moved from the 
back of his head to settle with obstinate resolution onto his frontal 
lobe, now cheerfully throbbing hotly against his forehead like some 
sadistic construction crew hell-bent on drilling the shit out of his 
skull.

It's not that he doesn't trust her.  In fact, he'd choose her as his 
backup over anyone else, any day.  He knows that Scully is right, that 
his anxiety is mostly unfounded, knows that his partner is perfectly 
capable of handling herself.  Level-headed.  Professional.  Not at all 
hesitant to use deadly force.  He trusts her abilities far more than his 
own.

(So, you gonna chill and be reasonable and let her do her job, or what?)

Fuck no.

He grabs his coat and runs out the door.

*    *    *    *    *
F    O    U    R
*    *    *    *    *

Art Auditorium
Tisch School of the Arts


"Excuse me."

Parrot turns to the woman who, only minutes ago, had disappeared from 
the auditorium magically appear in his projection booth.

"I'm with the FBI," she flips out her ID, looking at him warily.  "Mind 
if I ask you a few questions?"

He has guessed right about the color of her eyes.

"Of course."

Somewhat dorky looking, she thinks, eyes flickering over her subject, 
noting every detail.  Long brown hair covering a high forehead, brown 
eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses, and a rather weak, receding chin.  
Fairly short with a stocky build, but with no distinguishing features.  
Not particularly striking or noticeable in any way.  Answers every 
question with the erratic, personable tic of your typical, goofy 
starving artist manfully trying to make his voice sound deeper than its 
developmentally high timbre, but otherwise, harmless-seeming enough.

"...how long have you worked here again?"

"Too long.  I graduate this fall so after June I'm outta here."

With some fascination, he observes her eyes fix unflinchingly at him and 
even as the questions come fast and furious, picking at details in his 
carefully prepared alibi, she never drops her gaze down to her pen 
scribbling furiously on the notepad.

"So you've seen nothing odd here at all?"

"Just about all the people here are art students.  It'd be weird if they 
weren't weird."

Finishing with her questioning, Agent Scully puts her notebook back into 
her coat pocket.  She hadn't exactly been expecting the Amazing Kreskin 
or some other wild-gazed, eyebrow-calisthenic prophecy spewer, but 
somehow, Parrot Gasman doesn't quite strike her as the charming, 
seductive hypnotist her partner had profiled.

Back in the auditorium, she surveys the seated masses once more.  Would 
Mulder would have been able to pick the killer out of a crowd, be able 
to discern one who had crossed that line between impulse and action, 
able to see past the anonymous facade and find the monster behind the 
mask of normality?

With a guileless and pleasant smile, the young projectionist's face did 
not seem one of a potential murderer, but then the most successful and 
extraordinary killers have always sported unextraordinary facades.  A 
strange sensation runs through her, a feeling of unease that hasn't 
manifested since she first set eyes on the Addams Family Lurch clone, 
Donnie Pfaster.

Feeling a bit out of sorts, Scully looks down at her cell phone in vague 
curiosity about why her partner hasn't called in almost twenty minutes, 
wondering if he actually took her bluff seriously.

Mulder, only a phone call away, dropping everything in sight to come 
running to her like some slobbery, needy golden retriever, eager to 
help, to comfort, only to give her those hurt, shuttered looks when she 
invariably pushes him away, wanting to be alone, to do things on her 
own.  She is angry when he smothers her with concern, angrier when he 
draws back in studied indifference, angry at the cancer, angry at losing 
control of her life, angry at everything, because dammit, it still felt 
human to just be a little pissed-off, and somehow, in that odd illogical 
way, if she can just stay angry, she can almost forget about the fact 
that her number was going to come up soon.

And Mulder?  Well, Mulder was always the nearest, convenient punching 
bag.

A shock of white light bursts against the screen, startling her out of 
her thoughts, as the reel empties out with a noisy whirr and the 
whipping sound of the loose film end slapping repeatedly against the 
table.

Amidst the shouts and curses of the howling audience, Scully squints 
through the sudden illumination, turning back to the projection booth, 
at the take-up reel spinning in morose neglect, and sees that Parrot 
Gasman is gone.



Outside--


She definitely makes him nervous, uneasy.  So uneasy, he couldn't even 
enjoy the movie anymore.  Parrot doesn't like dealing with people he 
can't control.  Too many variables, too many inconsistencies, unreliable 
actors, the press, pressure from the producers, harsh critics, there 
were simply too many fucking problems already attached to this grossly 
overbudgeted movie and that nosy FBI only added to them.

So he had to ditch.  Better to shelve the production for a while, let 
the unappreciative masses simmer down before shipping it back to make 
second rounds.  People forget so easily in this business, a different 
title, a bit of rewriting, and he had no doubt they would welcome back 
their flavor of the month with open arms, after all he had created 
several bona-fide hits.  He was gold, he had the magic touch, he knew 
how to make the masses watch.

As he slogs his way down Broadway towards East 8th, he sees another man 
approach from the opposite direction, eyes searching the various 
buildings as he listens to some sort of music or radio player hidden 
within the deep recesses of his coat pocket.  As the stranger lifts his 
eyes towards him, he stops.  Hands slip up to remove the phones from his 
head as he stares speculatively at Parrot.

Parrot smiles.  This one has an open mind.

He abruptly turns into the nearest alley.

"Hold it!" he hears in the background.

He weaves his way through the familiar corners and walkways, pausing 
just long enough for the man to catch up, making sure he is alone.  Then 
he stops, turning to face his pursuer.

"Keep your hands where I can see them!" the voice echoes against the 
walls.

The stranger has his gun drawn.

"You don't want to do that."

The man freezes, eyes flickering away, if listening for something.  His 
gun wavers for a second, indecisively, then lowers.

"Not yet, at least."

Parrot calmly shifts the glasses on his face, strolling up to the 
stranger and walking around him, studying his form, his features, his 
expression, ticking off individual details in a mental shopping list.  
Long coat, ill-fitting shirt, rumpled jacket.  And the butt-ugliest tie 
he's ever seen this side of cat puke.

"No, no, no," he mutters to himself, taking in features.  "Something not 
quite right."

"But you haven't even seen my Jack Nicholson imitation."

Parrot stops dead in his tracks.  The stranger is calm, too calm for 
someone who knows he is about to be hoisted up onto the butcher block.

"So you know."

"I have extraordinary abilities.  And your taste in music...sucks."

The man's eyes are dark, reflectionless, greedily sucking in all ambient 
light in like some bottomless whirlpool.  Something moves behind him, 
constantly shadowing him, an obsession, a drive, but something much more 
powerful than the mundane drivel of simple human emotion.

For the first time in a long, long while, Parrot feels unsure about how 
this movie will turn out.

(Wait, wait, wait a fucking minute!)

This is Parrot, he is the creator, the cinematographer, the big guy for 
chrissakes.  He is in control here.  He will not shelve the script, he 
will not go overbudget, not accede to a petulant actor's whims.  The 
film will shoot on schedule, the dailies will come back great and the 
movie will be a fucking-A blockbuster because he wills it to be, and 
he's gonna be fucked if he's gonna let someone else run his show.

So now, he has his actor.  And he has an idea of how to get this one to 
put out.

"She's dead you know."

"What are you talking about?"

He sees the man's eyes flicker, his jaw unconsciously twitch.

Parrot smiles.  Wasn't too hard to figure out the co-winkydink of two 
feddies showing up at almost the same time.  They always showed up in 
pairs, and even plainclothes look less conspicuous than this funky suit.

"About yea high.  Red hair.  Pretty blue eyes."

He draws his finger across his neck in a slow, cutting motion, teeth 
glistening wetly in a wide grin.

"You're lying."

"Didn't take much effort, really.  You could say I did her a favor."

"A favor."

"She was gonna to go real soon anyway.  I just helped along the 
process."

He sees a cold anger build up in the stranger, a black, bilinous cloud 
with the mottled diffusion of octopus ink, nearly suffocating in 
intensity.     Yes, yes, this is what he wants, he wants madness, he wants 
genuine fucking emotion, the passion and the hatred, and the director 
man keeps yanking on fed boy's chain, 'cause he's gonna bring out his 
best performance yet.

"Don't worry fibbie, you get to join her in a minute."  He extends his 
arm, reaching for the gun.

The man suddenly pulls back and trains his sights unerringly at his 
forehead.  Parrot sees the barrel of the gun, the humorlessly smiling 
man behind it, and backs away.

"It didn't work."

What.

The.

His head whirls, he feels his power, the control dissipating like mist 
into the night air.  He is no longer a god, he is no longer the creator, 
the maker, he is a nobody once again.

Impossible, im-fucking-possible!

"How-why...fuck!"  The deep, throaty rasp is forgotten as his voice 
unconsciously returns to its original nasal register, his legs buckling 
under him, staring up into the barrel of the big, black gun.

"I was hoping for an Emmy."

The bullet roars out of the chamber, shattering the lens of his glasses 
in its screaming path towards his right eye.

Before Parrot Gasman dies, he sees the dour stranger standing over him, 
it strikes him how familiar that look is, even as thought of him 
laughing at his name trickles fleetingly through his rapidly fading 
thoughts.

Then darkness sucks him into cold nothingness.



On the street--


She hears the gunshot, notes it's particular crack and vibration, and 
extrapolates the source from that sound.  Drawing her 9 millimeter, 
Agent Scully plunges down the maze of crisscrossing streets and back-end 
buildings.

Coming to a stop in the alley, she squints at the figures in the dim 
light.  Perhaps it is simply a trick of the flickering illumination, but 
she could have sworn to seeing two men together, their images nearly 
overlapping like shadowed images or a ghost of double vision.  She 
blinks, and then there is only her partner standing there alone, and a 
body rapidly staining the pavement.

"Mulder, what are you doing here?"

He turns at the sound of her voice, relief flooding his face at the 
sight of that approaching familiar face, feeling oddly exuberant.  The 
headache plaguing him for the past week has dissipated, its absence 
almost intoxicating.

"What is it?"

She looks around, eyes searching the nooks and shadows of the dead end 
street.  Shaking her head, she puts away her gun and reminds herself to 
make an appointment with her optometrist as soon as possible.

"Nothing."

An illusion, a trick of the eyes, nothing more.

She brushes past him, to the corpse on the ground, snapping on the latex 
gloves from the ever-present supply in her coat pocket, and turns it 
over from its facedown position.

"He was the projectionist," she mutters, looking at the body of the 
young man, taking apart the scene with a clinical detachment

(Right eye, shattered lens with a dark red hollow behind it.  The shot, 
a tiny nine millimeter projectile into the socket.  With little 
resistance to stop the spinning round with three-hundred plus foot-
pounds behind it, it would have torn through the large arteries in the 
brain like a hammer into Jell-O.  The sudden cavern where the retinal 
orb was destroyed would be the outlet for the intense pressure from the 
arteries, shooting out their warm life force in a six-inch red jet.  The 
tumbling metal mass would then spew mangled grey and pink matter down 
onto the ground as it exits the body via the foramen magnum.)

"I caught him trying to escape," he offers, by way of explanation.

(From the residual powder burns, the source was approximately a foot or 
two away.)

This is not the stunning, pressure aided pointsmanship with John Barnett.

There was no hostage, no weapon other than her partner's, no concrete 
evidence of this man's direct danger to the public.

This was, simply, an execution.

"He wasn't armed, Mulder."

"He tried to take my gun."

(The angle of the entry and exit wound suggests an inferior position of 
the subject in relation to the shooter.  The fact that the body pitched 
forward suggests a kneeling position.)

"From his knees."

"He tried to put psyche me out."

"And it didn't work."

"Apparently not."

"So you fired, point blank, into his face."

An image of Parrot Gasman on his knees, begging, seconds before Mulder 
puts a bullet in his eye, flashes through her head.

"Mulder, you know this was inappropriate use of deadly force."

"Look, Scully, if I didn't kill him...do you want to visit another crime 
scene, another fucking set, this time with some other poor shmuck 
shellacked to a goddamn typewriter with 'red rum' plastered on his 
bathroom mirror?  Do you want to wait around to maybe collect more 
evidence, maybe find more clues, maybe see another apparition, while he 
goes along happily cutting up people for 'Spartacus' or whatever the 
fuck is playing next week?  Do you?"

Scully's argument, in mid-formulation, cuts off as her mouth snaps shut.

"No."  Barely audible.

"Then there is no problem, is there?"

He realizes that he has been waving his gun, gesticulating with it 
throughout their entire exchange.  Holstering it with a look of 
annoyance, he turns away from his partner, irritated with her 
sanctimonious preaching, her holier-than-thou attitude and by-the-book 
bullshit that she now feels morally obligated to bring up and throw in 
his face.

As Scully watches him step away from her, it strikes her, that phrase 
that she remembers him mentioning years ago.

'Tells you something about the rule book, doesn't it?'

*    *    *    *    *
F    I    V    E
*    *    *    *    *


Office of the Assistant Director
FBI Headquarters


In an atmosphere so thick with tension, the Assistant Director Walter S. 
Skinner has to tug at the collar of his freshly starched shirt to 
relieve the strain of sharing his office space, even if only for an 
hour, with his two favorite paranormal magnets.

Four years.  Forty-seven closed cases.  A record, by all conventional 
standards, impressive even by those unconventional.  From their earliest 
folders he could usually tell by the first page which agent was on 
report duty for a particular case.

>From him, it usually involved convoluted leaps of logic, paragraphs of 
long exposition often including a detailed history of the paranormal 
event from the first sighting or experience, the first recorded piece of 
x-file evidence, and sometimes, the occasional moral and social 
allegory, threaded and woven in a complex and amazing tapestry.  Even if 
sometimes a bit shy of concrete evidence and vaguely flouting standard 
Bureau format, Mulder could always find an illustrious future in the 
writing field if he ever decided to quit his day job.

>From her, the report would simply consist of an incredibly detailed 
documentary of facts, evidence and scientific, littered with a mind-
bending array of medical terms and explanations.  Meticulous and dry, 
her work more than often read like an article for the American Journal 
of Medicine in its determination to assign rational explanations to 
whatever phenomena they found, though Scully would mention her partner 
in passing, along with his, often incredible, explanation, at the very, 
very end.  And sometimes, there would even be a grudging admission of 
the possibility of his insights, when lack of contrary evidence proved 
otherwise elusive.

As the years progressed, he saw how the two Agents' writing styles 
gradually changed, shifting and adapting to each other, much like their 
formerly diametrically opposed views slowly converging, though still on 
equally opposite sides of center.  The increase of factual evidence, the 
need for concrete proof now shows up in Mulder's files, as well as a 
subtle change in style more compatible to a good, but still 
entertaining, documentary.  On her side, Scully has become much more 
open-minded, lightening the assault of technical verbiage for the lure 
of good prose, sometimes even going so far as to adapt her worse half's 
eclectic writing style.

So when Skinner silently reads number forty-eight for the second time, 
surreptitiously eyeing the two in front of him, he wonders about what 
happened in New York that could have the duo coming up with such a 
haphazard mess of smattered, missing details and brief, fragmented 
sentences.  Even Mulder, on his worst day, is at least pretentious, 
taking a smug, almost insufferable pride in the convoluted logic of his 
work and wording, and Scully, well this is nothing like the usually 
anal-retentive Agent.

Sitting in the right chair, she is ramrod straight, almost at attention, 
her beige suit perfectly pressed and immaculate, if a little baggy, and 
the question fleetingly crosses his mind about how much weight she has 
lost in the past few months from her illness.

"A search on Parrot Gasman's apartment and the basement of the art 
auditorium turned up several weapons used in the commission of the 
murders and a dozen cans of shellac."

Fingers entwined and folded neutrally in her lap, Agent Scully's eyes 
are determinedly fixed on the "Thank you for not smoking" plaque on his 
desk, giving her report in a flat, fixed voice, as if almost embarrassed 
about something.  Which is rather odd, since she rarely apologizes for 
anything.

Special Agent Doctor Dana Scully.  Ethical beyond reproach.  Moral to a 
fault.  Except when it relates to her partner, in which case all the 
rules go flying out the window.

Speaking of which--

His eyes swivel over to Special Agent Fox Mulder, who, apparently wholly 
unconcerned with this abomination of a case report, is silent, slouched 
in his chair, right elbow languidly propping up his chin, and a blank, 
distant expression on his face.  Staring off into space, preoccupied 
with something else, his rumpled grey suit looks like it spent the 
previous evening in a pile on the floor, his appearance unwashed, and 
body language fairly screaming he'd rather be somewhere, anywhere, than 
here right now.

Skinner returns his focus back to the folder, frowning at the page in 
front of him.

"The autopsy report is incomplete, Agent Scully."

"There was a problem with the tape sir, some sort of static discharge 
rendered the latter part of the recording nearly incomprehensible."

He flips a ten pages forward.

"This says you discovered the evidence at eleven-thirty pm on the 
eleventh of May."

"Yes."

"But here," he moves back a few pages. "It says the suspect died at 
nine-forty five that same evening."

"Yes."

"You're telling me," a pause, reading, "Agent Mulder took him down, and 
then the both of you discovered the evidence?"

She hesitates, glancing sideways at the man on her left, who for all the 
world, still looks like he doesn't give a damn.

With a rankled frown, the AD finds Mulder's ill-timed insouciance 
suddenly infuriating.  He has given these two nearly free reign, and 
although they have never abused their privileges, despite coming 
incredibly close on several occasions, the smell of trouble bubbling 
beneath the surface of his young, brilliant agents denote signs of 
something threatening to explode.  Mulder has always been the bastion of 
self-destructive behavior, only reluctantly tempered by the woman beside 
him, but Skinner fears the agent's penchant for self-immolation will 
eventually engulf Dana Scully as well.

"Is this true, Agent Mulder?"  The older man asks, a rougher tone than 
normal in his voice.

Mulder's eyes flicker up.  Unfocused, almost vacuous, but strained.

"Agent Mulder...was defending himself, sir," she hastily interjects.

"And did you witness this, Agent Scully?"

She drops her eyes, then lifts them.

"I came onto the scene after the suspect had been taken down."

"Unacceptable."

He tosses the folder to the edge of his desk, letting it hang there in 
front of them.

"I expect all my agents to give me a full and complete report.  Not 
this...mess."

"Sir, if I may explain," Mulder speaks for the first time, absently 
rubbing his right temple with two fingers.

"There's nothing to explain, Agent Mulder," Skinner glowers behind his 
spectacles.  "This--" he points angrily at the pile of papers, "Is 
garbage.  If you two have forgotten how to write a report, you could 
always retake the course back at Quantico."

(You gonna take that, cowboy?)

A sudden surge of violent thoughts emanate in Fox Mulder's brain, the 
dam of aggression bursting the floodgates as a rush of adrenaline 
courses through his veins, the deafening pounding in his chest only 
slightly damping the low, guttural growl forming in his throat.  And 
somehow, despite the primitive swirl of hot blood and testosterone, he 
valiantly tries to fight down the maddening impulse to leap across the 
desk and beat the ever-living shit out of his boss, though the effort 
makes him weak and dizzy.

Skinner watches the transformation of the agent on the edge of his seat 
into something he has only seen a few times in his life, seeing him lean 
forward, muscles coiled tightly like an agitated rattler ready to 
spring, hands paling with strained effort as they clutch the armrests, 
jaw locked with tooth-crushing, twitching tightness, then tension 
drawing down jugular veins and carotid arteries nearly bursting with 
pressure as they weave through the knotted lines of his neck. The look 
on his face, while carefully neutral, contain that are eyes filled with 
a hate, a deep underlying resentment of some sort, and also, some sort 
of internal struggle.

Unconsciously the war veteran innocuously sets himself towards the edge 
of his chair, shifting into a better position to defend himself.  There 
will be no sucker punch again, and this time, no second chance.

"Do you have a problem with this, Agent Mulder?"  A tone that makes 
Scully look up at her boss in shock.

"No sir."  Calm.  Too calm, too sudden.

"I also want you to make an appointment with Employee Assistance.  
That's a direct order."

('You need a shrink, Agent Mulder, you've gone mental.') it translates 
to the Agent.

Like fluid slowly draining out of him, the tension in his body gradually 
dissipates, inch by inch, second by second, until he is back again to 
the laconic, old Fox Mulder everybody recognizes.

"Yes sir."

*    *    *    *    *

He takes the steps down two at a time, his long, furious strides closing 
on the lobby only one more floor down, recalling the near episode with 
the A.D. in his head.  The other times Mulder could blame on being 
drugged, stress, or the nature of the case itself.  This time there, 
however has no explanation for his reaction, no excuse, nor any great 
reason, really.  And that disturbs him.

"What was that all about?"

Looking back at Scully's nearly breathless pace behind him, her shorter 
legs working double time to catch up, he slows down a fraction.

"What?"

"You looked like you were about to attack Skinner back there."

"Yeah well, I didn't do it, did I?"

Just some sort of urge for retribution.

Retribution for what?

He leaves the question hanging, shutting out the beginnings of that 
particular conversation from his mind.  Despite being 'Spooky,' he was 
generally not inclined to talk to himself.  Or maybe he just hadn't 
noticed until now.

She watches him as he squints, creating several deep creases in his 
forehead.

"Headache again?"

He nods, lip curling in a frown.

"Mulder, you should really get it checked out.  It might be-"

"It's not a goddamn aneurism, Scully."

Shit, shit, shit.

Silence.  A long silence.  They pause in the main lobby of the J. Edgar 
Hoover Building, two still figures standing out among the busy 
pedestrian traffic.  Then,

"Should I check your water filter again?"  A voice so chilling it would 
ordinarily send Mulder scrambling to cover his vitals.

He scowls at her and walks away.  He knows he is being unreasonable, but 
for some reason he just doesn't give a fuck.  Then, an odd thought pops 
into his head, not really funny at all, but for some reason a short bark 
of laughter manages to escape his throat.

"What's so funny, Mulder?"  Scully, still standing in the landing, the 
ire in her voice landing with a solid 'thunk' somewhere in his neck.

"Just thinking about Parrot Gasman.  What a name.  Almost as good as 
Burst."



Office of Karen Kosseff
Employee Assistance Program


"Come on in Agent Mulder, and have a seat."

He has a neutral expression on his face, but his eyes reflect the utter 
and complete loathing at being here.  Like a cornered animal, he scours 
the room, searching for all exits, relaxing only marginally once he 
completes his survey.

"You know me?"

"Assistant Director Skinner notified me of your arrival.  I took the 
liberty of pulling your personnel file."

A nod as he floats through the room with soundless footsteps, examining 
the array of certificates adorning the walls.

B.A. U. Penn, M.S.W., Georgetown U., Member, A.C.S.W..  Impressive, but 
no match for the Fox Mulder mental wall of defense.  Every single 
evasion and mind trick known to man has been learned and categorized in 
his eidetic memory, research, practice, and application sharpening the 
fortress gates into an impenetrable mechanism.

He sits down in a chair across from her, despite the size of the couch 
she accompanies.

"I see you have a background in psychology, Agent Mulder,"  The social 
worker known as Karen Kosseff, or so say the roughly half-dozen 
certificates and degrees plastered on her walls, leans forward to look 
him directly in the eye.  "And probably no stranger to mind games, but 
if you want this therapy to work, if you want me to help you, I do ask 
you to be honest with me."

He nods pleasantly.

"Of course."

She will be easy to bamboozle.



Every word, every expression, every gesture the perfect mask.  He fed 
the social worker everything she expected to hear, watched her watch 
him, taking her mental notes, asking careful, leading questions, and 
then dismissing him with a sympathetic look and the suggestion that he 
take a few days rest, but should get back to work as he can after that 
to 'normalize' again.

And he only nodded in mute agony and sorrow.

All in all, a rather brilliant performance, if he did say so himself.



Scully had looked up from her laptop, eyeing him warily when he wandered 
back to the office and plopped himself behind the desk.  But he said 
nothing, instead, choosing to occupy himself with a case folder, and so 
she went back to typing out whatever it was she was working on.

Probably the report.

Despite the fact that she was still likely pissed at him.

And he sat there pretending to be interested in the contents of "Cattle 
Mutilations in the Ozarks," and occasionally, when he was sure she 
wasn't paying attention, chancing a glance to her downturned face, 
feeling somewhat comforted among the rhythmic tap-taps of her fingers 
striking the keys.

Even when she is obviously ignoring him, he finds her presence pleasant 
in a nice, non-sexual sort of way.

He blinks.  How did sex suddenly sneak into the picture?

Not that she was unattractive or anything.  Not at all.

Well, except maybe the first time, when she walked into his office in 
that fugly-assed gender-neutral tweed suit and severe hairdo, looking, 
of all things, like goddamn Clarice Starling from 'The Silence of the 
Lambs,' all cold and professional, with a gigantic skeptical chip on her 
shoulder and a smart mouth to match.  She'd told him then and there, in 
no uncertain terms, exactly what she thought of the paranormal.

And from that moment, he knew, _he knew_ he would never be able to get 
rid of her.

Odd thing was, he found out she was as dedicated to the truth as much as 
he, albeit in a different capacity.  She became an integral part of him 
as much as he of her, her passion for knowledge, to find answers for 
unexplained, matching his.  She was a kindred spirit, a reminder of 
something he didn't want to admit, that his lonely soul, isolated in his 
journey for Samantha, for the truth, had found a companion to share his 
thoughts, his fears with.  And she didn't laugh, didn't destroy his 
work, though she did call him up on some of his odder ideas, deriving, 
what he felt, was way too much pleasure from shooting holes in his 
theories.

And her reward for her efforts?  Isolation.  He had always been alone, 
always on the outside, so he didn't particularly give a damn about what 
other people thought of him, didn't care that they laughed or made fun 
of his work or considered him a freak.  Hell, he didn't really give a 
shit about his stupid nickname, if truth be told.

But Scully...

He watched her slowly become ostracized within the Bureau, saw her 
friends from the academy slowly, but surely, drift out of her life and 
saw the 'Mrs. Spooky' moniker make the rounds of office gossip, finally 
latching itself onto Scully, a mark that never left even when they'd 
been split up, though to her credit, she seemed supremely immune to the 
connotations of that particular nick, not that any of her previous ones 
(many of which, he guessed, no one would have the balls to mention in 
her presence, not if they wanted to keep them afterwards, that is) were 
all that flattering either.  And the credit for this little feat of 
complete unoriginality had to be given to Tom Colton.

He shifts in his chair at that revolting thought.  Now if there was any 
scientific proof of asexual terrestrial lifeforms spawning from the 
dungheap of bureaucratic bullshit, this particular kid embodied it.  
He'd heard through channels that Colton had been bucking to get Scully 
transferred to VCS before he'd even asked her to assist in the Tooms 
case, and knew instantly that the little obsequious sonuvabitch simply 
wanted all the help he could get without sharing the glory, and 
targeting his spotlight-shy partner under the pretense of friendship, 
was the best bet.

Normally, he would've let the viccie flounder and gleefully watch as the 
twerp fell on his face, but parasites like him never went down alone, so 
despite his disdain towards such close proximity to the boys'-club 
assholes, he'd tagged along, looking out for Scully every step of the 
way.  At Tooms' questioning, which obviously was going to bottom out, 
and Mulder had seen too many professional liars walk from these tests 
before, he'd considered checking out Eugene's shoes for tacks, only to 
find the boys turning around to indirectly question Scully's credibility 
and profile.  Instantly realizing they were fishing for a scapegoat to 
hang this particular disaster on, he stepped in to shift the focus off 
her.

And knew the perfect way.

Sometimes having a rotten reputation is better than any black belt in 
martial arts.  Better him than her, he figured, and they'd been only too 
happy to oblige.  So they mocked, blamed, blustered and threatened, and 
he'd taken the brunt of their wrath, accomplishing his goal.

She never quite caught on, though, he concedes wryly, the 'territorial' 
thing was at least somewhat accurate.

An inward sigh.  Colton might have been a jackass, and probably still 
is, but he is a jackass that blazing up the VCS ladder, whereas 'Spooky' 
Mulder would be forever shut away, hidden in the basement of the J. 
Edgar Hoover building like the deformed, retarded family member no one 
wants to talk about, in a department with no chance of any recognition 
even if the temperature in hell dropped to absolute-zero tomorrow.

So despite what his deviant thoughts are telling him, he has no 
intention of screwing up her life even more or soiling the delicate 
ambience that lies between them...because there is something there that 
transcends the simple physical coil of mundane existence, more than just 
the bodies of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully sitting here in this room...a 
silent communication and understanding that goes beyond the ordinary, a 
spiritual (he imagines her rolling her eyes at that description) 
connection that flows much deeper, more intense than just a plain old 
tumble in the sack.

Even if that sex might be really great, which of course he'll never know 
because it'll never happen.

Nope.

Not ever.

He sneaks another look over to her, now busy scribbling something on the 
opened report, head tilted even further down, deep in thought in what 
was most likely an attempt to conjure up some really big and 
impressively obscure multi-syllabic word to send the Skinner flailing 
for his Oxford-American dictionary.  Eyebrows knitted, lips pursed, she 
brings her favorite fountain pen up to her face tapping it against her 
cheek in a soft rhythmic pattern, then ever so slowly, unconsciously, 
drawing it lower, and Mulder watches, transfixed, as what has to be the 
most adorable overbite in his world delicately clamp down on the end.

Um.

He shakes his head, dropping his eyes down to the folder to instantly 
derail that approaching train of thought.

Cattle mutilations.  Bovine evisceration.  Steer gastroenterology.

Besides, she isn't interested, even if what he's seen in her choice of 
men puts him right up her alley.

(Yeah right, you idiot, like she'd want some shmuck with a twenty-four 
year adolescent obsession over his sister...a selfish, arrogant bastard 
only two steps shy of being committed to an asylum, with the perverse 
belief in everything paranormal, who always ditched her and made her do 
all the paperwork, whose crusade effectively flushed her career down the 
toilet, resulted in her abduction, who-knows-what-the-hell experiments 
on her, killed her sister, and now gave her an inoperable nasopharyngeal 
cancer, and that doesn't exactly add up to the most romantic feelings 
for anybody, so no thank you sir, and fuck you sir, but I think you've 
done enough damage as it is.)

There.  He'd worked it all out by himself.

He closes his eyes, feeling much more relieved.

Except his head is pounding again.

"Mulder?"

Her soft touch on his shoulder nearly sends him through ceiling with a 
startled yelp.  Christ!  How she manages to materialize from out of 
nowhere is something he's going to have to investigate one day.

Opening his eyes to see those stunning blues framed by the tiny little 
furrows of worry between her eyebrows hover a foot away from him, all 
signs of former irritation forgotten in the immediate concern for his 
health, nearly takes his breath away, and he smiles despite the 
racquetball game gleefully whapping away inside his cranial mass.

"I'm okay.  You startled me, that's all."

Scully studies his face, reading every line from his forehead to his 
chin, then straightens up to lean back on the corner of the desk.

"I'm surprised the Social Worker let you come back to work so soon."

"She didn't.  I'm playing hooky."

"Mulder," That old, familiar sigh.  Comforting, somehow.  "Go home.  I'm 
pretty sure those dead cows won't be going anywhere."

"While you do what?"

The corner of her mouth twitches ruefully.  He is getting a little too 
adept at flinging her words back at her.

"Work.  Someone here has to."  She walks back around the desk, picking 
up the tape recorder.  "And I still have to make some sort of sense out 
of this mess."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Some sort of high pitched static buzz in the middle of the autopsy 
recording."

"Maybe it's your magnetic personality."

A groan.  Accomplishing his task, Mulder smirks, rising from his seat.

"Most likely a bad tape."

"Maybe if you play it backwards at half speed, you'll be able to catch 
'Aqualung.'"

She shoves him out the door, closing it behind him.



Tower Records
Arlington, Virginia


So, Brady is in a bad mood, see.  He's always figured by the time he's 
twenty five, he'll like, have this record contract, doing gigs & tours 
with his garage band 'Phlox,' on the road, making millions of bucks, 
diving into unlimited pussy at every stop and being so fucking famous 
that everyone will knock each other over in a scramble to kiss his 
scrawny ass, 'cause they do real music and don't suck like 'Hootie and 
the Blowjobs.'

Fuck if nothing ever turns out right.

'Cause, he's gonna be twenty five next week, and he's still here in 
shithole, Virginia standing behind the counter with this stupid, orange 
name tag that reads "Hi! My name is Brady!" ringing up other people's 
music at Tower Records.  No concert, no gigs.  Even his girlfriend is 
acting kinda funny, just recently being a total bitch, and he's got a 
funny suspicion she might be boffing Timmy, but Timmy's a fag, and 
Brady's really not phobic or anything, but shit, the guy's such a--

"Excuse me."

Some tall, lanky old dude with a leather jacket and white tee is 
standing in front of him, looking like some sort of throwback from a 
Marlon Brando or Jimmy Dean flick, not that they're not cool or 
anything, but jeez, this guy is OLD, what thirty-seven, thirty-eight?

He can see it now, it's gotta be a mid-life crisis or something like 
that.  He sees it all the time at the University.  Old dude listens to 
"Pearl Jam" or some other shit to impress young, dumb 19 year chicks -- 
they love that sensitive, mature stuff since he has some decent middle-
management job that pays for dinner and movies, plus he probably has a 
corvette or some other big dick-shaped car 'cause he's so fuckin-ayyy 
and all.

"What can I do ya for?"

He takes a disc out from his jacket pocket and hands it to the clerk.

"I was wondering, do you have any more by this group?"

"Nine Inch Nails?  Sure."

Fifteen minutes later, Brady rings up several new CDS for the guy who 
doesn't even ask about the albums to see if they're good or crap or 
anything.  He would have never pegged the guy to be the industrial type.  
Even if he were trying to be cool, this isn't really the big band stuff 
that impresses girls.  Goth chicks, maybe, but he doesn't seem to be 
into their kind of shit.

The guy opens his wallet and hands him his Visa.  Swiping it through the 
reader, he takes a look at the name on the credit card.  Fox Mulder.  
Mom and dad must've been hippies or beatniks or at least smoked a lotta 
dope at some time.

Probably got picked on or beat up a lot in grade school too.

"Cool name."

The older man scowls at him.

"Mulder's pretty common."

"No, dude, I was talking about...oh wait, I get it?"  Brady laughs.

The man is still scowling like he's got this killer bee up his ass.  
Sensitive fucker.  Guess he still gets razzed on about his name.

Not saying anything more, he hands the guy the charge slip and a pen, 
and packs his cd's in a bag as the dude scrawls his name and returns it.

"Thanks for shopping.  Come again."

So, Jimmy Dean Middle-aged Mulder nods and saunters away with the new 
collection of tunes dangling from his fingers, and Brady watches him go.

Not bad looking for a guy, not that he was into him or anything, but he 
supposes some babes might dig this dude, even if he does look 
permanently pissed.

But then the guy, turns back, like he forgot something, then says,

"A word of advice, Brady.  If you think she's cheating on you, she 
probably is."

Freaky.

Fuckin' spooky.



END DEA EX MACHINA

*    *    *    *

DEA EX MACHINA II: PRAXIS

*    *    *    *
O    N    E
*    *    *    *

"For the sake of duty, I have always driven to the edge of madness, to 
the brink of feeling myself, one foot stepping off the ledge and 
plummeting my soul into the unknown horrors of the evil of man, to 
identify with and become those who thrive on the outskirts of human 
misery. You, you have always brought me back from that precipice, 
prevented me from taking that final step from which I can never return, 
you, who have always been there, have always been my salvation, but I 
fear this time, however, you will not be able to take my hand to lead me 
back."

He pauses, taking a deep, shaky breath, feeling the nausea rise from the 
depths of his gut to his Adam's apple as the room spins with the fury 
that would make the hardiest sea salt lose his supper.  Swallowing 
another couple of Dramamines without water, the sickly sweet substance 
of the coat grating against his inner larynx, he dully wonders how many 
of the funny yellow pills he has ingested in the past few hours, 
seemingly too many to keep count of, and turns back to the hiss of the 
gears rolling against the tape of the hand-held recorder.

"I suppose what many had predicted of me was inevitable, perhaps I have 
been lucky for too long and that this is merely fate coming to collect 
it's toll for the previous times I have played with insanity but somehow 
managed to cheat my way out..."


One month earlier--


An Arson Crime Scene in
Erie, PA


Blackened. Burnt. Devastation. The faint, musty odor of ash rising into 
the air as a light drizzle of rain plinks silently down on the charred 
embers of the house, completely gutted except for the impassively solid 
concrete base, its only signs of a fire battle displayed in the angry, 
scorched marks on its surface.

He stops in front of the yellow tape line and lets his eyes drift close 
as he lifts his face up to the open sky to let the soft mist of water 
fall on his features. The slight curve in his
throat moves gently up and down as he takes a deep, shaky breath and 
tilts his head back down forcing his eyes to open, to assimilate the 
details of the crime scene.

Pausing from inspecting the remains of a victim, Special Agent Dana 
Scully glances back at her partner standing forlornly in the overcast 
light, his billowing black coat cleanly blending in with the sooty 
remains, a tall, lonely figure rising out from the ashes. She wonders if 
that is how he looked so many years ago, just a boy sitting among the 
ruins of his friend's house, that lost, sick feeling of utter 
helplessness. Haunted.

Snapping off the gloves, she abandons her work to step back under the 
line.

"Are you all right, Mulder?"

The agent shrugs in what he hopes passes for a noncommittal expression.

"Why, do I look a whiter shade of pale?"

"You didn't have to come along. This isn't exactly helping your phobia."

Biting the inside of his cheek, Mulder suppresses the urge to snap at 
her penchant for stating the obvious.  When the NCAVC asked for her to 
temporarily fill in for their unavailable medical examiner all the way 
up in Amish hell, he somehow ended up tagging along like a goddamned 
Queequeg despite the fact that this particular sight makes his innards 
tie themselves into a knot.  He even put up with the feeble, 'I-don't-
need-you-to-constantly-hover-over-me-you-overprotective-Neanderthal' 
bullshit rant that she'd tossed at him, probably out of sheer habit, 
because there was no way he was going to let her be 'fine' on her own 
and go driving for half a day, then muck around in this dump, not with 
the way she's been seeing things everywhere because the last thing he 
wants to do is find out that she'd plowed headlong into a telephone pole 
or the side of a building after wigging out from another one of those 
ill-timed wraiths that had nothing better to do than pop up uninvited at 
the Dana Scully mental house of horrors.

So fuck the Violent Crimes assholes if they think 'Spooky' Mulder is 
some sort of unweaned breast-feeder umbilically tied to his partner, 
fuck the fire and the poor, dead sap who ended up extra-crispy on this 
week's Chaco Chicken menu, fuck the ghosts, the apparitions, the 
bogeyman and the car he drove them here in.  Fuck it all, even if it was 
all illogical and stupid and he'd have week-long nightmares because of 
this.

But he doesn't say that.

"No, I'll be okay." A faint, reassuring smile.

She touches the side of his face for a moment, as if willing her 
strength and calm to flow into him through that brief contact point.

"This won't take too much longer," she murmurs, and he watches her step 
away from him, feeling the warmth flush still on his cheek where her 
fingers had been only moments before.

And he remembers why he does these illogical and stupid things.

Christ.  It's been three-and-a-half years, nearly forty months since the 
Marsden case, but the twisting in his gut feels as fresh as the newly 
formed ashes among the ruins, despite the unclear blur of events--

...Somehow getting the boys out of the burning house.

...Playing the dutiful agent and making his statement.

...Going straight home afterwards and vomiting in the toilet until there 
was nothing left, then curling up into a little ball on the cold tile 
floor.

He sighs, shifting his foot, hoping she finishes soon before he falls 
victim to the willies creeping up his abdomen.  Despite not caring about 
what the ABIS crew thinks of him, he really doesn't want an audience to 
witness the indignity of him slipping into a catatonic fetal position, 
even though the idea seems incredibly attractive right about now.

(Then don't think about it, knucklehead. You're the damn profiler. Start 
profiling.)

Clamping down on the queasiness spiraling out and threatening to run 
rampant in his midsection, he scans the scene with the cold, detached 
eye of years of Behavioral Sciences training, ticking off observations, 
factoids, and statistics as the gears grind methodically in his head.

The placement...

--So obvious--

The position of the body...

--So simple--

Indicates an arson-homicide...

--So wrong--

Or a homicide using the cover of fire...

--Not the first--

Meticulously planned, executed...

--Not the last--

As if done so many times before...

--Like the show?--

An experienced killer...

--Hate men--

Using anger, murder as a fuel...

--Hate women--

An organized serial killer...

--Hate everyone--

Kill everyone.


"Mulder!"

That slightly sharp pitch, that particular agitated inflection rapidly 
snaps him out of contemplation like a cold douse of water driving every 
single dark thought, every anxiety and fear straight out of his head, 
except for one. And that particular one brings him crashing through the 
rubble like an enraged bear, heart pushing up his throat, blindly 
unheeding of the angry shouts and glares of the other investigating 
agents, until he is, at last, at his partner's side.

(Dear god, no, not now, not another sight, just let me just get her away 
from this, get her away, get her, do something you fool, take the focus 
off her, say something...)

"What is it, Scully?"

With shaking fingers, she lifts up several fragments of melted plastic 
rectangles burnt into the blackened right hip of the corpse, mostly 
destroyed except for a few letters of name, a partial credit-card 
number, and a half-intact, curling picture on a driver's license. He 
carefully wipes the charcoaled smudges off the ID with his handkerchief, 
nearly snapping the card in two when he recognizes the face.

"Doctor Scanlon," she whispers.



Classroom 1
National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime
Quantico, VA


Click.

A contrast of white, metal, and a brownish-reddish blur splays itself 
against the wall accompanied by the humming of the slide projector.

Doctor Scully squints slightly at the picture and fiddles with the focus 
switch as the picture grains slowly sharpen to form into the blackened, 
curled corpse from the crime scene. Taking advantage of the few extra 
seconds to compose herself, the agent forces her mind to click into 
lecture mode, to steady her nerves and voice, and to push out what the 
discovery of this particular victim has meant to her, and that she is 
about to systematically take him apart before the agents of the Arson 
and Bombing Investigative Subunit.

"Though certain forms of identification reveal the deceased to be one 
Kevin Scanlon, male, aged forty-seven, positive ID can not be confirmed 
until we obtain dental records."

Click.

The next slide reveals what could be classified by the untrained eye as 
a squishy, pinkish, leaking mass oozing out of an overbroiled steak, 
blown up to all six-and-a-half feet of grisly glory.

"An autopsy revealed the absence of any amount of carbon monoxide or 
smoke residue in what remained of the alveolar mass in the lung. This 
indicates that the victim was dead prior to the fire, and may have been 
dead for quite a while."

As her voice rattles further on the details of her findings, her eyes 
scan out over the dark, shifting shapes, attempting to make out the one 
that is her partner.

"...further analysis included the discovery of fragments of metal..."

An authorative 'click' advances the next slide.

"...embedded in the neck,"

Click.

"...the sinus cavity,"

Click.

"...and gums."

"Maybe they're alien implants," a voice sneers out, accompanied by a few 
nervous chuckles.

A muffled splash immediately follows, its heels nipped by a sodden 
"Hey!"

"Sorry," a familiar tenor drawls. "I'm a bit clumsy in the dark.  Be 
careful, I also have a tendency to drop my gun as well, which could be 
tragic since the safety's stuck off."

More sniggers.

Agent Scully clears her throat loudly, glaring at the faint outline of 
silhouettes in front of her, before continuing in a voice expert in its 
ability to lower the temperature of the room by fifteen degrees, as 
another slide pops up on the wall.

"These were the objects recovered." She points to the triangular one 
gracing the upper left-hand corner of the picture.

"The tip of what appears to be a butter knife wedged above the posterior 
atlas of the spine."

Moving across the frame, she points to the smaller, pointed object, 
obscured in deep brown rust and goo, on the right side.

"Part of a nail file buried up in the superior nasal meatus."

Her hand drops down to the remaining blackened and crusting object left.

"A one-centimeter screw drilled into the gums right below the third left 
molar."

"Ah, what are your theories, Agent Scully?" That same sneering voice, 
though notably chastened.

"The sheer crudity of the work denotes extreme delusional and compulsive 
behavior. This person may be so-called 'experimenting' on the victims or 
believes he himself is an abductee and is acting out these fantasies in 
a similar fashion."

A long, uncomfortable silence hovers in the air, broken only by the hum 
of the slide projector, as no one dares to mention the name that 
instantly leaps into mind. Scully takes a deep breath, letting the words 
spill out before she can choke on them.

"We may have another Duane Barry out there."

Another long pause.

"Thank you, Agent Scully."

The machine dies with a weak rattle, settling the room into darkness 
moments before the fluorescent overhead lights snap on.  As Scully 
adjusts her eyes to the sudden brightness, the formerly oblique figures 
seated before her sharpening into clarity, much like the first muddled 
slide, and silently rise to file out of the room.  She notes, in 
passing, one particular agent awkwardly attempting to hide the wet, 
brown stain cooling in his lap with his binder, has developed an intense 
fascination with the main hallway.

After the door shuts behind the last person, she zooms in on her partner 
sitting innocently in the rear, the wire frame of his spectacles 
covering the most outrageously dishonest, little-boy look ever spread 
across his face. To his credit, Mulder has the minimal grace to appear 
only slightly smug in light of his unusually successful effort at 
bullying someone.

"Mulder..." She sighs, eyeing the incriminating empty Styrofoam cup on 
the left corner of his desk.  Well, at least he hadn't resorted to his 
standard male-rape threat, though he probably would have figured out a 
way to work it in had it gone far enough.

"I hope you aren't going to accuse me of wasting a perfectly good cup of 
lukewarm coffee on Agent Milchaud."

"Accusation usually infers at least a modicum of innocence."

He pauses in his attempt to look indignant, instantly switching tactics.

"You wouldn't hurt a guy wearing glasses, would you?"

*    *    *    *    *

Special Agent in Charge Bob Wasserman of the ABI Subunit covertly 
watches in mild trepidation as Spooky Mulder sits there quietly at a 
vacated desk, apparently lost in his own little universe, studying the 
contents of the recent file quickly being dubbed the 'Stake-n-Bake' 
Case.

Never said the boys weren't quick in their ability to spew off stupid 
nicks at the drop of a hat. And it was probably the same self-
congratulatory group that originally gave the Spookster his charming 
little moniker as well, though, as the ASAC continues to observe the 
agent, something about this particular guy's demeanor doesn't exactly 
strike him as the demented, starry-eyed, foo-fighter-chasing crank 
snickered about in Behavioral Sciences, who, despite all the derision, 
name-calling, and downright nasty little-sister jokes, carries a profile 
accuracy rating still historically unsurpassed by any one else in the 
Bureau.

So when Spooky Mulder volunteers to do a monograph, no one turns him 
down.

Not even Milchaud, despite stumbling out of the classroom over a half-
an-hour ago, with the contents of a McDonald's eight million dollar 
lawsuit lovingly splattered on him. In all honesty, the agent's ill-
timed remark wasn't too far off from what everybody was thinking. He'd 
just had the unfortunate stupidity to say it out loud.

After going through the contents of what seems to be six or seven times, 
Spooky finally closes the folder and puts his face in his hands. Tiredly 
rubs his eyes, then fishes out from his coat one of those Tylenol sample 
packets he sees sitting by the bucketfuls in hospitals and doctors' 
offices, and pops the capsules in his mouth, swallowing them dry. Then 
drops his face back behind that wall of fingers.

Just then, the Mrs. walks in and all eyes, meaning to or not, 
automatically swing to her. It isn't too often that Violent Crimes gets 
a female presence to grace it, especially one with legs you could just 
die for a lick behind one knee, that jaw-dropping combination of the 
most vivid blue eyes and red hair he's ever seen, and guts steely enough 
to unflinchingly crack open the most putrescent ribcage of a two-week 
old drown victim.  All that combined plus the unfettered testosterone 
and male locker-room mentality inherent to the section, and you can tell 
when Agent Scully's been around that day by the dozen or so graphic 
dominatrix-doctor-role-playing fantasies floating about the general pool 
the same late afternoon.

Her eyes flicker around the room, cursorily passing over everyone,
searching for something.

Evidently you have to be psychotic or dead for Doctor Scully to even 
spare you a second glance, and then it's being faced with either a gun 
or scalpel in hand, neither option particularly arousing.  Which is how 
her other non-obscene unofficial moniker ended up being 'Freak Magnet.'

No, that's wrong, he amends.  The only attention she ever pays to anyone 
is to her partner and when her radar finally locks on to him, she heads 
in his direction, pointedly ignoring everybody else in the room.  
Wasserman supposes pairing up accident-prone Spooky with the good doctor 
was sheer budgetary brilliance that the bigwigs are still slapping each 
other on the back for, considering the number of times the agent manages 
to land himself in the hospital. A bullet-charmer, as accounting 
affectionately labels it.

Spooky lifts his head up as she puts a hand on his shoulder sitting at 
the corner of his desk and murmuring something to him.  He listens, then 
murmurs something back. A nod. A glance.

Oh, how the rumors flew about this particular pair, but they had, for 
the most part, been totally unsubstantiated, though, he notes, he has 
never seen partners communicate quite like that.  Then again the same 
speculations concerning Dana Scully and Jack Willis had made the gossip 
mill six years back, all of which had never been quite confirmed either.

And Lord-Jesus-fucking-Christ, Spooky suddenly swivels his head right 
towards him with this weird, speculative look, as if the guy's actually 
heard what he's been thinking all this time, and to make it worse, his 
partner's also following the line of his sight and is now also looking 
at him as well.

Wasserman drops his eyes down to the papers in front of him, suddenly 
quite interested in the contents of the newest 302 to hit his desk. 
Feeling the focus shift, he lets himself glance back up as the Bullet-
charmer and the Freak Magnet both get up and turn to leave, the former 
pausing briefly to pick up his folder and let her pass in front of him, 
his hand unconsciously traveling to the small of her back, and as their 
footsteps fade down the hall, the ASAC lets out a long breath he didn't 
know he was holding.

*    *    *    *    *
T    W    O
*    *    *    *    *

"All right, Mulder, care to tell me what happened back there?"

Fingers drum on the steering wheel in an internal rhythmic pattern, 
mutely answering the question as his foot presses slightly harder on the 
gas pedal, sending the Taurus grumbling up to a protesting sixty-five.

Dana Scully doesn't expect a long oratorium, just something, a word, a 
grunt, a stupid joke, anything to dissolve the silence of what looks 
like is going to transpire into another one of her partner's black 
moods, a condition showing up with disturbing frequency these days.

Mulder was always moody, but rarely mercurial.

She would attempt to tell a blonde joke herself, but for some reason, 
they all come out as 'Question: Where does Detective White do when she 
wakes up in the morning? Answer: Why she goes home, of course,' the 
punchline inevitably fizzling out before the setup even finishes, which 
is probably unfair in light of it all, because Mulder's told a gazillion 
groaners on a regular basis.

"What do you mean?" he finally answers.

"You practically shoved me out the door back at Quantico, trying to get 
me out of the place like it was on fire."  Ugh, not a good analogy, she 
mentally berates herself, watching him reflexively twitch at the last 
word.  "What's going on?" she concludes lamely.

"I didn't care much for what Wasserman was thinking."

"What?"

"Never mind." Then, silence again. And that drumming.

Mulder shifts in his seat, feeling Scully's eyes drill into the side of 
his head as acutely as one of her cranial saws, boring in past the skin, 
past the bone and meningeal layer, exposing the cavity and attempting to 
pick out the pieces inside the mess of cobwebs and cosmic sludge of his 
brain.

What can he say to her that won't get him committed for sure?  His 
perception of people, what they think, they feel, suddenly it seems all 
so obvious, their actions, every movement, every twitch, unconscious 
glance or fidget, it's like he's suddenly looking inside of everyone, 
and unfortunately, they seem to be all shouting, assailing him at once.

Except for Scully.

Stupid thing is, metaphysical connection or not, he still can't read 
what the hell is going on in her head half the time.  And he finds it 
extremely odd and endlessly frustrating that except for her regrettably 
bad ability to act, he can't pick out her thoughts like he can do with 
just about anybody else, considering he'd eagerly give up a limb to be 
able to snoop at the details of her mind.

(Shut the fuck up, Mulder.)

Christ, there'd been two psychos who'd tried to lobotomize her, all in a 
span of less than six months, and here he was, asshole supreme, now 
trying to do the same thing mentally.  That fucking rage of curiosity 
was wholly the fault of the bitch Pandora, her weakness tirelessly 
driving his thoughts 'round in an endless moebius strip.

He eases on the gas, dropping the velocity a fraction below the speed 
limit, clearing out that pointless mental loop.

Enigmatic Doctor Scully, indeed.

A rustle of clothing catches his eye as she arches her back, stretching. 
The subsequent glance downwards reveals a pair of experimentally 
wiggling toes freed from the confines of sensible shoes.  Which can only 
mean--

"Maybe I should drive," she offers.

"I'd rather not."

"We'd get back faster."

Dana Scully, Magna Cum Laude graduate of the Evil Knievel school of "we 
don't need no stinkin' brakes" driving, who feels it ultimately 
necessary to spend as little time possible in connecting the distance 
between two points, who can get from Annapolis to the office in under an 
hour and a half, despite rush-hour traffic, the little speed demon who 
picked her teeth with the bones of drag racers after she'd chewed them 
up for a snack now wants to commandeer the vehicle to the dismay of one 
Fox Mulder.

>From a simple physical inspection, no one would never think that the 
inside of one of those dainty feet contained at least twenty pounds of 
pure, unadulterated lead. Hell, if there was anything that would've 
turned Mulder religious it would be her driving, finding the attraction 
of the instant prayer irresistible once when she hit the New Jersey 
turnpike at seventy, sending the poor Taurus screaming through the U-
turn like greased fucking lightning on amphetamines.

And then she has the gall to wonder why he insists on driving most of 
the time.

"That's because you're oblivious to things like speed limits and stop 
signs and pedestrians."

"You're exaggerating."

"Well, maybe not pedestrians. You do make at least a half-hearted 
attempt to miss the ones who try to get out of the way."

Still, it is rather cute seeing those tiny bare feet work authoratively 
on the pedals, even if it is only out of the corner of streaming vision 
as they're being propelled forward with enough g-force to slam his 
eyeballs into the back of his skull.

"That's getting old, Mulder. Just like your obligatory need to hum 'The 
Little Old Lady From Pasadena' every time I get behind the wheel."

He weighs the decision of her ankles against his lunch of sunflower 
seeds and a change of boxer shorts then taps on the accelerator again, 
bringing the car up once more to sixty-five.

Attention drawn from his driving abilities down to the contents of the 
case folder, Scully flips through the documents, one by one, eyes 
slightly narrowing into a frown as she brings the report closer to her 
face.

"You're squinting again."

"Hm?" "

Where are your glasses?"

"I dunno. Somewhere in the office, I think."

But he's noticed that she's also taken to doing her field notes and 
reports without them too, and he's pretty damn sure it's not vanity.  
He's also pretty damn sure she hasn't gotten any contact lenses lately, 
either.  Well at least it isn't any sort of major vision impairment 
she's afflicted with, just a mild bit of nearsightedness, something that 
affects him as well.

That slightly myopic way of viewing things.

"I heard you offered to do the profile for this."  She flips through the 
pages.

"Surprisingly enough, Wasserman didn't seem to have any problem with 
it."

"And you thought everyone in Violent Crimes considered you a nutcase."

"Only you know where I store my nuts, Scully." A smirk.

"Oh, have you finally gotten them shipped back from England?"

"Ouch."

Four years of endless verbal fencing with her permanently glib partner 
have sharpened Dana Scully's repartee to a level that would boggle the 
mind of any unfortunate soul who stumbled upon their exchange, but she 
silently wonders if she would be able to carry on a regular conversation 
without a hint of innuendo or morbid humor ever again.

Probably not.

Smiling inwardly, she pauses at an unfamiliar picture.  It is not of 
Scanlon but of another charred, decaying figure, rotting among the 
ashes.  Several more of the same series follow in suit.

"Where did you get these?"


"Where did I get what?"

He sneaks a sidelong glance only to be hit with a look the effects of 
which could be described as mild sunburn.  Agent Mulder wisely resists 
the urge to chuckle.

"That is, or rather, was Garvin Hewitt from New Hampshire, also died two 
weeks ago in a fire as well.  The coroner stated there were pieces of 
metal lodged in the victim's body but attributed it to flying shrapnel 
when the place went up."

"It is more than a likely possibility."

"It also seems that Hewitt was also an active member of the local MUFON 
Branch there."

"So you think the person who killed Scanlon is the same one who killed 
this guy."

"The MO and the idea behind it seem familiar.  VCS had this particular 
one on file, but I can guarantee you there are probably more similar 
unsolved arson-homicides in the VICAP database. Given the nature of the 
cases, these could be deemed an X-file, so Skinner will most likely give 
us the green light to take it from them."

Scully looks at him for a long moment, contemplating things in her head, 
then, slowly, deliberately, closes the folder.

"No."

He nearly goggles at her reply, the car swerving for a second as 
suddenly numb fingers fight for control of the steering wheel.

"It's Violent Crimes' case, let them handle it."

"But," Mulder sputters, "Finding this killer might bring us some answers 
about your abduction, there might be something this--"

"This has nothing to do with my..." the sentence trails out as she 
swallows trying to dislodge the final word stuck in her throat.

"This is just some sick sonofabitch with an implant fetish."

"A sick sonofabitch with detailed knowledge of alien abductions?"

"A sick sonofabitch who just might have read Jose Chung or Whitley 
Streiber."

The car comes to a screeching halt up on the bank, kicking up clouds of 
gravel and dust.  Inside, Mulder looks straight out ahead into the 
disappearing road.

"You said it yourself, we may have another Duane Barry on our hands."

"In case you've forgotten, Mulder, Duane Barry was also insane!  What's 
going to happen if we do find him? Are you going to listen to another 
set of bedtime abduction stories? And then what? Considering how trigger 
happy you are these days, it makes me wonder, are you going pull another 
Wild Bill Hickock?  Are you, Mulder?"

"I never asked you to cover my ass."  He manages through gritted teeth, 
feeling the blood rush from his arms, his legs, his torso, all in a 
maddening race up into his head.  Two more minutes and the damn steering 
wheel will probably end up in his lap.

Despite the overwhelming need to slap her partner silly, she stands her 
ground, damping down on her rising hysteria, willing herself only to 
gaze calmly, icily at the man seated next to her.
She has stared down bigger, much more intimidating men than Mulder in 
her time.

"It wasn't only _your_ ass I was covering, Mulder."

Cold. Rational. Like a mental smack to his head.  He leans back into the 
chair, closing his eyes, taking a long, deep breath.  She was right, she 
was always right about things like this, but shit, didn't she 
understand? Didn't she know that this possibility, any possibility just 
might be something...

Her voice again, but softer--

"I know what you're trying to do, what you're hoping to find with this. 
But you're only grasping at shadows this time, Mulder."

"Some shadows turn out to be more substantial than you think."

"Some.  But not this one."

He sighs.

"Look, I've already agreed to write this up. A bit of research into 
VICAP this weekend can only help the boys, right?"

His calmer tone belies the stubborn look of his face and set jaw.  There 
will be no way to talk him out of this.  One more argument at this point 
and he will most likely go off half-cocked on his own in another ill-
timed ditch, trying, in his thoughtless way, to save the world. Which 
means she will have to chase after him, hunt him down, then kick his 
stupid, inconsiderate ass up and down the street after she saves it once 
again.

And she is so, so tired of that.


At least she had managed to wring a concession out of him this time, 
even if he will most likely forget it by Monday morning.  Well, not 
forget, noting his eidetic memory, but rather, a
selective amnesia.

Very selective.

Hearing no further protests from her, he starts up the car, drawing off 
the bank as she silently gazes out of the window watching the receding 
light.

It is not the fantastical, outlandish cases that disturb Dana Scully as 
do the mundane ones. Of all the Eugene Tooms, Virgil Incantos and 
Leonard Betts that roam the fringes of reality, the worst monsters are 
the human ones, the Luther Lee Boggs and John Mostows, the ones that 
hunt not out of physical need, but for mental pleasure, these are the 
ones that take a toll on her partner's mind.

Each picture, each profile invades his mind, slicing a bit of Mulder 
away with each case, mentally devouring him as much as the cancer does 
to her brain.  Suddenly, investigating bovine exsanguination in Arkansas 
doesn't seem like such a bad idea after all. Suddenly, it seems much 
more feasible, a much safer alternative for them to investigate, 
ridiculous quest or not.


She had seen Jack Willis fall into the same obsession, the same trances 
Mulder falls in now, fixated on suspect, completely oblivious to 
everything else except the need to enter the perpetrator's mind, become 
one with the monster.  She had learn to profile from Jack and had always 
considered him to be the best, until the evening he came over to her 
apartment, muttering something angrily about what Spooky had done.

"Spooky?"

"Spooky Fox Mulder, headcase and wonderboy of Violent Crimes."

There had been a string of armored truck robberies within in the past 
three months, the guards all dead with no witnesses and few clues.  
Investigative Support deduced that former guards who worked with the 
companies were in on the heist, having intimate knowledge of pickup 
times, patterns, and routes. So while the boys were doing background 
checks on security guards, Robbins jokingly tossed the file to Mulder, 
who was working on a particularly harrowing case involving a  pedophilic 
child killer, at the time.

"How about an instant cure, Spook?" He joked.  Mulder flipped 
disinterestedly through the files for about fifteen minutes, then tossed 
it back with a completely wacky theory.

"The mechanics?" Dana echoed dubiously.

"Sick part is," Jack sighed, "He was absolutely right.  They would rig 
the truck to break down, the guards would radio an emergency into 
dispatch, but the calls never made it through.  Instead they were 
intercepted by these guys who sent out their tow trucks, and that's how 
they did it. Afterwards, they fixed the trucks so that there seemed to 
be nothing wrong. We picked them up at another attempted heist today."

"You don't sound too happy."

"Three months investigating this case and this guy comes up with a 
solution in fifteen minutes. Yeah, I'm a little ticked.  I'm not the 
only one though.  Patterson shit a brick when he found out his guys had 
been upstaged by the Spook."

"I gather he's good, then."

"Best damn profiler the ISU ever had the unfortunate luck to lose.  At 
least by reputation."

"Better than you?" She arched an eyebrow.

He simply looked at her, a curious mixture of wonderment and jealousy.

"Spooky is better than the perps themselves."

It took a lot to impress Jack, and evidently this Spooky had managed to 
without even setting out to do so.  She was even more curious to know 
how such an agent could be held in such equal amounts of derision and 
awe.

"You're not his type, dear." Jack teased.

"Should I be relieved or should you?" She teased back.

Dana Scully proceeded to do a bit of research on Special Agent Fox 
Mulder, at first looking him up in the Bureau's database.  He had 
graduated with an B.A. in Psychology from Oxford before entering 
Quantico.  His Academy class records were impressive, excelling in 
forensics and psychology, his natural forte.  At the worst, specifically 
in physical pathology, he was passable.  Probably a fainter, she snorted 
reading the last part.

His pistol range qualifications, however, were not quite as stellar. He 
barely met minimum. Consecutively.  Looking further, she realized it 
wasn't just because of bad aim, but also, he simply stopped shooting 
after making the requirements.

Just packed up and left.

In the archives, she found an article in the December '88 issue of the 
FBI Review detailing the Monty Props case.  She read the monograph, 
finding it chillingly accurate, filled incredible detail practically 
down to his shoe size. His career had been skyrocketing at Violent 
Crimes, one success after another, despite his apparent heavy stomping 
of more than a few bureaucratic toes.

Then, inexplicably, in 1992, he transferred to a relatively unknown and 
abandoned division and more or less disappeared.


Disappeared into the X-files, she finishes silently, feeling the sway as 
the car makes a left into the familiar urban evening streets of D.C..

A babysitting assignment for her that somehow managed to weave itself 
into the very being of their lives, of creatures that go bump in the 
night, of nine lost minutes, of government conspiracy and 
extraterrestrials, of abductions and experiments, of cancer and of 
dying. Life and death inexorably wrapped in the embrace of truth and 
lies.

Life. Death. Truth. Lies. Black. White. Right. Wrong. Years ago they 
would have been obvious. Today, all the former extremes have overlapped 
and blended, former edges blurred into an ever diluting expanse of grey. 
A purgatory of sorts, her life suspended indefinitely by a tenuous, thin 
line, twisting, shaking, waiting with breathless anticipation for the 
break to finally come.

To fall or to rise, she doesn't care.

'Oh, there's plenty of room in that cold, dark place for liars, Scully,' 
the hollow voice of Luther Lee Boggs purrs, and she shivers as his icy, 
dead fingers brush fleetingly against her cheek.



The Mutual UFO Network -- New Hampshire Division
Rye, NH


His shoes tread softly against the unpolished floor, then stop.  
Pausing, waiting, letting the presence of the room invade his pores.

Like a woman it draws him to her inner sanctum, opening herself up, and 
allows him to plumb its depths, to investigate its mysteries. It 
caresses his mind with possibilities, covering his eyes with the hazy 
gauze of elusive information, and whispers yet to be divulged secrets 
into his eager ears.

The scratched floor tells the story of constantly moved furniture, the 
folders tell another about chemical esterases and nucleotides. No 
windows to see outside of this world, no disturbances from without, only 
the comforts of ascetism and compulsive tidiness, work as joy, pleasure, 
life, the mysteries of the universe infinitely more alluring than the 
touch of a lover.

Garvin Hewitt's desk.

Deconstruct a man to recompile his killer.

He dives through books, through folders, and stacks and stacks of 
papers, picking up notes and random scribblings but finding nothing that 
will give him a taste of the other's mind. He lifts
the telephone off the stack of phone books piled beneath it. Gripping 
them by the spine, he first shakes the yellow pages, then the white, 
until a shiny piece of plastic rolls dislodges from its hiding place to 
clatter hollowly onto the floor.

Another compact disc. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra with the Robert 
Shaw Chorale performing Orff.

Find me.

Catch me.

Kill me, it taunts.


Arrogant little shit.

He opens his leather-bound field journal and tucks the disc into its 
recesses.

Two days later, Special Agent Fox Mulder delivers the profile.

*    *    *    *    *
T    H    R    E    E
*    *    *    *    *

A Chrysalis.

The pupae. Transformation into the surreal.

With each kill the it is refreshed, rejuvenated.

The worm asks and the worm receives, its joy the ultimate pleasure, its 
fury, unbearable pain. It feeds on misery, is aroused by suffering, and 
grows stronger and stronger with each one taken. The worm feeds the 
Chrysalis the nectar of souls it drains, hardens and polishes its shell 
to a brilliant obsidian. Wrapped in their symbiosis, monster and angel 
dance, kiss, make love in the beauty of death.

>From the Chrysalis will emerge a new being, a demigod awakening, shaking 
off the embracing silk of hibernation and trading its old, wrinkled skin 
for a sleek body of steel and wings of ether and fire.

It will be magnificent.



Dana Scully's Apartment
5:30 AM


The buzzing of the alarm jars the breath of almost sunrise, its 
incessant shriek joined by the cacophony of accompanying peeps from a 
few ambitious avians noisily fluffing sleep off themselves against the 
window sill. In a reflex born through years of swatting snooze buttons, 
a hand shoots out from under snug covers, instinctually striking its 
prey, the offending clock, with unerring accuracy, cutting off the 
synthesized bleat in mid-sputter.

With a deep, sleepy sigh, Dana Scully tosses the covers back, preparing 
to step out of the warm recesses of her bed and brave the chill morning 
air, when a barely audible moan drifting from the far left corner of her 
bedroom captures her attention.

Instantly snapping awake, she whips her Sig out of its holster situated 
on the nightstand and levels it at the general direction of the 
intruder--

Another apparition.

This time, a girl, a little one crying noiselessly except for that 
strangling, weak wail, the ethereal moan from a pale, translucent form, 
a lifeless likeness with upward-turned flat, dead eyes and wordlessly 
moving lips flapping open, shut, open, shut.

Intense, almost garish, red blood gurgles out of its ear and oozes down 
the neck to stain the shoulders of shimmering white cotton pajamas, 
slowly spreading across its front like sticky maple sap on a hot summer 
day.

Then, the wraith slowly combusts, flames emerging from behind her body, 
and like a rapidly melting candle, tongues of yellow and orange lick 
away at the young flesh, devouring first the long brown hair and 
eyebrows, turning white cloth into blackened curling soot that sticks to 
its skin with blistering vengeance.  The fire works its way around to 
the eyes, melting and dripping dangling out of sockets by a long blue 
cord, fingernails, fingers, lips, ears, face, burning, charring the 
epidermis, worming into the soft meat, charring muscle and fat inside 
the crisp, black shell.

Grinning madly, the apparition opens its mouth to speak, but only a 
burst of fire erupts from the core of that gaping maw as the raging heat 
envelops everything, stripping everything down to browned skeletal 
remains, bones shaking, wobbling with the intensity of an unstable 
skyscraper of cards. A sigh emerges from its lipless grin, pleading, 
begging, beckoning before the irresistible force of gravity finally 
collapses it into a pile on the floor.

Then, ever so slowly, it fades out, banished by assailant daylight, as 
the Doppler blaring of fire trucks and police cars scream by on the 
outside avenue.

Clutching her knees to her chest, the gun resting tightly against her 
shins, Dana stares vacantly at the now empty corner for a long, long 
time.



Humbert Warehouse/Storage Co.
Annapolis, MD


Escalating fetishist.

That is the first thought that flits across Mulder's mind even as he 
pulls up behind the flashing lights of police cars and endless streams 
of splayed yellow tape being rolled over the damply smoldering kindling, 
the idea hitting just before the usual one strikes, the one that tells 
him exactly what kind of a dumbfuck he is for showing his terrified-
shitless mug at yet another impromptu barbeque.

He pops open the glove compartment, drawing out rarely used Serengeti 
shades classically favored by the infamous MiB's and drops another two 
Extra Strength Tylenols, though what he really wants right now runs more 
along the lines of prescription beta-blockers. Slipping the sunglasses 
on, he takes a deep breath and opens the door and stands, forcing his 
knees not to wobble as he strides up to the crime scene.

Those from the local PD who happen to look his way might think Special 
Agent Fox Mulder is a vain little prick, a GQ cover boy stopping on the 
sidelines, unwilling to get his charcoal Armani suit (marred only by a 
hideous chartreuse-and-grey striped tie) and London Fog trench coat 
dirty. And then there are those sunglasses. Those obscure, smoky lens 
reflecting the ashes of scenery and nothing of its owner, the effect 
transcending the ordinary into way-too-slick FBI chic.

They would see the shades and wouldn't see the dark, hollowed rings 
under his eyes, looking as if he had come off the loser in a week-long 
boxing match with sleep, they wouldn't see the red, puffy eyelids of 
histamines working overtime, the bloodshot, yellow eyes of millions of 
screaming capillaries and bled tear ducts, they wouldn't see the look of 
despair flowing out only from his pupils, spilling into his irises and 
corneas, nor the effort only revealed in those eyes of his superhuman 
effort to maintain control over the rigidly impassive mask he has on 
display.

All they would see is Fox Mulder standing very still, silently clutching 
his case folder to him, like a priest his bible during a particularly 
harrowing exorcism.



Dana Scully's Apartment--


It could have been two minutes or two hours, but Dana couldn't tell.

Still huddled, frozen in place, her thoughts stuck in replay mode, she 
doesn't have the benefit of at least the few minutes respite of a 
videotape rewind, as that scene plays in her head over and over and over 
again, a morbid football game constantly rehashing the winning touchdown 
from only one angle--the child bleeding, the child burning, bleeding, 
burning, bleeding, burning...

The shrill squawk of the phone punctures the air and the image jiggles 
in a mental glitch.

One. Two. Three rings. After the third, the answering machine picks up 
with "This is Dana Scully, please leave a message." The standard beep 
follows, then a mumbled curse before the ubiquitous dial tone of a 
frustrated hang-up. Five seconds later, Scully's cellular phone chirps. 
Relentlessly. Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen times.

After about nineteen or twenty, she picks up.

"Scully?" breathlessly spills out of the phone's speaker before she even 
gets it to her ear.

"Yeah."

"Scully...there's been another one." She swallows hard before asking the 
inevitable.

"A little girl?" Dead silence. As if the entire world had suddenly 
forgotten to breathe.

"Where?" She finally asks.

"Humbert Storage. That's six blocks from you. I'm there right now."

"I'll meet you."

"Scully, maybe you shouldn't--" The click of her phone cuts his words 
off.


Pressing the "end" button a little too hard, Mulder bows his head 
slightly forward, pressing the cellular against his forehead before 
letting out a deep, bitter sigh.

Ordinarily he would be thinking of other little girls, Samantha, Amy 
Jacobs, and all those children who had the hearts cut from their 
pajamas, struggling with an impossible, and ridiculous, moot theory of 
how he could have prevented this tragedy from even taking place, 
mentally lashing himself for not somehow, being able to stop it.

But right now he is thinking of Scully, having traded in his old habit 
self-flagellation over his sister for a newer one involving his partner, 
a fresher set of livid wounds to pick at. He thinks of her enduring 
hours of driving every day just because she couldn't live in D.C. 
anymore, of her choice to be nearer to her mother and the sea, and of 
all the restless ghosts who have now begun to find her again.

She hadn't considered moving from her apartment in D.C. after Eugene 
Victor Tooms broke in and tried to eviscerate her, sans fava beans and a 
nice Chianti.

She hadn't considered moving even after returning from her three-month 
abduction.

She didn't consider moving until the evening of the twenty-seventh of 
April in 1995.

He remembers following Scully through that door with the 35 on it, 
sweeping the area for listening devices and any residual signs of 
Krycek, scouring the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom, only to come 
back out to see her still standing in the living room looking down at 
the grisly set of rust-colored stains on the floor.

The very spot where Melissa Scully was gunned down.

Then she turned around and walked out.

"I--I can't go back in," she told him. "All I see is the blood, and 
then...I imagine her lying there."

So while she spent the rest of her downtime awaiting reinstatement at 
her mother's, the movers loaded up her furniture-- her bed, her couches, 
and that claw-footed bathtub and carted them from D.C. all the way up to 
her new home in Annapolis.

She lost her entire deposit because the bloodstains didn't quite wash 
out, but never went back to dispute the claim, and Mulder somewhat 
jealously wondered how she manages to move ahead, to go on with such 
resolute determination, remembering all to clearly how he himself had 
wanted to simply die when he thought Samantha was lost forever.

But Scully has always been stronger than him. He recalls how 
frighteningly easy it was to give up, to fall into despair, when she was 
in that coma, a feeling that should have been replaced by effused joy 
when she recovered, but somehow, instead, managed to convert itself into 
a private shame locked deep within his soul.  A shame that can never be 
expunged because it is constantly reinforced with the knowledge that she 
has never given up on him--not in Alaska, when she brought him back from 
the dead, not when everyone else resigned him to fate as a boxcar fajita 
in New Mexico, not even when he'd had the gun to her face and she was 
screaming at him to fight it...

The 'I want to believe' poster in the office is right on target: a poor, 
wishy-washy, self-doubting, passive statement that concentrates all of 
what is Fox Mulder into one little sentence.

Pathetic.

He sees the tiny approaching figure that is Scully walk up the street 
and flash her badge to the police, looking only slightly unkempt, as if 
she had rushed in dressing. As she nears, he also notices that this is 
the first time in a while that she hasn't bothered with make-up. Just a 
brush through the hair, a bit of lipstick, and out the door. Add that to 
the light sprinkling of freckles he hadn't realized he missed until now, 
and she might have stepped out of a time portal from a few years back. 
But moving closer and the faint lines around her forehead, her mouth, 
become visible, her cheekbones and chin jut out more tightly, her 
haunted eyes reflect years of horror and pain. That combined with the 
aura of the Doctor and agent, the air of serious, dignified intellect 
that steely refuses to give any indication of how rattled she is, and 
she has suddenly come a long way from the woman who initially drew back 
sickened at Pfaster's cosmetic corpse de-enhancements.

For a minute he considers offering her his sunglasses, but wordlessly 
hands her the case file instead.

Opening the folder up, Scully finds her partner's report at the very 
top, neatly penned out instead of typed. Glancing through the pages of 
detailed description, it is an almost dizzying marvel to see how his 
mind has worked this particular miracle, how that eidetic memory has 
linked all of the clues together and somehow, impossibly, rendered a 
profile out of the gibberish of clues and half-suppositions.

"The suspect is a Caucasian female--" she reads aloud.

"Scanlon didn't seem the type to be into manicures," he drones 
tonelessly. "Go on, I love listening to myself write."

"--late thirties to early forties. Tall, nearly six feet and incredibly 
strong. She believes that something or some things are calling to her, 
encouraging her to commit these atrocities. Though her actions display 
some knowledge of the subject of extraterrestrials, the probability of 
her being an abductee is unlikely."

"Like you said, Scully, all textbook knowledge."

"The suspect may have been married once, but is no longer. She also has 
no children or pets--"

"Five to one, feral cats are afraid of her."

"--and is unemployed, but reasonably well off and able to travel at 
will, most likely through a recent inheritance. She has suffered a 
trauma, a great loss, something that drove her to commit her first act 
of murder, and once that step was taken, developed a taste for it--"

"She obviously never discovered Pez or gardening as a hobby."

"The burning of the victims for her involves a two-fold reason, the 
first, as a way to destroy evidence except for what she wants to be 
discovered. The second is a symbolic process, a ritual of her rebirth 
from destruction, like a phoenix rising from the fire."

"Just think of Sylvia Plath with a Chuckie Manson complex."

She looks up at Mulder's face partially hidden behind the shield of 
Serengetis, above the shades, beads of cold sweat standing out on his 
forehead, below, mouth twisted into a smile reeking of sarcasm.

To her knowledgeable eyes, looking absolutely ill.

He has changed subtly, but definitively. The demeanor, while always 
dark, has deepened, as if someone had pulled the plug containing his 
tightly wound emotions and hooked them up to a neural amplifier. His 
humor, once gentle and self-mocking, is now harsh and scathing. He is 
constantly moody, argumentative, condescending. He is Mulder with every 
demon, every vice loose and on the rampage, the id working in overdrive 
to propel him forward ever so closely to the lip of some unidentifiable 
chasm.

"Agent Mulder," a forty-ish, slightly balding, paunchy police detective 
interrupts, ducking under the ubiquitous yellow line down to trudge 
towards the pair, his badge flopping loosely against his belt.

"We found the child's body, or rather what was left of it. You think 
this one might be related to your case?" Scully's eyes flicker to her 
partner in surprise.

"Depending on how the coroner's report turns out," he answers coolly, 
though one bead of sweat dislodges itself to roll down the side of his 
face.

The detective nods and then heads off to speak to the ME. Mulder 
gestures faintly to the folder in Scully's hands, answering her unasked 
question.

"I was going to drop it to Violent Crimes today, but this..." his voice 
fades momentarily before regaining strength. "This changes things."

"Mulder, I find it hard to believe Skinner will even let you touch this 
one, especially in light of your last outing with a child killer."

"Believe what you want, Scully, I don't want to argue semantics. I'm 
going to do this either with or without you. Which will it be?"

Another bead of water rolls down Mulder's cheek, but not from his 
forehead. As he turns and takes five steps away from her, reflexively 
clenching and unclenching his fists, Scully thinks of Sisyphus, his 
strained, tired muscles pushing the boulder uphill, millimeter by 
millimeter, inch by painful inch, only to have it inevitably slip from 
his grasp at the moment of possible victory and roll all the way back 
down, crashing back to the beginning. She thinks of the broken man and 
his eternal burden of punishment, of anticipation and futility.

Then she thinks of Mulder and his boulder, his burden, dedicating 
himself to a case that, in one movement has become personal, another 
sister to save or avenge in his eternal act of penitence, a fumbling 
attempt to somehow to patch that gaping tear rent across his soul. She 
can not fault him for his crusade, even though every one drives the 
wounds deeper, sacrifices his mind, his body, his soul in the ultimate 
bargain for a flicker of redemption.

And what she has seen today, the horrible plea of the anguished child's 
spirit, crying out against this monstrosity, seeking vengeance, justice. 
Closure. Those images have etched themselves permanently into her 
memory, refusing to be ignored or shut away.

Mulder offered her a choice, but does she really have one?

No.

"Skinner will probably chew me out again if you get yourself hurt," she 
says lightly, though her answer weighs heavily in the air.

The back of her partner's head nods curtly. Then softly, almost shyly, 
without turning around, Fox Mulder breathes,

"Thanks, Scully."

*    *    *    *    *
F    O    U    R
*    *    *    *    *

Annapolis PD Basement Morgue
12:55 PM

Clicking into professional mode has never been particularly difficult 
for Dana Scully. Whether it is the suit, badge and the weapon on her hip 
that define the Special Agent or the clinical scrubs and latex gloves 
that work as the props of the MD, she settles quite comfortably in 
either of the two roles, much more so than the one of simply being Dana.

Tonight, the pathologist is on stage, the cold, sterile air of the room 
setting the background for clinical activity like candlelight to a 
romantic evening and she goes through each step in her ritual of 
transformation. First, the scrubs: light green shirt, pants, booties and 
gown, then, a mask, a pair of gloves, and a second pair over them, 
finally, the goggles fitting in place over the bridge of her nose, and 
Doctor Scully is right at home.

She walks in the room just as the pathologist's assistant glances up 
from snapping his second set of Polaroids at the upper quadrant of 
blackened remains. The sight of the tiny bones takes her back to the 
vision of the early morning, throwing her internals into a sudden triple 
somersault before she forcibly pushes that picture out of her head.

No. Now is not the time for squeamishness.

"You were right, Doctor Scully." The PA points to the seared, gooey mess 
of cracked bone and baked cerebral matter, formerly the little girl's 
head. "There had been some sort of pointed object inserted into her left 
ear, probably driven into the brain. How did you know?"

"An educated guess," the agent replies shortly. "Did you find anything 
else?"

"Just a few fragments of metal," He gestures with his chin towards a 
tray on the instrument table. "But they might have been picked up while 
the body was being gathered."

Inspecting the contents of the tin tray, she recognizes half a dime and 
an obscure metallic piece with grooves and ridges identifiable as part 
of a key.

"Where did you find these?"

"Well, the first one there," indicating the dime, "Was sticking out of 
the neck. The second one I found while opening up the cranium. Fell out 
of her nose."

She nods, then beckons him step closer as she wedges her hands into the 
mouth, left yanking down on the mandible, right pulling up against the 
maxilla, prying the jaws open in one swift movement.

"Give me a light in here."

The PA turns on his flashlight then tips it down into the mouth as 
Scully fishes around inside, tracing the gumline with an index finger.

"What are you looking for?"

"The third piece of-- Shit." A sotto curse, jerking back her hand as 
blood oozes through the minute puncture in the latex and settles into a 
red, trembling bubble atop her finger.

Snapping off the gloves, she tosses them into the hazmat container 
making a beeline for the sink. "There's something in the gumline below 
one of the left premolars," she calls back over the hissing of the 
faucet.

"A broken tooth?"

"No, it felt like some sort of pin prick."

He looks at the agent for a moment, then picks up the flashlight again, 
squinting into the oral cavity.

Ten minutes later, as the third metal object, a broken syringe tip, 
plinks onto the tray amidst the whirlwind of pops from the instamatic 
flashes, Scully punches in the numbers on her cellular.

"Mulder," bounces back to her on the first ring.

"Where are you?"

"Well, after you banished me from the morgue..."--he had protested all 
of fifteen seconds before scooting out of the Police Department--"I 
decided to head down to Quantico and have a nice chat with VICAP."

Probably for the best. While having her partner suddenly start to babble 
incoherently during the middle of an autopsy is one of those things 
Scully's learned to deal with, she doubts the PA would have been quite 
as accepting.

"Did you find anything?"

"It was mostly a one-sided conversation. I answered all the questions 
but the computer wasn't terribly keen on putting out."

"Perhaps you should have taken it out for dinner and drinks first."

A chuckle. "So that's what I've been doing wrong. But it did finally 
give me one more name to add to the case file."

"Looks like it's going to be two names, Mulder." A pause.

"Christ," he mutters. "Any ID on the girl?"

"No, not yet. The police are still searching through their records for 
recent missing child reports. I'm going to wait around to see what turns 
up."

"All right. I've got yet another mandatory brain-sucking session with 
Karen Kosseff anyway. You still think Skinner's doing this just to spite 
me?"

"Now you're being paranoid."

"Guess I'm all back to normal then."

And then he is gone. Skinner had obviously been unconvinced about how 
the initial session turned out, because per the AD's new orders, Mulder 
now attends the Employee Assistance program once a week. Walking out of 
the office, annoyance souring his features, he always returns with a 
smug, self-satisfied look, as if he is alone on some giant personal 
joke.

Part of her is intensely curious about the sessions, wondering if Mulder 
is playing mind games with the social worker as he has done so 
frequently in the past with the other agents of the bureau. It certainly 
wouldn't be beneath him. And it would be easy to find out.

One call to the Lone Gunmen and Byers could tap into the computer 
system--

No. She shakes her head mentally. Despite her intense suspicion, she 
will not go to such means and violate her partner's rights.



Office of Karen Kosseff
Employee Services


"Tell me about your partner, Agent Mulder."

That question hits him out of somewhere in the outfield, reminding him 
of the first time he attempted to catch a pop-fly. He had been eight, 
and his father had cracked the ball high up into the air, so high it 
might have disappeared into the sun. He remembers retreating, squinting 
up in the glare of daylight, glove raised, ready, only to be smacked in 
the head as he misjudged the velocity and approach of the downward 
rocketing leather.

"Scully?" he echoes, unconsciously shifting in the chair situated across 
Karen Kosseff, as he rapidly analyzes her words.

Translation: Scully has obviously mentioned him to the Social Worker 
before, the only reason why the subject is even being broached right 
now.

"I do believe you work with Agent Scully, right? This your third 
session, and so far you haven't mentioned her once. How has she affected 
the way you work? How has her illness?"

Other than the fact that he's a total wreck every time Scully sees one 
of those ghoulies or has a nosebleed or shows up even five minutes late 
for work because he doesn't know that she hasn't just suddenly dropped 
dead in the street or in her car or in the hallway outside the office.

Other than the fact that he's been going nuts for the past few months 
because she's been isolating herself from him, from her family, and 
Jesus, what a fucking idiot he was, babbling about premonitions and 
death and Harold Spuller when all he really wanted to do was ask her to 
tell him something about her health, anything except that she was fine, 
because she wasn't.

Other than the fact that Scully can't talk to him about what's going on 
with her and yet she can pour her heart out to this Karen Kosseff, this 
Social Worker, a complete fucking stranger who doesn't know what the 
hell's been going on these past four and a half years and won't know 
because their partnership's none of anybody's goddamn business, this 
same stranger who now expects _him_ to spill his guts.

Other than that, he feels great. Just fucking peachy.

"It's difficult sometimes," he murmurs. "I get worried."

"I understand perfectly. Cancer is something that not only affects her, 
but her family and friends as well. You."

"Yes."

"Agent Scully mentioned that there were no survivors from the group of 
cancer patients she was acquainted with."

"There is _one_."

Karen stops. Looks at him. Surprised by the sudden vehemence of his 
reaction, an anger flaring in his eyes, before eyelashes drop over them 
and raise back up to reveal their normal hazel calm.

"You believe Dana will survive this."

"I have to."

"Why do you have to believe this?"

"Because she does."


Question, answer, parry, feint, thrust. An elegant fencing match using 
words as foils--each verbal move by her anticipated, calculated, then 
ducked, obfuscated, and returned.

No one can be on the receiving end of endless numbers of runarounds 
without learning at least a few of the basic tricks, and Mulder has 
picked up his education from the government's best. He answers Kosseff's 
questions with a solid wall of appropriate responses, weaving his spell 
of classic-but-recovering PTSD while garnering information about 
Scully's sessions from whatever tidbit she lets slip.

As the rest of the hour dribbles by, he peripherally eyes the PC at her 
desk, noting the telltale Ethernet token ring looping out of a rear ISA 
bay, the line drifting across the carpet through the wall to be 
redirected into the main link.

And idly wonders if tapping to the Bureau's servers would be 
considerably harder than getting into Holy Cross.'



Conference Room 2
Annapolis Police Department


Barbara Benedict is a striking woman. An ageless, faintly lined face of 
delicate, but strong European features, a large, aquiline nose over full 
lips, dark blonde hair with eyes an odd, opaque green, which takes a 
minute for Scully to recognize as colored contact lenses. Exotic and 
powerful, almost masculine features that might have stepped out of an 
Ingmar Bergman film. Even through red puffy eyes and a face streaked 
with tears, she draws herself up with a quiet dignity, with such 
presence that one would almost forget about the wheelchair she is in.

"When was the last time you saw your daughter?"

"Last night."

A dark, smoky timbre that would have probably sent shivers down Mulder's 
spine, were he here.

"I put Kathy to bed at ten before heading to my own room. When I woke up 
this morning--"

Scully hands her a tissue, something she keeps an abundant supply of, 
especially recently. As the woman gratefully takes the Kleenex, she 
notices how large, yet delicate the receiving hands are.

"Do you think anybody might have kidnaped her? Your husband? Family?"

"Agent Scully, my husband is dead. The only family I have left is a 
younger brother, Nathan, who has been living in Amsterdam for the past 
ten years."

"What about friends?" Barbara gives a half-smile, daubing at an eye.

"We don't have many." Then her face drops, as realization sinks in. "Is-
-is it true?" she whispers. "Is she..."

"We won't know for sure until we can match her dental records."

"And how long will that take?"

"A few days. Perhaps a week."

"You're saying I might have to wait a week to find out whether that...in 
there is Kathy?" Her voice rises, stopping at a notch before hysteria. 
The worst part for families, the waiting, though the argument of which 
is a greater evil, the dread of anticipation or the agony of the truth 
is something that can never be truly answered.

Picking up a pen, Scully twists it through her fingers, gnarling the 
piece of plastic and metal over skin and sinew--under the index, 
through, over the middle, through...

"Do you have a picture of your daughter?" she finally asks. The woman 
nods tearfully, opening her purse, and the agent glances in as she pulls 
out her pocketbook, noting, among other things, a bottle of saline 
solution and a pill case with "Est--" visible on the obscured label. 
Flipping to the middle section of semi-clear plastic card holders, 
between the social security card on the flip side and drivers license on 
the accompanying slot, is a photograph young girl with the smiling 
innocence of youth staring back out at the two, a wide grin only flawed 
by one missing incisor. The momentary flash of that same face and jaws 
flapping, pleading nearly staggers Scully, and she takes a deep breath, 
collecting herself.

"I'm...sorry, Mrs. Benedict," she begins. But can't finish.



Fox Mulder's Office
FBI Headquarters


O fortuna,
Velut luna,
Statu variabilis.

The strains of the chorus, nearly a hundred strong, shake the very 
foundations of the basement office as they chant out the set of verses 
that everyone has heard at one time or another in their lifetime in at 
least a dozen films.

Inside, unheeding of tinnitus he will probably suffer later, Mulder 
scribbles into his field journal, precise, neat strokes of blue coloring 
the parchment, as he peels away each facet of the killer's mind. Making 
a career out of entering people's heads is a treacherous task, as any 
psychologist will explain, the endless alleyways and twisting corridors 
of the human brain are often filled with innumerable dead-ends and 
doorways that lead to sudden drops nowhere. When the mine is one of a 
madman, it is practically suicidal.

     'The idea of transformation is important to her. She sees herself
     in a state of suspension, like a cocoon. She does not do this
     seeking her own pleasure, but rather, for the pleasure of
     another. Her hunger is not of a physical nature. She is feeding
     something almost vampiric in nature. An irresistible force. An
     impulse, if you will call it.'

He rereads his last few words, as the sound of the door opening and 
shutting reaches him during a rare moment of pianissimo grace.

"I heard you blasting "Excalibur" all the way from the elevators."

Scully gingerly covers her ears as the volume of the verse rapidly 
escalates into a mind-numbing forte, the effort causing the tinny 
speakers to rattle and shimmy worse than a hyperactive kid at a long 
church sermon.

"Oh ye of big-budget, cheesy flick fandom. This is Carmina Burana by 
Carl Orff. Which is probably the most overused selection of music in 
film history and somewhere in the background of every other movie from 
your beloved "Excalibur" to "The Doors.""

"So I can safely assume you're now out of your industrial music phase?"

Bending down, he turns the volume knob several notches to the left and 
spins back around in his chair to look up at his partner as she settles 
her briefcase down on the table. Or rather, at the bandage at the top of 
her right index finger, a wide tab of pseudo-flesh dyed color one or two 
tones darker than the finger it's wrapped on, and at the very, very tip, 
a barely visible speck of red peeking through the thin layer of gauze.

"...with V8 instead of coffee?"

He veers back to reality, catching only the last part of her comment, as 
he follows the line of that same hand pointing down to the pint of red 
vegetable juice on his table.

"I thought I could do with a change."

"I'm amazed you would even entertain the thought of vegetables, much 
less imbibe those of the liquid variety."

"What is that?" he asks suddenly, unable to take his eyes off that strip 
of sticky plastic curled lovingly over her first digit.

"It's called a bandage, usually used to cover up cuts, dermal 
abrasions..."

"I know what a bandage is, Scully. What happened to your finger?"

"I cut it during the autopsy."

"Did you get it checked out?"

"It's just a nick from a syringe, Mulder. I didn't have time to have it 
looked at."

"Scully, needlestick injuries need to be checked on for contamination 
and blood-work. The risks--" He stops as she fixes him with an odd look, 
suddenly feeling about as silly as the time he had tried to explain the 
process of exsanguination to her.

"Mulder, it's not that important."

"You can't avoid hospitals forever, Scully."

She pauses in unpacking the contents of her valise, and something 
briefly flickers across her face just before the curtain drops and she 
re-assumes her professional mask. Feeling something clamp and twist in 
his chest, he forces himself to breathe normally, as she carefully and 
calmly lies to him.

"I'm not avoiding anything, I just don't have the time right now."

Mulder who picks up the bottle, absently swirling the remaining quarter 
contents of V8 around.

"You would tell me if something was wrong, right?"

Snapping up the screen of her Powerbook, she sits down, ducking behind 
it.

"Of course."

Which signifies the end of that particular line of questioning.

He chucks the bottle across the room, watching it sail in a graceful arc 
and land with a solid clunk in the garbage can.

"Now," she continues, halfway hidden behind her shield of laptop. "If 
you're done lecturing me on the finer points of JHACO regulations...the 
case?"

"Show me yours if I show you mine?" A weak, half-hearted attempt--a 
forced concession that tweaks the knot in his chest a fraction tighter.

She pulls out the folder, thick with Polaroids and autopsy details, and 
sets it down in front of him. He eyes it with unveiled wariness, not 
reaching for it, as if afraid of having his hand bitten off.

"A woman, Barbara Benedict, came to the station today to ID the body as 
her daughter, Karen."

"What is her viability as a suspect?"

"I would say in other circumstances, Mrs. Benedict might have been one 
of my first guesses."

"But?"

"But she's confined to a wheelchair with no active mobility in her 
legs."

"Being wheelchair bound didn't stop Peggy O'Dell from running into the 
street and ending up as a hood ornament."

"Back to the abduction theory, Mulder?"

He shrugs.

"Just something you might consider."

"Peggy O'Dell's condition was the result of a hysterical reaction, much 
like Billy Miles' catatonia. There was no real physiological basis for 
her paraplegia."

"And Barbara Benedict?"

"Is diabetic. She goes in for kidney dialysis three times a week at St. 
Mary's. Even if she could get out of her chair, her hypertension binds 
her relatively close to home. Shuttling around to three different states 
just to hide bodies is rather extreme considering the renal distress she 
would have been subjecting herself to."

"Was ID on the child confirmed?"

"Not yet, but in light of the picture she showed me and..." she sighs. 
"Let's just say I won't be surprised when the dental records come in."

"But you didn't tell Ms. Benedict."

"What was I supposed to say, Mulder? That I woke up this morning to see 
her daughter standing in front of my dresser start to bleed from the ear 
and then burn to death?"

"You might have rephrased it a little differently."

"I don't see how you can rephrase something like that at all!" she 
snaps. "And what if I'm wrong, Mulder? I would have tortured that woman 
on the basis of a hallucination."

"A hallucination?" he repeats slowly. Dangerously. "Is that what you're 
calling it now?"

Fox Mulder knows about denial quite intimately. It was, after all, his 
first lover, and visits him for regular nocturnal trysts, but Dana 
Scully takes that art to an entirely new canvas. She  lowers her eyes to 
the desk, to the folder on the exact dividing line between the two, the 
file he still hasn't dared to touch yet.

"What does it matter, Mulder? It's not as if I could use this as a basis 
for identification purposes."

"Just try to understand, Scully--"

Bastard. Self-conceited son of a bitch. The tightly wound self-control, 
the mask suddenly explodes in a torrent of exhaustion, anger, fear, and 
a thousand other raw emotions, a swirling miasma of conflicting, 
splintered nerves lashing themselves out to strike the man across her 
with an undefinable fury.

"Understand? You're asking me to understand, Mulder?" her voice begins 
low, but rapidly escalates with each punctured, stressed word. "You try 
having fifteen-year old boys with multiple gunshot wounds accost you 
from the shadows, you try seeing strangled prostitutes on corners 
silently begging you for help, old men and women beaten to death by 
their caretakers, children run down in the street by hit-and-run 
drivers, you try seeing that little girl die in front of you over and 
over again every time you close your eyes, and you try to tell her 
mother just how her daughter was killed. And then you tell me how 
goddamn understanding you can be!"

She slams down the lid of her Powerbook with enough force to nearly 
crack the screen and storms out of the office, the clap of the door 
banging shut behind her echoing in the hallway, as the final strains of 
"O Fortuna" bleat out weakly behind Mulder.

He closes his eyes, feeling himself come undone, individual piano 
strings snapping one by one down into a descending hollow chorus.

*    *    *    *    *
     quod per sortem          since Fate
     sternit fortem,          strikes down the string man,
     mecum omnes plangite!    everyone weep with me!

                    --"O Fortuna," Carl Orff
*    *    *    *    *

She had barely enough time to race to the bathroom, hand pressed to her 
face, before it hit her again.

The symptoms come fast, often without preparation, but Scully has 
learned to read certain signs-- a slight moment of dizziness, a lapse of 
phase, becoming asynchronous to the rotating world, a familiar, numbing 
tickle starting off between her eyes and eventually moving down her 
nose, until the inevitable finally happens.

Two drops fall on the front of her jacket, the remaining ones splatter 
in stark contrast against the pasty porcelain sink. A red Monet, she 
thinks, noting the delicate flowering patterns of the blooming crimson 
spots, before counting the days since the last one.

Eight days, she calculates a few seconds later. The time between each 
attack shortens by a few days, sometimes as much as a week, as time 
slowly ticks to zero on the Armageddon clock. There had been twenty-nine 
days between the first few. After that, twenty-one. Seventeen days. 
Fourteen. And now, eight.

She dabs at her jacket, vaguely thankful she'd worn black today. Blood 
wreaked havoc on beige. Wetting a towel, she wipes under her nose, then 
blows into it to get the salty stench of blood out of her sinuses. Then, 
tossing it away, she washes her hands under the faucet once again and 
pulls off the soggy bandage to inspect her finger.

Although the flow has mostly stanched, the wound is still open, leaking 
just a little bit of plasma and erythrocyte matter. Poor clotting 
agents, Scully notes critically. Another sign.

Searching her pockets for another band-aid, she remembers with a certain 
reluctance that she'd placed them in the pocket of her long coat.

Which means she has to return to the office.

No use in avoiding the situation. She will simply step back in there, 
sit down, continue working. Pretend the argument never took place. 
Pretend that everything is fine. Pretend hard enough and maybe Mulder 
will just shut up and leave things alone.

Easy enough.



Fox Mulder's Office--


"A Kodak moment," Mulder mutters to no one in particular.

He would have been muttering to Scully if she hadn't only just vacated 
the premises, nearly tearing the door off its hinges in a fury that he 
found himself picturing in terms of Odysseus' ride through the strait of 
the Sirens-- where the old sailor had to be bound to the mast so he 
wouldn't pitch himself off the side of the ship in a combination of 
madness and desperation.

In other words, she was pissed and he was confused, and he didn't know 
what to do.

It would have been easy enough if the situation was merely a life-
threatening case, because then he could pitch himself headfirst into the 
action, but then again, jumping onto a moving train had nowhere the 
consequences getting Dana Scully mad at him did, point being, that while 
falling off a speeding locomotive would have certainly, painfully 
mangled if not outright killed, it would at least have been a much more 
pleasant prospect than facing the deadly ire of his partner, who could 
do in so many words what soccer players with steel cleats could to a set 
of unprotected balls. So, in the course of working a rather (self-
confessed) thin Greek-and-sports analogical correlation to this 
particular predicament, he decides on a course of action he has always 
taken when such situations arise.

He does nothing.

And he does nothing for a while, simply letting his eyes roam about the 
office, drifting over the filing cabinet, the desk in the far, far 
corner that she never uses, until it makes its rounds to finally drop 
back down to his desk.

And her case file.

One that probably has a whole slew of disgusting photos taken from every 
single imaginable angle as well as a penetratingly detailed report on 
exactly how that little girl's body came to its unenviable conclusion.

(You're going to have to take it like a man some time, g-man.)

Figuring things couldn't possibly get much worse at this point, he opens 
up the dreaded folder.

He is right about those photos. There are lots of them. Dozens, in fact. 
Picture upon picture, with enough close ups and detail for him to 
mentally piece together an entire horrific three-dimensional model. 
Buried within the little pile of Polaroids is a little wallet sized 
photo of the girl, one of those Sears discount ninety-one-different-
sized-versions-of-the-same-pose-for-$14.95 studio session results. He 
feels his heart start beating faster crashing against his ribcage. She 
looks a little too much like Samantha for comfort.

"Shit," he spits, turning the picture over, so he's staring at the back 
with the "made by Kodak" seal racing repetitively across the paper. Then 
picks up the reports, first reading the statement made by Barbara 
Benedict, the crime scene notes, and then finally, the details of the 
autopsy.

'A child, female, approximately eight.'

(A child. So pretty, so young)

'Ninety centimeters in extremis. Brown hair, brown eyes.'

(Beautiful redolent in crimson)

'Lungs show no carbon monoxide poisoning'

(as she cries, wailing echoes, reminding--)

'All signs indicate death occurring prior to the arson.'

(of the tinkling)

'Inspection of the cranial region further supports that...'

(of chimes striking against themselves in the breeze)

'...a long, sharp object had been placed into the aural cavity, bursting 
the tympanum, cochlea, and semicircular canals.'

(With a flick of the wrist cries are forever silenced)

'Instant death resulted upon the object entering the brain.'

(A pity for a young one to have the mark on her)

A flash, a bright light, like a knife plunging into his head, as 
consciousness swoops into another body. And he is no longer watching, 
like a third party observer:

(Spreads the three pieces of metal on the cloth) breathing (hands 
working, moving, no longer awkward with inexperience) harder(picks up 
the filet knife, a makeshift scalpel) comfort (draws it along own 
tongue) shivers (tastes the edge) cool, sour scintillation a fine 
scarlet line (warm burst of tingling nerves) breaking along the edge 
warm, salty (he begins...)

He sees it. He sees his hands, the knife. Such delicate work for what 
seems to be large clumsy fingers. Stained red, so red, so warm, 
inviting, pulsing of life, to soak luxuriously, bathe in such 
richness...

With a wrench that nearly tears unravels his guts, he is suddenly back 
in place.

In D.C.. In the FBI Headquarters. In the office.

Breaths come in short, dizzying pants, the air smothering, suffocating, 
a fist slowly closing on his windpipe, ever so gently squeezing the 
oxygen out of every single pore in his body. Cold, shaking, feeling his 
collar, hands, wet from perspiration.

He looks down at his hands again, seeing the blood.

Out

(his mind screams)

need to

Get out

Get--

*    *    *    *    *

Scully didn't know whether to be concerned or annoyed when she stepped 
back into the office only to find her partner had hastily abandoned the 
premises, but not before making a complete mess of the place--autopsy 
photographs scattered about the floor, tossed pencils, pens rolling 
every which way, the desk lamp knocked on its side, and papers, pages, 
leafs, fallen everywhere. Three discarded sample packets of Tylenol.

And his open field journal, sitting oddly untouched in the middle of the 
desk.

Picking it up, she glances at the open page. Three words penned in 
large, shaky scrawl, like a child first learning to write in block caps:


     CHIMES
     
     MARK

     HANDS


"What the hell?" the agent mutters.



HN Hampshire Lounge
Alexandria, VA


Lifting a second martini to her lips, the Miriam Acheson takes a 
delicate sip from the edge, actively ignoring the frank, open stares 
directed towards her from the general male populace.

She is bored. Very bored. And everyone seemed so boring--pathetic 
middle-management boors, sweating profusely while offering to buy 
drinks, arrogant yuppie acolytes smoking large, expensive cigars while 
trying not to gag on the foul odor, well-to-do married men, desperately 
afraid of suffering their version of menopause, miserably trying to 
reassert their virility by hiding their wedding rings and picking up 
women half their age.

Dull, dull, dull.

And then he steps in, an Armani suit with a long coat, expensive Italian 
shoes, and an attitude looming over him like a permanently overcast day. 
From the look of his tie, he obviously has no steady girlfriend or wife. 
He seats himself at the other end of the bar, completely unaware of 
anybody else, gesturing to the bartender. Interesting. Old money or 
nouveau riche? she wonders, trying to mentally place him in the 
appropriate tax bracket.

"What'll you have?" the bartender asks.

"Whiskey. Straight up." The bartender nods, lifting a bottle of 
Bushmills from the well and pouring a shot-and-a-quarter into a rocks 
glass.

She watches as he pulls out his wallet, catching a glimpse of a hip 
holster and its contents. Neither. Government employee. Possibly Secret 
Service, which would tally him up to a minimum of $70,000 per annum, 
Fifty thou, if FBI. Not too bad, but not great either. In any case, he 
seems to be the best option tonight out of all these clods. Yes, she 
supposes, he will do.


Mulder takes a sip and clears his throat as the liquid stings his vocal 
passages, deliberately ignoring the thinly-veiled stares of the woman 
four seats away. Right now he needs to get drunk. Get stinking, fucked-
up, shit-faced as quickly as possible, then go home and quickly pass 
into insensibility. One peaceful night of stupor.

He feels her eyeing him up and down. She likes what she sees. But then 
again, she's always had a thing for the sad, tortured types. And right 
now Mulder knows he'd beat Gregg Allman hands-down, though probably 
couldn't sing about it nearly as well.

He downs the shot in one gulp, coughing, feeling the alcohol burn its 
way down his trachea, a miniature Sherman's March into his gut, as it 
begins its slow dissipation into his bloodstream.  An easy effort aided 
along by an empty stomach.

"You obviously don't do this often," comes the voice from his right, as 
he signals the bartender for another.

He turns to look at her.

Tall, brunette, with long legs cropped off only by the medium-length 
skirt and a voice that could make ticking off register receipts sound 
terribly sexy.

His type.

He shrugs. "This is more my father's drink."

"And are you like your father?"

"Only in the fact that a lot of people want to kill me too." He downs another 
one.

"So you like to live dangerously." Observing her through slightly fogged 
eyes, lifting thoughts, phrases, paragraphs from every little movement 
she makes, he constructs the picture of this woman. Looking for a 
challenge, a little game to play. A mindless fuck.

He needs another drink.

"You might say that. Care to find out?"

She hesitates, fidgeting with her martini, before emptying the rest of 
it in one movement.

"I don't even know your name."

"Marty." He signals the bartender.

>From his own psychologist's perspective, he realizes he is only prone to 
this sort of excessively self-destructive behavior whenever felt he had 
lost or was losing Scully, throwing himself blindly at everything and 
every one. Drinking. Sex. Mental dissolution: Comity. Some other 
mysterious brunette whose name, for some reason, he can only vaguely 
remember in shadows and whispers. The Mostow case. Instincts of self-
preservation completely and totally disregarded, all actions driven on 
adrenaline, blindly racing forward at full speed into every brick wall 
without a helmet and hoping in his own little petty, insecure way that 
she would still somehow care enough--

Yeah. Right. As if any minute now and she'll magically appear in this 
bar to save him from this Bambi Berenbaum double, this woman whose 
physical attributes were quite...tributable, but a few megawatts short 
in the lighthouse.

But Scully has surprised him before. At Ellen's. In Alaska. Miller's 
Grove. Even taking the wrong elevator into the kitchen. Somehow he knows 
he wouldn't be surprised if she did walk in here, take one look at his 
sorry ass and then drag him out of here by his tie and take him home. 
Take care of him. Worry about him. Fuss over him. All the while ignoring 
herself and her declining health.

He downs the rest of the drink, forcing the thought out with some 
sluggish success. The other reason he rarely imbibes--usually, it leads 
to too much self-analysis. Introspection on things he'd rather not have 
to look at too closely. No. Not tonight.

Tonight he doesn't want to be found.

He looks at the woman as she chatters on, picking up his silence as an 
opportunity to fill the dead air with, apparently, moving air. Just 
yakking on about something or another, the words warbling in his ears 
like the muffled grown-up voices in Charlie Brown cartoons, and Mulder 
smiles at her, even though he doesn't know what the fuck she's talking 
about.

When was the last time when getting stinko and sex came together hand in 
hand? He vaguely wonders if there is another odd conjunction of the 
planets hovering directly over the bar tonight.

*    *    *    *    *

The Chrysalis sees him, a tall, walking shadow. He is hurting from 
something. The smell his vulnerability, his desperation, is oh, so 
sweet. Something in him cries for comfort, for solace from the agonies 
of the wright of life has brought him. He is beautiful in his misery. 
Mesmerizing in his pain. His devastation is nearly complete, the taste, 
thrilling on lips.

And her. The bitch. She has no idea what he is.

>From one of the shadowed booths, the observer goes unnoticed, watching 
the man with the woman. He pays for both their drinks and they leave 
together.

Empathy is not a common emotion.  More often, it is a distraction.

But this is different.

Oh, yes. Chrysalis can understand the source of his pain.

It is from fighting his nature. The familiar pain felt within, every 
knife, every wound emanating from his resistance to the inevitable.

(Don't fight it, love. You will never win.)

But he will learn. Tonight he will be initiated.

You see, the man is a feeder too.

*    *    *    *    *

Shoes. At least a hundred pairs. High heels, clogs, flats in every color 
imaginable, one of those jumbo-sized boxes of crayolas spilling out all 
over the place, the ones with a plastic sharpener in the front with 
descriptions on each individual wrapper reading "cornflower" and 
"goldenrod" and "vivid tangerine," spread out in several rows of racks. 
Drawing eyes up, he nearly does a double-take at the incredibly tacky 
Nagel in the hallway directly across from him.

She had gone straight for his belt before the door even clicked shut, 
unzipping and drawing him out with expert haste, as she lowered herself 
down on him. And Mulder reacted instantly, vaguely surprised at his 
functional ability after nearly half a dozen shots in his system.

So he leans back against the opposite wall, looking at this pseudo-art 
tripe that's staring back at him with the wickedly sharp flat green eyes 
of a four-color spread, thinking this has got to be one of the ugliest, 
most cliched piece of shit he's ever seen, seconded only to an Elvis-on-
velvet painting, and at least the latter contained better taste in 
subject matter, all while she's working on him below, bobbing her head 
back and forth, doing her darndest to keep his attention as he feels his 
legs giving out, not from any intense pleasure, but because he's so 
fucking plastered, he can barely stay awake.

He groggily pushes her head back from him, feeling her front teeth bite 
in on the head of his cock as it exits her mouth. Standing, she yanks 
his tie out of its carefully constructed knot as he presses her up 
against the wall, groping at her under her dress, lifting it higher and 
higher as clumsy hands yank down the obstructive pantyhose.

Taking the tie from her hands as she undoes his shirt buttons, he wraps 
it around her wrists, tying them together in a loose knot, then pulling 
her arms over his head, so they're bound around the back of his neck, he 
presses her body against the wall right next to that fucking Nagel as 
she wraps her legs around him and then, unheeding of whether she's ready 
or not, he rams himself inside. He has no trouble entering.

No kissing, no holding, no polite exchanges. Nothing more Mulder wants 
from her than what the contact points of their bodies provide, as he 
slams in and out of her warm, pulsating flesh like a jackhammer, the 
lithograph shaking and tilting against the hall.

She bites his shoulder and he pushes her face away, keeping her at a 
distance, only feeling the nerves from the end of his groin working in 
and out of her.

She likes it rough. He can do that.

He puts his hands around her neck, thumbs up against her carotid 
arteries and squeezes, cutting off the blood supply to her brain. As he 
feels her struggle against him, she lets out a long,
shuddering growl as her inner muscles contract against his straining 
member. His body continues moving, screaming for release from the 
tension but it doesn't come.

He can't.

She feels leaden, her body heavy like a corpse. Looking at her, he sees 
her face dissolve-- rotting like decaying meat sinking falling of bones 
as squirming maggots rise out of eyeless sockets and nostrils feasting 
on the flesh within

(Feels fingers)

sinking into bones grubs crawl over his fingers down his sleeves chunks 
of her sloughing off oozing a putrescent stench that suddenly churns his 
stomach.

He tries to shove her away, but she clings on, opening her mouth to let 
a rotting tongue drop down from between decaying teeth, jaws grinning as 
the words and clicking of innumerable bug exoskeletons hiss out from the 
exposed larynx.

Feed the worm, she whispers.

Feed the worm.

Recoiling suddenly, he pulls himself out, dropping her to the ground, 
and untangles himself from her arms, scrambling away from her. He 
hastily grabs at the shorts around his ankles, nearly sprawling into the 
racks of shoes, but instead only knocks a few flats out of place.

"Hey, you're not finished," she slurs, working one hand loose from the 
bindings. "Where the hell are you going?"

He doesn't answer her, afraid to look back, clamping his jaw tightly 
shut as the familiar sour taste of bile rises up to his throat and 
spreads over the inside of his mouth. Pulling up his pants over a 
rapidly diminishing erection and buckling it, he yanks open the door, 
his shirt hanging loosely open at the front as he stumbles outside.

"You bastard!" she screams, picking up an orange clog and throwing it, 
only to have it clunk back as the door slams shut behind him.

*    *    *    *    *

The woman is angry, the figure observes from the blanketing shadows of 
the street.

Though nothing is visible through the pitch black emptiness of the 
apartment's windows, it knows she smells of sex and of sweat, fluids 
musky, pungent in the heavy air.

The Chrysalis found that falling into his mind is as easy as him had 
slipping into hers, their souls interconnected with the sanctity of 
vision, sharing each kill, each beautiful bath of awashed torment. And 
with that, Chrysalis smelled the mortality on the woman's skin as surely 
as he.

It is a powerful, delicious odor that permeates to the very core of her 
being. Like a ripe fruit ready to be plucked and eaten, to be opened and 
devoured, she is ready for the passage, to be fed to the worm. The man 
had started the job, and the shared joy was exquisite, the vicarious 
pleasure almost as powerfully orgasmic as the act itself.

But he was unable to finish. Mortis interruptus.

Disappointed. Very disappointed.

This is, simply, bad manners.



Fox Mulder's Apartment
Alexandria, VA


Letting the spray of the shower jettison over his body, he scrubs 
himself furiously, frantically, to get the smell of her off him, rid 
himself of that stench, but the sheer presence of it seems to have 
seeped into his pores, down into his flesh, his muscles, the very marrow 
of his bones. Gripping his arms tightly around himself, as if afraid he 
will suddenly fly apart, Fox Mulder leans back against the tile, 
standing there until long after the water runs cold.


Ignoring the chill, biting air and evaporating water prickling his skin, 
he steps out of the bathroom and pulls on a pair of black shorts and a 
jersey. Looks hazily around the room for his journal, then remembering 
where he left it.

At the office.

Shit.

Inside the desk, he rummages around, looking for sheets of paper and a 
writing utensil.

Snap.

The tip of the pencil breaks against the paper from too much pressure on 
the delicate point.

Snap.

The second one too.

With a silent roar, he tosses the papers across the room and opens the 
drawers, ripping apart. Sweating. Shaking. Like an addict in withdrawal. 
Fumbling, dropping he finds his long unused tape recorder, and after a 
few tries finally manages to press the record button with slippery 
fingers, hoping that the batteries aren't dead. They aren't.

     "There is a certain dance of death within the animal kingdom, a 
     finely choreographed ballet between the predator and the prey. It 
     is believed that every animal intrinsically knows when its time to 
     die is, whether it's young or old, healthy or sick. The predator 
     recognizes the scent, and the prey struggles, as every death row 
     prisoner does as he is being led to the electric chair,  but its 
     demise has already been foretold.

     "I have always accepted this dance of death, but have never felt 
     its scent caress me until today. It is indescribable, an almost 
     irresistible foulness-- "

Hands begin to shake violently, almost spasmodically and the tape 
recorder drops to the floor, spinning and bouncing like a leaden 
jumping-jack, but still whirring, still taking in the sounds of the room 
and preserving them on the magnetic analog strip. Scrambling out of his 
chair, Mulder tries to pick it up, but is unable to hold himself steady 
as the room begins to spin, a carnival ride rising from a dormant state, 
slowly rotating, eventually picking up enough momentum to whirl in a 
dizzying fury. The crack of bone kissing wood follows as he drops to his 
knees, then, ever so slowly, crumples, slowly folding until his forehead 
touches the ground.

As the whirr of the tape recorder beside his head seeps into his 
consciousness, he turns his eyes to gaze blankly at the spinning 
rollers.

*    *    *    *    *
F    I    V    E
*    *    *    *    *

Autopsy Bay 1
FBI National Academy


The body this time is a young woman who might have passed as a close 
relative of a certain entomologist, Scully fleetingly muses, as she 
looks over the corpse, picking out individual details anomalous to the 
entire MO--the main one being the victim was mostly fresh, bodily fluids 
left undrained, instead of the usual days or even week-old desiccated 
shell. It hadn't been burned too badly before the team finally retrieved 
it.  Liquids in the tissues made all the difference.

The work was incredibly sloppy too. The killer had left behind a 
substantial number of fingerprints and foreign samples, not even 
bothering to eradicate evidence, as if this particular slaughter were a 
hasty, spur of the moment decision instead of the usual, meticulous, 
well thought out plan. The fire had not been usually well contained--
spreading only after it had destroyed nearly all evidence--but carried 
the haphazard marks of a hastily abandoned torching.

All these moves which had first made Scully suspect a possible copycat. 
But certain details only known to the investigating staff are showing 
up--mainly the badly cobbled stitches of fishing line in the back of the 
neck and gums--cutting off that avenue of possibility, and so the case 
perhaps is beginning to look up as they have not only a mostly intact 
body of evidence, but a killer who is also pleading to be caught.

Mulder would have been able to shed some insight into why the murderer 
was suddenly becoming so obvious.

If he had shown up for work, that is.

Because he has basically disappeared. Well, perhaps that is a bit of an 
exaggeration. He is, simply, more or less incommunicado at the present. 
No one answers at home, and his cellular only returns an "out of 
service" recording. When the local bureau couldn't reach him this at 3 
AM this morning, they called up Scully at home to report the latest fire 
taking place in Alexandria--three miles away from Mulder's domicile. 
They couldn't find him, so she ended up going to the site by herself, 
feeling oddly out of sorts about the whole thing, like a recent amputee 
still unreconciled to losing a limb.

Naturally, she would assume he had ditched her once again, but he has no 
real reason to this time, especially in the light of the most recent 
incident occurring practically on his doorstep. Oh, there is no doubt he 
had hightailed it off somewhere, though the reasoning behind it is 
rather strange to Scully because despite Mulder's frequent flights of 
eccentricity, it is very unlike him to abandon a case in mid-
investigation.  Especially one he has a vested interest in.

So she simply has to assume he is out sniffing down another trail only 
visible to his uncanny senses.

In the meanwhile, she has a body on a slab with a full story to tell. 
Death whispering her secrets to her from beyond the unknown. This 
unmoving flesh would tell her what the woman ate for lunch, what sexual 
activity she recently engaged in, if she took drugs. It would tell her 
if she smoked, had enhancement surgery, ate fatty foods, drank too much, 
or ever brought a child to full term, if she dyed her hair, had an 
appendectomy, a yeast infection, even glaucoma. And most importantly, it 
would tell her when and how she died. Perhaps even why.

Clicking on the tape recorder, Scully begins in a tired, drawn voice. 
"Time is nine forty-five AM, Wednesday, June seventeenth. Deceased is a 
female, late twenties..."



Office of the Special Representative to the Secretary General
United Nations Building
New York, NY


Marita Covarrubias is resigned to being taken for granted, resigned to 
being ordered around by the unnamed men of the Consortium, the old, 
powerful figure who own the life of her, her superiors and millions of 
others. She willingly plays this dutiful role, behaving like the meek, 
submissive puppet while watching, observing.  Waiting.  Planning.  
Because old men, no matter how powerful, how rich, how untouchable, do 
not live forever.

She is not, however, thrilled about being called upon in the menial task 
of catering to standard government issue like Special Agent Fox Mulder. 
So, as she steps out from her desk to face the man in the chair across 
from her, her arms lock stiffly into an impenetrable cross, and in the 
frostiest, biting voice, makes no qualms about her irritation regarding 
this particular indignity.

"Agent Mulder, you have obviously mistaken my position for that of a 
secretary.  Why do you need _my_ help in tracking down a man's records 
in Amsterdam?"

The Agent wearily passes a hand over bloodshot eyes as he picks apart 
the details of her clipped, precise speech. Her bark rings like that of 
an automaton, anxious to get him out of there, hiding something, 
perhaps.

"I've gotten a hold of Nathan Benedict's older records, but they 
disappear after 1994. He supposedly hasn't left that country, and I need 
to know why he suddenly vanished."

Mulder has never trusted her much in the first place, and that 
particular feeling rages even stronger now.  Eyes narrow, as he begins 
to watch her more carefully, absorbing, categorizing, processing, and 
interpreting every nuance of movement down to a careless flicker of 
finger.

Of course his sudden, intense fixation on the figure of the Special 
Representative does not go by unnoticed.  In fact, this is better than 
she can hope for.  Fox Mulder's reactions, despite her best machinations 
of their brief encounters, have always ranged from indifference at best 
to barely-veiled annoyance at worst, so she had hastily aborted her 
attempt at seduction in its fetal stage.  Being rejected is one of those 
things that does not fall on her well.  But now, his sudden apparent 
notice of her sparks that opportunity once again.  Fox Mulder is not an 
unattractive man.  This would be one of the more pleasant things she 
would have to do for those old bastards, a pleasant distraction.  She 
swiftly changes her mind about this menial request, shifting her 
tactical base.

"This would require some...deep research on my part.  Is it really that 
important?"  Sitting back on the corner of her table, she delicately 
crosses her legs, allowing him a somewhat tantalizing view of thigh.

He notices.  Of course he notices.  He wouldn't be human not to notice.  
Unfortunately for her, however, it does absolutely nothing for him.  
After last night, it'll be a long, long while before he'll be able to 
even contemplate the idea of sex again.

"It is. This information is vital to several lives.  I need your help.  
I wouldn't be asking otherwise.  Can you do this for me?"

She fakes a look of pure sympathy, whispering throatily, "Are you giving 
me a choice?"

That line stops him cold.  Familiar.  Too familiar.  Where had he heard 
those words before?

He racks his brain, trying to relive, recall snippets of dialogue stored 
away in folders within folders, each one opening up as he mentally 
unearths them.

Rhode Island.  In a hospital.  In a hallway.  A man.  A cigarette.  His 
gun.  And a threat.

'You wanna smoke on that or you wanna smoke on this...?'

Cancer Man.

"What makes you say that?" he asks neutrally, hoping like hell the Rep 
can't hear the pounding of his brain bashing against the inside of his 
skull, fighting to get out.

It explains everything--why she was always so eager to help, spewing 
crap about 'believing in what he did' and 'right' and all that other 
upbeat cheerleader babble she stroked him with.  Too ready with 
information that Deep Throat, would be nervous in passing so openly to 
him. Too sure of herself despite the dangers of flouting such powerful 
figures.

In short, it was all too easy.  And he had almost fallen for it.  But 
the furtive meetings, the thickly discernable fear and nervousness that 
constantly licked at the trail of his two former informants, these 
elements aren't in the makeup of in the woman in front of him.

Deep Throat was afraid.

X was afraid.

Covarrubias, on the other hand, acts like she's playing some fucking 
pinball game.  With him.  With them.  A nudge here, a shake there, 
information seeping in through one channel, spinning out against the 
flipper to another.  Right now he couldn't see it any clearer if she lit 
up a Morley herself and blew fucking smoke rings into his face.

"I'm sorry. I simply can't help you with this," she says briskly, while 
writing down something on a piece of paper.

Slipping the scrap of paper to him, she brushes his hand upon passing 
and looks up at him with a smoldering eyes.  He smiles gamely, fighting 
the reflex to yank it away and slug her with it.

So, they decided to set up their own little purveyor of disinformation. 
A good plan. A brilliant plan.  But they should have used a better 
actor.

As he leaves her office, clutching the sheet in his hand, he 
contemplates his next move, not looking at the note until he reaches the 
lobby.

Opening it up--


     'Friday, 9 PM, my place. I'll have what you need by then.'


Christ.  Another heavy-handed 'oops-you-caught-me-in-nothing-but-my-
bathrobe' scene in the making.  Not that Covarrubias isn't attractive or 
anything, she just isn't his type.  That and he harbors an inherent, 
deep mistrust of anyone who could rise to a position of authority under 
the age of thirty.  Bill Gates included.

Still, the Rep may be a useful source after all.  At least until she 
outgrows her usefulness or the Consortium figure out that he knows and 
inevitably, invariably, intimately introduce her to the nearest ditch.

The price of playing.

He tears up the note into tiny pieces and dumps them into the nearest 
trash bin before heading back to his car.



Sci-Crime Lab
FBI Headquarters


2:30 in the afternoon with Mulder still a no-show.  Scully glances at 
the same "No service" message for the eighth or ninth time this day, 
feeling incredibly irritated and achy from the stuffy congestion 
building in her head and a tickle in the throat which she recognizes as 
the onsetting symptoms of a cold.  Great.

Though she'd like nothing better than to tell Mulder to shove this 
particular case up a highly sensitive area, go home, fall into bed and 
sleep for a week, a deeper sense of responsibility places her, at the 
moment, with Agent Callas for the better part of an hour waiting for the 
computer to chug out a match for the latent fingerprints.

"I'm sorry, Agent Scully," the younger agent shrugs.  "I've checked and 
cross checked but nothing's showing up on the NCIC database."

"Why don't you take a break while I look some more?"

She gives Scully a grateful smile as she stands up stretching.

"Thanks. I'll be right back."

"Mulder, where are you?"  Scully mutters to herself, after the door 
shuts behind Callas.

Creeping up somewhere in her slightly muddled mind, a wee bit of guilt 
flashes for snapping at him yesterday.  It is not as if he's never acted 
like an insensitive boor wheneer he was obsessing in a case. She has 
accepted as fact that all his mental energy, including those of 
functioning as a decent human being, becomes redirected, focused in a 
magnifying-glass pinpoint towards his goal.  Simply put, on case he 
would be a complete jerk with single-minded intensity, to the detriment 
of all polite behavior, but return to his goofy, normal self soon 
afterwards.  Or some semblance of such.  It's just yesterday she wasn't 
in the mood to take it.  Tired.  Sick.  Something.

She clicks on the search menu for the government database, watching the 
little hourglass empty, tilt over, and empty itself again, a pattern 
that repeats itself six or seven times before displaying "MATCH" on the 
screen.

"About time,"  Scully straightens, tapping impatiently on the table as 
the page slowly loads.

It slowly scrolls down on the monitor: a picture, a name, the branch, 
and ranking.  A feeling of deja-vu settles over the room as she stares 
numbly at the information displayed in front of her.

*    *    *    *    *

Not terribly eager at the prospect of spending a few more hours looking 
up fingerprints in every single available database, Callas takes her 
time in walking back down the hall towards the lab.

Opening the door, she is nearly bowled over by Scully mumbling an 
apology before bulldozing her way out.

"Oomph!  Sorry.  Did you find what you were looking for, Agent Scully?"

"Um, yeah," Scully calls back. "Just not what I expected," she mutters 
to herself, as she hurries down the hall, leaving the befuddled agent to 
stare after her.



Office of the Assistant Director--


Walter Skinner knows it has to be either one of the two--they're the 
only ones who would have the chutzpah to attempt to burst into his 
office without an appointment.

>From the voices outside, he recognizes Kimberly and the other one as 
Scully.  Which in all likeliness means that her partner has once again 
gotten engaged in something foolhardy and probably life-threatening as 
well.  Mentally steeling himself for yet another impending disaster, he 
closes the report in front of him and awaits the agent, who storms in, 
wasting no time with pleasantries.

"I'm requesting you take us off this case right now," her voice carries 
through a little stuffy.

"What case are you talking about, Scully?"

"The arson-mass murderer, the fetishist..." Her voice trails out at the 
blank look on his face. "You didn't green light it."  A statement, not a 
question.

"Agent Scully. The only 302 Agent Mulder recently brought to my 
attention involved steer innards and the Midwest.  It sounded so 
ludicrous, I flat-out denied it.  Now what is _this_ that the two of you 
are unofficially working on?"

"It--there's--" interrupted by coughing.  A wet, congested sound.

"Is that it?" he points to the folder in her hands.

She hesitates, but his look brooks no disobedience.  Reluctantly, she 
relinquishes her report. Flipping through the pages, Scully fidgets even 
more as his face grows darker and darker.  After a long, uncomfortable 
silence, Skinner puts down the folder and removes his glasses.

"Agent Scully," he rubs the bridge of his nose, an action he only does 
when he is about to lay into either her or Mulder.  "Do you honestly 
think I would let your partner handle another case like this after the 
Roche fiasco?"

"No, sir."

"Then my advice is for the two of you straighten this out before I do. 
That will be all."

She nods, eyebrows furrowed, before picking up the folder and leaving.



So it is happening.

Skinner knew from the start, had more than an inkling that despite 
episodes of sheer brilliance, Mulder was also totally unstable, and he 
had thought he had seen the agent at his worst--when Scully had been 
abducted.

Despite several hairline fractures and cracks in the construct of the 
agent's mind, Mulder had always managed to somehow hold together in the 
end, perhaps by Scully's help, perhaps by divine intervention.  But his 
one fatal flaw, this broad, perverse streak of self-destructiveness, is 
now flaring at full light once again.  This time, instead of weathering 
the damage, he can almost see Mulder finally falling apart from the 
constant chipping:

The return and subsequent loss of Samantha.  His father's death.  His 
mother's illness. Scully's cancer.  Bit by bit, chip by chip, waiting in 
hushed anxiety for the vase to finally break.

The AD had hoped mandatory counseling sessions might have worked out, 
but in reading the reports sent up by Karen Kosseff, what he saw only 
reinforced his fears--Mulder would simply not deal with the Social 
Worker in an open, honest manner.  Fear because, in the end, the only 
alternative for the agent would be early retirement for mental 
disability.  His career effectively finished. Over.

God knows Mulder didn't give a bean about his career when he had thought 
he would lose Scully the first time around, and now his actions verge on 
desperate, an insistent bid, his hat tossed into the race to see if he 
could die first.

Die first to avoid facing the pain of losing her again.

And all Skinner can do is wait.  Wait for the inevitable.  Wait for a 
miracle.  Wait and hope that somehow, in the irrational and disordered 
universe, the two agents would perhaps manage to find a way to prevail.  
Because he himself couldn't do a damn thing.

Position.  Rank.  Power.  They had given him just enough to show him how 
meaningless to them it really was.

*    *    *    *    *

It was late in the afternoon before Mulder managed to stumble back into 
the basement hallways of the J. Edgar hoover building.  He had taken 
three steps away from the stairwell when a sudden wrench tore through 
him like a buzzsaw set loose upon his innards.

Racing to the bathroom, he flings open the door to a stall and lets it 
all come up, unable to stop hurking as his guts twist and splash out 
into the depths of the bleached blue water, wave after wave of coiling 
then purging, the wracking reaching deep, deep down all the way down to 
his gonads, a stinging, aching sensation like they'd been recently used 
to tee off at the Masters.

Feeling weak and light-headed, he leans heavily on the flush handle, 
another headache choosing at this moment to tear through his brain, as 
he spits a few more times, trying to get the sour taste out of his 
mouth, a fine line of drool leaking out the downturned corner.

Dramamine.  Need more Dramamine, the thought filters through the knife 
stabbing in his head.  In the car.  Too far away.

"Fuck," he mutters as more saliva dribbles over his lip.

Tylenol.  In the office.  Only fifty feet.  Okay, left foot, right foot, 
left foot, try not to fall, idiot, where was he?  Left--no, right, 
left...

If he had looked down at the contents of the bowl, he might have noticed 
the thick, black fluid slowly sinking to the bottom to swirl away down 
the drain.


What seems to feel like hours later, the agent somehow manages to get 
the right key into the lock, fending off the temptation to violently 
kick the door in out of blurry frustration, and stumbles in the office, 
staggering against, and then past the filing cabinets in a clumsy little 
feint before dropping ice-sweaty palms against the top of the desk.  The 
left hand steals under the drawer, yanking it open hard enough to spill 
several paper clips, two erasers and a pencil out onto the floor, and 
rummages through for those little red-and-white packets.  Only two more 
left.  Mulder tears through them shoving all four pills into his mouth 
and taking several long, painful swallows before dropping his head back 
down blearily at the contents of the calendar below him.

"Are you through?  Or shall I wait for you to knock over your desk lamp 
again?"

The clipped, cold voice strikes through the fogginess in his head, and 
he looks up, meeting eyes that deliver a look so cutting, he suddenly 
wishes he'd stayed a little longer in the bathroom.

Say, until maybe next week.

"Christ, Scully."  He wipes the cold sweat off his forehead with the 
back of his left hand.  "How long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough."  She slams the case file onto the desk, missing the 
fingers of his right by millimeters.  "What is this?"

"It's called a folder.  It usually contains documents, photographs--"

"Cut the bullshit, Mulder!"  Her voice raises a notch, dampened only by 
slight congestion.  "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

He blinks, taken aback by the first real profanity he's heard come 
spilling out of her mouth.  Directed at him, anyway.

"Skinner told me you never even brought this up with him."  Her tone 
drops back down, though barely contained.

"Oh, I knew something slipped my mind."

"You lied to me!"  Up again.

"I'm assuming this isn't an appropriate time to say 'now you know how I 
feel.'"

"I had a talk with Skinner.  He said he never approved this.  You lied 
to me, Mulder.  About the case.  About...about everything, you asshole!"  
She ends, shaking, barely coherent.  Not that a stuffy nose helps 
either.

"I think this may constitute what could be known as a double-standard, 
Agent Scully."  He eases himself down into the chair, interlacing his 
fingers.

She swallows her retort, choking down a bolus of colorful phrases Mulder 
would have been surprised to find out she knew.  After a few seconds, 
she finally allows only a question to escape.

"Who is Miriam Acheson?"

A dumb, blank look returns to her.  She swallows.  He hadn't even known 
her name.

"A woman," she continues casually.  Too casually.  "Twenty-nine.  Five-
foot seven.  One hundred thirteen pounds.  Brown hair, brown eyes.  
Lived at 1342 Mission Street.  The killer struck again early this 
morning.  The police tried to get hold of you, but you 
were...unavailable."

Each individual detail drops into place like the pieces of a puzzle, 
until the picture finally coalesces into memory.

His gaze lingers on the file in front of him.  Lifting up the cover, the 
newest autopsy photo of pale carcass with a y-incision across the neck 
and down the abdomen greets him with grim familiarity.

Scully watches his face uneasily, noticing he is unsurprised by what he 
sees.

After a long moment, Mulder looks up from the picture.

"Do you think I killed her?" he asks slowly.

Her eyes drop down to the snapshot, passing his gaze along the way.

"The woman had recently engaged in sexual intercourse.  Latent 
fingerprints on her neck were revealed to be yours.  Bodily fluids found 
in her are the same phenotype as yours as well the remains of a certain 
tie.  If I were inclined to gamble, I'd wager how certain hair and serum 
samples collected from the scene will probably turn out once the DNA 
results return from the lab."

He nods, calmly pondering the overwhelming evidence.

"Arson is not an uncommon method used to cover up sexual assault."

"What do you expect me to say to that, Mulder?"

"Do you think I killed her?"  he repeats.

"No, Mulder, I don't think you killed her."

"I've lied to you once already," he presses.

"Why are you doing this, Mulder?"

"I want you to make sure you're not just saying this out of some sense 
of obligation to me."

(Boy you're just charming 'em left and right this week, G-man.  Would it 
be at all possible to say something to Scully that didn't make you sound 
either completely stupid or a lifetime member of Assholes Anonymous?)

The look she slaps him could crystallize his spleen.

"All right.  Since you think so little of my objectivity, I'll give you 
my theory.  One: the fact that you're pyrophobic, scared dumb by the 
very notion of fire, precludes most possibilities of arson use.  Two: 
all signs point to the woman having consensual sex, not forcible 
assault, as opposed to the theory you so kindly offered.  Three:  
circumstantial evidence aside, your preferred method of execution is 
usually a bullet to the cranium." --She takes a fleeting, nasty pleasure 
out of seeing him flinch at that one-- "Four: You can barely sew, much 
less know the intricacies a Smead-Jones knot.  Did I miss anything, 
Agent Mulder, or do I pass?"

He doesn't reply, only flips through the rest of the report agitatedly.  
Afraid.  Distressed.

She almost reaches a hand out to touch his wet forehead, where little 
beads of perspiration seem to conglomerate on a regular basis now, 
almost takes his hand to squeeze in a small gesture of her support.  
Almost.  Because she can almost see where his hands have been, his arms, 
his lips, his body against the one she had to cut up, only recently 
alive, breathing, both covered in her perfume and musk.  Her body, now 
dead, pale, gutted and decomposing, lying in the morgue.

Scully suddenly finds the simple act of touching him repulsive.  
Instead, she steps back, shielding herself in a knot of crossed arms.

"Where were you, Mulder?"

"I took a drive up to New York this morning."

"Last night."

"I went home.  I went walking."

"Did you go home or did you go walking?"

"I don't know.  I was drinking.  I don't remember."

"Drinking," she echoes.  Deja-vu indeed.

He stops, reading the autopsy details, pointing a slightly shaky finger 
at one line on the page.

"It says here, instead of fragments of metal, There were pieces from a 
compact disc embedded in those three areas."

"Yes.  There were also a few other conflicts with the MO, which leads me 
to think the killer is getting sloppy."

"Who was the artist?"

"Mulder, are you even hearing me?"

"I said, who was the FUCKING ARTIST?"

Her eyes go flinty.

"Rachmaninov."

He throws his seat back, rising abruptly.

"I have to get to a music store."

"Mulder, stop this right now!"  The tone in Scully's voice stops him 
cold at the door.  "It isn't our case.  This never was our case.  If 
word gets out to OPR, that we've been obstructing Violent Crimes' 
investigation, it won't be our jobs either!"

Another racking cough seizes her, and she covers her mouth, feeling wet 
flecks hit her palm.

(Damn, no, not now, not...)

"I don't give a shit about Skinner, OPR, or Violent Crimes."  He throws 
out into the door.  "They don't know what the fuck is going on, and 
they'll never know.  I know.  I've been there.  I've seen it.  I've done 
it.  And if you can't help me, Scully, just get the hell out of my way!"

He spins around angrily, and like quicksilver, the emotion instantly 
shifts to fear, aghast at the blood spilling down her nose and chin.

She looks down staring at the massive spray of blood on her palm, 
seeping from between fingers running in tiny rivulets down the back the 
hand.  Then, ever so slowly, she looks up at him with eyes that are much 
too blue, much too bright.

The last thing Scully sees is Mulder, mouthing her name as he leaps 
towards her, before pitching forward into darkness.


Movement, swaying.  Muffled sounds,  murmurs.

She feels herself pressed against another body, the light sway of movent 
and footsteps rocking their forms.  It is nice and warm.  And strong.  
She doesn't want to leave the comforting embrace, she wants it to be 
like when she was five, to sleep in the comfort of the back seat of a 
car during a long road trip, lifted in Ahab's arms and carried into the 
house, to her room, and gently tucked into bed.

She reluctantly opens her eyes halfway, pushing against the lull of the 
regular heartbeat and sees the floor moving, reflecting the lights in 
alternating patterns of light and dark, the hallway bouncing by like 
waves in a calm sea.

And the open-mouthed gapes of the entire steno pool.

Only then she realizes she is cradled in her partner's arms, being 
carried down the hallway like some damn scene from 'An Officer and a 
Gentleman.'

Her eyes flicker wide, and she sits up, nearly dislodging herself from 
his hold.

"Put me down, Mulder."

"You're going to the hospital."  Or something like that.  His voice 
sounds muffled, unclear and hollow, as if talking though a glass of 
water.

"I'm--"  She shifts in his arms, attempting to find a way to straighten 
out without unceremoniously dumping herself onto the floor.

"If you say that one more time, I'm afraid I'll be forced to gag you."  
A calm, reasonable tone, belying a definite and sincere threat.

He is so damn tired of sitting on the offsides, tired of hearing that 
annoying, endless phrase like it's her fucking mantra, tired of being 
scared shitless every time she has a nosebleed or faints or...

She squeaks as Mulder's arms unconsciously tighten further on her 
squirming form, legs taking longer, faster, furious strides down the 
hall.

He wants to carry her away, throw her in the car and blaze his way back 
to Annapolis, back to her apartment, and lock the both of themselves 
away from the work, away from the world and feed her endless bowls of 
chicken soup and grilled cheese sandwiches until she gets better because 
as anyone knows, chicken soup is the universal cure, but something warns 
him in that oh-so familiar voice that if he even attempted that, he 
would be the next body on Doctor Scully's autopsy table.

Justifiable homicide, she would say.

He stops in front of the elevators, bringing his face within inch of 
hers, and evenly spits out his words in a low, threatening tone usually 
reserved for questioning recalcitrant suspects.

"You are going to the fucking hospital right now, and you're going to 
stay there and have every single test ever known to medical science done 
if I have to carry you kicking and screaming all the way down there and 
tie you to a fucking gurney."

With some satisfaction, he notices she is too stunned to do anything but 
meekly acquiesce.



Oncology Ward
Holy Cross Memorial Hospital


A Bacterial infection.

It's not low blood sugar, or lack of sleep or any of the other crap 
Scully's been feeding him the past few months.  One little needlestick 
and suddenly a billion fucking bacterial cells have somehow managed to 
pop up in her body, blazing a trail of infection through her 
bloodstream, her lymph nodes, and her respiratory system.

Christ.  He should have known.  Most cancer patients didn't die from the 
primary tumors.  They died from lowered resistance to secondary 
bacterial infections.

Bacterial infections.

Mulder has never heard such an ugly set of words.

One little needle was all it took.

And the cancer, the cancer that has spread like wildfire to her Central 
Nervous System, her lymph nodes, the disease permeating every breath, 
every heartbeat.  The secondary tumors have become vascularized, taking 
on new networks of blood vessels, hijacking her body to grow with their 
own demonic force.

She is going to die.

He watches her figure in bed, asleep from exhaustion of taking an 
endless battery of tests: MRIS, lymph node biopsy, gallium scan, bone 
scan, pictures and pictures and pictures of the inside of her skull 
plastered up all around the room.  This is not what he meant when he was 
trying to get into her head.

And Margaret Scully silently, sadly, taking the ghostly hand of her one 
remaining daughter, gently brushing back the hair from her face, trying 
to be strong.


He had called her as soon as Scully checked in, hoping guiltily that she 
wouldn't be home so that he could leave a message on her answering 
machine, that he wouldn't have to talk to her, to have to face her and 
confirm her the worst fears about her daughter.  But she had picked up 
with her cheerful 'hello' on the first ring, a voice that made his 
misery even more pronounced as he set about to dashing her good spirits 
with the effectiveness of a forty-ton girder beam.

"Mrs. Scully?" he replied, fighting unsuccessfully to keep his voice 
from warbling.  "This is Fox Mulder."

"Oh my God, what's happened to Dana?"

"How did you--"

"Fox, you never call unless there's something wrong."

And so he told her, and she came, making impressive record time.  Well, 
now he knew from whom his partner had learned to drive.

And he mulls over those last words, 'never calls unless something's 
wrong.'  Special Agent Fox Mulder, purveyor of maudlin news.  Guaranteed 
to kill the best of moods and clear rooms faster than an ex-convict with 
a facial pustule.  Hello, your daughter's kidnaped; hello, your 
daughter's missing; hello, she's brainwashed and psychotic; hello, she's 
dying...

Cynicism runs deep through his core.  Of all the glimpses of little grey 
men, of conspiracies, and of mysterious creatures that go bump in the 
night he wishes he could believe in her faith, in a merciful God.  He 
can not fight this cancer, can not kill this particular ghoulie.  All he 
can do is watch helplessly as she fades from him day, by day, minute by 
minute, until only a ghost remains.  He has seen her die a hundred times 
in whatever fleeting dreams intrude upon the few hours of sleep his body 
demands per week, but the pain never lessens.

She is going to die.

With every nose bleed, every cough, and every vision she has, she takes 
another step away from him, visions of coffins and headstones prancing 
in his head like decaying sugar-plum fairies.  He shudders, as he 
remembers the headstone Margaret Scully had ordered for her daughter 
over two years ago.  Even though he turned away from it, that image, 
like the stain, etched itself into his mind.  Cold, grey stone, lovingly 
polished and carved--

'Dana Katherine Scully, daughter and friend'

Some fucking friend he was.  And the verse.  "The Spirit is Truth."

Well, John, the "truth" is getting Dana Scully a single occupancy at 
Club Cemetery.  With a gorgeous ground floor view, lots of company, and 
a cheerful staff, she'll be guaranteed peaceful rest for all of 
eternity.  Though accommodations are a bit cramped, they've never 
received any complaints.

She is going to die.

A little whimsical part of him fleeting wonders if Scully will change 
that to "I'm fine," as her last parting shot.

Of course he blames himself for this, blames himself for her infernal 
luck in being assigned to him in the first place, for the four and a 
half years she had to put up with him, for her cancer and for her 
imminent death.  Because, by all rights, he should have been the one 
taken instead of Samantha, instead of Scully, he should have been the 
one experimented on, the one dying.  He should have driven her away, as 
had done with the multitudes of ex-partners before her.  He should have 
never given her Duane Barry's implant.  He should have--

Should have, but didn't.  Selfish bastard.

She is going to...

Feel that old dull wrenching sensation within him suddenly break, he 
blindly stumbles out the door.  He no longer has the luxury of tact or 
time, not with her life.  He has only one chance, a gamble that will 
either save her or kill the both of them in one swift stroke.


*    *    *    *    *
S  I  X
*    *    *    *    *


"And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door."
-T.S. Eliot


Death has never particularly terrified Fox Mulder.  His death at least.  
He has always known that with his demise, the world would not cease to 
function.  There would still be conspiracies, secret governments, and 
Reticulans forever imbedded in the woodwork of mythology.  At times he 
even looked forward to it.  Wanted it, even.  The easy way out.  With 
death there would be closure, rest, the final chapter snapping shut on 
his otherwise abysmal existence.

When it turns its fickle attention to others, however, he is not so 
keen.


Office of the Assistant Director
FBI Headquarters


"Agent Mulder, what is this about a case I never--"

He looks up surprised as an ID wallet and holstered gun drops onto his 
desk, then drops his eyes back down to the service weapon, a custom Sig 
Sauer 230, crafted to fit the smaller hands that command it with 
unflinching accuracy.  Carefully maintained, well oiled and cleaned, the 
gun would alternately purr and roar in the care its owner lavished upon 
it.

"Where?" he finally asks.

"Scully's been admitted to Holy Cross."

"I'll send your forms through for a temporary leave of absence as well."

"No, sir."  The older man looks up at him in surprise.  "I'd like to 
keep working.  I need to."

He could either work or watch her die.

"Get the paperwork done and I'll approve it."

The agent nods, then leaves, and Skinner watches his retreating, bent 
back.  Mulder, seeming so much smaller, almost broken by the weight of 
his partner's illness, throwing himself headfirst into something that 
could possibly guarantee some sort of salvation or certain death, 
drowning, desperately grasping to every illusion and red herring in
the futile, desperate hope that one will turn up a cure, a miracle, 
anything substantial, instead of merely drifting through his clutching 
fingers like sand or mercury.

Then there was that same look in the younger man's eyes, the same mental 
state for nearly three months during his partner's absence, churned up 
to a pitched frenzy when he had thought Scully was going to die at 
Georgetown.  Mulder had requested for an initial "meeting" with the 
Cigarette Smoking Man, got it, and resisted the path to revenge.  That 
look came by a second time when he requested another meeting, down a 
different fork in the road, but Skinner chose to cut him off at the 
pass.  Because all paths with the Smoking Man led to darkness.  But 
today, today he had not requested another meeting, as the AD thought he 
would have surely done at this juncture.

Odd.

Skinner wonders how long it will be before another resignation letter 
appears on his desk, knowing this time he would not be given the chance 
to refuse it.



Richmond, VA--


So sad, the Chrysalis muses, touching the downturned, partially shadowed 
face in the fuzzy picture snapped so hastily a few days ago, stroking 
the lines etched into the man's forehead, wanting to smooth out the 
creases of age, of conscience.  Such beautiful eyes, reflections of the 
soul hidden behind appalling blinders.  But the man's aura is so strong, 
so prevalent, not even the sunglasses can block it out, the unmistakable 
black presence oozing out of every pore, covering him in a diffuse grey 
nimbus like a surrounding fog.  He has fought valiantly against nature, 
against urges, against truth, and like those who refuse to see, he will 
be put down.

When the predator stops hunting, it becomes the prey.

But not now.  Not yet.  When the time is right.  When the transformation 
is complete.  When--

"Get--get in here right now, you little asshole!"  comes the shriek from 
the living room outside.

"What is it sis?"

>From her seated position, the older woman hurls her clam chowder at the 
entering figure, striking with impressive accuracy, and splatters the 
scalding liquid over the front of the new blouse, bits of potato, 
shellfish and celery, clinging with sticky, thick constitution to 
slightly drooping breasts.

"Stupid!  Dickbrained!  Fuckhead!  Retard!" she snarls in a gravelly 
alto, pointing at the large-screen TV, and the news spewing its 
obligatory instant news report in snazzy sound-bites and jerky, 
surreptitious footage.  "I know what you did.  Look!  What the hell 
possessed you to try this?"

"Sis," returns the cajoling plead.  "I had to do it.  I think I saw 
another--"

"Think?"  The screeching interruption accompanies a wildly flung spoon.  
"You don't have enough..." the utensil rebounds with a light thunk off 
right temple, leaving just a faint creamy smear.  "...there, to think!  
I'm the one that thinks.  I'm the one in charge.  Don't ever, ever try 
to think for yourself again, do you understand?"  No response.  "I said 
DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

Still nothing.  Just an intense fascination with the pixels dancing 
across the news screen, and a soft, dreamy phrase.

"He is one."

"One what?"

The Chrysalis walks to the screen, to the shaky snippet of video 
footage, the grainy, poorly-lit picture panning the site, glibly passing 
over one figure standing listlessly against the background of the 
blackened panorama.

"Another one."

"Nathan, you are a fucking idiot," Barbara Benedict sneers.  "Kathy!"

"I'm sorry, mom," returns the impossibly high voice of a child near 
tears.  He kneels down by her wheelchair, head down, and after a moment, 
she takes his head, pressing his face against her breast.

"Darling, now, now.  I still love you.  Just remember I am with you all 
the time," she purrs, stroking his hair.  "The only one you love is me."

Her body then shudders, twitching helplessly, lashing up completely 
stiff for a second, then flops back limply in her seat.

The kneeling figure before her stands up, delicately wiping tears from 
the corners of eyes.

"Someone has to do the thinking around here," purrs the voice of Barbara 
Benedict.



9:05 PM--


Five minutes late already.  Actually, he isn't late.  He's been sitting 
outside in the rental car since 8:15.  Watching.  Waiting.  Unwilling to 
move.

And for the first time in what seems like forever, his mind is clear, 
the hazy fog of nausea and migraine pressure lifted from his cranium in 
a brief respite.  A moment of grace.  A warning.

(Gotta get with the program...make the performance of a lifetime, G-man.  
Don't even think of screwing up.)

Glancing up at himself one last time in the rearview mirror, Mulder 
notices his eyes have taken on a lighter, brighter tinge.  He doesn't 
bother to think about it further as he shoves himself out of the car.



Marita Covarrubias' Apartment
New York, NY


"Agent Mulder," the blonde breathes through the 6-inch expanse of door 
and frame, in an attempt to look surprised.  Her look scrapes over his 
form, settling somewhere between the tucked in areas of t-shirt and 
hooks of his button-fly jeans, before drawing back up to his face.  She 
opens the door wider.  "Come inside."

"Can I fix you something to drink?"  The rep calls back over her 
shoulder as her hips swing away from him in a saunter back to the living 
room.  Mulder steps in behind her, taking dispassionate inventory of the 
surroundings: dim lighting, candles, music, and a bottle of just-
uncorked Merlot.  Then, her: a short blue silk kimono, cut at least four 
inches above the knee and belted at the waist, the soft, clingy sheet of 
fabric enhancing her shoulders and the curve of her back, moving, 
shifting with every minute gesture.

"No.  I'd rather not."

"Ah."  She pours a glass for herself and downs it before turning back to 
the agent with hooded eyes.  Marita takes a deep, unconscious breath as 
he approaches, striding purposefully towards her with an undefinable 
expression on his face, closing the distance from fifteen feet...to 
ten...five...to where she can feel the heat emanating from his body as 
he brushes up against her...

Then shifts his gaze over and reaches behind her for the folder sitting 
beside the discarded wineglass.

"Is this it?"  He draws slowly back from her, a subtle zoom-out from 
proximity into them overstuffed chair across the room, and she slowly 
lets out her breath, disappointed at the vacuum of thermal intensity his 
absence leaves behind.  She would have never figured the dour Special 
Agent Fox Mulder for a tease.

"Yes.  Nathan Benedict's file was rather...interesting to say the 
least."  She can play too.  "In late 1994, he was undergoing 
psychological evaluation in regard to his gender dysphoria."

Eyes lift.

"Nathan Benedict was a transsexual?"

"Evidently."

"That would explain the supposed disappearance.  He was living for two 
years as a woman.  Is this the doctor?  F.P. Nayba?"

Marita slips up behind him, dropping a perfectly manicured hand on his 
shoulder, feigning interest in the contents of the folder.

"Yes, his credentials were readily available."  Reaches past him to turn 
a page, letting the silk of the thin robe stretched across her chest 
brush against his right ear.  "Doctor Nayba has been in practice for the 
past ten years."  she pauses, dropping her voice a smidgin lower, a 
level huskier.  "Why is this information so important to you?"

"It answers a lot of unasked questions."  He turns his face to hers, 
evading her with a lazy smile.  Frohicke, he wills silently, creating 
new four-letter expletives with whatever combinations of consonants and 
vowels remain unexpurgated.

Twenty seconds.  Words beginning with 'D' or so begin rolling around 
before his phone finally chirps.  Breaking eye contact, he reaches for 
his cell phone.

"Mulder," mutters into the headset.

"It's me.  Sorry I'm late.  I got tied up."

"This better be important."  Sotto foghorn.

"It took a while to get this line secured."

"That's perfectly okay."

"But of course if you're..." a polite cough on the other end, "...busy, 
I can always--"

"No, no, I'll be right over."

"Try not to sound too relieved there, Mulder," the other voice drawls 
before hanging up.

"I have to go," the agent mutters, shutting off his phone, letting a 
trickle of phony disappointment leak out.

"Oh."  Genuine disappointment.  "Then perhaps, some other...?"

He slips out before the last languorous word drifts past her lips.



Outside--


Passing by a row of phone booths, not making any eye contact with, not 
acknowledging the Garth double from a "Wayne's World" movie lounging at 
one of the three mini-cubicles, Mulder strides past the lanky blond 
without pause or the slightest flicker of recognition.  The Lone Gunman 
waits until the he disappears, then pushes the frames of glasses further 
up his nose and turns back to the booth.

"Elvis has left the building," Langly mutters into the handset.



Mobile Office of the Lone Gunmen--


"--think she's going to do it?"  Langly's high-pitched nasal question 
squeaks through the cheap radio shack speakers attached to the ceiling 
of the modified van.

"She won't risk any sort of connection to her private line."  Mulder 
answers, stepping from the passenger seat to the back where the two 
remaining Gunmen fiddle with their equipment.  "Is everything set up?"

"I've got the unit on the last phone in the row."

"Don't you have more than just one of anything?"

"We're not the Federal Government, Mulder,"  Frohicke grouses.  "WE 
don't have an expense account.  And then there are certain people who 
have conveniently forgotten to return loaned surveillance equipment."

"I gave you Scully's number.  That's not exactly returnable either."

"But she moved!"  A shuffled stamp from the little man enhances his 
petulant whine.

"It's not my fault."

"Aw, come on."

"No way, Frohicke.  I've already been shot by Scully once.  She'll 
probably aim lower next time."

"Dana's already shot through my heart."

"Yeah, and you give love a bad name.  It's not my heart I'm worried 
about."

A pause, and the Lone Gunman drops his eyes to the floor.  Softly--

"How is she, Mulder?"

The agent absently fiddles around with a few controls, picking up and 
putting down a few obscure pieces of equipment, before replying.

"She'll be better if this plan works."

"Shh," comes a static hiss from Langly.  "The mark's arriving--

"Mark?  Who are you, George Hayduke?"

"--guess you're right after all."

"Of course I'm right," Mulder retorts.  He turns to the bearded man 
hunched over a laptop, the one who would seem otherwise odd if not 
attached to a computer console of some sort.  "Ready Byers?"

"Ready."

"Wait!" Langly's anxiety ripples through the speakers, freezing all the 
men.  "Something's wrong!"

"What?"

"She's headed for the wrong phone!"

"Do something Langly!"

*    *    *    *    *

Slamming down his own receiver with the grace and subtlety of an elk on 
skates, Langly hops over and snatches away the other handset just as the 
delicate fingers of the blonde brush the receiver.

"Sorry," he apologizes with a slightly goofy grin.  "The other one's 
broken."  He pumps in a quarter and dials, obliquely turning away from 
her.

Marita Covarrubias throws an irritated glare to the back of the 
unresponsive figure, then moves over to the phone at the far end.

"What happened?"  the voice picks up the other side.

"Hey ma!  The surgery came out just fine."

"Is she at the right phone?"

"Yep.  Nose job turned out perfectly.  You should think about getting 
one for that honker of yours, ma."

"Langly?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't quit your day job for stand-up."


Minutes later, the Special Representative to the Secretary General hangs 
up and walks away.  After a few more minutes of waiting, Langly takes 
the little round metallic device sitting unobtrusively against the side 
of the speaker, and slips it into his pocket.  Whistling to himself, he 
saunters into the night.



10:42--


"Okay, what we do is feed the sounds through this digital tone 
analyzer."  Frohicke generously explains to the agent.  "This little 
piece of equipment is so sensitive it can separate the pitches of 
individual tones, analyze them, and then categorize them into their
corresponding numbers on the digital readout panel."

Squatting on his haunches to inspect the compact piece of machinery with 
the square LCD face, Fox Mulder turns a dubious eye to the older man.

"This looks like a caller ID unit."

"Well..."

"Is it a caller ID unit?"

"I guess you could--"

"What you're basically saying is, you're going to play the dial tones 
back into this caller ID unit to find out what the numbers are."

"If you're going to put it that way..."  the older man mutters in an 
irritated voice.

"It's a D.C. call," announces Langly.  "555-4417."

Byers nods, then spins to his terminal, entering the data into a reverse 
directory search.

"Frohicke, I need you to look up someone else as well.  An F.P. Nayba, 
M.D..  He should be with the medical registrar.  See what unofficial 
information you can dig up on this guy."

"Okay, got a match," Byers calls back.  "Oh, you're going to love this--
The number is registered to a Jack Colquitt."

Christ.  Talk about delusion.

"That's the one, boys."  Mulder slaps Frohicke excitedly on the 
shoulder.

"Here's the address--"



1654 Lexington Ave, #212
Washington, D.C.


The place was a dump.

In the apartment, he'd searched everywhere, but the Cigarette Smoking 
Man kept no records.  Evidently he'd paid everything in cash.  Nothing 
except nearly twenty bottles of Bud Light, several boxes of Morleys.  
And that:

"The Liar, the Killer, and the Conscience"

Mulder flips through the neatly typed pages of the newest Raul 
Bloodworth novel, bound and numbered in manuscript form, speed-reading 
the entire contents before dropping it back down on the kitchen table.  
Not that Mulder had any sort of weakness for Mack Bolan testosterone 
novels or such equivalent writings, but, this, to simply put it, it was 
bad.

Really bad.

A bonafide stinker.

No writing talent.  Whatsoever.

Now he's _sure_ the raisin-lunged bastard couldn't possibly be--

A visitor slips through the doorway, gun raised, even as the agent spins 
to whip his piece up at the entering figure.

"Here to play again?  Your detective skills have improved tremendously, 
Agent Mulder," the Cigarette Smoking man grates, coolly ignoring the 
hard plastic of the Glock's barrel pressed against his right eye socket, 
as he flicks his left one over the younger one in mental inventory.

The boy is haunted, but at the same time his eyes, his demeanor, is 
cold, an aloofness never present before settled over his features.  Even 
when Mulder last held the gun to his face over two years ago, he reeked 
of an innocence, a charming naivete that still reflected hope and 
desperation, a loathing to take a life, even for the prospect of sweet
revenge.

Back then, he had been easy to manipulate, easy to talk down.

The recent months have made the young Mulder hard and bitter.  The man 
standing before him has tasted the thrill of the cold-blooded kill, the 
fringes of desperation, and the absolute willingness to sacrifice 
everything.  He will not hesitate this time.  He will simply empty his 
gun into him and walk away, without remorse, without a second thought.

But that would assume the kid ever manages to get in the first shot, 
which, at this point, is rather unlikely.  Unlikely, because of the Colt 
.45 reciprocally jammed into the agent's left temple, fully cocked.  
Less trigger pull, fewer milliseconds.

Advantage, Colquitt.

"You're not difficult to find,"  Mulder replies, equally coolly.  "All I 
had to do was follow the trail of cigarette butts."

A long moment passes with neither man moving, speaking, the quick, 
shallow breathing barely audible in the room as both gauge the other's 
every small movement, from a simple twitch of a finger or hand to a 
barely perceptible nuance of expression flickering across the face.  The 
older man breaks the silence first, in a tone betraying only slight 
nervousness.

"Put your gun away, Mulder.  My arms are beginning to tire."

"You first."

"My, a bit paranoid are we?"  He sneers, slowly easing up on his weapon 
from the side of Mulder's head, lowering it, then placing it back in its 
holster.

"Actually, I was beginning to enjoy this Mexican standoff."  But the 
agent nevertheless releases the pressure on the eye socket, reluctantly 
putting his own away as well.

"How is Agent Scully doing?"

"You know very well how she's doing."

"Then I gather you're here to bargain for her life?"

"Skinner already did that.  I'm just making sure you follow through."

"Another death threat, boy?  You've not only become boring, you've 
become redundant as well."

As the smoking man calmly tears open a fresh pack of Morleys, fishing 
out the comfort of a burning stick, a familiar green-and-grey striped 
tie pokes out from his jacket, catching the agent's eye.

Mulder pushes the thought away, unwilling to entertain _that_ genetic 
possibility.

"No, I know your pathetic little shit of a life doesn't mean much to 
you,"  he leans back against the unpapered wall.  "And quite frankly I 
don't care much about mine either."

"That much is obvious."

"However, should it become apparent that any fatal circumstance should 
fall on me, my mother will be extremely distressed."

The flame of the lighter pauses for a just an instant before continuing 
on its journey to light the cigarette.

"Fox," he smiles as a barely perceptible twitch skitters across the 
younger man's jaw.  "Are you are using your mother to blackmail me?"

Mulder tilts his head, reading every single pause, every movement.

"Doctor Kevin Scanlon, oncologist on staff of the Allentown Hospital.  
Funny thing is, he wasn't an oncologist.  In fact, there's more than a 
likely chance he was responsible for the deaths of all of the abducted 
MUFON women, including Betsy Hagopian."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"Scanlon, surprisingly enough, was also employed by Lombard Research 
Facility, which I've heard is undergoing a few legal problems and 
investigation right now.  Something about unauthorized research. 
Dangerous retrovirii and genetic experiments and such."

"I have no idea what you're talking about agent Mulder."  But his breath 
comes just a little faster, a little higher, and his hands shake just a 
little before he takes that long, deep draw on his cigarette.  "And 
besides.  This so-called Scanlon is dead.  I heard it on the news."

Mulder reaches into the pocket of his coat and pulls out a zip disk, 
casually holding it up between the first two fingers.

The Cancer Man takes another deep draw, hissing smoke out through both 
nostrils.

"Another man tried to bluff me once.  A pity, what happened to his 
wife."  His cool demeanor rapidly begins to flake off as words grate out 
faster, harsher.

"I think you're familiar with the term 'Vegreville.'

Good.  He has his attention.

"You have a thing for my mother, a past, and reason why I'm still 
around, as much as it turns my stomach to admit it, is because of you.  
However, I have come into possession of...certain items of interest to 
your superiors, and should this...information go public, and there are a 
number of ways that I have to make it happen, there will be no doubt 
that I'll find a bullet in my head.

Now for the kill.

"So the fact of the matter is, will you break my mother's heart by 
taking both her children from her?  I don't think she'll ever forgive 
you or even physically be able to handle it.  And while you may be an 
ice-cold black-lunged bastard, you're still only a man."

The Cancer Man takes a deep draw from his cigarette,

"You give me too much credit for my compassion, Agent Mulder.  And for 
my power."

"I don't give a fuck about your compassion."

"So all your work, your eternal search for the elusive truth, you would 
willingly throw away?"  Sneering.  "For a woman?"

"I never said I wouldn't go public with the information.  I still may.  
However, should Scully die because of what your people did to her, you 
will find out just how quickly information can be disseminated to the 
general public.  And as you know, I am extremely high profile."

"In essence, you do not guarantee your silence either way.  What makes 
you think I'll deal with a losing prospect like that?"

"Because you have no choice."

A fog of smoke covers the old man, the odor of old and fresh tobacco 
assailing Mulder's nose.

"I see you have become quite adept at playing this game now.  You have 
the potential for ruthlessness Bill lacked."

If the remark affects the Agent, he doesn't show it.

"So I take it we have a deal."

The old man looks at him, almost sadly.

"There are bigger concerns of the world than just your partner, boy."

"Like you give a damn about anyone besides yourself."  Mulder's jaw 
tightens as a nagging suspicion creeps stealthily into his mind, 
something that spills over him, a quick freeze racing down inside his 
ribcage.  "You don't have anything.  You've never had anything.  There 
is no cure, is there?"

"Don't underestimate yourself, Mulder."  A long, greyish cloud hisses 
out of his mouth.  All the answers you need are locked up in your head."

"And what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"I've already told you everything you need to know.  It's up to you to 
decipher it."

Nothing else.  Mulder exits, every motion, every expression impassive, a 
performance for the hidden eyes that follow him to his car.  He does not 
relax until he is way out of range.

Using his own mother as a bargaining chip for Scully's life.

Jesus.  When did he become so cynical?


The last bit of grey wisps out of the nearly dead end of the cigarette, 
dissolving into the air as the Cigarette Smoking Man thinks of the past, 
remembering another man years ago, another one willing to give 
everything up. Watching history repeat itself in front of his very eyes,
wondering if he was ever that young, that naive, that hopeful.  That 
desperate.  But of course he was.  Round and round and round Karma goes, 
where it stops...

He thoughtfully drops the remains of the butt down the neck of an old 
empty bottle of Budweiser, watching it fizz out in puddle of stale beer 
and emit a trail of whimpering smoke in its final hurrah.  The boy had 
always on the outside, always been one step behind.  Now, with this, he 
has finally entered the game as a full-fledged, card-carrying member.

Better and better yet.

*    *    *    *    *
S  E  V  E  N
*    *    *    *    *

"War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If 
you can't grin, keep out of the way 'till you can."

               -Sir Winston Churchill


Fox Mulder's Apartment
Alexandria, VA


The door opens to the same apartment, the same hallway and door, and the 
same tall figure with slightly stooped shoulders shuffles in, coat 
shifting restlessly against his form.  A small yellow bag emblazoned 
with the "Tower" logo dangles precariously from the edge of an index
finger, the slight weight making a shallow indentation in the tip.  As 
the other weary hand reaches for the light switch to engulf the room in 
unwelcome light, it pauses in mid-movement before dropping back down.  
Eyes flicking back and forth in detailed appraisal, the rods in his
corneas slowly readjust to the murky expanse as Fox Mulder surveys the 
apartment, eidetic memory comparing his present surroundings to the 
mental snapshot he took this morning, before coming to the obvious 
conclusion:

Someone's been here.

Not surprising.

But they'd found nothing, despite the expert ransacking.  They would 
probably get the office too, if they hadn't trashed it by now.

Well, at least they'd attempted to put everything back in place 
this time.  He imagines the nervous directive expelling from that 
gravelly-voiced ashtray's mouth in grudging paranoia, actions admitting 
somehow that his little performance had, in fact, unnerved the bastard 
into action.

But perhaps there is an assassin in the shadows just waiting for the 
perfect moment to put a nice large caliber slug into his forehead.  
Well, this is his lucky day, cause 'ol Spooky isn't gonna be putting up 
a fight tonight.

Cure or kill.  Either resolution is acceptable.

Just as long as it isn't Krycek.

Jesus, please, no.

Anyone but that fucking faggot.

It would be insulting.  Humiliating.  The most degrading death 
imaginable.

Well, except maybe for auto-erotic asphyxiation.

Despite everything, a wry smiles creeps across his face as he waits for 
his personal up and close encounter with 300 grains of hot lead.

Nothing.

Tossing the bag of Rachmaninov CDS onto the kitchen table, he leans his 
forehead against the cool, machinery induced comfort of the 
refrigerator, letting out something between a breath and a deep sigh.  
It would be too easy to rub him out, and they never did anything the 
easy way.

He sighs again, feeling that same old familiar feeling threatening to 
tug him down into a complete sobbing wreck...

But no.  Not tonight.  Simply too tired.  Too tired to cry, too tired to 
think, to care.  Let the world implode in its own insanity, as long as 
they just leave him the fuck alone.

<Creak>

He almost misses it.

<Creak>

Eyes flicker open.

Light, hesitant footsteps make their way down the hall.

The building manager never bothered to fix the squeaky floorboards 
outside, despite numerous complaints from the neighbors.  Mulder never 
had a problem with them.  It made the task of sneaking up to his 
apartment an annoyingly difficult feat.

>From their resonance and aural proximity, he estimates 10 more steps 
before they hit his door.

Nine.

So, what to do?

Eight.

As satisfactory as volunteering himself up for target practice sounded a 
few minutes ago, another emotion has managed to creep up and suffuse 
itself in the interim, a blackened, dead sort of feeling.

Seven.

Reflexively dropping to a crouch in the shadows, he unholsters his 
Glock, ratching back the hammer, swallowing a few times, as he listens 
to the footsteps gradually near.

Six.

Something past despair, past anger, past anything really.  Nothing much 
except for the urge to really, really want to kill somebody right now.

Five

Kill one of those assassins.  Kill the Secretary General's Rep.  Kill 
the Morley Man.

Four.

Walk into the office where all the bastards congregated with fifty 
pounds of dynamite strapped to him and blow him and every cocksucking 
self-appointed arbiter of the world up into little chunks of consortium 
kibble.

Three.

He narrows his eyes, attempting to divine the image of the mystery 
attached to the shadow of a pair of shoes that bend and break up the 
continuous strip of hallway light wiggling in under the door.

Two.

A half-second later, he points his weapon squarely at the middle of the 
door, no longer particularly concerned whether his would-be assassin 
wears Bruno Maglis or not.  Contrary to popular belief, no one cares 
what footwear you're wearing when you're dead.

Stop.

His fingers tighten on the trigger, anticipating the shattering and 
splintering of wood and the surprise on the fucker's face when bullets 
come shooting out of the door straight into his chest, when the 
preliminary silence is interrupted by a knuckled rap.

A puzzled pause.  Then Mulder slowly unwinds, feeling somewhat self 
conscious.  As far as he knows, killers don't usually knock.  Even the 
most polite ones.

Wishing he had a peephole, he opens the door a crack.

"Mrs. Scully," he stammers, nonplused, at the figure in front of him as 
the most instantaneous thought that flits into his head causes his 
throat to seize.  "Scully.  What's happened to--?"

"Dana...is as well as she can be at this moment."  Red-rimmed eyelids 
flutter with exhaustion, the unconscious action enhanced by the dark 
rings around deep-set sockets.  "She asked me to give you this."

The older woman holds up a white paper bag, meticulously folded at the 
top.

The agent looks at it blankly.

"What is it?"

"I don't know.  She made me promise not to open it."

He nods dumbly, taking the offering from her slack hands.  Maggie 
brushes back the locks of hair straggling over his forehead to look into 
his hooded, listless eyes.

"You haven't been by the hospital for nearly two days.  How are you 
doing, Fox?"

Mulder shrugs, not trusting himself to answer.  She waits, but any 
further action not forthcoming, simply takes the hand clutching the 
mysterious paper bag and gives it a gentle squeeze.  Then she looks at 
the other hand, the one still tightly gripping his gun.

With another nervous shrug, he decocks it and stuffs it back into the 
empty holster.

"Try to stop by the hospital tomorrow, if you can, Fox.  Dana--we, want 
you there."

He nods mutely, head bobbing slightly in acquiescence.

One more hand squeeze and Margaret Scully turns away.  Mulder listens to 
the fading creaks of delicate footsteps carry her away before shutting 
the door.

Dropping onto the sofa, he unrolls the closed flap of the package and 
blinks twice at the contents--a bottle of Erythromycin and a note.  
Fingers the lined notepaper supplemented with an ad for Claritin stamped 
at the top, then unfolds the lower half of sheet taking in the precise,
neat penmanship:


     'Mulder,


     'The lab report from the autopsy revealed Miriam Acheson to have 
     had a mild form of Chlamydia, and given the type of contact you 
     had with her, there is a good chance you were also infected.'


Translation: Idiot.  You didn't use a rubber and now you have a nasty 
social disease.  Hope your dick falls off.


     'The medication should be taken exactly as instructed and 
     completely finished.  You should also abstain from sexual 
     intercourse until you have completed the regimen.'


Translation:  I've given you the biggest, foulest pills I could find, 
sincerely wishing you'll choke on them, so you think twice about where 
you stick your buddy the next time.  Hope your dick turns green, then 
falls off.


The writing changes from here, a slightly larger space between 
paragraphs, a slight shift in the angle of the letters, a moment of 
hesitation before writing the next section.


     'Mulder, it is none of my business whom you choose to have a 
     relationship with.  However, as your friend and partner, I 
     strongly suggest you consider some sort of protection in the
     future, for your sake, if not anything else.'

     DS'


Fox Mulder slumps back into the leather cushions, reading the label on 
the bottle.  Despite his abandoning her at the hospital, she still 
worries about him enough to write a prescription, fill it, and of all 
things, apologizes for interfering in his life.

He can imagine her, sitting up in bed, the morphine pack hanging from 
her shoulders--no, she had refused the morphine, choosing the clarity 
and excruciating pain over drugged somnolence-- as thin, pale fingers 
struggle to press the pen against the paper.  He can see her, leaning 
back in exhaustion, dropping the note in the package and folding the 
opening up, before sitting shakily up and handing it to her mother, all 
with explicit orders not to pry.

His head rolls back to fixate on the ceiling, a lonely part of his mind 
dully preoccupied with the bumpy texture and creases, trying not to 
think, not to feel, willing himself to just fade away, for his atoms 
split in a giant ball of light and heat until there is nothing left of 
the shell sprawled in the living room.  But physics are not so kind.

"Mulder, you are a world-class, royal asshole," he mutters.

Even that infernal voice in his head agrees.

*    *    *    *    *

Another night of sleeplessness finally crawled into day as Fox Mulder 
watched the bluish ozone light filter into the room, the penetrating 
straggle of sunlight gradually creeping across the floor in an obstinate 
mission to pour its blazing glory across his face.  After several 
minutes of fruitlessly trying to stare down the sun, he gave up and 
stumbled into the shower.

In the hospital's gift shop, he bought a bouquet.  Had gotten thirty 
feet when the strongest urge of hypocrisy overtook him and he dumped the 
contents into the nearest trash bin.  Somehow, he ended up dragging his 
feet through the hallways of Holy Cross with empty hands stuffed into 
the pockets of his trenchcoat, wondering what he could do, what he could 
say that would even make a damn bit of difference.

Sit with Scully again?  Another session of talking to her, talking to 
himself?  Of trying to say something that would make some form of sense?  
If words could heal, he'd spout off the entire unabridged Webster 
dictionary in twelve different languages.  If words could create 
miracles, he'd chant the entire contents of the Bible, the Baghavad 
Ghita, the Koran, and the Epic of Gilgamesh and believe every single 
letter.  If words could mean anything, he'd tell her things
that were kept locked away inside of him, words that had never left the 
sanctuary of denial, escaping only once in four years in a conversation 
about iced tea.

But words were just words.  A bunch of phonemes linked together to 
assign labels to things, to feelings, to things that just weren't meant 
to be said.  They didn't do anything, they didn't mean anything.

They were just words.



Room 204
Oncology Ward
Holy Cross Memorial Hospital


The room's oddly dark and aloof countenance clicks Mulder's finely honed 
sense of paranoia into full alert.  Peering in through a corner of the 
window, he catches a glimpse of unidentifiable shadow hovering over 
Scully.  Too tall, too thin to be her mother.  As part of the figure 
backs into the light, the creamy bright glow of a lab coat reveals 
itself, then ruffles back into the penumbric darkness.

The agent retreats silently to the nurses station with long, dynamic 
steps, an agitated, walking bundle of overloaded nerves ready to bust an 
internal breaker.

"Nurse!  Hey, you!" he motions the nearest person.  "Is there a doctor 
in with Dana Scully right now?"

She searches through her charts as he looks back at the still-closed 
door, fiddling with something beneath the folds of his coat.

"Um, no sorry.  The last resident came by room 204 an hour--"

Halfway down the hall before she finishes, running, flying as fast as he 
can, praying he's not too late as whips his gun out and bursts through 
the door, snatching a glimpse of needle sliding into the IV, a slow, 
poisonous snake.

"Hold it the fuck right there!  Drop the syringe!  I said drop it, 
asshole!  You have no idea how much I want to find any excuse to shoot 
you right now."

The figure slowly, carefully withdraws the needle and places it down on 
the bedside table.  Then slowly turns around to face him.  Breathing 
hard, the agent's face twists into confusion only able to muster a--

"You?"

Kurt Crawford.

"I--I'm sorry, Agent Mulder, I just wanted to see how..."

He looks over at Scully, still in bed asleep.  Undisturbed by the 
commotion.  Or unconscious.  But still alive.  Her chest rises and falls 
in a hypnotic, steady rhythm to the syncopated heartbeat he can somehow 
hear in his ears, a heart fighting, willing to struggle on.

Still breathing hard, he drags the hybrid outside into the hallway, 
thrusting his pistol into the young man's ribs, his face only several 
inches from the other's as strained words leave in a guttural growl.

"Did Cancer Man send you?  Were you trying to kill her?  Answer me!"

"No!  We told you what we were trying to do.  I was trying to save her!"

"How do I know you're not lying?  How do I know you haven't changed your 
minds?"

"Agent Mulder, you do realize what will happen to you if you shoot me?"

A sardonic smile drained of any warmth yanks at the corner of his right 
lip before departing post-haste.

"Thanks for reminding me."  He roughly turns the clone around, shoving 
his face against the wall and jams the barrel of the gun against the 
base of his skull.  "Now answer."

"I'm not lying."  His voice drops lower, almost to a whisper.  "She's 
all we have left."

"Why should I believe you?  Why now?  Why wait until she's gotten this 
far?  Why not earlier?"

"It still hasn't been tested out to satisfaction.  We've been working on 
a modified factor of the hybrid gene, using her code of branched DNA.  
We were hoping for a little more time.  But now..."

Mulder feels his head go light, a rush of something filling his brain, 
his body with a sensation that seems almost foreign to him, something he 
hasn't experienced in years--A flicker of hope.  Maybe Pandora wasn't 
such a bitch after all.

He eases off on the Kurt, just a little.

"This...hybrid gene, was that what you were trying to inject into her?"

"Yes."

"You think it'll work?"

"Right now we don't have a choice.  Now will you please let me do this?"


*    *    *    *    *
E    I    G    H    T
*    *    *    *    *

Her heart is the first thing Dana hears, the soothing rhythmic thud 
squeezing out life into the twisting, turning ropes of blood vessels, of 
lymph, blood cells, protein, plasma hissing through one-way lanes, a 
constant, pulsating journey to the limits.  Lanes divide into smaller 
streets, forks branching out sideways, backwards, snaking out every-
which way into gradually narrowing capillary-fingered extremities, but 
like prodigal children always return back to the source.

She travels down the lines of the main artery, a foreign body within 
herself, braving the rapids of the bloodstream, of cells merging, 
macrophaging, dividing, bursting, spiraling down into veins as metallic 
voices, fragments, thoughts combine in a mental mosaic of frenetic 
intensity accompanied by the sucking sounds of lungs gasping for oxygen-

     'Trust no one'

     'I had to trust them'
     
     'You can trust us'

Turning, spinning, blood and viscera, ligaments, muscles, contracting, 
flexing, tightening, relaxing, a twitch driven into frenzy by a rush of 
loose ions and salts--

     'You never trusted me...!'

     'You're the _only_ one I trust...'

     'I trust you're telling me the truth...'

Building, rebuilding, rebirth of flame in the lungs, spitting fire and 
molten steel, burning cells with charred intensity--

     'The truth is in me...'

     'The truth will save you, Scully...'

     'Truth, truth, there is no truth...!'

A single body bursting through, killing, destroying, rebuilding in the 
agonizing cycle of birth, death, mortification, and rebirth, living and 
dying, over and over and over--

     'How do I die...?'

     'You don't...'

     'You don't...you don't...you don't...'

Twisting and arcing up into the stratosphere, struggles, kicking, 
pushing up, breaking through the liquid mass of warmth, ten feet, five 
feet, three, one, breaks the surface, rippling the atmosphere like a 
riptide pool, a silvered fish shattering the air--

She bursts into the light.

*    *    *    *    *

The spiraling journey towards the flicker of illumination at the end of 
the tunnel comes to an abrupt halt upon the reintroduction to physics of 
the material world--in this case, Special Agent Dana Scully's headlong 
collision with an immovable object, specifically, the nose of Special 
Agent Fox Mulder.

"Ow!"  His head snaps up upon the impact and he falls back into the 
bedside chair, cupping the bridge of his nose in one hand.

"Sorry," Scully mumbles, rubbing her forehead, before settling back into 
her pillow.  She closes her eyes, feeling the new throb rise from the 
side of her skull.  Then, ever so slowly, her eyes flutter open again, 
as a thought occurs to her.

"Mulder."

A "whuh?"  manages to filter through his hand.

"Where am I?"

"Not at the hospital."

"I see that."

She sits up in the bed absorbing the contents of the room's interior as 
much as the mysterious intravenous solution attached to her wrist.  Out 
of a corner of her eye, she spots a Kurt Crawford checking her vital 
signs monitor, at the far end of the room, another Kurt reading a
chart, beyond that, a third Crawford hovering into view with some 
unidentifiable, yet obviously medical, tool.  Her eyes track slowly from 
one clone to the other, stopping slightly at each one, then finally 
swivel back to her partner.

"Mulder."

"Huh, Scully?"  Two fingers tweak his nose, gently assuring its bruised-
but-unbroken status.

"What the hell is going on?"

"You're at Lombard Research Facility."

Her expression doesn't change.

"In Pennsylvania."

Still no movement.

"I brought you here."

Not even an eye twitch.  He shifts uncomfortably under the silent 
drilling.

"These Kurt Crawfords are hybrids.  They've been working to help you, 
Scully.  To help us."

Like a damn statue.  Dogs would lose a staring contest against Scully.

"I didn't think there was any other choice."

Her eyes flicker around, re-absorbing the information, before another 
question coalesces and exits.

"How did you manage to get me transferred from the hospital, Mulder?"

"Ah, you weren't exactly transferred."

"I see."

"In fact," he scratches the edge of an eyebrow.  "I might be wanted for 
kidnaping."

An exasperated, but ultimately unsurprised, sigh.

"Did you at least let my mother know?"

"I couldn't let tell her, Scully.  It might have proven dangerous."

"Ah, you're awake, Agent Scully."

Both turn to the set of clones slowly coming up behind the one that 
spoke, exact replicas of the original lined up in perfect planar 
imitation.  The second one, the one reading her chart, looks
up with a smile.

"How are you feeling?  Are you experiencing any nausea?  Discomfort?"

Noticing, for the first time, she unconsciously touches her forehead.

"No, I'm..." her head tilts slightly to the side, surprised at the 
truthfulness of her words "...fine.  What kind of treatment have you 
been administering?"

The third one speaks up.

"How much do you know about transfection, Agent Scully?"

"Just the basics," the agent frowns.  "It's a process that involves 
implanting cells that produce a retrovirus vector for a gene into 
tumors.  The modified bacterial or viral product enters and changes the 
cell."

The hybrid nods.  "You might also be familiar with bacterium 3924, 
retrovirii hosted in chloroplast infusion, base pairs five and six."

Her chin lifts, then sets, as the final pieces fall into place.

"Purity control."

"They're injecting you with monkey pee, Scully,"  Mulder whispers 
conspiratorially in her ear.

"What kind of side effects should I expect from this treatment?" she 
looks at the glowing chartreuse intravenous solution distastefully, 
remembering bubbling green goo and several lost pairs of shoes.

"There are advantages to green blood, you know?"  Mulder smirks.  "Next 
time some lunatic comes lunging at you with a sharp instrument, 'pfffft' 
they'll be dead."

She smacks his shoulder as the hybrids smile thinly.

"No green blood at all.  That is a more desperate measure.  What we are 
going to do is introduce this virus as a vector into your tumor cells.  
The host bacteria have been modified to your specific genome code, and 
will basically destroy any cells producing signs of the branched
sequence."

Mulder bends closer to her, a little crease marking his forehead.

"What's wrong, Scully?"

"How did you know when I was about to say something?"

Lightly brushing her left eyebrow with a gentle finger, he slowly draws 
down the tiny little lines in the corner of her eye, the lines that have 
slowly developed over the past few years, carving themselves into her 
features like thin cracks on an alabaster statue.

"Like a crooked pin,"  He murmurs.



46th St.
New York, NY


The machine remembers his first kill well.  A man.  An important man in 
a high place.  He had no idea what that particular man did to warrant a 
sanction or why they wanted him dead, but that was fine.  Extraneous 
facts usually got in the way of the job.  He waited from an alcove as 
the man left the United Nations building at 1:57 am in the morning of 
December 1st, 1973.

One bullet to the head and it was over.

Admittedly, he felt a slight twinge in the following few minutes as the 
30.06 round erupted from the barrel and the acrid smell of gunpowder 
infiltrated his nostrils, but ultimately, everything becomes easier with 
practice.

Killing has become not second nature to him, but first, the icy recesses 
of thought, of conscience no longer defined by law or morality.  
Conscience is a liability for a professional.  Sanctioning is his job, 
his existence, and he does it well.  He asks few questions, and performs
as directed.  And though the years have passed with the blood of 
hundreds and his hair has greyed all around, he still remains the 
Machine.

He asks no questions about his new assignment.  He never does.  He only 
listens, fingering the Gimlet with an almost absent fondness, watching 
the spike plunge out of the pen-like base with a slick, metallic 
"shhhk."

"You understand the directive?" comes the faintly annoyed question.

Twirling the alien icepick in his fingers, the Machine snaps the needle 
back in before returning the object to his overcoat.

"Yes.  What about the clones?"

"Terminate them all.  They've been nothing but trouble.  Besides," 
yellow-stained fingers carelessly flick the air in front of them.  
"There's always more where they've come from."

"Incoming reports say that there are two others in the building as well.  
One man and a woman."

"How long have they been there?"

"Four days."

"Do you recognize them?"

"Yes.  What would you like me to do?"

His superior, the other man, the other killer, takes a long draw of his 
Morley, holding that long, poisonous breath in before finally exhaling.

"If absolutely necessary, terminate them too."



Lombard Research Facility
Lehigh Furnace, PA


The Lombard Research Facility hasn't changed much since the last time he 
wandered through the halls with Byers and an assassin at his heels.  Of 
course they've replaced the shattered bulletproof door and upgraded the 
alarm system, which made it difficult to go anywhere without being 
picked up on one of the main cameras.  So how the hell seven clones 
managed to lose Scully within the expanse of less than 8000 square feet 
reaches beyond Mulder's panicked comprehension.

"What do you mean, you don't know where she is?"

"She's never wandered off before," one of the Kurts shrugs nervously as 
the others mill about, weaving back and forth through the septic tanks 
like children looking for a lost ball in a field of tall grass.  
"Usually she's asking one or more of us questions or observing the 
developing tanks."

"Scully!"  Looking around, the walk turns into a slight jog that 
accelerates through the hallways of the facility as the agent scours the 
area's nooks and crannies.

His gut plunges somewhere near his ankles as he slows down to a stop in 
front of the vault.

Her back is turned to him, the gap in her hospital gown revealing a hint 
of the tattoo etched into her lower back, its head peering at him while 
green IV solution hanging from the pole clasped in her left hand winds 
its way down to her wrist.  In front of her, the S- drawer lies

open as Scully holds one of her own test tubes up at eye level, not 
turning as he enters, absorbed, contemplating the mysteries of her inner 
self grotesquely displayed in the little glass vial.

"What is this, Mulder?"

His mouth opens and shuts a few times before regaining the ability to 
speak.

"They're ova."

"That was a rhetorical question, Mulder.  What I really meant was 'why 
didn't you tell me?'"

"Scully--"

"You did know about this, didn't you?"

His silence confirms her suspicion.  She turns to him, eyes flickering 
an ambiguous topaz.

"How long have you known?"  He looks down, unable to answer.  The lack 
of reply only infuriates her more, the end result culminating in an 
eruption of her vocal cords.  "Goddamn you, Mulder!  You had no right to 
keep this from me!"

Soft, barely audible--

"I...I couldn't...I didn't know...I couldn't..."

"You couldn't what?  What the hell gives you the right to make that 
decision?"

"Penny Northern had just passed away, I didn't think--"

"You've known since then?  It's been four months, Mulder, why couldn't
you find the time in four months?"

"Because you were sick.  Because..."

"Because you thought I was going to die."  His eyes do a reflexive 
little dance up from the floor at the brusque sentiment of her words.  
"So you decided to spare me this pain, is that it?"

"Scully, I--"  He takes a step towards her.

"Get away from me."

The four words are evenly spaced, dripping none of the vitriol that he 
expects, no hatred, no anger, or even a touch of scathing commentary.  
It is the reduction of his presence to a non-entity, those toneless, 
flat words, that makes Mulder back away in miserable retreat.



Hybrid Development Room--


The hybrid tanks, he finds, have a lulling soothing rhythm that reminds 
him of those oil-and-turpentine moving-wave sculptures that rock 
endlessly back and forth on every yuppie desk.

The naked boy suspended inside the bilinous green liquid, turns slightly 
out, yawns languidly, then curls further into the fetal position before 
becoming still again.

Just like Scully, Mulder muses.  Sleep through damn near anything.  But 
how much of the boy was Scully?  How much Betsy Hagopian?  Penny 
Northern?  How many of those ova did it take to combine with whatever 
alien chromosomal genes to create the genetic combination of this 
particular Kurt-Crawford-to-be?

As if sensing the drifting string of thought, or perhaps, finally of the 
presence directly outside its artificial womb, boy turns, his eyes 
fluttering open in the thinly opaque septic fluid.  As it focuses on the 
agent with a speculative, calm expression, it doesn't take Mulder
more than a few nanoseconds to recognize those same piercing blues 
scrutinizing him with pointed intensity.

"Agent Mulder," an adult clone approaches from behind.

"Just wondering, you know, how much of Scully is in it," he gestures 
vaguely at the tank.  "Him.  What would you say be an average 
percentage?"

"Does it really matter?  They are all our mothers."

He continues studying the boy, the genetically developed Uber-redhead 
returning his gaze with unblinking, intelligent eyes.

"How is she doing?"

"Why don't you ask her yourself?"

He laughs, a silent, self-deprecating chuckle as the boy loses interest 
in the staring match and turns away to resume its slumber.

"I doubt I'm on Scully's Christmas card list anymore.  I think she's got 
me up there with the guy who was her last date."

For the first time, the hybrid turns a impatient eye to the unshaven, 
unkempt man stubbornly holding his place in front of the tank, before 
letting out a shot.

"Did it ever occur to you, Agent Mulder, that the world doesn't revolve 
around you?"

Mulder's eyes snap up, the import of familiar words somehow sinking in 
their final context.  He shuffles his feet in contrition, then looks at 
the Kurt ruefully.

"You know, a wise woman told me something like that once.  Somebody's 
mom, I think."

"Come on, Agent Mulder."

He glances back one last time at the boy in the tank, contemplating the 
mysteries of probability and genetics, before following the hybrid out.



Richmond, VA--


Breasts, the Chrysalis notes in the reflection of the full length 
mirror.  Breasts make the woman.  Not this, the atrophied pectoral 
muscle and saline implants bulging from deeply scarred and puckered 
tissue on the chest.  Breasts are a piece of art, the perfect symbol of 
feminism and motherhood wrapped in the soft, pliable mounds, worshipped 
in innumerable carvings of the Venus of Willendorf since the beginning 
of time.  He lifts one scarred and drooping breast up to finger the 
jagged line of white crisscrosses running in the crease.

Time.  Time and money will fix the wrongs of the world.  But for now, 
revenge will have to suffice.

"You are a freak, Nathan" a voice hisses out from behind him.

He covers himself hastily, drawing the open front of the shirt closed 
over his scarred and mutilated chest.

"Stop calling me that!  He promised.  He was going to make me 
beautiful..."

The engine of the electric monster hums as Barbara Benedict rolls 
forward into the room, gnarled, stringy fingers clicking back and forth 
on the side buttons of her wheelchair.

"Only I can make you beautiful, Nathan," she sneers.  "Because I am 
beautiful.  You, by yourself, you're nothing but an ugly shell."  Then 
the voice drops into the husky silk of seduction.  "You know how I can 
make you beautiful..."

Automatically, he kneels, lowering his head, a movement automated by 
years of habit as much as any Pavlovian reflex.  She takes his face 
caressing it, preparing, when he suddenly stands up, roughly pushing her 
away, toppling the wheelchair backwards and

"No! I am beautiful!  He knows...he sees..."

"Look at you, Nathan," her sibilant low growl grates against his inner 
ear.  "You want to be a woman, you want to be me...but you'll never 
succeed, not without me, understand?  You will live and die a freak 
without me!"

Hate comes easily to one who has experienced it first hand for nearly 
four decades.  Self-loathing festers in the veins of decaying skin, 
roping and burrowing into the core by sheer energy of its own power.  
The Chrysalis lives on loathing, on humiliation, it kills for the
exquisite agony of death.  Because in self-hate and destruction, the new 
flesh can rise from the the old.

(Feed)

"Shut up!"

"Freak!"

(Feed the worm)

"Shut up!"

"Freak, freak, freak!"

(Feed the one that really loves you)

"Shut up!"


He reaches down, takes her by the arms, ignoring her ineffectual 
flailing against him.

"Shut up!"

Wraps his hands around the beautiful head, swinging thrashing her body 
like a pitbull worrying a rag doll.

"Shut up!"

Harder, faster, struggling, tighter, whiplash, until the satisfying snap 
rings in a lullaby to his ears and she lolls in his arms like a loose 
rag doll.

Hugging all the warmth out of the rapidly cooling body, the 
metamorphosis, sacrifice, begins anew with another mate, and the 
butterfly dries its wings out in the morning sun, raising new
arms to the beckoning light.

The transformation is complete.



Lombard Research Facility--


"Agent Mulder?  Agent Mulder!"

The agent twitches once, twice, then the world zooms back into reality, 
pupils relaxing from pinpoints of black into normal charcoal pools, as 
the ceiling comes back into screaming focus.  Mulder shudders 
reflexively, his chest heaving with a spasmodic twitch before lurching 
up into the Kurt bent over him.

"What happened?"  He feels a strong pulse tugging at this throat, 
crawling up toward his chin, as still useless arms flop bonelessly at 
his sides.

"I'm not sure," the clone speaks slowly, appraising the situation.  "You 
were walking along behind me when you suddenly clutched your head and 
collapsed."

"How long have I been out?"  He shakes his fingers, feeling the tingling 
needlelike sensations spike through his arms in unsympathetic 
belligerence.

"Ten, eleven minutes at the most.  Are you epileptic, Agent Mulder?"

"No."

"Are you sure?  I think you might have had a seizure."

Mulder brushes the hybrid's arm away and gets up, wobbling slightly 
against the pinpricks running rampant down his legs.

"Cheer up.  Maybe it is an aneurisym after all," he mutters.

"What?"

"Nothing."

The Kurt stops in place, phasing out, as if listening to another voice 
only audible to the hybrid's ears before turning suddenly pale and 
dashing off towards the main room.  Mulder pauses, incensed for a 
second, then curiously follows the clone, freezing as the picture before
him carves itself in his mind for eternity--

The sight of Scully pale and doubled over in bed, involuntarily 
jacknifing to some mysterious internal crisis while bodies of Xerox 
Kurts run back and forth, crisscrossing and swarming in front of him.

"Something..." she gasps, clutching her midsection.  "Something's 
not..."

He stands here, helpless, hopeless, dumb, unmoving, wanting nothing 
better than to crawl up the nearest wall, to scream and scream until his 
voice gives out.

"What happened?" his tinny and disembodied voice ekes out to no one in 
particular.

"BP's seventy palp."

"She's crashing!"  One Kurt shouts.

"Someone mix up a Dopamine drip!"  The second one orders.

The third one slips the needle in.

"BP Doppled at sixty."

"She's not stabilizing," comes the fourth.

He grabs the nearest running Kurt by the collar, shouting, shaking him, 
fighting down the blood rushing into his eyeballs and forehead.

"What the hell is going on?"

"Splenic sequestration crisis," he shouts back.  "But it shouldn't be 
happening to her.  We made sure of it during diagnostics!"

"What the fuck is that?"  He shakes harder.

"A blood filtering problem.  We checked!  I don't understand..."

"I swear, if anything happens--!"

"Something's not right!  It's not supposed to only destroy the cells 
with the proper double helix strand!  Something in her blood..."

The younger man's face crumples with the unsuccessful effort to stifle 
emotions, shaking his head, about to burst into tears, when a flash of 
something hits Mulder's memory.  He drops the clone.

"Smallpox."  The word leaves a dull, bitter taste in his mouth.

Seven pairs of eyes swivel instantly to him.

"Her smallpox vaccination.  She said there was a gene tag in her scar.  
If it's in the vaccine as well, I think the retrovirus might...oh 
God..."

"It's attacking all cells carrying that genetic marker," one finishes.  
"Get that IV out!"

The needle is pulled before the second phrase hits completion, the Kurts 
working in sympathetic motion, when a shot rings out, their roars 
shattering the sterile chaos with smoke and violent intensity.  Several 
bullets rupture the drip-bag, sending its green contents spraying over
Scully and the clones, as the hybrids scatter formation in the sudden 
upheaval.

Running towards his partner amid the barrage of bullets, Mulder dives 
into her, rolling her off the bed onto the ground, and turns the steel 
hospital frame up sideways as a makeshift shield.  He snaps his weapon 
out of its holster and fires a few stray shots over the top before 
peering over the edge to see a familiar grey-haired figure leveling pair 
of .45's directly at him.

*    *    *    *
N    I    N    E
*    *    *    *

Lombard Research Facility
Lehigh Furnace, PA

Positioning himself in front of his partner's form, Mulder waits breathlessly 
for the barrage of
shots to puncture through the bed, knowing the mattress and frame would serve 
about as useful
protection from Teflon-coated cop-killers as a stick of butter against a hot 
knife.

He sees the finger against a trigger tighten just a twinge.

The slight node of his Adams apple bobs up and down in a strangled half-
swallow.

Flat eyes narrow a fraction.

Tighter.

His throat stops in mid-movement.

Half a second more.

Tighter.

The grey-haired man shifts his aim.  Deliberating for a fleeting moment 
which eye he should plant the bullet in when he catches something:

A twitch.

A barely perceptible shift of focus.

Behind him.

He spins, just as a clone closes in the distance between the them and 
methodically opens up his wrist with a scalpel.  The rattlesnake's hiss 
of toxic, biological chemicals spews out the green, gaping wound 
launching deadly blood into the atmosphere.

But the Machine is prepared for such occurrences.  He snaps off the 
visual and olfactory functions and grasps the hybrid's head forcing the 
Kurt's head down.  The spike of the Gimlet pick slips out with an icy 
sigh and slips its way into the base of the clone's skull with expert
tactile reflex as the redhead chokes and sputters into dissolution.

Flinging the quickly decomposing form away, he counts to fifteen to let 
the retrovirii dissolve and die in the light and air before opening his 
eyes.

Swerving back to find his former targets, he sees they have taken the 
advantage to run.



Hybrid Development Room--


Of all the locked-down double-redundant bullshit security systems in the 
world, he of course had to have chosen the one room that didn't have a 
goddamn lock on it.  Ignoring the screaming pain shooting through his 
back, Mulder drags a development tank across to the door, wedging the 
edge of the table underneath the doorjamb to secure it into place.

Evidently just in time, as he hears a desperate rattle on the latch of 
someone trying to find their way in.

Wheezing from the effort of hauling the quarter ton mass of liquids and 
electronics nearly thirty feet, the agent slides down the front of the 
tank, leaning his back against it to make sure it holds as a barricade.

"Agent Mulder!" he pauses as a Kurt's panicked voice filters through the 
wall.  "Agent Mulder.  It's me, let me in!"

He doesn't move, closing his eyes, as the pleads cut off suddenly with a 
thump, shriek and gurgle, trying to shut out the screams of the dying 
hybrids outside, focusing on the lapping waves, the soothing rhythmic 
motion with a single-minded concentration.

And nearly leaps into the air as a pair of hands work its way under the 
trousers of his right leg.

"Uh, Scully," he drawls tightly over the hammering in his chest.  "As 
interesting as the offer is, I don't think now is an appropriate time."

"Shut up, Mulder."  Faintly audible, but nevertheless authorative.  From 
her prone position, she slips the Walther PPK from its ankle holster and 
drops down the safety.  "Now give me your jacket."

"What?"  Marveling at her intestinal fortitude, his mind blanks itself 
of all amusing reply as he watches her brush back several locks of red 
with a thin, shaky hand.

"Your jacket, Mulder," Scully repeats, as if talking to a slow child.  
"I'm not dressed for the occasion."

"Oh."

Shedding his coat, he notices the pair of legs stretching out from the 
hospital gown hitched up a good six inches above her knee, the hem 
moving up even higher as she reaches for the coat...

"Mulder!"

The line of sight instantly leaps up to her face with a guilty hiccup as 
she sits up, donning the charcoal-grey Armani and finding her arms 
swallowed up by the sleeves.

"S-Scully, I--"

Several shots rip through the door, blowing out the glass of the giant 
fishtank right next to the agent's head.  The agent ducks under the 
shattering glass as the water pours down on him, dislodging the nearly-
grown inhabitant onto the floor along with the slippery green stuff.  
The body flips and flops like a fish on terra, buckling in its sudden 
premature birth from the glass womb before finally going still.

But the door holds.  Amazingly.  Blessedly.  Despite several powerful 
thrusts at the mauled wood, it remains intact with the table edge still 
jammed under the lever.  After a few more seconds of futile banging and 
firing, the assault stops.

Mulder ponders for a few minutes considering the implications of this 
particular bout of grace, when the faint acrid odor grips his sense of 
smell.

A smell he would recognize anywhere.

Yanking the table back with clumsy, panicked movements, he flings open 
the door and nearly falls backwards on top of Scully as she yells out 
his name and pulls him in from the adolescent flickers of flame reaching 
greedily for him.  He slams the door shut again, breathing heavily
and staring glaze-eyed at the burning fingers trying to worm their way 
in through the nickel-sized holes in the wood, as the word echoes over 
and over in his mind in a nightmarish curse.

Fire.

Oh god, fire.

The flashback of putrescent stench and burnt clothing, seared nails and 
hair emitting nauseous fumes acts as a fist pumps rapidly at his 
stomach, bile crawling up his throat trying to find its way to freedom--

Get Scully out.

He staggers to the nearest tank, pushing it towards the door and topples 
it over, spilling the viscous fluid and its contents unceremoniously on 
the floor, but it does little to stymie inexorable approach of fire 
towards a new fuel source.

Sandpaper rasping against larynx, seizing breath, saliva, mouth flopping 
helplessly, twisting, writhing in the open air--

Get Scully...

He vaguely hears her calling his name...to get what?

Struggling, twitching, heat, unbearable in it's ravenous fury, licking 
in singed foreplay of deadlier, blacker things to come, burning rubber, 
plastic, cement,

Flesh.

Hands tugging at him.  Her hands.  Pulling, reaching, initial strength 
failing with the inexorable mass of dead weight.

Get...

Black smoke on the ceiling creeping down, a cigarette fog, carbon 
monoxide seizing lungs, thoughts dimmer, a slow decrescendo into black 
as the final pleading thought seeps in through his consciousness--

Can't, can't do it...

No exit.

No...

(Snap out of it!  Get up!)

Mulder cracks open his eyes as the fuliginous heat and flames lap at the 
edges of his fingers, nipping like teething puppies.

"Can't..." comes the hoarse whisper through a rapidly fading breath.  
"Scuh--"

(Just sit up and shut up, g-man!  I'm going to help you through this.  
Listen to me, do what I say, and we'll all get out of this fine.  Sit 
back, relax, and let me do all the work...that's right, just think of a 
breeze...)



Security Room--


The last touches to arson line in glorious arrays of oxygen and propane 
tanks ready to send the research facility skyward in a blaze of fury.  
The Machine attaches a digital counter strapped to a one-inch block of 
C5 behind the tanks and sets the counter to T-minus three minutes.  His
fingers nearly depress the 'set' button, a when movement on a monitor 
catches his eye.

Watching with mild curiosity, he sees the figure of Fox Mulder rise from 
the crumpled fetal heap on the floor and open the door as an impossibly 
bright flickering mess roars its way inwards to him.  The little 
jittery, grainy figure then bends down to pick up his partner.  Turning 
her face towards his chest, he lifts the collar of the jacket over her 
head, and together they leap through the fiery flare and disappears out 
of camera range.

The Machine considers the relative unimportance of this particular 
person, then weighs that against the impertinence of having someone 
escape twice from under him.  Making a final snap decision, he resets 
the clock to six minutes before setting the countdown timer.



A Hallway--


The Machine pauses in the roaring inferno of the hallway, dodging 
shattered and melting glass strewn everywhere, searching for the signs 
of life moving about the crackling, burning facility, and glances down 
at his watch.

Four minutes, eleven seconds.

A shuffle and soft crunch of footsteps upon broken glass catches his ear 
from fifty feet northwest in the adjoining hall.  With a half-smirk, he 
snaps back the barrel of his .45 and follows the source of the sound.

Turning a corner, he spots his main target not more than twenty-five 
steps up the hall, the one who got away once before, singed damp 
clothing and hair, half-carrying his pale and coughing partner through 
the scorched furnace, a walking, sodden, dripping mess of pure...

Calm.

The one known as Fox Mulder looks up at the new obstacle blocking his 
way to freedom and his expression changes.  Predictable, except that the 
new one replacing the stroll-in-the-park look switches to not 
uninhibited terror, but of annoyance.  He carefully, lowers his partner 
to the ground, despite her vocal protests and stands in front of her.

The Machine is used to seeing fear, weakness and confusion oozing out of 
trembling pores from his targets.  In fact, he expects it, relishes his 
moment of ultimate power over a fleeting thing such as life.  But this 
one, strolling confidently up to him, as casually as if he was about to 
ask for a light on his cigarette, gives him moment for pause.

Even over the deafening crackle of pylons crumbling to dust, his voice 
comes out as a soothing, syllabic rhythm.

"From what I've seen, I know you're a crack shot."

He saunters closer.

"However, even crack shots miss sometimes.  The next bullet could be a 
dud.  Or misfire.  The chamber could jam.  Any number of things could go 
wrong."

That voice is hypnotic, convincing, steady like a metronome.

"It wouldn't even be your fault.  One bullet.  And I have a full clip.  
That's fifteen opportunities for me."

The agent is nearly at point blank range, and yet the Machine doesn't 
fire, watching with insatiable curiosity, the man whose eyes seem 
somehow different.

"So you might as well put that thing down."

Impulse, coercion, an undeniable persuasion tugs at his mind.  The 
barrel of his weapon unconsciously lowers slightly in the rhythmic 
assault.

"That's right.  Just lower it."  He smiles.  "Hey, I'd like you to do a favor 
for me--"

"Mulder!"  Scully's shout shatters the spell.

His eyes catch the barest twitch of movement of the grey-haired man's 
features and snaps his head to the right as a bullet roars past his left 
ear, leaving the heat of powderburn and a shrieking ring in its wake.  
Almost in slow motion, he sees it drive into the head in front of
him, splattering fragments of bone, blood, and brain everywhere.

Spinning around, he sees Scully in a sitting position, faint tendrils of 
smoke rising up from the PPK edged out the accordioned right sleeve.

He then turns back and casually rifles through the man's pockets for any 
passes or keys before spotting the watch counting down from a minute and 
fifty-four seconds.  Dropping the arm, he trots back to help Scully up 
on her feet.

"Come on, we have to get out of here."

"What the hell was with the Buckaroo Banzai move back there, Mulder?"  
She yells over the roar of the flames as another girder crashes down 
behind them.

"He was blocking the only way out."  He slings one arm over his shoulder 
and pulls her along.  "I had to do it."

"By walking up to him and asking him to let us go?"

She doesn't see the cold, half-smile cross her partner's face.

"Sometimes that's all it takes."



46th Street
New York, NY


The Elder.  A bullshit title for a bullshit job, the Cigarette Smoking 
Man silently contemplates as he watches the other's sausage fingers work 
the small gold ring on his left finger, twisting it gently over and over 
in a nervous, contemplated habit.  But, he supposes, a much healthier
one than a pack of Morleys a day.

"The security breach at Lombard has been taken care of as promised," he 
begins, striking and lifting a match to the ever-present cancer stick 
hanging from his lips.

The fat man considers his associates's words for several seconds before 
leaning back in his chair with his characteristic strangled mumble.

"I heard there was a problem."

"A problem?"  The cigarette twitches slightly as the question filters 
through his teeth.  "Do clarify, please."

"The man you dispatched seems to have met with a...fatality.  In the 
incident."

Nothing the Smoking Man didn't already know.

The Machine was a valuable asset.  He carried out assignments with the 
utmost punctuality, always did as directed, and never questioned the 
motives of any sanction.  Sometimes, however, assets begin recognizing 
their worth, their value.  They become ambitious.  Killers never asked 
for more than what was necessary to carry out his assignments, but with 
time, with whatever meager scraps of information leaked his way, he 
began piecing together the larger picture.  The Smoking Man also knew 
his man carried out other directives not authorized by him, orders 
coming from some unknown level above his.

So it became necessary to divest certain interests.  To liquidate 
present assets.

And thus the last assignment for the Machine.  He had not counted on 
Mulder and Scully to be at Lombard, but at the same time could not 
afford to give away any more information of his particular interest in 
preserving a certain pair of agents.  A test had been laid out before 
him and he continued to play his bluff, counting on that strange mixture 
of Karma and dumb luck to rescue the two once again.

He was not disappointed.  If there was one person who was terminally 
lucky enough to escape from certain death time after time, it was Fox 
Mulder.  He would expect nothing less.

The Cancer Man shrugs, grinding the remains of the butt into a half-full 
ashtray.

"Accidents will happen."



Fox Mulder's Apartment
Alexandria, VA


"A mysterious fire took place in Lehigh Furnace late last night--" huffs 
the nasal, monotone voice of the Channel 2 news reporter through the 
invisible speakers on the 19-inch tv.

The mixture of blue and red light pulsing from the screen play shadow 
puppets on the blank, drawn face of Fox Mulder half-hidden in the depths 
of his couch, as he presses a button on the remote control, rapidly 
flipping through snippets of channel dialogue.

"Firefighters spent the evening unsuccessfully trying to put out a blaze 
that engulfed Lombard Research Facility--"

<click>

"Sources allude the Pennsylvania arson case may be related to the string 
of other--"

<click>

"JFK, blown away, what more do I have to say?"  His finger pauses for a 
second, leaving the image of Billy Joel playing on VH-1, and then, "We 
didn't start the fire--"

He jams a finger onto the mute and the room falls silent for a few 
seconds to the flickering images on the tv screen before faint sounds of 
the street outside playing on the periphery of the windows slowly filter 
in.  Pulling himself up wearily, he pops in "The Devil in Miss Jones"
on the VCR and lets it play in the background as he bends to pick up the 
discarded tape recorder off the floor.

Lombard Research Facility.  Burned.  To the ground.  The internal 
explosion had blown out all the doors, making a fire so hot it felt like 
a blast from an open furnace door, even as bits of wood, metal and glass 
shotgunned by them as they hit the ground.

And Mulder lay there, unmoving, even as the sirens of approaching fire 
trucks and police cars accelerated their way towards the scene.

It was gone.  All the evidence.  All the Kurts.  Everything completely 
obliterated.

Along with his last hope.

"At least they've managed to slow down the clock a little,"  Scully 
murmured, sitting up, then turned pale at the green, sticky fluid 
running out her arm.  She tried to wipe it off, but it kept leaking, 
that mysterious mildewy lymph that turned from friend to foe in her 
body, more and more and more of that greasy stuff just oozing from where 
the IV used to be.

And Mulder hunched over and tried so hard not to gag, but the urge was 
too overpowering and he just vomited, stomach contracting wildly, 
spewing out sticky black fluid that spilled nearly invisible against the 
charcoal pavement at night.  Reality spun shakily around and veered back
into sharp focus as the voice had left him in third person faded back 
into the recesses of his mind.

But nevertheless, something had changed.  Something inexorably ugly.  A 
mark upon his brain.  What began as a spot at the edge of consciousness, 
he can feel spreading and blossoming like a plague of corruption in its 
parasitic journey through his nervous system.

Stained, somehow.

He glances down at the pictures scattered on the floor, shining up in 
glossy Polaroid relief from peripheral light and television 
illumination.  Bodies upon bodies upon burnt, decayed, mangled bodies.  
All victims, all dead, all crafted by the same monster that had bought a 
moment of respite for him and Scully.

Scully.

He had taken her back to her mother's, quietly slipping away when the 
door opened to Maggie Scully's surprised face, unable to face her 
accusing eyes.  He had failed.  Fucked up.  And
where he could tell his father he had lost Samantha, he couldn't tell 
her, the mother of Scully, that he had gambled with the devil and lost.

"All the answers you need are locked up in your head."

Bastard.

Answers to the question of Samantha, answers to the question of the 
killer, answers to the question of Scully.

And all the devil asks for is everything.

He could do it.  He had done it before.  He could do it again.  Except 
this time, he would not step back towards safety.  Complete sublimation 
into the other.  Bring the monster to the fore and let it reveal all its 
secrets.

Turning the tape recorder around in his hands, Mulder flips the cassette 
over to an unused side and hits the record button.  His tongue runs over 
dry, chapped lips a few times before the weak, raspy vibrations of his 
throat embed themselves on magnetic tape:

"For the sake of duty, I have always driven to the edge of madness, to 
the brink of feeling myself, one foot stepping off the ledge and 
plummeting my soul into the unknown horrors of the evil of man, to 
identify with and become those who thrive on the outskirts of human 
misery. You, you have always brought me back from that precipice, 
prevented me from taking that final step from which I can never return, 
you, who have always been there, have always been my salvation, but I 
fear this time, however, you will not be able to take my hand to lead me 
back..."

*    *    *    *
T  E  N
*    *    *    *

Maggie Scully's Residence
Baltimore, MD


Look like crap, Scully muses as she faces the mirror for the first time 
in a long while.  Inspecting the dark rings around the eyes of some 
unrecognizable stranger, a ghost of what she used to be stares back at 
her in reflection: sallowed cheeks, a perpetually pinched and tired
expression scampering with rampant abandon across her face, and blue 
veins and lines exhaling in sharp relief against glassy skin.

Lifting her fingers up to her left ear, she snaps her thumb and middle 
finger, sighing when the lack of response confirms her prognosis.  Her 
hearing had rapidly declined over the past two weeks and was now mostly 
gone from infection and the irregular pressure of fluids in her left
cochlea.

The auditory loss had been a slow, terrifying process, a loss she tried 
to make up for with extra alertness, and no one had suspected otherwise.  
But at Lombard, when Mulder had smiled and touched her eyebrow and 
whispered something into that ear, she couldn't hear what he said.  She
didn't dare ask him to repeat it, refusing to let him know the extent of 
damage her illness had caused, something even the gene therapy could not 
fix, so she lay there, resigned to never knowing.

And it was not just her hearing either.  The accompanying loss of 
equilibrium aggravated by the pounding between her eyes disturbed her 
balance so much that she could barely hold the PPK straight when she 
blew the assassin's face off, terrified that she would hit Mulder 
instead.

But despite the never ending headache, despite the losing the left ear, 
Dana's mind is still focused, still sharp, even as she questions herself 
the inevitable: if it will always be this way up until the very end.  
Will she be able to retain the ability to remember, to write, to
formulate logical, coherent thoughts, to keep control over speech, over 
bodily functions?

Or will her mind simply fade into oblivion like her body's losing 
struggle?

Not Goddamn likely.

Unlike Mulder, who had quietly slipped away without a word four days 
ago, slinking off in some form of self-imposed punishment, Dana Scully 
refuses to lay down and let it happen.  With the old anger building up 
in her again, for the eleventh or twelfth time today, she hits the auto
redial number on the cordless phone.

"I'm not here," the familiar lackadaisical voice statically drones over 
the earpiece of the telephone handset.  "Leave a message."

"Mulder, pick up the phone,"  Scully snaps into the other end, and 
pauses, waiting for the click of the receiver being lifted.  "Mulder are 
you there?"

Nothing.

With a frustrated sigh, she clicks the off button and paces the room 
three or four times before making a decision.

"Dana, where are you going?"  Calls the voice behind Scully as she tucks 
the t-shirt into newly baggy jeans, grabbing her car keys on the way to 
the front door.  She continues moving, oblivious to the question.

"Dana?"  Margaret Scully repeats.  "DANA!"

The younger Scully turns around, surprised, to face her mother.

"I'm sorry, mom."  Her eyes drop and dart around, inspecting the wooden 
floor, as she hunts for an explanation.  "I was preoccupied."

"Where are you going?"

"I need to check up on someone."

"On Fox."  Not a question.

"Mom, Mulder hasn't answered his phone in four days.  I need to make 
sure he's all right."

"Why don't you take care of yourself first?"

"I--I'm fine mom.  Really."

"But what if something happens to you?  What if--?"

"Nothing will happen to me mom.  Besides," she jokes weakly, "If 
something does, you can always reuse that old tombstone you bought."

Maggie Scully reacts as if being struck, the etchings around her mouth 
becoming more pronounced to the frown already set in her lips.

"That's not funny, Dana."

Scully sighs, feeling the momentum drain out of her feet.

"I know, mom.  I know."  She looks up, gazing into her mother's eyes.  
"Mom, you told me that when I was in Georgetown two years ago, Mulder 
refused to let you and Melissa take me off life support."

"Dana..."

"I'm not blaming either of you," she adds in hastily, "I did specify the 
terms in the living will, and I'm glad you respected my decisions enough 
to follow its wishes."  She pauses, hesitates, trying to formulate the 
right words.  Finding none, she simply bulls forward.  "But Mulder,
he...he refused to consider the tombstone."

Shaking physically from holding back tears, from holding back emotions 
threatening to erupt from the core, Margaret Scully says nothing but--

"I understand."

She takes her daughter in a hard, fierce hug before finally releasing 
her.



Fox Mulder's Apartment
Alexandria, VA


After exactly three knocks followed by no discernable response, Scully 
lets herself into her partner's apartment with the key used so often, 
she can recognize it by touch.  She drops the unmarked key back down 
into the collection on the ring, not having bothered to replace the
"Mulder" label after it peeled and fell off months ago.

The light from the television and red glowing buttons on the VCR plays 
some dreadful low-budget porn flick with the sound cut off, and strains 
of piano keys banging through the speakers over the background of a 
hyperactive orchestra.

But no Mulder anywhere.

Scanning the room in its deep fog of tightly closed windows and curtains 
and musty used air, the light of the answering machine blinking in sad 
solitude catches her eye.  After suffering a millisecond of guilt for 
invading his privacy, she presses the button and adjusts the volume up
to the highest level as the tape rewinds and settles before rolling out 
its first beep and message.

"Langly here.  Byers looked through every on-line database, Mulder.  
There's just no one with the last name "Nayba" in any reverse directory 
search in the world.  Are you sure you spelled it right?  Sorry, man."

The beep announces the next message.

"Hey Mulder, Langly again.  Byers had an idea.  The name could be an 
anagram, like your pen name, MF Luder.  Just thought you might think of 
that."

Another beep

"Mulder, this is Skinner.  I still need that 302 from you on my desk 
before I can approve the case you're working on.  Get it to me now."

And the final message.  Hers.

"Mulder, pick up the phone.  Mulder are you there?"

Sighing, she turns off the button on the machine.

"I know, sometimes I can't believe it's my voice either."

Scully jumps, spinning around, trying to divulge out of which shadow of 
the room the voice came from.

"Mulder?  Why are you in the dark?"

A long, tired pause.  From out of the barely illuminated black of his 
apartment, his voice floats through.

"I've used up all my good replies for that question."

Crossing back to the hallway, she snaps on the light, then reconsiders 
shutting it off, if just to banish the horrific sight in front of her:

The sight of her partner huddled against the fishtank, his legs crossed 
underneath him, unkempt, covered in sweat with a half-week's worth of 
stubble covering his face, matted hair falling lankily into bloodshot 
eyes.  And then, surrounded, no, covered, by an island of photographs,
images and images of the dead, charred victims everywhere around.

"Mulder.  I came--"

"To inspect my wallpaper?"  He doesn't look up.  "I'm fine." A voice 
tinged with tired irony.  "What are you doing here, Scully?  I'm pretty 
sure it's not to comment on my interior decorating."

"You look awful, Mulder."

"Anyone ever tell you you've got a lousy bedside manner?"

"That's why I went into Pathology," she jokes weakly, edging closer to 
him.  "How long has it been since you've slept?"

He considers that for a while, then gives up.

"What day is it?"

"Mulder, you can't drive yourself into the ground like this."

"I've done it before.  It's not so bad."  Her eyebrows crinkle.  "At 
least this way I don't dream."

Her hand briefly brushes his hair, but he flinches from her touch, as if 
burned.

"Don't, Scully."

"Mulder--"

"I'm working."  And when he looks at her, his eyes aren't quite the 
same.  A different hue perhaps.  Or a different presence.

"Is this why you haven't been taking anybody's calls?"

He shrugs.  Scully clenches and unclenches her hands, feeling the 
frustration mounting.

"Those words in your field notes, what do they mean?"

"What words?"

"Chimes.  Mark.  Hand.  You had them scribbled in your journal.  What do 
they mean?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Why won't you tell me?"

"It's not important.  Go home, Scully.  You need to get as far away from 
me as you can."

The bubble descends in a slow, soft arc reducing the sounds of the 
atmosphere to muffled murmurs.  She could have said something, she could 
have stomped and yelled and thrown something, but he doesn't really hear 
her anymore, simply focusing with single-minded determination towards
divulging the secrets within the pictures, within the hunt and the kill.

He only senses the door clicking open, then shut, then picks up the 
recorder and presses the only button worn down from repeated use.

"I reread Moby Dick again, hoping for some reason the ending might have 
changed...but in an ordered universe, Starbuck never survives the 
madness of Ahab...except in mine...and this time, despite everything, 
you can call me a selfish bastard, and I will be the first to admit it, 
I am glad I will be the one to go first..."



FBI Headquarters
Washington, D.C.


The main lobby of the J. Edgar Hoover building always held a 
particularly unpleasant reaction for Special Agent Dana Scully.  Even as 
she waits impatiently in line to enter the main corridor, she hesitates 
when her turn comes up, pausing in front of the detectors as a mild
anxiety settles on her in a flashback of the fateful squawk of sirens 
nearly two years ago.

And of course, Johnson is there again.  He remembers too, nodding 
sympathetically as she takes a breath, blinking a few times to settle 
herself, then steps through.

Silence.

He winks at her as she exhales, and she returns a shaky half-smile 
before turning to the elevators.



Office of the Assistant Director--


Though the Skinner would never admit it, the presence of Scully standing 
before him in his office is heartening, even if she is, at this point, 
lecturing him about the foolhardiness of letting Mulder carry out an 
assignment that was proving detrimental to his mental health.  She
had stormed despite the fact of it being after-hours and faced him with 
the crossest, iciest look he's ever seen in her since their clash in the 
Office of Personal Responsibility.

His relief and disquiet comes from memory of the pallid, weak state she 
had been in at Holy Cross in contrast to now.  Despite her features 
ravaged by sickness and worry, behind it, an almost inhuman 
determination holds her up before him, refusing to crumble to 
exhaustion, illness or anything else that would have driven someone 
lesser towards resignated defeat.  And of course, she is here because of 
her partner.

"Sir, I have reason to believe a serial killer is targeting Agent 
Mulder.  He needs to be put into protective custody."

"And how do you figure that, Scully?"

"The killer is now choosing her victims deliberately.  A...a woman Agent 
Mulder was acquainted with was the most recent--a sloppy maneuver 
targeted towards him."

"I see."  He picks up a phone.  "I'll assign a couple of agents to watch 
him."  He pauses as he realizes she is still standing there.  "What 
else?"

"I'm also requesting permission to be reactivated for field duty."

"Denied."

"Sir," her eyes flash.  "I know more about this case than anyone else 
besides Agent Mulder."

"I'm not going to reinstate you, Scully.  There is no way I will send 
one of my agents out into the field to die."

"With all due respect, sir, if you don't reinstate me, there will be 
more than just my death."

The words skip out, each syllable pronounced with quiet calm, as 
casually as if she had been ticking off an expense form, and the simple 
way in which she says it gives Skinner some pause.  After several 
moments of silent consideration, he finally accedes.

"You will have two junior agents assigned to you.  Use them."

"Sir, I really think--"

"They will follow your directives in this investigation, but should 
anything drastic happen to you while on this case, I will be immediately 
notified and you WILL be removed."

"Sir--"

"Do I make myself clear?"

She opens her mouth to protest, then shuts it.

"Yes, sir."

Silently praying he doesn't regret this move, he slowly opens the lower 
drawer of his desk, and pulls out her ID and gun.

"Welcome back, Agent Scully."



Fox Mulder's Apartment
Alexandria, VA


His car is still outside.  He is nowhere at his apartment.  His couch.  
The bathroom.  Kitchen.  Nowhere.  From the look of things, Mulder also 
left in a hurry.

Picking up the phone, Scully dials his number.  Nothing.  Fifteen rings.  
Sixteen.  Seventeen.  Eighteen...

"Um, Agent Scully?"

She turns blankly to the young, fresh-faced caddie at her right, who 
suddenly looks down in a nervous bout of self-consciousness.

"Spit it out, Fischer."

Fischer gesticulates apologetically in the general direction of left.  
"The couch is ringing."

Turning her good ear carefully towards the sofa, the familiar chirping 
sound ringing from the recesses of the cushions confirms the junior 
agent's observations.  After some digging, Scully comes up with Mulder's 
cellular.

Damn.

She hangs up, looking at his most recent phone of five months.  Mulder 
had been pouty about the whole idea of cellular phones at first, liking 
the idea to being kept on a virtual leash when she dragooned him into 
phone hunting, but the mood vanished as he immediately fell in love with
the shop, cheerfully playing with all the button features, the little 
flip-mouthpieces, and programmable options.  He was always such a sucker 
for gadgets.  After an eternity of agonized deliberation, he finally 
settled on the most expensive, slickest model complete with alphanumeric 
pager features, caller ID, and twelve different ring settings, while 
she'd chosen a simple, functional model sans all of the annoying bells 
and whistles and cheesy doodads that Mulder absolutely had to have.  And 
she put up with his thirty-odd calls a day for nearly a week as he felt 
obligated to put every feature of his new piece of equipment to good 
use, though he was mildly disappointed they couldn't come up with a 
model that could also make coffee and feed the fish.

Such a little boy, excited by his cool little toy.

Moving over to his desk, Scully clears some space of the pictures and 
takes his field journal out from her valise, gripping the chapped 
leather thoughtfully.

But then, this weird dichotomy, his absolute refusal to get a laptop, 
insisting on writing his field notes in longhand.  Broaching the subject 
with him only resulted in her partner muttering something about Umberto 
Eco and the Mac being the modern symbol for Catholicism while PC
compatibles were Protestant, and then outrageously asserting his staid 
atheism.  As if getting a laptop would suddenly force him to some sort 
of moral religious dilemma.

Though she surmises, he'd probably go crazy if she ever took him to 
Computer City, picking out the model that was crammed to the gills with 
maximum CPU power, at least 64 megs of ram a cd-rom/sound blaster combo 
and 56X2 fax modem, of course loaded with Super Tetris and the X-tra
Large version of "You Don't Know Jack."

She stops that thought, biting her lip.  She will never be able to take 
him laptop hunting, he will not call her up in the middle of the night 
for no other reason than to tell her a ridiculously stupid pun he'd 
heard that day, he will never open doors for her, guiding her with
that ubiquitous hand to her back, or give her one of those rare, self-
conscious smiles, or brush the hair out of her face and call her "Dana" 
again, and that is the truth.

The two young agents who have followed her into the room her shuffle 
uncomfortably behind her, watching their senior stand there staring at a 
cellular phone and book.  The other one finally coughs, breaking Scully 
out of her reverie.

"Um, Agent Scully.  Since Agent Mulder isn't here, what should we do?"

"Velasco, I want you to put an APB out on Agent Mulder.  Notify all 
local authorities.  You and Fischer do a scan of the local area within a 
25 mile range.  If you find Agent Mulder, contact me immediately."

"Where will you be?"

She looks down at the seven or eight of those little tapes laying around 
on the floor, scattered among frayed and worn snapshots.

"I'll be right here."

Settling herself down in the chair, Scully picks up the microcassette 
recorder and hits "play."



Office of the Lone Gunmen--


"Not to be rude or anything, Mulder," Langly wrinkles his nose as he 
moves upwind of the agent.  "But how long has it been since you've had a 
bath?"

"Ah, don't mind him," Frohicke offers sympathetically back over his 
shoulder.  "I've had week-long benders like that."

Mulder approximates a soundless, humorless laugh that falls flat 
somewhere between his face and the six inches of air before it.

"Not getting much here, Mulder."  Byers, as usual, permanently attached 
to his computer.  "The only permutations of the name F.P. Nayba that the 
anagram engine came up with are combinations of "'by Pa FaN.'"

"Maybe he likes the Steelers," offers Frohicke.

Mulder scratches his forehead in verisimilitude of concentration.  "One 
of the victims was murdered in Erie."

"Lombard was in that state too."  Byers, again.

It strikes Mulder right then, that same feeling.

The last time he had been too drunk to understand, to be aware of the 
presence of her constantly looming at the edge of his consciousness.  
But now, it all clicks into place.  Buying himself a first class one-way 
ticket to hell did have its privileges, and was taking the entire 
screaming shuttle ride into complete mental oblivion, where cryptic 
messages scramble back into place with previously invisible clarity.

F.P. Nayba.

So stupidly obvious, it was ridiculous.

"Who'da thought Pennsylvania would be such a popular place?  Hey, where 
you going?" Langly stumbles back, nearly falling on his ass as the agent 
roughly shoulders him aside on the way out.

Now Mulder knows where to go, he knows where he will find her.

Because empathy is not a common emotion.



Fox Mulder's Apartment
Alexandria, VA


     '...Had the killer been abducted?  Unlikely.  The very nature of 
     the killings precludes all evidence of abduction.  Scully is 
     right.  This is simply an escalated fetishist with
     an obsession that hits particularly close to home...'


Static buzz.  Scully forwards the tape to an area where it clears up.

     '...She does not do this out of pleasure, rather, out of 
     necessity, but unlike Tooms or Incanto, her hunger is not of a 
     physical nature.  She is feeding something that is not a
     part of her, something almost vampiric in nature that forces her 
     to do what she does.  An impulse, if you will call it.  Or a 
     voice...'

More buzz.  In a pattern that has become monotonous, she clicks the 
search button, listening to the squiggled speech and hissing that seems 
to interrupt the recording every thirty seconds.

     '...There have been numerous accounts of serial killers who have 
     claimed to have heard voices in their heads issuing commands, 
     giving them that impulse.  'Son of Sam' Berkowitz and Ted Bundy, 
     come to mind, but few, if none, of these claims were genuine in 
     nature, with the possible exception of Duane Barry.  However, the 
     possibility of his 'hearing
     voices' more than likely involved an external medium...'

A tedious few hours later, Scully rereads the screen on Mulder's desktop 
computer, staring at the stilted monologue transcribed from his tapes, 
the sections that had not been obscured with that annoying buzz.  
Breaking into system was easy.  He was nothing, if not predictable in 
his choice of passwords.

His voice notes had started off with dispassionate analysis, textbook 
theories, fact laying, observations.  As she listened further through, 
his voice took on an air of desperation, short attention, meanderings, 
ramblings, occasional bouts of incoherence and strangled noises.

She pops the last tape into the recorder and, fingers poised at the keys 
to type out the next fix of half-stilted mumblings, freeze, unable to 
drop in synchrony to the next words spilling out of the speaker.

     "This darkness creeps up on my soul, looming like a plague of 
     locusts, I drown in their buzzing shadow, feeling them devour me 
     until nothing is left but dry, empty bones.  Sometimes it feels as 
     if I'm drowning, hands drawing me down into a sea of blood, the 
     screams...the visions...like Cassandra of Troy, these visions 
     carry a curse...I enter their minds, their lives and deaths 
     intertwined in the ecstasy, the glory of the kill...I feel the 
     monsters, I become them, I am Burke, Boggs, Pfaster, Roche, in the 
     spiraling miasmic descent, the anguished screams...and in my 
     mind...when I close my eyes, I can only see the blurred, scarred 
     faces of countless unnamed victims...oh God, Scully..."

A large mass of static electricity blurs the rest of the recording, its 
insistent guttural hiss overshadowing all other text.

Feeling her throat close, Scully clicks off the recorder, unable to 
listen any longer.  This is the first time he has uttered her name.  To 
her.  She never imagined hearing it would cause her insides to lock and 
twitch.

She had been afraid of this, afraid for him.  Afraid he will not allow 
her to go down the road of her mortality by herself, as he throws 
himself in front of every creature every killer, every evil challenging 
them, begging them to destroy him first.

She had always been annoyed at Mulder's recalcitrance to show her the 
aspects of profiling they had never taught at the Academy.  She'd wanted 
to learn his insights, his ways of how he could get into the mind of a 
killer.  "Next time," was all he would say, in the same fashion as "you
can get the next mutant," and then invariably, he would conveniently 
forget.  For a while she wondered if his reticence was because he felt 
threatened by her gaining knowledge, but Mulder was never the type to 
feel jealousy over any such thing, so she remained puzzled over his
particular lack of enthusiasm for this role, never realizing until much 
later, that he had been trying to spare her the horror, preferring to go 
down that dark tunnel alone.

Jack had always known when to draw back, when to leave, when he was 
coming too close.  Mulder never had those boundaries, always toppling in 
headfirst, heedless of the dangerous undercurrents.  It was those lack 
of boundaries that made him brilliant, gave him the ability to make 
outstanding leaps and insights, though the toll nearly submerged him 
innumerable times.

She had never been able to appreciate that until she was forced to place 
herself in Gerry Schnauz's mind.  In their contact, she had seen the 
horror reeling in that man's head.  That moment had shaken her to the 
core, and she had gained a new respect for her partner, for the way
he could see demons in a photograph, the mind and motivation of a killer 
in the muddle of forensic evidence.  The way he could see it all, and 
not go insane.

She had told him of this, and he had made a joke.

"Welcome to the Hotel Sanitarium.  You can check out any time you 
like..."  His words were light, but the look, the look on his face--

God.

It had been so sad.

For her....And she knew why he shut her out so often, why he in these 
cases would become suddenly distance and shuttered.  Because of her.  He 
wanted to keep her out of the slaughterhouse of his mind.

The same mind that had managed to find Patterson, Roche and Gasman.

The same mind that would find this killer.

And now, now she has find a way to enter that same dark tunnel.

To find him.

Rubbing her eyes tiredly, she rewinds the tape, then plays it again, 
transcribing it into the computer.



HN Hampshire Lounge
Alexandria, VA


Seven glasses of iced tea, the ice all but melted in all but the last 
one, the sweat of condensation long gone from the rest of the room 
temperature beverages.

A strange man who pays for drinks he does not consume, simply sits there 
waiting, prodding a wilted lemon browning at the edges, poking at it 
until it falls off its perch atop the rim of the Collins glass.

And then it happens.

Like a play, she enters from stage left.  He looks up from where he is 
waiting, stage right.

Her head turns unconsciously, drawn by that same impulse that craves 
mortis towards him.  She smiles.  He knows.  She is watching him.  She 
wants him as the next one.

He stands up slowly walks towards her, even as her legs carry her to him 
in that slow, predatorial gait.

They meet in the middle.

She will take him.  Comfort him.  Show him the joys of her flesh, of her 
spirit and madness.  And then she will kill him.  One final soul to feed 
the worm.

He smells it on her, from her perfume, from her skin, her aura.  He can 
almost see the blood dripping from her fingers.

Deadly.

He has found the Chrysalis.

The woman smiles.

"Hi.  I'm Barbara Benedict."



Fox Mulder's Apartment
Alexandria, VA


The quiet chirp of incoming mail notification flashes on the screen, 
disturbing Scully's study of the long, rambling transcription from 
Mulder's tapes.  Glancing up at the headers, she finds:

     From: lovemachine@magicbullet.org
     Subject: Another woohoo! from alt.sex.stories
     To: f_mulder@fbi.gov

In a slightly desperate measure born of half-hope towards some sort of 
new clue popping up out of the ether, she opens the message.  Then 
stares long and hard at the screen, feeling the frustration build up at 
finding everything written in complete gibberish.

Lifting the receiver of the phone, Scully dials a number she has always 
known, but never, ever considered using, until now.

One ring and the line picks up.

"Domino's Pizza."

"Frohicke," she smiles at the familiar voice.  "It's Dana Scully."

"Dana!"  The warm combination of surprise, relief, and unfettered 
adoration packaged in the expression of one word, is only slightly 
marred by a muffled 'hey, do a trace on this' filtering through the 
background, despite Frohicke's indelicate attempts to cover the 
mouthpiece.

"Don't bother.  I'm calling from Mulder's apartment."  She allows the 
old man a few seconds grace to pick his throat up from the ground.

"Oh.  How are you doing?"

"I'm fine."  The familiar line slips out of her mouth without a second 
thought.  "But that's not what I called you about.  You just sent an e-
mail to Mulder with subject "Another woohoo."

"Uh," the other voice suddenly chokes before stammering on, "You don't 
want to read that.  Take my word for it."

"I _can't_ read this," Scully retorts.  "It's encrypted.  What method 
are you using?"`

"It's called Rot-13.  Here, let me get Byers on the line to explain."  
She hears the shuffle of the phone being juggled with a muttered 'you 
take this' before the scramble of hands places her at the next Lone 
Gunman's ear.

"Rot-13 is a simple encryption method,"  Byers finally answers, voice 
accompanied by the tapping of keys in the background.  "Basically, you 
move a letter 13 spaces forward in the alphabet.  "A" becomes "N," "B" 
becomes "O" and vice-versa."

"Not much for security."

"It's not meant for security.  It's more of a choice issue for people 
who may be offended by certain message contents."

She raises her eyebrows.

"I find it difficult to believe anyone who reads alt.sex.stories could 
be easily offended."

"Well, if you don't want to read it, you can't.  If you do, there's the 
option to decode it under the message window."

"Charming," she answers dryly.  "I'll have to remember that.  Has Mulder 
contacted you at all?"

"He was here earlier tonight.  Why?"

"When did he leave?"

"About two hours ago."

"If you see him again, let me know."

"Sure thing."

"Wait!"  Scully adds quickly, remembering.  "What was that name he was 
having you investigate?  Did you come up with anything?"

"Nayba?  Nada."

"Spell the whole name out for me."

She types each individual letter in the first line of the body of mail 
as the Lone Gunman retells it to her.  "It's totally fake though," he 
adds in afterwards.

"Not necessarily.  It seems, to me, too...original, too deliberate.  It 
might be fake, but there's _something_ there."

"We'll keep looking into it."

Hanging up, she looks at the screen, letters playing along the page in 
tantalizing cryptograph.  Letting curiosity get the better of her, she 
finds the Rot-13 button and decrypts the message, revealing the closely 
intimate details of Nikki Grinder's latest anatomical adventures.

Scully rolls her eyes, finger on the mouse button prepared to send the 
electronic letter back into e-mail oblivion when she glances up at the 
letters she had typed out at the top.  Reading it carefully, the agent 
sits there blinking rapidly for a few minutes, staring at each letter,
moving the Rot-13 cursor back and forth between what she typed out only 
a few minutes before to the translated revelation before her.

F.P. Nayba, extrapolated 13 letters, resulted in an S.C. Anlon.

Scanlon.


*    *    *    *
E  L  E  V  E  N
*    *    *    *

Special Agent Fischer returned to Agent Mulder's apartment at 02:30 
hours to check up on her senior agent, as per confidential request of 
the Assistant Director.  It seemed the rumors regarding Agent Scully's 
physical condition were true after all.  She also heard that the doctor
and her partner curried favor with the Assistant Director in spite of a 
number of escapades that would have shown anyone else the back door of 
OPR.  She had pretty much chalked them all up to office pool gossip, 
until her visit to the AD's office.

He had ushered her and Velasco in and told them quietly, but in no 
uncertain terms, that should anything untoward befall Agent Scully, 
notification to him was imperative.  Failure to do so in a timely manner 
would mean immediate and irrevocable reassignment to back-room wiretap 
duty at the Anchorage Field Office.

Stepping in, she watches her Senior Agent work tirelessly in her search: 
making calls, flipping through reports, photographs, and listening to 
those tapes, when her movement stops abruptly.  Scully lifts a trembling 
hand to her head, closing her eyes, head tilting forward unconsciously.
Then, a solitary drop of red falls onto the desk in front of her, 
staining the first page of the evidence report.  Reaching into her coat, 
Fischer's fingers move over the upraised buttons of the cell phone, 
ready to dial the numbers drilled into her head, when Scully's voice 
stops her short.

"No calls, Fischer.  I'll take full responsibility."

"Agent Scully, your health is a mandatory--"

"I said NO CALLS."  She lifts her head up, eyes swiveling to focus on 
the junior agent.  "What happens to me is inevitable.  But I can stop it 
from happening to Agent Mulder."

After a few seconds, Fischer drops her eyes, letting the phone slip back 
into her pocket.  "Velasco's still on moving watch.  Is there anything 
you need me to do while I'm here?"  Well, Alaska was said to be quite 
nice in the spring time.

Scully picks up a report from the pile, flipping through the contents.

"Go on-line and search through the American Medical Association's 
Physician database.  See if there's a reference to an F.P. Nayba or a 
Kevin Scanlon in there."

Fifteen minutes later, the agent calls out her victorious find over her 
shoulder.

"There's a couple of them here.  Kevin A. Scanlon, Boca Raton, Florida.  
Kevin F. Scanlon, Salem, Oregon.  Kevin P. Scanlon, Erie, Pennsylvania.  
Kevin no-middle-name Scanlon, Arlington, Virginia."

"Try the Pennsylvania one."

"Kevin P. Scanlon, M.D..  Medical License suspended 1983...for grievous 
malpractice and operating without proper consent.  Evidently, he liked 
to 'dabble' outside his field."

"Genetics or Oncology?"

"Reconstructive Surgery."  Scully's head lifts at that.  "But wait," the 
younger agent's fingers tap tirelessly over the keys.  "In 1995, it 
says, his license was reinstated."

"Without a review by the board?"  Scully considers that, chewing on a 
fingernail.  "Try the Arlington one."

"Kevin Scanlon, M.D., Alexandria, Virginia."

"Reconstructive Surgery?"

"Nope.  Specializing in Endocrinology."

"When was he licensed?"

"May 1996."

"What about F.P. Nayba?"

A few minutes of silence, only interrupted by the tapping of keys.

"Nothing."

Scully's eyes drop down to the report in her hands.

"Look up this name--a James Donnish."

Her fingers work the computer, pause, then, "James Donnish, M.D., 
Alexandria, Virginia.  Specializing in Endocrinology."

"Licensed?"

"May 1996."

"Interesting coincidence."

Fischer frowns watching the gears turn in her senior agent's mind.  "And 
this person is...?"

"Barbara Benedict's primary care physician."  Lifting the receiver, 
Scully dials the number on the police report.

"What are you thinking?"

"That perhaps it isn't Scanlon that was killed after all.  They never 
did find his dental records."

She listens as four rings sound before the answering machine picks up.  
The same husky voice of Barbara Benedict is there, apologizing 
breathlessly for the non-presence of said occupants, but the agent is 
captured by something else -- a strange, ethereal tinkling in the 
background, the barely audible noise filtering through, replaying one of 
the words in her partner's field journal.

Then, almost too soon, the long beep sounds.

In disbelief, she calls the number again, listening.  Confirming.  
Before motioning to the junior agent.

"Come here."  She dials again, playing back the message and surrendering 
the handset.  "I want you to tell me what you think this is in the 
background."

Fischer picks up the phone, listening to the muffled discharge in 
concentration.

"I dunno.  Sounds like an ice-cream truck.  Or maybe one of those old 
wooden wind chimes."

The agent nods thoughtfully.

"Set a team up for 2290 Dakota Drive."



Barbara Benedict's Residence
Richmond, VA


The footsteps and weapons of twelve SWAT team members ransacking the 
place, breaking doors and windows, thunder through the two-story house 
as they tear apart the place with efficient, professional brutality.

Storming through the kitchen, Scully glances cursorially at the calendar 
covered in a plethora of red circles, times, and exxes through them 
before heading towards the living room.  Five steps later, she turns 
around and backtracks to inspect the dates more carefully.

"Team's sweeping this place,"  Fischer doubles back to her moments 
later.  "So far, nothing.  They did, however, find a number of surgical 
instruments, needles and wire in what looks to be a little girl's room.  
They also found--"  She stops as Scully doesn't turn from reading the
calendar.  "Agent Scully?"

"Fischer," she finally replies.  "Pull up the record of Barbara 
Benedict's police statement and tell me the date it was taken."

The younger agent nods, running out.  Five minutes later, she comes back 
in.  With the MPK slung over her right shoulder, she pulls open the 
valise and digs around inside for a while before finally coming up with 
the folder.

"Um, statment documented June sixteenth, 1997," she mutters, trying to 
balance the folder, briefcase, and rifle at the same time.  "Time, 
sixteen hundred thirty hours, taken by Special Agent Dana Scully, 
Federal Bureau of Investigation."

Scully lets her finger drift over certain marked days in the calendar,

"These here, the dates circled, they're the days and times of Barbara 
Benedict's dialysis sessions."  She points at one date marked on the 
calendar before her.  "Including this one."

"June sixteenth."  Fischer squints, reading the tiny numbers of the 
appointment hours.  "Three to six P.M.."  She looks up.  "That means..."

"Barbara Benedict could not have been at the police station when she was 
also having dialysis."

"We found something!" A muffled shout from out behind pierces the air, 
and the two agents dash out to the source of the news.

They had come to arrest Barbara Benedict for the serial murders and for 
the attempted murder of a Federal Agent, but upon discovering her, the 
first particular notion swiftly flies out of Scully's head, throwing yet 
another twist into the investigative proceedings.

Because Barbara Benedict is very much dead.

An agent had discovered the shriveled form of the woman folded up and 
crammed into an industrial-sized, lift-top freezer built to hold 
approximately six-hundred pounds of meat.

Barbara had obviously been dead for only a little while, as freezer burn 
from exposure to the cooling elements in confinement still had work cut 
out for it.  Upon a cursory inspection Scully, finds a clumsy suture in 
the neck.  Another mark.

And somehow, she finds it impossible to stir up sympathy for a woman who 
had at least been an accessory in the murder of her own child, if not 
the actual hand herself.

Despite the obvious, unnatural angle of the woman's neck, Scully pries 
open the woman's eyes, searching for telltale pinpoints of red for 
asphyxiation.  Even clouded over with the cataracts of death, they still 
reflect the green in the irises.  She pauses.

Green.  Natural green.  The woman she spoke to wore green contact
lenses.

Then, whom had she spoken to at the police station?

Think, Dana.  Think.  The person who had pretended to be Barbara 
Benedict, had to have enough knowledge of the family to be able to pass 
it as her own.

Lifting up the dress of the dead woman, she reads the rows of collapsed 
veins and bruises along Barbara's thighs, pockmarks and fresh venous 
scars, mottled and weaving in a tapestry of vessel disarray.

Someone for whom it wasn't mandatory to show up for dialysis sessions.

"Wrap this up and ship it back to Quantico," she orders the nearest 
agent, as she heads back inside the house.

Searching the living room, she finds a picture on the fireplace mantle.  
It is of Barbara and another woman, both of the same fair hair and 
remarkably similar features, with Kathy, in front of the Richmond 
Memorial.  Except the Barbara she talked to was standing behind them and 
the Barbara in the freezer was the one in the wheelchair.

Judging by the looks of the little girl, the photograph could not have 
been more than one year old.

Barbara had said her family members were all dead except for a brother 
in Amsterdam.  She could have lied.  But that would have been too easy 
to trace.  And of course it could be completely coincidental that these 
two women should look so much alike.  Identical twins?  There were too
many dissimilarities for such.  Perhaps Fraternals.

She looks more carefully at the picture of the woman standing in the 
back, towering over the two forms in the front, feeling somehow, she's 
missing something.  Her eyes drop to one hand resting on the seated 
Barbara Benedict's shoulder.

An unusually large hand.

Hand.

The "Est--" label on the pill bottle suddenly becomes obvious.

Estradiol.  Hormone therapy.

And Amsterdam.  Where some of the most advanced techniques of gender-
change operations took place without the explicit prerequisite of years 
of extensive psychotherapy and counseling required in the United States.

The vibration of the phone in her pocket alerts her to the presence of 
an incoming call.  Still looking at the picture, she lifts the phone up 
to her right ear.

"Scully."

"Velasco here," voice filters through the other end.  "A credit charge 
Agent Mulder made at the HN Hampshire Lounge was flagged as it came 
through the wire."

"Head on over there as quickly as possible."  She holds a hand up 
towards the junior agent as she comes in.

"I'm here right now, but according to the closing bartender, he left 
this place about an hour ago with a woman."

"Scour the area."  She turns to as the agent coming in the door shakes 
her head.  "Fischer and three agents will be joining you at the HN 
Hampshire Lounge in..."  the junior agent holds up fingers on both 
hands.  "Thirty minutes."

"Gotcha."

"The area's clean," Fischer informs her as she clicks her phone off.  
"No one around, no other bodies found.  We have enough for a conviction.  
Now if we had a live suspect..."

Scully slips the photograph from its frame off the mantle and hands it 
to her.

"Have the bartender see if this woman in the back is the one Mulder left 
with.  I'm going to have a talk with Doctor Donnish."

"Who is this?"  Fischer frowns, staring at the picture.

"Nathan Benedict.  Looks like he's come home after all."

*    *    *    *    *

The game.  The hunt.  The singularly crafted maze of madness he 
interlaces with fragments of memory, reflex, and desire dashing through 
ethereal jumps of the synapse.

He likes it.  He actually likes Mulder too.  But promises have to be 
kept, you know.  The code of honor and all that.

Walking around in Special Agent Fox Mulder's mind was no trip in the 
park.  He'd booby-trapped all the entrances and corridors.  A wrong 
stumble meant sometimes hours of dull, soporific conversation with an 
old windbag.  Other times, gargoyles would leap out of the woodwork, and
he'd be forced to do a duck shoot, blasting them away, forcing them to 
retreat, if only temporarily.

A regular, fucking carnival ride, this brain was.

But never, ever was he never allowed the full picture of anything, only 
bits and pieces of contradictory, fragmented slides accentuated by 
spaces of pure black, like someone had sucked that memory right out of 
Mulder's brain.  But then he'd found some other not-so well hidden
things.

Interesting things.

A hidden violent streak, masked under well tamped aggression.  But that 
wasn't the most interesting part.  The most fascinating aspect was 
hidden behind the hundreds of lockboxes, defenses, and alarms in his 
head, something that so well repressed, so determinedly squashed
down that he would have almost laughed, because what Mulder has stuffed 
so desperately away always seemed pretty obvious to him.

Interesting.  Very interesting.

Two actors on the stage.  Set.  Blocked.  Wooden marionettes lying 
lifeless until brought into action by the simple whisper of suggestion, 
the tug of this puppeteer's string.

Hollow men.

Stuffed men.

Here we go 'round the prickly pear, prickly pear, prickly pear...

He would wait.  Wait until the final act.  No sparks, thrills or chills 
without a certain partner who hasn't showed up yet, but if she's as 
smart as he thinks she is, she'll find him.

If he actually smoked, he'd light up a cigarette.



Chesapeake General Hospital
Alexandria, VA


Flashing her ID to the security guard at the entrance, Scully's usual 
line of cursory questioning is cut off at the pass by the man's casual 
question--

"You the back-up?"

"Excuse me?"

"We don't get too many feds here early in the morning.  I figured you 
were the back-up for the other guy."

"This other agent, was he with a woman?"

"Yeah.  I guess you could call it that."

Pulling the cellular phone out of her coat, she dials a few numbers and 
then stops, glancing around the lobby and elevators.

"Could you tell me where Doctor Donnish' office is?"

"Fourth floor, number four-one-eight."

"Are the physician's offices separate from the main care unit?"

"Yes ma'am.  But several of the offices on that floor do have urgent 
care patients."

The agent considers that.  Then scribbles down a number on a piece of 
paper before handing it to the guard.

"If I'm not back here in twenty minutes, call this number.  Ask for 
Velasco or Fischer.  Give this address and report a possible hostage 
situation.  Tell them to request a team.  You'll also want to call the 
fire department as a back-up."  She eyes the elevators again, noting 
their slow, sluggish movements, exacerbated by frequent stops at every 
floor.

"Lots of patients being transferred at this time," the guard shrugs.



Office of James Donnish, M.D.--


Doctor Scanlon.  Dead.

Again.

Looking down at the freshly dead corpse of Kevin Scanlon, Mulder 
absently watches as the blood gurgling out from the extra smile in his 
neck languorously soaks into the burgundy carpet.

His paralysis, the numbing, dull, immobility that extends from his brain 
down to every fiber of his muscles, the muscles that want to scream, to 
move, to react.  But one word, a suggestion really.  One word locked him 
into place and forced him to watch the preceding events as Benedict
casually slit the throat of the cowering doctor.  This same paralysis, 
for some odd reason, that chooses not to stop his sudden and 
unconquerable fit of snickering.

"What's so amusing, darling?"  The ethereal voice purrs into his ears.  
Not quite feminine, not quite masculine.  A strange, swirling mixture of 
two sets of vocal chords working in unison.  The Chrysalis' delicately 
wields an eight-inch filet knife, arms covered and slicked with hot,
steaming red, a diva displaying her gorgeous crimson gloves.

"This,"  he gesticulates towards the body, lip curling sardonically.  
"This is a bad joke.  Scanlon dead is how this whole fucking thing 
started in the first place."



A Stairwell--


Scully hesitates momentarily, feeling the sharp surge of pain in her 
head that leaves her woozy and with fleeting consideration that morphine 
might not have been such a bad idea after all.

The familiar, almost forgotten tickle crawls in her left nostril and she 
impatiently wipes at her face with the back of her hand, unwilling to 
stop for even a moment.

Glancing up the spiraling staircase, her feet rapidly pound up the steps 
of the remaining two floors.



Office of James Donnish, M.D.--


"Almost time."

The baritone warble of a phony falsetto seeps through Mulder's haze, 
words punctuated by an internal mental nudge poking his consciousness 
out of its soporific state.  His arms and legs began to tingle, the 
sensations increasing in strength as nerves and muscles slowly return to
functional state.  A few more minutes.

He doubts, however, that the Chrysalis would wait for him to regain his 
strength, and even then, Nathan Benedict out-massed him by an inch and 
nearly twenty pounds.  Mind humming rapidly into overtime, he glances 
over to the rapidly cooling body of the doctor.

"Scanlon," he fishes wildly, attempting to distract the younger Benedict 
from his mission.  "Why Scanlon?  What did he have to do with it?"

"I don't know anyone named Scanlon."

"Sorry.  Nayba,"  He glances hazily at the nameplate on the desk.  
"Donnish.  Whatever the hell his name is this week."

"Oh, I would have killed him long ago, but he promised to help me.  Us.  
He never followed through.  But we did."

"Us?  We?"  The agent echoes, eyes darting around the room. "I don't see 
your sister anywhere.  Where is she?"

Benedict smiles, then taps the side of his head.  Stops.  Twitches 
momentarily, in a jerky, stilted motion of a pair of hands exchanging 
the strings of the puppet.  Voice, sultry, the alto hiss of a higher 
timbre.

"I'm right here, darling.  You felt it."  The voice then changes back 
into it's phony high pitch.  "She and I are one.  But you know that."  
Leaning forward, he rests the knife delicately on Mulder's chin.  "With 
this, we will all be one."

"Wouldn't you like to be a psycho too?"  The words slip out of his mouth 
before common sense has a chance to pounce upon them.

"Stop calling us that!"

"There is no "us," Nathan,"  Mulder reasons calmly, as his eyes still do 
the dance, searching for something of use, anything of use, as fingers 
now begin to twitch.

"Shut up!"  The register of the voice drops another notch into baritone.  
"Nayba messed up, don't you see?"  The agent's gaze swivels to the sight 
displayed before him, then averts rapidly away as Benedict opens his 
blouse, displaying a ragged set of breasts.  "I went to Amsterdam
become beautiful.  We were _supposed_ to be beautiful.  Instead he made 
me half of what I am.  He made me a freak."

"Nath--Barbara--"

"All I wanted was to be beautiful," he moans, twisting his hands, the 
rotating knife catching glints off the fluorescent ceiling bulb, a 
dancing, red beacon.  "To be loved."  Letting the dagger dangle 
carelessly from the fingers of his right hand, he lifts Mulder's chin 
with the left, tilting his head up bringing his lips lower, but the 
agent manages to twist his head to the side, feeling a familiar acidic 
taste crawl up his throat.

With a sudden fury, the Chrysalis drives his fist into his nose, hearing 
the cartilage crack with a satisfying crunch.

"Bastard," the voice hisses, suddenly reverting to the female timbre.  
"You're just like all the others.  I thought you'd at least understand.  
You know.  You feel it too.  We are alike, you know."

"Oh, really, are you nobody, too?"  Mulder manages to slur out.  Despite 
not relishing the idea of getting his ass kicked by a guy in a dress, 
getting ravished by one was definitely not a better option.

"Darling, don't fight it."  The throaty, thrilling voice of Miriam 
Acheson.  He twitches wildly, jerking his head side to side, even as she 
grips his face tightly forcing his head up to plant a wet kiss--

"Hold it right there, Mr. Benedict."

--and sees a familiar redheaded agent with her gun pointed at the two.  
The right side of her face is slightly red, like smeared lipstick, 
guided by the faint trickle of red from her nostril.

The Chrysalis stands up unwinding itself from the agent like a lazy 
caterpillar.

"Oh...is this the chippy," the definitely male voice purrs.  "Sorry, 
babe, but you're not his type."

"I'm afraid you're not his type, either, Nathan."

"Stop calling me that, bitch!" the younger Benedict roars.  "He's mine.  
We're linked."  He pulls the agent closer, sticking his tongue in his 
ear, even as Mulder thrashes ineffectually, desperately trying to 
contract into a little ball.  And yet, somehow, in the last vestigially
humorous part of his mind, he's finding the whole situation suddenly 
absurdly hilarious.  He never imagined being caught in a territorial 
fight like this.

And then, like the capped bang of a starter's pistol--

(Now!)

A command.  The release.

As if someone let loose the spring on a mouse trap, Mulder's arms 
suddenly shoot up, wrapping with deadly intensity around Benedict's 
throat, efficiently crumpling the larger man's windpipe like an empty 
milk carton

"Mulder, stop!"  comes a scream in the background, but he tunes it out.  
He feels nothing except his fingers around his neck, squeezing, seeing 
his eyes bulge, the knife drooping uselessly from his hands.  He finds 
it humorous, the voice box and hyoid bone slowly snapping from the
pressure, tongue flopping out, the twitching gurgling gasps coming from 
a slowly bluing face.

Then, the face shifts again, the fake green eyes peering out in 
terrified hysteria as a high pitched treble trembles in gross 
disproportion out of the host body.

"Please don't hurt me, mister!"

Scully freezes, feeling her chest reflexively recoil, as that high-
pitched squeal pierces through Mulder's head.  Girl.  Little girl.  
Kathy.  Kathy Benedict.  His hands suddenly go slack, dropping the form 
before him.

With a sudden flick of the wrist, too smooth for either agent to catch, 
the Chrysalis drives the dagger into his gut, twisting the end, then 
draws out and plunges it in again.

"Come join me, baby," rattles out of the bloody windpipe, as he smiles 
through the rivulets of red running between his teeth.  Then, Benedict 
collapses forwards against the agent.

"Mulder!"

Still standing, Mulder turns in the haze, vaguely recognizing the petite 
figure standing only twenty feet away.

She is calling to him, she has a gun in her hand, now pointed down at 
the ground.  He looks at her, sees a trickle of blood inching its way 
down to her lip, the same reddish tone smeared on the right side of her 
face.  He wants to wipe it away, to rid the hideous streak of red that
mars otherwise perfect features. 

Forgetting about the Chrysalis, he drops the body like a dead load, 
slowly stumbling towards her, staring in owlish fascination, hands 
absently searching his pockets for a tissue.

Another stab of pain sears through his skull and he falls to the ground, 
twitching.

Frozen in place with eyes wide open, yet unseeing, unblinking.  Jaw, 
tightly locked as if maxilla and mandible had been fused together.  The 
body still.  Very still.  Unmoving.  Unbreathing.

Doctor Scully raises her fist, carefully angling the space of fingers 
between the second joint and knuckles so they are flush with the target, 
looking down, making sure of her aim.  Then with a grim determination, 
brings it slamming down to the middle of his chest.

Crack!  Once

"Breathe!"

Crack!  Twice

"Goddammit Mulder, breathe!"

Crack!

The body below her jacknifes and with a loud, strangling sound and the 
pop of jaws unlocking, Fox Mulder deeply sucks in air like a half-
drowned swimmer, the machinery of his body that has paused for thirty 
seconds or an eternity kick-starting back into action.  His eyes blink,
moistening the bloodshot orbs that have gone dry, but they still stare 
up at her, vacant.

"I'm sorry, Mulder," she stammers in relief.  "I couldn't pry your jaws 
open, and your nose was broken."

Nothing.  Only seeing the lips moving in the that face hovering over 
him, mouthing something he can't fathom or hear past the rushing noise 
in his head, then a shadow, a figure, the image of death wielding a 
knife, splattered with red, his red, soon to be hers, and with sudden 
clarity, the bubble bursts and the roar of environment assail his eyes, 
his ears, his nostrils with their presence, and he screams, reaching for 
her holster and drawing her weapon--

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG...

She swerves around at the first shot, sees her bullets riddle the body 
of Nathan Benedict, one, two, three, four, losing count after that as 
each hole blasts from his chest like an overloaded dam suddenly loosed, 
pouring out wave after wave of blood and viscera from each bulging crack 
in the foundation.  The remains of a sagging, slightly atrophied breast 
dangles from the open blouse, flopping obtusely against a reddened
belly.

Each shot bucks in Mulder's hands as he fires repeatedly at that spectre 
until it drops, defeated in its efforts to claim her.  Death has a 
substitute to take today.

Gently prying the gun from his fingers, she picks up his discarded 
trenchcoat from the ground, and lays it across his torn midsection, 
unsuccessfully trying to quell the shaking possessing his form.  Then, 
with surprising strength, he pushes her aside to turn away, gripping the
bloodied coat against his stomach, before attempting to bring himself up 
into kneeling position.

"Christ," he gags, teeth chattering with the effort not to hurl.  "I'll 
never do another prison-rape joke again."

"Mulder, you need to lay down," orders Scully.  "You can't move around 
like this."

He shakes his head numbly.  "I--I think I'm okay."  Hearing the beeps of 
several buttons dialing on a cellular, he stands up shakily.  "What are 
you doing?"

"I'm calling an ambulance."

"No."

"You need to be hospitalized, Mulder.  Your wounds look too deep for a 
superficial treatment.  That knife was serrated.  You've definitely torn 
something."

"No.  No ambulance.  No hospitals, Scully.  I mean it."  The look in his 
eyes offer no compromise.  He gestures slightly to the body ten feet 
away.  "What about--?"

"Nathan Benedict?"  She turns, then walks over to the body, inspecting 
it.  "After taking about ten bullets to the chest, I'd say he's dead."

Turning back, she finds him gone.

*    *    *    *

He had to leave.  To get out.  The air, the presence was unbearably 
stifling, the feeling of his mind being slowly siphoned away by a hand 
squeezing ever so firmly against his brain.

He couldn't have been more than a few blocks away from his apartment, 
and yet he couldn't walk.  Lifting his arm to hail a cab, three passed 
by before one grudgingly slowed town before his wavering figure.  The 
cab driver asked him where he wanted to go, after looking curiously at 
his face and then trenchcoat, the garment itself unsuitable for the 
current weather, especially one tightly buttoned on a humid July day.  
Mulder thought he gave him his card, but as the vehicle sped out onto 
the freeway, the thought slowly trickled into his brain that this cab 
ride was going to be a long one.

He closed his eyes, only opening them once to see them turn onto the 
Annapolis off-ramp, then let them droop back down.  Ah, well.  Perhaps 
it was for the best.

After all, Scully could make the pain go away...she could make it 
better...she could...

Coming to an abrupt halt in front of a familiar set of apartments, the 
driver turned around expectantly, saying something he couldn't 
understand, but gathered had something to do with the fare.  He pulled 
whatever bills remained in his wallet and dropped them on the seat in 
front of him.  Muttering something else, the cabbie picked up the money 
and then blanched, looking at them.

The agent followed his gaze, noticing, for the first time, with dull 
fascination, that the palms and fingers of his hands were slick with 
red, as were the fingerprints on the bills.

He pushed his way out of the cab, ignoring whatever words the man 
continued to call out and stumbled towards Scully's apartment.

He knocked.  No answer.  Fumbled in his pocket with slippery, sticky 
hands for the key to her lock.  ("I don't know why I even bothered to 
give you a key here, since you obviously prefer to kick in the door," 
she'd snapped testily at him after that Van Blundht incident.  But he'd 
suspected it was more embarrassment over nearly lip-locking Mr. "I-
seriously-doubt-this-has-anything-to-do-with-consensual-sex" than actual 
peevishness over wanton property destruction.)

After several minutes of near misses, he somehow managed to jam it in 
the lock and turn it.  Stumbling around inside, he peered around, hoping 
for a "Mulder, what are you doing here?" to drift towards him.

But she wasn't there.  No voice.  No look.  No hands to guide him 
towards comfort.

He decided wait.

Closing his eyes, he let himself slowly slide to the floor.



Chesapeake General Hospital
Alexandria, VA


The familiar vibration of the phone disturbs the dampened hustle of the 
team efficiently scouring the crime scene and taking evidence.

"Mulder, where the hell are you?"  She queries impatiently, snapping the 
phone up within milliseconds.

A pause.

"Ms. Scully?" a hesitant, unfamiliar voice asks.



Dana Scully's Apartment
Annapolis, Maryland


"I'm sorry to had to call you, Ms. Scully," the building manager, a 
sweaty, middle-aged, man with a nervous tic in his left cheek 
apologizes, "But when I saw this--"

He points to ajar door, blood slick on the doorknob and jamb.

"--I thought I'd let you know before I called the police."

Pushing the door wider, she sees him, curled up in a ball on the floor 
after taking no more than ten steps, next to him, a set of keys splayed 
out a couple of inches away from ashen fingers.

"No, no police will be necessary."

"Are you sure, Ms. Scully, because--"

"Thank you."

She shuts the door on his overcurious eye and turns back to face her 
unconscious partner.

*    *    *    *

Somehow, in that expanse of time that drifted between nausea and the 
pain, she did appear, like an angel, a saving grace.  He felt familiar 
hands drift over his face, down the side of it, cool, reassuring fingers 
on his fevered forehead.  Then, the air hitting his torso, prickling the 
open nerves of his gut, the snapping of latex gloves, opening of 
bottles, and tearing of packages.  The stab of a needle digging into his 
shoulder, and the slow, numbing effect of something running through his 
muscles and veins drawing him into deeper black with only the periphery 
of pain to tug him back into awareness.  A strange pulling, yanking, 
piercing of his lower midsection.  Then, something else, something soft, 
wispy against the periphery of his collarbone captured his attention.  
He concentrated on the brushing of the tips of Scully's hair on his 
chest, and found that consciousness passed much easier.

She took him in, put fixed him up, and made it all better.

Scully always did that.



Office of the Assistant Director
FBI Headquarters


The veins in the Assistant Director Walter Skinner's head stood out 
proudly against his skull, milliseconds away from bursting out with the 
strain it took not to yell at the two junior agents standing before him.

"What do mean both Agent Scully and Agent Mulder are missing?"

The two glance at each other uneasily, both taking nervous swallows 
before one of them finally speaks up.

"Sir," answers Velasco in a reasonable voice.  "We were following up 
another lead assigned to us by Agent Scully.  We were later only 
informed of other developments in the case by a security officer at 
Chesapeake General."

"And you found Agent Scully there," presses the AD, only slightly 
mollified.

"Yes, sir."

"And what of Agent Mulder?"

"He...was not around, sir," Fischer pipes in.

Removing his glasses, Skinner sits back in his chair, rubbing the bridge 
of his nose.  "Tell me, then, how did the two of you manage to lose 
Agent Scully in an enclosed crime scene?"

"She went outside to take a call, and then..."  begins Velasco, then 
trails off.

"Is this what you call handling your assignments?"

"Sir, these two agents handled themselves impeccably, sir."  They turn, 
surprised, at the unannounced arrival of Special Agent Dana Scully at 
the door.  "In fact, I'd like to make a recommendation for the both 
them."

"Where have you been, Agent Scully?"  asks the AD, visibly relieved, 
after his moment of stunned pause.

"I had to pull up some information on the suspect."

"Agent Scully," Skinner growls.  "The report so far mentions two dead 
bodies, both of whom share names and identities with people who are 
supposed to be dead.  I'm pretty sure anything you have at this moment 
would clarify this situation."

A folder stuffed full of papers, autopsy reports, and interviews hits 
his desk, the front cover opening to reveal the neatly typed out field 
report laid atop the miscellaneous pile.

"Nathan Benedict applied for gender reassignment at age twenty-seven," 
drones Scully.  "These are the results of his psychological screening.  
He was rejected after the psychologist concluded he suffered from a 
Dissociative Disorder and not Gender Dysphoria.  A year later he moved 
to Amsterdam and began hormone treatment and breast implants--only 
failing to complete the penile inversion surgery."

Flipping through the papers, he nods, absorbing the information.  "So 
this Nathan Benedict was the one who did all this."

"Well, he was one of them."

"There was more than one?"

"His sister, Barbara Benedict.  Agent Mulder's profile wasn't wrong.  He 
just combined the two into one person."

"It says here, your weapon was used to kill Nathan Benedict."

"Yes sir.  Agent Mulder saw the suspect about to about to attack with 
deadly intensity and acted accordingly.

"With your service weapon."

She doesn't answer.  He waits, but nothing more from her is forthcoming.

"Where is Agent Mulder?"

"Agent Mulder is, ah, indisposed right now."

"But you have everything under control."

"Yes sir."

His eyes flicked over to the two junior agents standing in the back, 
trying their best to blend in with the wallpaper.

"That will be all."

The Assistant Director waits until after the door behind Fischer and 
Velasco clicks shut, before turning back to the agent in front of him.

In a soft voice, Scully sighs, "Thank you, sir, for letting me come back 
to do this."

"This is your last assignment, Agent Scully."

She doesn't answer, merely looks down at the floor, smiling wanly.

"How are you feeling?"  he asks suddenly.

"I'm fine, sir," the words tumble out of her mouth without a second 
thought, a reflex born of endless repetition.

The Assistant Director could have pulled rank, wielded his position of 
power.  Demanded to know how she really was.  To force her to tell him 
the truth.

But he chooses not to.

"That will be all...Agent Scully."

She nods, not looking back at the door closing shut behind her as she 
makes her way towards the elevators, to the hall of her final trip to 
the basement office, to...who knew after that?  To go home and die, 
maybe.

Pressing the last button on the wall of the closing elevator doors, a 
thought attacks her sensibilities, causing her lips to involuntarily 
curl upwards in the verisimilitude of a smirk.

What was that Mulder had said?  Something about how you could always 
count on a murderer for fancy prose.

She'd never been a good liar, an affliction stemming from ingrained 
Catholic guilt, but she'd had a great deal of practice recently.  The 
same could be said for Mulder and his shooting skills.

She and Mulder.

The liar and the killer.

He would not appreciate the analogy.



Dana Scully's Apartment
Annapolis, MD


He arrives out of slumber with a desperate need for water, vocal cords 
raw and tight in his throat, feeling like he'd swallowed a half-dozen 
nail files.  Too bright, his sluggish mind somehow manages to register.  
Room too bright.

Obviously, he's not at home.

Looking around groggily, Mulder vaguely remembers waking up in the same 
room several years ago, in pretty much the same state of mind.  Sitting 
up, he winces at the pain roaring through his gut, doubling over and 
clutching it out of reflex, feeling the bulk of gauze wrapped around his 
midsection.  Guess the stabs weren't as deep as she thought.

Stumbling into the kitchen, he passes by the table covered littered with 
opened wound closure packages, remnants of catgut, gloves, antiseptic 
and forceps.  At the cabinet, he pulls out a glass tumbler and fills it 
up with water from the tap.  Bringing it up to his lips, he misses, 
banging the rim against his bandaged nose, and a bolt of pains sears 
through head, causing the glass to slip from suddenly slack fingers to 
shatter against the floor.  Dropping to his knees, he attempts to pick 
up the little pieces amid the sopping mess, paying no heed to the glass 
cutting into his fingers, only concentrating on the tightly clutching 
the shards in shaking, sweaty palms.

He vaguely hears the door opening and footsteps running into the 
kitchen, followed by an all too familiar "Mulder!"

"I'm sorry," he mumbles, still clumsily fumbling about the floor, 
picking up a piece, dropping it, picking it up again.

Finally frustrated, he pounds his fist against the linoleum breaking 
more glass under his knuckles, repeatedly driving his hand into the 
ground, leaving little red prints their wake.

"I can't..." his cracking voice shouts as his fists keep pounding.  "I 
can't keep my hands...can't use them..."

"Mulder, stop."

She had heard the crash from outside, stuffed her key into the lock, 
cursing the stiffness of the recently installed bolt and ran into the 
kitchen, finding him there, kneeling on the wet floor, desperately 
trying to pick up the pieces of shattered glass.

Scully could only stand there watching in horror as his fingers flopped 
around the shards either slipping or gripping the sharp pieces too 
tightly and slicing open his hand, all while he mumbled incoherent 
apologies, his frustration, anger mounting at his inability to perform 
one simple act.

"Sorry, Scully...sorry..."

She kneels by him, putting her arms around his back to calm him.

"It's okay, Mulder, just stop."

Slumping in defeat, he lets his limbs go slack, hanging his head 
wearily, as she gently lifts him up to this legs.  Leaning heavily on 
her, Mulder allows himself to be led to the bathroom, to the sink where 
she turns on the tap to wash out the blood and glass out from his hands.

As she turns his hands over, carefully washing the other side, he looks 
to the side at the various little pill bottles sitting on the counter.  
Bottles and bottles of cancer medication, each one singing a tune to 
taunt his failure.

(The answers are locked inside your head)

The cancer man's cryptic comment flicks against him repeatedly.  In him.  
Somehow.  Somewhere.  An undisturbed memory.  A link that hasn't 
clarified.  Think, you asshole, think.  You haven't got much time left.

(Up to you to decipher them)

Looks up into the mirror and sees them.  Eyes that are not his.  The 
face and body, familiar, recognizable, he has seen them every day.

But the eyes, those fucking eyes.  Those goddamned fucked-up eyes.  
Blue.  They're fucking blue.  A light, bright, cold blue.


She should have recognized it.  She felt the shift in his presence, 
sudden and complete tension of every muscle in his body.  But even if 
she had known what he was about to do, she would not have been able to 
stop it.  The crash is spinteringly loud, a hundred wineglasses suddenly 
exploding in shattering chorus.

Recoiling and taking three steps back amidst a sudden hail of falling 
glass, she gingerly opens her eyes to see Mulder driving his head into 
the desolate remains of her medicine cabinet, his hair matted in a crown 
of blood, rivers streaking down his face, his arms, rippled and 
crisscrossed with rivulets of red.  Eyes, dilated to the point of where 
they are nearly completely black, demonic, murderous, possessed.

"Mulder!"

"Don't...come near me."  A voice not his, grates out through sandy jaws.

She reaches up for him, making the mistake of thinking her touch will 
reassure him.

"Mulder, stop!"

He flails wildly against her, bucking, shaking, somehow managing to 
backhand her hard enough to send her flying across the small space.  The 
back of her head strikes the wall with a loud crack and she slowly 
slumps to a sitting position on the floor, her eyes swimming in 
blurriness as nausea takes over, leaving her light-headed & unable to 
focus.

Mulder turns and again, his mood shifts, the anger subsiding, instantly 
replaced by another emotion, as if someone has suddenly switched the 
channel.

He drops to his knees in front of her, banging bone against linoleum, as 
trembling hands cup her face, her head, in the motion of a child trying 
to fix something he knows he has broken.

"Oh god Scully oh god I'm sorry oh god..."

His fingers weave into the hair around her temples, bringing her face 
up, trying to survey the damage, to feel the bruises under her skin.

She does not see him near her, is not aware of his presence until she 
feels his hot breath on her forehead.  The powerful combination of sweat 
and a pungent, saltiness chokes her nostrils as she weakly tries to 
regain focus.  Fingers, clammy and slick with blood, gently touch her 
face, small slivers embedded in the skin, prickling her chin in several 
places.

Her eyes flutter open, but remain unfocused.

He stops, looking at her, and the channel changes again.  As subtle as a 
wave passing over him, the insidious purring voice of suggestion lapping 
at his unconscious.

(You want her, don't you?)

Want--

To possess her, to have everything that is her, he wants to taste her, 
to devour her, feel her in his blood, under his skin, her aura in his 
nostrils, he wants the madness, the blood roaring in his head, to plunge 
into the depths of her, absorb her essence, to feel her envelop him, to 
lose himself forever in her immutable soul, to breathe life into her 
frail bones, to give her everything that is his, his body, his life, his 
spirit, his will, all the energy and the cosmos and the force of him, to 
drive out that gnawing parasite cancer in her body and replace it with 
some part of him or most of him or all of him, to be in her, a part of 
her, body, soul, every hair, every cell, every quark and neutrino, to be 
there forever and ever even when Armageddon comes and passes, and never, 
ever leave.


A wet, warm object touches her cheek, then slowly draws down, tracing 
the line of a thin, jagged wound.

He turns her head to face his, eyes wandering around her features 
studying her glazed, confused expression.  They follow the bright red 
stream dripping from her chin up to the source, the ugly gash on her 
lower lip.  He leans forward, mouth nearly touching hers, as his tongue 
snakes out, tasting the blood on her chin, then drawing slowly up to her 
lips.

(You and your pretty partner were always close)

"Mulder," she gasps, despite the shooting in her head this effort 
causes.  Tries to blink to clear out the fog in front of her eyes, but 
it only hurts more.  "Wait..."

His mouth covers hers, muffling her protests.  She feels the soft 
pressure of his lips, the nearly unbearable heat of his body, of life 
pulsing through, out of him, then something foreign, seeping into her, 
invading her very pores.  Breath labored and heavy, his head swims with 
unfamiliar  as he breathes into her.  Then, ever so slowly, as if 
gradually tuning in her presence, he feels something ripping from him, 
feels it move to her, her breath choking under his.

(You work so well together)

"Scully," he moans against her mouth, running his fingers through her 
hair, behind her head, feeling the strands caress the raw exposed nerves 
of his open, jagged skin.

Scully.

No--

She does not want it.  Not now.  Not like this.

(Sure she does.  You can have her.  You can have everything if you just 
listen to me.)

No--

He shakes violently, tearing himself off her, jerking like a defiant 
puppet against an unseen marioneteer's strings.  Clutching his head, 
face twisted in a silent scream, he manages a strangled plea through 
gritted teeth--

"Get out of here, Scully."

Willing herself to rise against the tide of nausea, she gets up 
unsteadily and stumbles out of the bathroom, peripherally aware of him 
crawling to the toilet and violently upending the non-existent contents 
of his stomach in noisy, wracking heaves.

In the living room, her eyes blur again, and she absently rubs them with 
the back of her hand, not noticing the bit of black, viscous fluid 
rubbed off onto her knuckle.

Still shaking, Scully picks up the phone and dials 911.


END PRAXIS

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NEXT:  DEA EX MACHINA III--TERMINAL

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