TITLE: Scatter
AUTHOR: Vehemently (vehemently@yahoo.com)
SPOILERS: The Red and the Black.
RATING: R. for adult themes, violence implicit and explicit, 
scariness and bad language.
ARCHIVE: Please do.
CATEGORY: X (X-File) and A (Angst).
KEYWORDS: Casefile. Conspiracy. Krycek. Otherwise, read on.
DISCLAIMER: Characters and situations entailed herein belong 
to 1013 / Chris Carter and no profits are intended therefrom. 
SUMMARY: Until recently epilepsy carried the stereotype of 
violent antisocial behavior. The brain is really not much bigger
than a cantaloupe, and yet so many of its diseases are still 
largely a mystery. In no small part because it's unethical to
cut open living people's heads to find out what's inside.
SPECIAL: Thanks to Lena, for speedbeta and hand-holding.

* * * * * * *

For a Particular Maria, who dared me to.

Scatter
by Vehemently
* * * * * * *

     Special Agent Dana Scully walked into her shared basement 
office with a bud vase of pink roses in her hands and a scowl on 
her face. She stopped when she saw her partner, caught in a 
moment of lounging in his chair, looking at her with alarm. His 
discomfiture made her swallow a grin and she set down the vase 
with care on his desk, the only surface in the room low enough 
for her to reach comfortably. Fox Mulder untangled his long 
limbs from his chair and stood, towering over both her and the 
long-stems, and asked,

     "Are you disappointed that you didn't get more of them or 
should I go shoot the guy for even having the idea?" She 
chuckled and blushed and he relaxed, finally settling into a 
low chuckle himself. He eyed her with mischief but she antici-
pated him, after five years of partnering, by snatching the 
note which nestled amongst the dark green leaves.

     "It wasn't the flowers I was frowning about." It was a 
little embossed card, on the expensive side. "Oh, look, 'Long 
distance from your brother Charlie.' How sweet of him. He felt 
terrible that he couldn't be with me... last summer." She 
paused, unable to come up with a good segue. "Someone from 
Violent Crimes cornered me in the elevator and gave us an 
assignment." She looked up to see the expected grimace on 
Mulder's face. "He gave it to you, actually. He told me I was 
along to make the Bureau look nice and caring."

     That earned a smirk. "But don't these people call you - " 
he stopped before he took his life in his hands. On another day 
she might have set him down, but the way his shoulders were 
creeping up around his ears gave her an idea why he was floun-
dering so badly into comedy. Violent Crimes. Again. She would 
offer him her sympathy but she knew he wouldn't take it.

     "Another one of those high school shootings. The Presi-
dent's putting together a task force, they want it to be the 
best. So they unearthed their master profiler and want you up 
there as soon as is humanly possible. How do you feel about 
Connecticut?"

     Mulder snorted. "It's a speed bump between Massachusetts 
and New York City." He cast about his desk, seeming to gather 
things he might need. Scully was secure in the knowledge that
he would arrive at the crime scene with ten pens, all of which 
would be empty. "I always did wonder about the Moodus Noises 
though. Surely they can't be just geological phenomena." A few 
legal pads seemed to do it for his desk; he stood in the middle 
of the room and looked lonely.

     "Not Moodus, Meriden. You know it?" He nodded but did not 
elaborate. "A fourteen year old girl by name of Michelle 
Manzarek opened fire in the high school gym about an hour ago.
Director Freeh spoke to everyone in the section personally and 
they're anxious to make it look good." His brows twitched but 
she knew he was not thinking on the anomaly of a female spree
killer. "The shuttle's in three quarters of an hour. Can you 
make that?"

     This got his attention. "I'm the one who gets my windows 
rattled every time they go for the southern runway. You have to 
go all the way to Georgetown and back, you had better get
going." He did not ask how long it would take; she knew and he 
knew that publicity cases required nice suits and close shaves 
and a sustained presence.

     "Right," she said, firming her voice. She wanted to say 
more. "Right." She turned to go, her hands useless at her sides.

     "Wait," he said suddenly as she neared the door. "It might 
snow, this early in spring. Bring warm clothes." He made a 
youthful move across the room and retrieved her flowers, 
delivering them to her like he held a baby. "You can't leave 
them here," he mumbled. "They'll die in the dark."

     "Of course, I wouldn't forget them," she replied, feeling 
authorized to leave. She juggled her briefcase and her roses, 
overcoat on one arm. A look over her shoulder as she closed the 
door revealed her partner, legal pads in one hand, standing 
staring blankly in the middle of the room.

* * * * * * *

     I wake suddenly  and ache all over. I am in sheets in a 
bed somewhere and I startle, wondering where I could possibly 
be. Then it returns, like a wave of nausea, and I throw off the 
covers and put my feet on the carpet. Carpet. Oh the luxury. I 
had the sense to pull the drapes last night at least; my mind 
is going in this old age. I peek, but peek only; paranoia and 
nakedness keep me out of view.

     But why am I doing this. This is New York, where everyone 
is a stranger and Kitty Genovese was raped while her neighbors 
turned up their televisions. Who would blink to see a naked man
standing in a barred motel window? The sun lights the city to a 
brighter shade of gunmetal; pedestrians are not breathing smoke 
so it is warming this spring at last. I will not be able to 
justify my gloves. That will be a problem soon, when April 
comes, but right now in the draped dimness it doesn't matter 
what I don't wear.

     I scratch my left hip with my right hand and curse at the 
ragged nails; but how am I to cut them, and who can cut them for
me? Another dance step to figure, here in this country, another
petty thing to think about. And I thought when I left the office
forever that I would be free of petty things and paper clips. 
But I am musing when I should be dressing. Well, it is early 
yet; we covert types like our night lives. I have time for a 
shower; I have washed up in too many public bathrooms lately. 
I bet it has good pressure. I boggle at the luxury of free soap,
wrapped and pristine, on the edge of the sink. I busy myself 
steaming up the mirror and step in, and dare to hope today will 
go well.

* * * * * * *

     The drive from La Guardia up into Connecticut might have 
been pleasant in the fall. In the second week of March it was 
dreary dull, all gray of bark and pavement and sky on the Wilbur
Cross Parkway. Mulder was letting Scully drive, which proved 
both the efficacy of bucket seats in rental cars and his dis-
comfort at returning to his old stomping grounds. She maneuvered
her way around an aggressive Ford Explorer and contemplated the
few times she had seen him amongst the Violent Crimes agents.
He was a deeply strange man, she had reconciled herself to that;
still, when placed in a situation of irritable, overworked 
hunters and a wild-eyed prey, he got stranger.

     She expected him to keep his silence all the way there, but
he let go pulling on his lip as they drove under a stone 
overpass and said airily, "You are now passing through the 
esteemed town of Greenwich, where the roads are clean and the 
rent is impossible." Scully did not like the set to his jaw.

     "Do you want to stop off and visit your mother on the way 
back?"

     His answer was slow to come. "No," he said philosophically.
"She hasn't entirely forgiven me for impugning her marital 
virtue."

     "Oh, Mulder." It sounded like an admonishment and she 
hastened to correct herself: "That was almost a year ago. I 
told her you were out of your mind on drugs."

     "Thanks." The look he shot her spoke volumes of both 
amusement and disturbance. But then, she did not want to talk 
about it either. "Besides, she's in Florida with her lady 
friends, too fragile for New England winter in her old age. I 
hated this town when I lived here; I don't like coming back."

     She measured him with her eyes as he watched the winter-
brown grass median fly by. It seemed safe to joke. "Does this 
mean you have insight into the mind of our quarry?"

     She had judged well; he wore his sarcasm like a cloak. 
"Perhaps. I moved here when I was fourteen, after all."

     "And?"

     "Abject boredom and enormous allowances. Like a John 
Cheever novel in chinos."

     "That's depressing."

     His eyes crinkled and she congratulated herself. "I don't 
want this to reflect on my musical tastes, but Trent Reznor 
of Nine Inch Nails grew up around here."

     "I have no idea who that is." 

     Now he laughed outright and the car felt warmer. "Well 
then," he wheezed, "I'm safe." He laughed himself out and his 
eyes wandered back to the median strip. They were all alone on 
this highway, which might have seemed rustic if it weren't so 
obviously designed for high-speed driving.

     Scully decided to break the silence one last time before 
she let him return to his brooding. "Thank you for the roses. 
They were beautiful. My younger brother calls himself Chuck."

     He ducked his head as she had known he would and muttered,
"I was in a pinch. Do you think he'll mind being used for 
camouflage?" They both kept their eyes on the road.

     "Not at all," she replied, and allowed the quiet of a 
cold Connecticut spring to overtake them.

* * * * * * *
                                
     Mulder crouched on the gymnasium floor to peruse a white 
pompon, drizzled with a paisley pattern of red. Strobes still 
flashed behind him and to the right, nearly five hours after 
the fact. He doubted the local police had handled something 
like this before, and doubted they were really crazy about 
hosting a cadre of jaded suits from far away. This town was 
nothing like Greenwich, he decided, looking at the red-rimmed 
eyes of the town cop who stood, arms akimbo, next to the folded-
up bleachers. Scully was near him, poking a particularly dingy 
pair of gym shoes with her pen, her face impassive. She stood, 
as if feeling Mulder's eyes on her, and approached her partner.

     "There used to be a song on the radio," he mused, his 
voice low. "Back during the eighties, right after I came back 
to the States. The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun. Remember that 
one?"

     She just bored her eyes into him without speaking. Soon he
bent his head and got back to work, not even daring a sheepish 
smile. Humor today was just not in it. To be honest, not a great
deal was to be gleaned from the crime scene; sixteen people had
screamed and fallen and rushed in panicked circles and left 
bloody Converse prints in layers on the waxed floor. The gym 
was not large, and hemmed further with folded bleachers, so 
that the front row would be sitting right at the basketball 
boundary lines. Mulder stood at the three-point line and ima-
gined his jump shot, and turned where he stood, seeing a line 
of girls in matching sweaters under and behind the basket. Four
of them now, in the hospital, put there by a fifth. At least
there were none dead, yet.

     He felt at odds here, out of his depth, as if the crime 
had been perpetrated a thousand years ago and bloated through 
generations of rumor. Guns, and teenagers, and guns and teen-
agers together. New Englanders he knew had been so indignant at
the evening news of late, the wool-dyed liberals proclaiming
loudly that it would never happen here. Meriden, Connecticut 
was not a hunting city, was too small for gang-banger drive-bys.
A girl, a cheerleader, a fourteen-year-old, history stable and 
bourgeois, a girl who had gotten her parents to excuse her
from dissecting frogs last year. Just one of those awful 
things, a spike in the statistics, he thought to himself. How 
does one apply theoretical models to just one of those things?

     Scully was reading his mind and coming back over here to 
chide him. But she only stood at his side, facing away from the
basket, and surveyed the wild pattern of blood by the bleachers.
She made a noise in her throat and began rummaging through her 
briefcase.

     "What do you think?" He kept his voice neutral.

     "I don't know," she answered, head tucked into her chest.
Finally she found another latex glove and handed it to him. "I 
want you to look at something." He snapped it on, wrinkling his
nose at the talc that billowed around his wrist, and followed 
her to the gym shoes she had been inspecting. "Do you see, here,
how the splatter hit the bleachers? It looks like one person
bounced, right here, and staggered away. Officer Cicciola?" The
red-eyed uniform turned to her, short and dark and compact and 
not quite sure what to do with his hat.

     "Yeah, uh, yes ma'am," he stuttered.

     "You said that the four victims were all huddled over 
there?" Scully pointed with her pen.

     "Yes. About eight yards, by the door. Jeff Dober said he 
carried Colleen Tessio over there, to where Christine Ramirez 
was shot, trying to get her out of the way. I hear Colleen's 
going to be all right. Missed her spine by a few inches. We 
don't know about Christine though." His face suggested that 
under other circumstances he might be voluble and charming. Now
his tone remained hushed. "It was Kenny Kannell and Miss Cohen,
the gym teacher? They're the ones wrestled Michelle down. She 
bit Kenny, I saw the bite on his arm. He's a good kid."

     His eyes stuck to his hat as it twirled in his hands. Mulder
 spoke up: "Did Miss Tessio, did Colleen fall over here,
or did Jeff pick her right up as she fell?"

     "Ah, he didn't let her touch the floor, he said. I know he
rode in the ambulance with her, he was crazy with worry." 

     "I'm sure you all are," answered Scully, and he sighed. 
"If Colleen didn't fall here, and the other three girls were 
all standing over by the door too? Then who made this imprint 
over here?"

     He scrutinized it as if for the first time and his shoul-
ders sagged further. "I don't know. Maybe Michelle herself. 
Kenny said she fought like a lion. It really scared him, he was
shaking all over. You know," he said with mournful hope, "He 
thought it might be rabies. He was asking the paramedics about
rabies shots."

     "We'll want to interview all the witnesses. Are they all at
the hospital?"

     "Yes. My lieutenant, Lieutenant Piedro, took one look at 
the report from 911, and he just shook his head and called up 
the State Police. He knew it was bad right off, so we sat every-
body down in the hospital lobby, got initial statements from 
everybody, kept them away from WTNH, they were here before the
blood stopped flowing. I didn't even know the FBI was here till
two hours ago."

     Scully nodded and let him lead her toward the door, but 
Mulder stood and looked at the Rorschach blot on the wooden 
bleachers. It made no pattern that he could see. Officer 
Cicciola paused and looked back at Mulder, cold concern in his
eyes. 

     "The CBS van just came into the lot when you arrived. I 
don't want you people telling crazy stories about us on the 
national news. We're not like that," he warned.

     Mulder grimaced. "Of course not. I grew up around here 
too." He joined them and they pushed through the double gym 
doors and into the hallway.

     "Whereabouts?" The officer perked up a little bit.

     "Greenwich." It might have amused Mulder, the way the 
policeman's face lost its perkiness, but he did not want to 
think about class antagonism right now. They traversed the 
eternal row of lockers quietly and braced themselves for the 
media gauntlet which lay in wait outside.

*

     St. Mary's Hospital was neat and pale and looked rather 
like a girls' school from the outside. It was ringed with police
cars like an iridescent necklace, banishing more news vans and
their barking inhabitants to the outer parking lot. It was still
hours before the evening news, but if they had to stay outside 
the stand-ups wanted their information before it got dark. It 
comforted Mulder, taking cheap shots at news people. They never
believed his form of tragedy after all. And they made a far more
appealing villain than a cheerleader.

     He and Scully split up to make their way through the wit-
nesses, who had talked to too many men in the same suits and 
drunk too many cups of coffee. By now, he realized, everyone
who was out of surgery just wanted to go home and curl up in 
their beds. Scully was speaking to Jeff Dober, who towered over 
her, all hockey-player bulk and blond curls, and patting him 
on the arm. Kenny Kannell sat, pale and gawky under a brown-
spattered shirt, clasping his mother's hand.

     "D'you think it could be rabies?" Kenny's voice was just 
changing and Mulder tracked gingerly around the symptoms of 
puberty. "I saw a raccoon with rabies once. It was all wigging
out, right, like it had bugs under its skin." He chafed the 
taped bandage on his forearm against his thigh like a compul-
sion.

     "Do you know Michelle very well, Kenny?"

     He glanced at his mother before replying. "We're in the 
same grade. We have half our classes together, last year too 
at middle school. But she's, you know, popular, she hangs out 
with the older girls."

     Mulder nodded to more than Kenny's words. "Does she have a
boyfriend?"

     "Ah, yeah, Joe Devers." Kenny drew a long breath and wiped 
tears from his eyes. "But they broke up last Thursday. A huge 
fight, right in the cafeteria. Everybody saw it. I didn't think
she'd go postal though, she could have had any guy she wanted,
even though she's a freshman. Everybody likes her."

     "And how did you get involved in the shooting?"

     Kenny paled further if that was possible and his Adam's 
apple bobbed. Mulder wished that Scully was here and could hold
his hand. "I, ah," Kenny let out a sound of disgust. "Jeff 
Dober was beating me up in the hallway when we heard it. She 
just started screaming for them to shut up and then she started 
shooting. Like five shots, I don't know. I didn't even think 
about it, she could have shot me too." Finally he dissolved 
into choking sobs which seemed to Mulder more a product of 
exhaustion than trauma, and tucked his head into his mother's 
shoulder.

     Mulder could not come up with anything comforting to say 
so he moved on to the next person, a girl whose dark sweater 
hid any bloodstains. Her father, enormous and mustachioed,
gave Mulder the hairy eyeball as he crossed the lobby.

* * * * * * *

     Despite his marvel of a reputation, Mulder would not be 
allowed to interview the suspect. Not until everyone else had 
taken a crack at her first. It seemed to Scully that there was 
some sort of maniacal one-upsmanship going on, the establishment
of a pecking order in the stance of shoulder and frequency of 
watch-checking. The viewing room really was too small.

     Lieutenant Piedro showed his dismay at the federal invasion
only with a quiet serenity that Scully rather thought should 
frighten the terse, snappish agents who leaned against the glass
wearily. He stood like a Samoan chief, arms like ham hocks 
across his wide chest, in the middle of the little room, and 
flared his nostrils as he watched his men, not the FBI, grill 
a sobbing fourteen-year-old girl who grabbed convulsively at 
her mother when she was not accepting tissues. Scully stepped 
away from her vantage point to consult Mulder, very conscious 
of the sound of her heels in this glorified closet, and threw 
a glance at the lieutenant. He sized her up quickly and returned
to his impassive survey of his realm.

     "What do you think?" she murmured into Mulder's lapel, 
unwilling to catch the attention of the six other men in the 
room. Mulder shifted his weight and stuck his hands in his 
pockets, turning his head to view Michelle Manzarek from 
the corners of his eyes.

     He made a noise. "She would be halfway good-looking if she 
weren't crying her eyes out. Otherwise I can't tell anything 
about her." He stuck out his jaw to chew on his lips, and Scully
understood the dismissal. She knew that politics were just not 
in him today, but it bothered her now, in this instance, when 
the man next to her was chewing gum in his rolled-up shirt-
sleeves and licking her with his eyes. A cast about the room 
showed that indeed Piedro and Mulder were the only ones paying 
full attention to the histrionics in the interrogation room; 
one was picking his nails, two others had their heads together 
and their eyes distrustfully in her direction, and the last,
the Special Agent in Charge, was indeed asleep as he leaned 
against the back wall.

     An hour like this, and another hour before they could 
justify breaking for dinner. She wondered where Officer Cicciola
had gone, if he was cranking papers into tinny typewriters or
still handling his hat in the hospital lobby where they had left
him. Scully would do anything for paperwork at this moment. She
bit down on her back teeth and tapped Piedro on the shoulder,
feeling like the Littlest Billy Goat Gruff.

     "Sir," she said, louder than she had intended, "Has she 
said anything useful in the whole time you've had her?"

     Lieutenant Piedro looked at her and ruminated and finally
replied in his basso-profundo: "No." His eyes left her and 
returned to the oblivious girl and Scully felt as if the man 
suddenly knew her bra size and preferred brand of condom. She 
felt the fatigue in her ankles and was very tired of being the 
only person in the room in pantyhose.

     A telephone rang suddenly, and each man patted himself down
before the cat-napper put the machine to his ear. "This is SAC 
Boyd," he said. As he listened his face got darker and darker.
He refused to return her querying looks until after he had rung 
off his phone and sworn for about thirty seconds. "Begging your
pardon, ma'am," he began, and she stopped him with a hand.

     "I'm a federal agent, sir, not a nun," she said, and 
realized she sounded as snappish as she felt. "I realize we 
haven't worked together before, but please don't treat me with 
kid gloves." She hated her strident tone, hated the necessity 
of the damned situation. The man next to Scully rolled his wad 
of gum around in his mouth with a look like he had just found 
out about those forms being in triplicate.

     "Well, Agent - Agent Scully? Looks like Christine Ramirez 
didn't make it." His shoulders fell and Scully felt a certain 
distant sympathy for him.

     "I'll head over for the autopsy right away," she said, 
suddenly all business, but Boyd objected.

     "We need you here. You're the only woman on the case. The 
detectives aren't getting anywhere, and if this turns out to 
have something to do with women's matters..." Boyd trailed
away into an embarrassed silence which Scully refused to 
alleviate. Instead she crossed her arms.

     Finally she spoke: "Have we interviewed her doctors, her 
teachers, anybody else who spent time with her? Do we know 
where she got the pistol?" Boyd patted his thinning hair and
shook his head helplessly with a vague gesture at the image 
Michelle made as she wept into another tissue. Scully fought 
the rising tide of blood in her face, cocked her head and gave
him her good looks and demanded, "Is your whole task force in 
this room, taking pointers from the Lieutenant?"

     Boyd rubbed a face marked by rueful crinkles at the eyes 
and replied, "Yes, we are, most of us. I was considering 
holding a meeting, to elucidate the joys of the silent treat-
ment." Piedro let out a huff of air which stirred Scully's hair.
"Your partner seems already to have caught on."

     When Mulder did not make his customary annoyed snort Scully
took a breath and planned her next rebuke, realizing how humor-
less she had already made herself out to be. But Mulder, she
realized, was not displaying largesse; he was staring with 
horror through the one-way glass of the viewing room. Scully 
spun, evoking a startled curse from Boyd, prepared to see 
Michelle had somehow got ahold of another gun. 

     The glass tinted everything a faint shade of rose, but 
even so Scully could tell that Michelle had gone pale. Her eyes
bulged, her hair stuck out in all directions, and the cords in 
her neck reminded Scully irritatingly of all the reasons women
are taught to hide their emotions in public. But Michelle was 
not pausing to deliver a wail; without another motion she fell
limp and slithered to the floor, escaping her mother's grasp as
if she had turned to sand. A brief silent pause was violated by
her choking gasp, and then Michelle writhed and jerked like a 
water droplet on a griddle and six of the seven men in the room 
were crowding the door to intervene. Scully stood mesmerized as 
Michelle's mother emitted a shriek and fled from her gyrating 
daughter, the wooden chair scraping a groan on the floor. The 
two local detectives backed away aghast, running into their 
lieutenant and the agents who had just realized they had no 
idea what to do.

     It wasn't till they rushed to bat at her waving forearms 
that Scully blinked and dashed around Mulder and out into the 
hall. When she got into the interrogation room, Boyd and one of
his men were kneeling over Michelle, one holding her arms and 
the other grasping her head in his hands. "Don't!" Scully 
shouted, knowing they would not listen. She shoved the other 
agent in the shoulder so that he had to let go or fall sideways.
"Let go!"

     She ended up physically pulling Boyd's hands away and 
pushing his body towards the door. She could only assume that 
he allowed it, so unnerved by what he was seeing. She glanced
at the mirror but there was no way of telling whether Mulder 
was still watching. Michelle swung her shoulders under her and 
grunted and finally lay still, panting, in the clearing her 
gyrations had made. Scully was panting too, and settled her 
shoulder pads before dropping to her knees and fingering 
Michelle's pulse.

     "How often," she gasped, spitting her hair out of her 
mouth, "does she have seizures like this?" An array of faces 
focussed on her with surprise and blank ignorance. The mother 
crossed herself and cast about on the floor for her purse, her
glasses askew on her face.

     "Never," she answered. "She's never been like this before.
What did you do to my daughter?" Mrs. Manzarek's tone flew into
the heights of her register, cracking at last. But Scully was 
looking at the girl, her black hair a coarse pillow behind her
head, dark circles under her closed eyes. She looked at the 
mirror again and only saw her perturbed reflection.

     Boyd cleared his throat and Scully stared hard at him. "We
need to get her to the hospital immediately," she declared, 
and men hopped like jackrabbits to obey. Piedro stood like a 
stone idol in his interrogation room and Scully spared him only
a glance. She listened to Michelle breathe and watched that 
ribcage with its little breasts rise and fall. Mulder was in 
the doorway.

     Mulder stood in the doorway with a look of extreme 
distraction, leaning on the door lintel with what might other-
wise have seemed like indolence. He looked Michelle over, and 
turned away, hands in his pockets again. Scully busied herself 
arranging Michelle's limbs into some semblance of order and 
went over in her head what she would tell the paramedics.

*

     As she was thanking Joe Devers and reminding him with her 
eyes that none of this was his fault, her phone began to ring 
in her coat pocket. Who else could it be. She tucked the little
machine under her chin and felt his dry voice in her ear.
  
   "Hey, it's me. I'm at the hospital." Mulder sounded even more
bland than usual.

    "What did you find out?" Scully excused herself from the 
Devers home and followed the driveway to her car, parked on the
street. The man of Boyd's who had come with her had had the
temerity to ask why not just park in the driveway.

     "A tonic-clonic event. The EEG suggests it's not her first,
either."

     "I'm way ahead of you, Mulder. I just got through talking 
with the boyfriend, who told me she pulled a stunt on Sunday, 
he thought it was to stage a fight. The way he described it 
sounded like a classic Grand Mal seizure."

     "Two seizures in two days? That sounds pretty severe for 
recent onset, doesn't it?" She paused before replying. She knew
he knew about seizures, she had read his little library about 
the mysterious powers of the compromised brain, she had helped 
him collect that little library, but his tone was suggesting 
tentativeness. She let herself into the car.

     "Have the doctors run any imaging tests? It could be a 
brain tumor or a lesion. Ask the mother if she was in a car 
accident recently, fell down the stairs, anything." Boyd's man 
ran the starter and almost flooded the engine. Scully looked 
away in disgust and heard Mulder echoing her feeling:

     "Mrs. Manzarek is praying right now. I made the mistake 
of mentioning demonic possession and she's convinced of it. 
Michelle's still in MRI but she should be out soon. She's been 
sluggish since she woke up, I can't get any answers out of her.
Ah, hold on a second."

     Scully idly scanned the neighborhood Joe Devers lived in, 
reflecting on its hardworking, nice, hand-painted atmosphere.
Some of the houses were old, displaying clashing roofs and
randomly inserted towers in the Victorian style. A man stood in
an altogether too light jacket at the corner of the block, 
looking at his watch, squinting in the dusk. He looked up, 
looked around with tension in his posture, and Scully wondered 
if her suburban idyll were about to be violated by a drug buy.

     The man sitting next to her fumbled with his keys and 
looked at her apologetically. Scully decided that she had al-
ready established a bad rep. "I'm sorry; I didn't catch your 
name?"

     "Rinz, Donald Rinz. I'm up from the New York office." His 
smile was watery at best.

     She answered with a smile of her own. She hoped it looked 
real. "What are my chances of getting to the hotel to check in 
before prime time?"

     Relief flooded his face like a blush. "We're all at the 
Days Inn, but we got shoehorned in with an orthodontists' con-
vention. Boyd may end up sacking half of us out somewhere else."

     Scully rolled her eyes at their new common enemy, bureau-
cracy, and straightened like a shot when the tinny voice 
returned in her ear. "I'm back. That was the doctor. He's show-
ing me - the images from Michelle's brain."

     "And?"
 
    "Well, I... You really have to take a look at them 
yourself. It's definitely not a brain tumor, but... I don't 
really know what it is."

     "Could it explain the epilepsy?"

     "Maybe." His reticence was almost as infuriating as his 
tentative tone. His voice firmed and she rather thought he was 
coming up with a theory on the spot. "Can you get dropped off 
at the hospital?"

     "Oh, yes. I'd like to check into the hotel first though." 
Her car pulled away and Scully watched the man standing at the 
corner, waiting for something which never showed. If she did 
not know better she would have sworn that his head swiveled as
she went by, tracking her as she left behind the Victorian 
houses. "I gather it's going to be touch and go with the rooms;
there's a conference going on."

     Mulder made a noise and he almost resembled himself. "How
long will you be?"

      "I'll be along in about a half hour. I'll want to check 
in on the Ramirez girl's autopsy too. Have you eaten yet?"

     "No," came the reply. "I'm not sure I want to."

* * * * * * *

     Michelle Manzarek. Her name is Michelle Manzarek and her 
social calendar is ruined. I think on what I would do if I came 
down with what she has, but it's not a particularly enlightening
train of thought. I don't like hospitals and I don't like 
showing myself like this but if it works my job will be that 
much closer to done. It only takes a few winks at a candy-
striper and a soulful look before she is sneaking away with the 
supplies I need. The boiler room will do for this operation. I
tell her a sad story, about an ex-wife and a brother-in-law with
a grudge and my foolish pride that I can't let them see me so 
diminished. She has tears in her eyes when I am done and throws
her hands around my neck in sympathy, agreeing to anything. Her
hands are long and pale, with blue veins tracing maps to her 
forearms. She is lovely and she is twenty years younger than me
and if I had the time we would be doing other things behind the
growling machines. But I am not being kept alive to perform 
perversions so I gently pull her free and kiss the palm of her 
hand and eye her pile of gauze on the floor.

     In no time I am a partial mummy and she completes the 
illusion with a blue sling. A disguise inside a disguise inside 
a disguise. She helps me curl the plastic hand into a more 
natural-looking state of relaxation, cooing about true love 
and other inanities. We part in the hall, and she gladly takes
the berating she is due from her supervisor as I shoot her a 
sweet grin and head down to see Michelle Manzarek.

     What a consummate fuckup. It's hard to believe such highly-
paid professionals could bungle so badly, except, I realize 
abruptly, that they left me alive of course, more than once. 
I am big enough to claim my errors, and still they don't replace
me, but send me into the field. Maybe their ranks are waning, 
as space aliens become chic rather than antisocial. Maybe I 
should watch where I am going or else I will end up down a hall
which doesn't have a stairwell at the end of it. The stairs are
cool concrete, with metal railings, and I have done violence in
staircases like these. I feint at each landing, listening to my
watch tick and imaginary policemen breathe stealthily ahead of 
me. But why would they bother with stealth. They have weapons 
and tin badges and all of their bodies. They would crash through
the doors from all directions and scream in my ear to freeze.

     I am scaring myself so I decide to take the elevator after
all; I duck through a landing door and into... I am in the baby
wing, a long glass window in front of me, harried men and 
identical tribes of relatives pecking at what lies beyond. I 
don't want to see. I must be on the right floor; Michelle 
Manzarek is fourteen so they would put her in Pediatrics. If 
she knew anything at all she would know that from the wallpaper,
and be angry. I try to blend as I wander past a nurses' station,
and make up a story about how sorry I am that I put my sister's
head through the windshield. I did tell her to wear her seat-
belt; all I got was a broken arm and a ruined truck. But nobody
stops me and soon I see animal stencils on the walls and know 
I am in the right place.

     I would know that too from the reasonable suit on the man
loitering in front of a particular room. I don't know him but
we are not far from New York, where both the Bureau and the PD
have seen my face and been offended at my offenses. The man 
looks painfully bored, but is too dignified to sit and read a 
magazine or play cards or whatever it is he does on stakeouts.
I used to daydream about my salad days, the skittering whine of
disco music hot like an infection, bodies throwing sweat in the
mostly-dark. I used to sleep and dream powerfully of the sweet
wracking confusion of angel dust. And then I would wake to 
distraction and cramps and the cool curve of my partner cocking
his head just so as his mind escaped the waiting on a tangent
of its own.

     History. Gone and long gone and no point complaining. I 
cast about for something to do so our man at the door will not
notice me; there is a play area just there, still in sight, and
I sit and keep one eye on a bald child of grade school age 
assembling legos in his pajamas. Cancer, it must be. I know a 
little about cancer. Who could have known to put a guard on 
Michelle Manzarek so early. They can't be here; Scully must 
still be on medical restriction from haring out down in
Pennsylvania. This case would be right up their alley.

     As if answering a call they step out of the room, first 
she and then he, and I wonder as I stiffen who is more dan-
gerous. It is a struggle to look natural but the bald child 
saves me, holding out a box made of red and blue bricks to me, 
his only audience. I lean forward and take it from him, marvel-
ing as if he were my own child, and ask him what it is. But he
won't speak to a stranger; he looks, coy, over his shoulder and
reaches for more legos. He will be a heartbreaker if he grows 
up. I can see now that he turns away the semicircles of scars 
on his skull, as if the doctors had opened a hatch in his head 
and sent in soldiers, sliding down to fight below the surface.

     The nurse on duty is looking at me with curiosity but not
unease yet; I offer her my most tremulous smile and she wrinkles
her forehead with some damned generic pity. I hazard a glance
down the hall and they two are conferring with a voluptuous 
intimacy of look and whisper. Scully's phone rings and as she 
answers it her eyes scan around automatically - and she doesn't
notice me.

     Whoever she's talking to has got her all het up. I can 
hear her from here.

     "No sir, that's just not true. I agree that her epilepsy 
may have been diagnosed at the same time as her violent out-
burst, but there is just no proof of comorbidity in the liter-
ature." Mulder is giving her a face like he's the one in a 
hospital ward and she cracks him an annoyed look. I had better
stop watching before he gets antsy and looks around carefully.

     "It's a stereotype based on the spastic movements you 
witnessed, but there is no basis in reality. No... No, sir. 
I have evidence you'll want to see about her condition." Ah, 
that I would want to know about. But she doesn't say much else
that I can hear before she hangs up. They look at each other in
a way I've never understood and turn as I watch, walking pur-
posefully away towards the elevators, her heels punctuating 
their mission. The reasonably suited guard glances around 
uneasily and follows - ah, they don't intend for him to guard 
her overnight. He must just be a hanger-on. They don't under-
stand what is staring them in the face. Their error is my
opportunity to administer to Michelle.

     As I enter the room I can have some sympathy for the 
difficulty of their job; she is under a massive assault of 
wires and tubes and humming indicators. Her hair is black and 
dingy, splayed across her shoulders and as I step close I can 
see her eyelids, still and smudged dark. She will not be tell-
ing people what I don't want them to hear. As I remove the 
syringe from my jacket I recite the litany of my justifications,
about her motor activity and her devout mother and her deter-
iorating brain tissue like sugar dissolving in black tea. She 
is already dead, I say aloud, she has been dead since she went 
out looking for a new drug. 

     The shot is swift and simple and the syringe is back in 
my pocket before a minute has passed. Stepping out into the 
hall and patting my chest as if seeking a cigarette segues into
my first, simplest and most reliable escape plan. I do need some
air, after all. I need some distance between me and the warm 
corpse. A nurse or someone will be looking in soon; everyone 
will come running soon. Her heart will stop any second now and 
then the alarms will wail. It is time for me to go.

* * * * * * *

     It was rather late and Mulder was not asleep. Weights like
the thumbs of God rested on his eye sockets but his thoughts 
rolled around and jerked their elbows into each other. He could
put it off, till Friday, till the case was over, till never. 
But he had promised himself not to shut her out, and staring 
out a hotel room window mulling it over would neither fulfill 
nor obviate his promise. He stood in his underwear in the deaf-
ening silence for a long moment before cursing quietly and
draping himself over an uncomfortable easy chair, which creaked
loudly. His partner surprised him when her eyes fluttered open,
her seeking hand finding only the imprint of his body on the bed. 
She  sighed and moved, her skin softer and her curves somehow 
rounder in this moment of unguarded half-sleep.

     "What is it?" she croaked, but her sound held affection 
rather than annoyance. A glance at her clock told him it was 
nearing one a.m.

     "Nothing, partner. You should go back to sleep." He watched
her blink, tendrils of that impossibly orange hair in her eyes.
He had been sure she dyed her hair to get such a shade until
the first time he saw her pubic hair.
     
     Scully looked at him hard and raised herself on one elbow. 
"It's not nothing or you wouldn't be chewing on it at this hour.
You've been distracted since this case began. If you feel you 
have to take yourself off this case..."

     He let out a breath and rested his chin in his hand. She
was right; she always was. He would keep his promise though it
meant making her angry. "I have a story to tell you," he began,
in what felt ridiculously like a seductive whisper. He could not
say it at full volume, not even in private. "It in no way has 
bearing on the case at hand. But it's something you - deserve 
to know." He worked his jaw and tried to put words together in 
his head.

     Decidedly awake now, Scully made as if to get up and come 
to him, as if she knew how hard it was to continue. He stopped 
her with his hand and told her: "When I was a young child I had
idiopathic epilepsy. My first seizure was very early, around 
age three. My last was when I hit puberty. It's not really very
uncommon; seizures affect something like one in every couple
thousand kids, and it just clears up inexplicably in some cases.
But I - I know that I should have told you a long time ago."

     Her mouth closed and she leaned back on both elbows, con-
sidering.  "You're right," she said finally. Her voice was 
thoughtful so far. "You should have told me last year, when 
your seizures returned."

     Mulder had not been thinking about that crazy detour. He 
shook his head and met her eyes. "That was different," he said 
simply. "When I was young it never hurt like that."

     "You were afraid the Bureau would find out, take away your
badge."

     "I would rather they thought it was an aneurysm than 
anything to repeat, yes."

     She sighed again, her disappointment clear. Then she sur-
prised him by wrapping her arms around her knees and facing him
with a wistful expression. "Always you strive forward, regard-
less of your own safety." He blinked and knew she was a step 
ahead of him again. "You sacrifice yourself up to the question
at hand. Even your own brain, you'll lay it on the altar if you
think answers will be forthcoming." Mulder shifted his shoulders
in the chair and propped his head to look at her. He could not
be sure whether he saw judgement in her eyes.

     A brief silence ensued, which Scully broke abruptly by 
asking, "How were they different? When you were young?" It was 
unexpected and Mulder's eyes left her face to delve into his 
own memory. He picked at the hem of his boxer shorts.

     "They weren't painful. I didn't see - I don't remember 
seeing - anything when they were going on. And I always knew 
when one would happen in advance. I had preliminary onset
hallucinations."

     Her brows wrinkled their concern. He could not come up 
with the words which would not make it sound frightening. "I 
heard things, like a rushing of cicadas and crickets in my ears.
Summer sounds, even in January. I knew it was going to happen so
I would try to find someplace private, or at least sit down so 
I wouldn't fall." Mulder felt like a freakshow on display. "It 
wasn't Grand Mal, like we saw earlier with Michelle. They were
partial complex seizures. I wasn't jerking and rolling like a 
fanatic."

     Scully did not echo his grin but only looked at him, her 
expression unreadable. Finally she smoothed her forehead and 
asked, "You never went into convulsions?"

     "I don't - I don't think so." It was Mulder's sincere 
hope not to come under Scully's microscope, but he realized he
had not planned this little confession adequately. "My mother 
said I would just lose muscle flexion and sit down suddenly in 
a heap, and stare into space. It gave her the creeps." She gave 
him the silence he required, making it easier for him to con-
tinue now that he had begun. "I would wake up, like a ragdoll 
on the floor, a minute or two later. I never remembered any-
thing... I was hazy and thick right after, and my mother would
pick me up and carry me to bed, and if it was afternoon I'd 
sleep the night through and wake up ravenous." He remembered 
something and it was like witnessing it for the first time. "My
father - when I woke up my father would be asleep next to my
bed. He propped himself up with pillows from the couch so he 
could see me. I always made him worry."

     She did smile then, a slim, sad smile, and Mulder returned
it. They had both had reasons to smile over fathers, and to 
lament over them.

"How often did they come?" Her face regained its focus and
Mulder felt closed off again.

     "Not often. Every few weeks or so. Maybe once a month."

     "Did they give you medication for them?"

     "For a while, when I was in second grade. It made me stupid
and I refused to take it. My father didn't mind, he said that I 
didn't have to take it. And then eventually they just went 
away."

     "When?"

     Mulder had to think hard to recapture that memory. "I was 
eleven. About a week before school started that fall. I was 
worried about having one at school. And then I never had one 
again after that."

     She seemed to have discarded, or at least laid aside, his
past lies of omission. Now she pondered the implications, her 
face pale and luminous in the dim light of the room. "None of
this is in your medical records."

     "No," he agreed. "I can only assume he went back and 
altered them all. It doesn't show up anywhere, not at my grade
school, none of the prescriptions I had... nothing. I was sure
the FBI would know, would bring it up, but nobody's ever men-
tioned it. I kept my mouth shut."

     They looked at each other for a long while. Scully mur-
mured, cleared her throat and tried again. "He wanted you to 
succeed." In the awkward silence which ensued it occurred to 
Mulder that he should respond, but his eyes sought out the 
luminous dial of the clock, his mind tumbling with too much 
clarity.

     He was saved by the terrible jangle of the telephone on 
the bedside table. Scully reached out and snatched it out of 
its cradle, her voice cracklingly professional. Her features 
shifted subtly and she leaned her forehead against the head-
board, radiating dismay. "Yes, I'll wake him," she breathed.

* * * * * * *

     It was two in the morning and Agent Scully was back in her
pantyhose. She strode down the hall of St. Mary's Hospital, 
knowing that here, as elsewhere, the morgue would be somewhere
in the basement. Out of an open door near the beige reception 
area swooped a three-man team, swinging like a barn door to cut
off her advance. A doctor in a white lab coat, bearded and
withdrawn; a gigantic orderly; and a bespectacled man whose long
neck and hooked nose made him look rather like a rooster all 
stood shuffling their feet as she put hands to hips. Another 
orderly lounged in a doorway down the hall, taking in the scene
with disinterest as he chewed something.

     "Hrm. Agent - Doctor - Scully, I presume," began the 
rooster. "My name is Dudley Pfirisch, and I'm the assistant to
the chief administrator of the hospital. It really wasn't necess-
ary for you to come out here at this hour -"

     Scully looked up at him only briefly before realizing she
was frightening him. "She died with an undiagnosed condition 
after a violent breakdown. I'd like to know what is going on. 
What was the time of death?"

     Pfirisch fingered his clipboard. "That would be..." He 
stalled, running a long finger down a list he had clearly 
memorized. He saw Scully notice him and stopped abruptly. "Time
of death was nine fifty last evening."

     "That's impossible. We left her at about that time."

     "Hrm. Yes. Apparently she coded no more than ten minutes 
after you and Agent - ah, your partner left the room. Consider-
ing her brain activity..." He gestured to the bearded doctor 
behind him, who was chewing so hard on his lower lip that a 
tuft of his beard stuck out horizontally. "Doctor Handley can 
tell you more about her medical condition."

     Handley shuffled his feet and opened his mouth but Scully
cut him off quickly. "But you're here to explain to me why I 
wasn't notified until forty-five minutes ago."

     Pfirisch paled and Handley, oddly enough, blew out a breath
as if he has dodged a bullet. The administrator replied, "Yes. 
Well, there was paperwork to be consulted, and we had of course
to notify her next of kin, and..."

     "And are you now satisfied that the hospital is on safe 
legal ground?"

     Now Pfirisch was a lovely shade of red. "Hrm. Yes."

     Handley spoke up. "We had a look at the last several hours
worth of data, and we can't say for sure why she died. I haven't
started the autopsy yet; my colleague was finishing up this 
afternoon with the victim from this morning. I was hoping we 
could work together." His smile was hopeful and deferential in 
a way that bothered Scully but also gave her satisfaction.

     "All right," she said, advancing through their phalanx and 
heading the way towards the elevators, "You can brief me on 
exactly what took four hours to go over while I prep. I'll want
to get a good look at her brain." A glance over her shoulder
revealed that she had shed Pfirisch and the orderly and was now
pursued only by Handley, who dry-washed his hands and wrinkled 
his brows.

     "Such a terrible thing," he mourned. They passed the indol-
ent orderly, whose eyes seemed to wander far further than was 
proper, even at this hour of night. Scully reflected how tired 
she was of that particular deadly sin and then tuned back in to
what Handley was saying. "This town will hardly be the same, 
even if something is revealed to have caused... the shooting. I
was off shift when it happened, but just as I was coming on 
they brought in a high school girl, acute psychiatric, and I'm
sure she's not that last."

     In the act of hitting the down button, Scully paused. 
"Acute psychiatric?"

     Handley brightened and then looked even more mournful. "A 
pilot program, we won funding from the state for it. A wing 
dedicated for adolescent psychiatric counseling. Acute inpatient
and outpatient counseling - " 

     "A girl from the high school came in today?"

     "Around five o'clock. Look, Dr. Scully, I oughtn't tell you
any more..."

     "What was her name." Scully knew that when she got her nose
on the trail she could be as rude and forward as her partner. 
She hoped, however, that awareness of that fact was somehow a
mitigation. Handley's flinch suggested it wasn't.

     He hunched his shoulders and lowered his voice till Scully
felt ridiculously like a girl passing notes in class. "Her name
was Adler, Chloe Adler. What she saw must have just put her over
the edge. I'm a little surprised not to see more of them here."

     Adler, Adler. Scully rolled the word around in her mouth 
and found a sour taste. When the elevator door opened with a 
bing and a creak, she gestured Handley inside and told him, 
"You go on ahead. I'll be right there." And she pulled out her
cell phone.

     Mulder answered on the first ring, sounding downright 
chipper.

     "Mulder, are you dressed?"

     His voice went thick with amusement or something else. 
"Should I be?"

     She took a moment to store his tone for another night and
another mood. "I need you down here at the hospital. We have an
adolescent inpatient, psychiatric, named Adler. The doctor I
spoke to said what she had seen sent her over the edge."

     "I don't remember any Adler among the witnesses."

     "Me neither. Will you see what you can find out?"

     "At two am?" 

     "Yes. We can have a late-night breakfast when I'm done 
with the autopsy. Boyd told me we're all meeting at eight in 
the morning to go over this."

     "Scully, teenagers are by nature prone to the extreme and
the dramatic. She could just be a close friend of Michelle's, 
reacting badly. Adolescent girls end up in psych wards all the 
time, long term and short term."

     "Is that a no?"

     He chuckled, "I'm on my way," but Scully had stopped 
listening to him. Her ears rung with the call of a Code Blue,
a code whose meaning does not change from hospital to hospital.
Code Blue in 3 East. Imminent death in 3 East. And as her eyes
scanned the directory on the wall, and she registered vaguely 
Mulder's voice full of concern in her ear, a cold feeling 
overtook her in a wave up her back and prickling into her 
scalp. 3 East was Adolescent Psychiatry.

* * * * * * *

     It turns out I was wise to pack a snack on this leg of the
mission. All of the janitors have something and I would have 
looked out of place. One of them even has a limp, and I don't 
think he's a plant to help me blend in. Maybe this state just 
has a soft spot for the walking wounded. The guard is just as 
interested in my cream soda and Twizzlers as he was in the bald
guy's salami on rye and I'm through security like this is a 
suburban office building.

     But this is a suburban office building. In Somerville, 
nice and brick and as unassuming as a pharmaceutical company 
can hope to look from the outside. Dr. Halvorsen is waiting and
I keep my head down as I wheel my new janitor's rig down the 
dazzlingly white halls. I wipe my hand on my coveralls with its
carefully stained name tag. Mike. I know I look like at least
one Mike. It's auspicious, having my oldest brother's name sewn
to my chest. 

     Where the hell am I, this is a rabbit warren, every hall 
the damn same. Surely by now the Dynamic Duo know Michelle is 
dead. Now his curiosity is piqued and her sense of justice
offended and my job will be harder. Of course they would be 
here, like cats after the whiff of a bacon sandwich already 
eaten. If they see me... I can only tell my story once and if 
they laugh and toss me into a holding cell then we're all lost.
I need leverage to move these mountains. What am I doing here, 
whistling low through my teeth like a jackass, cleaning up other
people's messes. There are things that need doing and nobody 
else in the world knows to do them. If I didn't know better I 
would think Grand Master is punishing me.

     Ah, green section. Trust me never to get really lost. 
Amazing the things that can be found in a janitor's pockets, 
like key cards and their codes. Seventh door on the left, un-
locked as planned. Cameras in the corners dead and black and 
turned to the ceiling, as planned. Doctors are good with details
like these.

     He is waiting inside, behind a mass of metal tables with 
racks of pipettes and inexplicable plastics. I startle him, and
he looks up from a file with his half-glasses perched on his 
nose. What a small man for such a large error. "What do you 
want," he asks, irritated, and squints at me, the file flipping
closed and behind his body in a fluid motion like the opening 
of a switchknife. He does not know me by sight and I am pleased.

     "Doctor Halvorsen," I intone, crossing the busy space 
between us on my toes. He stiffens and draws his shoulders 
together and I show him my teeth. I might as well act like an 
assassin to make up for the humdrum disguise. "I was sent to 
make sure the sample is entirely secured."

     He blows out a breath fairly shouting his relief that I am
not here to kill him so I come closer and peer at him lugu-
briously. As he withdraws from me he rolls shut a file cabinet 
and the wheels start turning inside my head. Not very smart, 
after all, telling me to ignore the man behind the curtain. He 
clears his throat and offers me the file he was reading. It is 
gibberish, lines of spectral analysis and unclear graphs. A 
squint is all it requires and he is falling over himself to
explain.

     "You see, here? This is efficacy over time. The compound 
breaks down in a few days and becomes water and a few other 
simple compounds. Harmless and untraceable." He is careful to
keep the file at my chest between us, pointing at what is 
upside-down data to him. "If anyone else were to have been 
exposed, we would know in another twenty-four hours."

     Stupid. I allow myself a grimace for a group of stupid, 
giggling girls. I tried drugs, everyone tried drugs, my limping
colleague this evening had the distinct bouquet of marijuana 
in his clothes. Fourteen is so vague a memory for me I may 
indeed have tried anything laced in a sugar cube. I could abuse
my body without protest, down tequila shots one two three four 
five six seven and go home with whoever was buying. I 
allow myself a sad thought for the last time I tried it, after 
I knew my infiltration in the Bureau had been a failure, and 
spent the next ten hours in a hotel room while the world spun
in circles. I am no longer fourteen. I have learned to be
careful and learned to drink cream soda. I have made my mis-
takes, but when I have discarded caution it has been for better
reason than a new high, I hope. I don't want to think about my
lack of caution. I don't want to think about my disasters.

     Halvorsen is looking at me anxiously, as if for approval. 
He wears all the trappings of authority and I am in greasy 
coveralls and he is deferring to me. I didn't have to perform 
for him at all; it must mean that someone called him up, noticed
how good his son was getting at baseball, asked wouldn't it be 
a shame if he blew his arm this young. I am not subtle but I 
hate that kind of blunderbuss threat. It makes little men like 
these desperate. More than just my boss is involved, then; Grand
Master is not so obvious unless it suits his purposes. Deeper 
and deeper; curioser and curioser.

     But I am letting him fidget in silence. "What kind of 
symptoms will I be looking at?" I do not use the conditional 
tense. I know I will be asked to cause another funeral.

     "Well, and I am just using the news reports and some guess-
ing, it would seem that the subject undergoes a personality 
change, becomes increasingly erratic, and becomes manic and
violent. Seizures occur soon afterward, and the brain loses 
cognitive function rapidly, culminating in coma. I can only 
assume that death is soon afterward."

     "Yes," I reply. "She died a few hours ago. That's not 
public yet."

     "I see." His shoulders slump away from me. "This is not a 
subtle drug, and we haven't gotten to human trials yet. I don't
know what to tell you."

     "Tell me there's no more of it rattling around out there,
Doctor." He looks at me with startlement and then relief clears
his features.

     "No. None but the original sample, which is surely degraded
by now. Nothing connects it to us; we didn't even label the 
beakers."

     I hand him the file and he moves to put it away, content 
for now to avoid thinking about this compound and this problem.
Content is right; he has turned his back to me for the first 
time. I cannot resist despite the twinges of conscience so I 
step in and swiftly thumb the right nerve, easing him awkwardly 
to the floor. Nobody is here to hear or notice. The bulge in his 
pocket is indeed a set of keys and the one unlabeled key fits 
the file cabinet. It opens and rolls out like a dream, neatly 
arranged papers beckoning for eyes to read them.

     There really is not much time before he wakes so my fing-
ers walk forward, back, through research of decades arranged by
start date. Love that scientific mind. One thick folder catches
my eye, full of dot-matrix printouts and stapled pages. 1964. 
That is my birth year. I press my fingers into Mike's name on
my chest for luck and pull the folder, propping it open on the
counter space.  

     I am rusty on the science of the first couple of pages but
big hexagon drawings say organic chemistry to me. The printouts
are more rewarding, unfolding like an enormous accordion. A
table, dates and codes on the short axis and hundreds of little
number strings on the long. People then, test subjects. I have 
seen something like this before. Tested on these dates, 
Wechsler, maybe the doctor or institution involved. Below the 
first test, a diagnosis code I don't recognize, and after it the
test numbers climb steadily. Maybe it's white cells, maybe it's
histamine levels. Damned organic chemistry. Oh my, here is a 
familiar name, the elder Mulder's scrawl in the upper corner.
What his son wouldn't give to see this, or maybe to destroy it.
Maybe this will be the bait I need to suborn his help.

     I can't help but think that the Consortium's files are like
the bedroom of a billionaire's lonely kid - projects begun and 
left hanging, or changed into other projects, massive dreams 
and terrible execution. Oh, here's something interesting. After
years of testing, the bottom row of the table is filled with 
XOUT, a code I recognize. Extract and eliminate. I was the cause
of that code being appended to Dana Scully's file, neither my 
finest nor my wisest hour. And here another thousand, maybe all
lumberjacks or housewives or retirees in Florida, snatched away
into darkness. My finger traces along the last line and I 
think... I have to come back to it and circle it with a finger 
to be sure. A gap in the data. No code for this subject, or 
rather, I realize, as I look closely, a code entered in pencil 
and erased.

     This may be useful if I can figure it out, but Halvorsen 
is already moaning on the floor at my feet. A quick flip through
the pages tells me little more, until I come to a readout of the
codes, fuzzy and aged: birth dates and XOUT dates. I am disgust-
edly not surprised to find that all of the subjects were adol-
escents on the XOUT date, in late 1973 and early '74. I am 
scanning down the list for the one who escaped such a fate when
Halvorsen rolls over. I have to go, and I have to leave this 
here.

     It goes into the cabinet as neatly as I can fold it and I
plunge the keychain back into Halvorsen's pocket as his eyes 
open. I give him my stare and tell him I was never here. I love
that line. It makes me sound so important, able to wrinkle the 
fabric of reality.

     I am stalking away down the hall before he can even sit up.
I have the rest of the janitorial shift to evaluate my new 
information. Who is Wechsler. Why is that name familiar.  I am 
sure Mulder would know, would have an instant interpretation 
for  - oh no it can't be. I count on my fingers, rounding back
three times to count that high. It can. And with a freezing 
intuitive certainty, I know it is even without any connective 
tissue between fact and fact. I have never been given to such 
wildly correct guessing. That was his arena.

     The four-hour shift goes more swiftly than I expect as I 
chew on this new puzzle piece. My beeper vibrates against my 
belly, a tickling, itchy sensation. Soon I will be out of this 
building and Grand Master wants his report. He may also have 
more orders for me, maybe a second girl to kill. I roll my 
shoulders, thinking hard about what my superior really thinks 
of the FBI. He does like to throw a wrench into the works, for 
that I can be both grateful and rueful, but I doubt he will 
care to use the weapon I have just gained. He will strike out 
on his own, training me to sit at his ankle like a whipped cur.
"Alex," he will say to me, that imperious note ringing in my 
ears, "Alex, it is your time to follow, not lead."

     Abruptly it hits me and in response my absent forearm 
aches. He has always called me Alex. The Treacherous Vixen 
called me Alex.  Is it possible they think that is my real 
name? Could old Coffin Nail have truly been so obsessive as to
obscure my name even from the inner circle of power? It is too
much to hope that he kept it to himself and that he is really
dead. One or the other I suppose, but someone now alive can
connect this thumbprint to that name and the ramifications of
that fact bother me. But I have asked others to sacrifice family
for causes in which I didn't even believe; if my brothers are
taken one by one I know I will have to allow it.

     I head for the door and the rest of a busy night. None of
my brothers knows anything so at least I can dream that they
think well of me.
     
* * * * * * *

     "Their brains were absolutely not normal," said Scully in 
a tone which radiated both authority and exhaustion, and she 
passed around the printouts they had pored over during the sand-
wiches he had brought with him in the middle of the previous 
night. Mulder enjoyed watching her hand the pages to Boyd with
steel in her eyes, standing cool in her same wrinkled outfit at
the head of the hasty conference.

     It was eight in the morning and Connecticut was not known
for its donuts. Mulder pinched the bridge of his nose and 
promised himself to wear his glasses next time he squinted at 
tiny blobs of color on a page.

     "What," asked Boyd, lounging rudely in his chair, "does 
this have to do with the causes for the violent incident?"

     Scully took a moment to push her hair back. While Mulder 
felt like his temporal lobes were trying to crawl out his eye 
sockets, he knew that he at least had snatched a nap while 
Scully cut and sawed all night. He knew he was the only one in
the room who could tell and felt strangely proud of her. "There
is no way of knowing, sir. The brain condition could have prec-
ipitated the event, or it could have nothing to do with her 
outburst. At this point, all I can say is that Michelle
Manzarek had this condition and acted violently. Chloe Adler 
had the very same condition and curled up sobbing under her bed.
And from the autopsy performed on Christine Ramirez, she also
showed signs of this... ailment."

     At this people finally began to sit up straight, coffee or
no coffee. Boyd sucked on his teeth and asked, "What kind of 
condition are we talking about?"

     Scully took her seat, as if unwilling to be the local ex-
pert any more. "The cerebrum was deteriorated severely, and the
cerebellum and medulla were showing signs of following suit. 
There was a clear progression from the images taken on Michelle
at seven p.m. to the post-mortem state I found last night. 
Christine died with the condition still barely developing, so 
it is difficult to say with her. Chloe's symptoms were obscured
by the sedation she was under, but her brain images are clear-
est. She apparently survived longer after onset of symptoms, 
and her brain retained almost none of its structural cohesion.
The tissue had the consistency of cooked oatmeal." She rubbed 
her eyes and Mulder decided it was time to speak.

     "Is there any evidence that it could have been -- done 
physically rather than on a cellular basis?"

     "Do you mean was this just a really severe concussion? No.
Not only are there no signs of bruising or skull fracture, the 
microscope showed individual cells, just throwing off their 
cell walls. Like a mass suicide. I looked up rabies for compar-
ison, and while I'm sure a blood test will confirm it, the cell-
ular damage is not consistent with rabies or any other 
infection common to this area."

     One of Boyd's men, the one who had driven with Scully 
yesterday, spoke up with irritation in his voice. "Mrs. Manzarek
said you told her it was, did I hear her right, 'demonic poss-
ession?'"

     "No," replied Mulder, and leaned back to hide his grinding
teeth. "I mentioned the fact that there were behavioral simil-
arities. But seizures and brain decay are not symptoms of poss-
ession." He heard the snorts to his left, and a few to his 
right. He plowed on, remembering why he had worked so hard to 
work alone. "Mrs. Manzarek dearly wants to believe that because 
it's something she's seen in the movies, it's something that 
makes sense. And the reality of the situation is just too dread-
ful for her - or anyone - to face.

     "At first I wanted to suggest that it might be some here-
tofore unheard-of variant on dementia infantilis, or Heller's 
Syndrome. That has onset before age ten, but it involves a 
clinically significant regression of motor, language and think-
ing skills and a marked change in personality. It's like a 
cascade failure in complex systematics: large chunks of normal
childhood development just reverse themselves one by one and go
away. That describes Michelle's state after her admittal to the
hospital. Her speech was disordered, she was uncooperative - "

     Scully spoke up: "Her behavior, yes. Her brainscan, no. 
Michelle's occipital lobes are markedly destroyed, Mulder, and
Chloe's are worse. That isn't just a developmental syndrome."

     "You're right, it wouldn't explain the epilepsy either. 
Neither of them has been to any new doctors, have they? Any 
prescriptions out of the ordinary?"

     "The parents can account for all of them, and they're all 
long expired and perfectly normal." Scully sighed and steepled
her fingers in front of her. "Where are you going with this?"

     "Oh, I don't know." He played with a pencil and eyed Boyd
from under his lashes. "There are a lot of biochemical companies
around here, aren't there?"

     "I don't know," said Boyd, irritated.

     "Bristol Myers Squibb, in Wallingford. American Cyanamid,
on the North Haven line, though they're just industrial chem-
icals. Amgen, somewhere down New Canaan way, I think.  Isn't 
there a Nextel or something in Hartford?"

     Boyd asked, "What are you getting at?"

     Mulder let himself grimace as he said, "They could be the
unwitting participants in a new drug study, some sort of unknown
gene therapy which had a disastrous side effect." Scully met his
eyes with no small horror, but kept her peace.

     Boyd cleared his throat and shifted in his chair as if he 
had suddenly developed hemorrhoids. "Hold on a second. Are you 
implying that she was some kind of guinea pig?"

     Scully looked at the table before answering, "We've come 
across it before." Then she firmed and stared Boyd down. "The 
Department of Energy has admitted as much, back in the fifties.
Soldiers, black syphilitics, men in prison. Would you like to 
talk about the Olson case?"

     Boyd flushed red and Mulder made a mental note. "Do you," 
Boyd managed finally, "have any evidence that she was administ-
ered a drug unbeknownst to her?"

     Mulder was aware of his own flair for the dramatic, but it
satisfied him immensely to reveal this last little bit of in-
formation: "I spoke to the teacher, Virginia Cohen, and she 
said the ninth grade biology class went on a tour of the 
FutureCorp Laboratories in Somerville last Friday."

     Someone down the table answered nastily, "That's very nice
but it still proves nothing. You're making suppositions and 
leaps not supported by the facts."

     Scully cleared her throat twice before she could interrupt 
the low-level sniping which followed, and finally she stood 
again, shoving back her chair and drawing all eyes. "I think 
we're getting side tracked from the important issues, here. One,
we have what may potentially be a public health threat, in the 
form of a virus, or a parasite, or even," at this she inclined 
her head to Mulder, "a toxin. We need to find out what kind of 
affliction we're dealing with. And Two, I haven't seen any 
reaction to the fact that Chloe Adler was clearly murdered. Her
nose was broken and fibers from a hospital pillow were in her
throat. Why would someone murder a sedated fifteen-year-old?"

     Everyone talked at once but nobody was saying anything. 
Boyd waved annoyed hands and asked Scully, "What do you 
suggest?" Mulder withheld his amusement at how easily they acc-
epted her authority, once her partner had been proven a looney-
tune.

     Scully burrowed her brows. "Bring in the CDC; they have a
hospital in Vermont and can better assess whether this condition
is contagious. I would suggest, for starters, neurological tests
on the survivors of the shooting, maybe on the whole school, and
we'll have to get permission from parents for that. We need to
establish the last time Michelle, Christine and Chloe were toge-
ther; one might have contracted it from the others and we might
be able to establish a disease vector. And we need," she said 
with emphasis, "to find out who doesn't want us to figure out 
what's going on. I want to take another look at Michelle's body
to make sure she wasn't murdered as well." 

     "All right, people," said Boyd, as if he had a plan. "I 
think it's time we call in some expertise. Rinz, I want you to 
call up the epidemiology people and see if they'll send a team 
up here. Just to be on the safe side." He stood, and the meeting
was over. "And you," he pointed at Mulder's chest, "I guess you
can go home. Not much point in working up a profile now that 
she's in that state."

     Scully looked at Mulder and they shared the knowledge that
they were hardly ready to leave this party. Mulder reminded 
himself to call up Skinner in Washington and nag him to throw 
his weight around.

     Agents shuffled their way out the door in twos and threes,
looking as if they had no purpose at all. Scully approached him
as he gathered up his coat and looked him up and down before
asking:

     "Virginia Cohen? I was there, Mulder, she didn't say any-
thing about a field trip yesterday."

     "I called her up at 2 am last night." That made her laugh,
in that you're-crazy way. She closed her briefcase and hefted 
it, and he saw her reluctance to face the rest of the day in 
her red-edged eyes. "Come on, Scully, you deserve the morning 
off. I'll wake you if the blood work and toxicity come in before
this afternoon."

     She smiled her gratefulness. Mulder drank in the slump of 
her shoulders, the wrinkles in her skirt, the plain ponytail 
that held her hair, and manfully kept a smile off his face. He
changed the subject.

     "The Olson case? Tell me you didn't make that up."

     "Didn't you pay attention in psychopharmacopoeia class? It
was investigated in the Senate in 1975. A Dr. Frank Olson at 
Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland took a dive out his 10th story
window. The CIA had slipped him an enormous dose of lysergic 
acid and he had a bad panic reaction. A classic failure to 
obtain informed consent of the test subject, you might say. 
November 28, 1953."

     "And that," he murmured into her ear as he escorted her 
out the conference room door, "is the reason I knock on your 
door in the middle of the night, in total violation of Bureau
policies."

* * * * * * *

     The toxicology did not come in till 2 pm, by which point 
Scully was up and dressing and very glad she had a worry wart 
for a partner. He had even brought her coffee and some unrecog-
nizable gooey pastry when he had dropped by, both of which 
languished on the bedside table while she buttoned her pantsuit.
She took a long look in the big mirror and decided that she
looked in control and ready to work. And the day was already 
half over.

     Her phone trilled in her coat and she fumbled to find it. 
"Hello?" she answered, feeling her precious mastery slipping 
already.

     "Did you eat your breakfast?" She could not tell whether 
Mulder was being overbearing or sarcastic.

     "Not in the ten seconds since you dropped it off," she 
replied, and she heard the amusement in him. "What does the 
report say?"

     "Well, if I could read it, I wouldn't need you as a part-
ner, now would I?" As soon as he finished it, he jumped on his 
own sentence with corrections. "Except to keep me from getting
myself killed on occasion. Boyd called in a chemist and a few 
other assorted lab-coat-types and they're all going into fits.
You should come down here and talk to them."

     Somehow she knew that she would be doing this alone. "Where
will you be?"

     "I've got an appointment with a FutureCorp rep, who's just 
dying to tell me about the company's community relationship." He
got started on the conspiratorial possibilities and she pulled 
on her coat. "I can't tell whether they started the school pro-
gram to get at the kids, or if it just became a convenient 
cover. I'm hoping to get a tour and maybe an idea of how they 
could have tested the kids without anyone noticing."

     Scully took a long look around the parking lot from her 
doorway. "Mulder, did you leave me without a car?"

     "No," he replied with false sulkiness. This case had him 
in great spirits suddenly, and she thought not for the first 
time about how he could be so elated about other people's suf-
fering. "There should be a white sedan on the right hand side. 
Keys are in your coat pocket. It's a tiny parking lot; you can't
miss it."

     She found it after all and wondered when he had gotten 
comfortable rifling through her pockets. She decided that the 
lateness of the hour was making everything off-kilter today. 
After a promise to call him when she had any more information,
she climbed into the general-issue car and got going. It was 
strange to drive to the hospital again, this time in daylight.
The telephone cables swooped along next to her and she wove
her way past a mall and an industrial park before turning in to 
the hospital lot.

     They made her park in the outer lot amongst the last of the
news people, who still had satellite vans in long rows but now
sat listlessly and interviewed each other for ten-second updates
while they waited for official press conferences. As she climbed
out of her bland little car, she scanned her surroundings for 
preying cameras, just knowing they would recognize her and swarm
around. Nobody was looking her way. Technicians from a cable 
news channel were eating sandwiches in the slot next to her; 
someone with the bouffant of on-air talent was swinging her
microphone, and Alex Krycek was walking with a certain casual 
grace towards the row of cars behind the big white vans.

     Scully froze halfway out of her seat. Alex Krycek, in 
jeans and a black leather jacket, was wending his way between 
a pickup and a red compact car, glancing askance at the news 
vans. She ducked down in her seat as she saw his body turn in a
wary circle. When she dared look again he was climbing into the 
red car and starting the engine. She vaguely registered that 
the cable men sitting on their bumper were giving her strange 
looks as she pawed frantically in her coat for her cell phone.

     By the time she had hit her speed-dial Krycek's car was 
rolling out of the lot, but at least she was sure he had not 
seen her. Mulder's voice was crisp and annoyed in her ear and 
she gathered her scattered thoughts. "Mulder, it's me. Where 
are you?"

     His tone changed immediately. "I'm at FutureCorp, getting 
a tour. What did you find out?"

     "I haven't gone into the hospital yet." She scribbled the 
license plate number on the inside of a Hershey's wrapper and 
thanked God her partner was so messy. "Listen, can you dodge 
out of there?"

     "I don't know," he replied cautiously. "What's going on?"

     She was on a cell phone. So was he. "Mulder, I just saw a 
certain curve ball. I'm in the parking lot of the hospital. I'd
like to discuss the situation with you in person and decide what
our next step is." He was silent for a long time. She could hear
his breathing and knew he had understood her. Why wasn't he 
answering.

     "Are you sure?" She made an involuntary noise and it seemed
to shame him. "Of course you're sure."

     "I left some evidence in my hotel room. We'll want to 
protect it, and make copies of our notes." His heavy sigh ex-
pressed all his fears and expectations for her.

     "Yes. I'll meet you at the hotel in half an hour." He 
clicked off and left her shaking with adrenaline. As she shut her
car door and started up again, it occurred to her that she would
have to drive out again to the hospital later, some time in the
future, when this new question had been dealt with. She roared
out of her parking space, startling a cameraman, who staggered
out of her way.
     
* * * * * * *

      I've had a weird feeling all day, as if someone had a bead
on me, no matter where I go. Half the afternoon in St. Mary's 
medical library, confirming all my suspicions with a little bit
of excitement and a little bit of dismay, barely avoiding the 
FBI clones wandering around in confusion. They really should 
learn not to gossip. But they're not dangerous; Mulder and 
Scully were off chasing down some 'wild theory' and -- and I 
don't think anyone but me has ever penetrated the FBI. That's 
ridiculous of course so I settle my shoulders in my seat on this
bus and pretend I'm not watching the sharp-eyed teenager with 
too many holes in his ears. He and a few ethnic grandmothers 
are my only company; the Big Cheeses do not employ grandmothers
as assassins. Not yet, anyway. 

     The things we do for our little causes. Or don't do. It 
eats at me, knowing that someone has sent a second operative to
cover my bases and not knowing who it is. It eats at me because
obviously he doesn't know how to kill a girl without raising all
the wrong eyebrows. Suffocation. A dangerous amateur, or so I 
can hope. I can hope he's not being clumsy on purpose so he can
frame me later. At least Michelle took care of the Ramirez girl
for me.

     I'm nearing my stop - and cursing once again the small 
parking lot which requires I leave my car behind - so I stand
and stretch my neck and try to balance in this rocking orange
interior. The gray sky is getting blacker outside so as I stop
off I glance around and maneuver the plastic hand into its 
pocket outside of the circle of a streetlight. I am only three
blocks from the hotel, but pedestrians stand out on this strip
mall so I jog across the street and towards the neon sign of
their hotel. Welcome AAO Members indeed.

     Passing cars make wet sounds, but I hadn't noticed it rain-
ing. Rain is the least of my worries, unless Michelle and 
Christine and Chloe were the only ones. Time will tell, though
I'd rather nothing told, not mouths nor printouts nor the X-rays
I'm about to steal. MRIs, whatever. I suppose I should be 
grateful that I didn't have to kill that girl Chloe, but either
way her brain tells too clear a tale. Why couldn't they have 
informed me earlier; I would have gotten rid of her with less
fuss and no evidence. The hotel is a large ugly concrete block,
some severe industrial trend, and the doors to the rooms all 
lead off an outside catwalk rather than a hallway. Better for 
me, and less chance of being stopped. I don't, after all, look
much like an orthodontist.

     Nor an FBI agent any more, for that matter. The neon sign 
casts a sickly glow into the stairwell, which is definitely not
lit up to code. I shudder under a wave of that bad feeling 
again. Dark corners lurch at me with claws extended as I take 
the concrete stairs two at a time, my steps booming up and down
as if I'm being chased. Third floor. I only have to make it to
the third floor and then I'll be able to think straight again.

     I am breathing in great gasps so when a shoulder hits my 
solar plexus I exhale with a whoosh and tumble, winded, down to
the landing. Something tumbles with me and when I am on my back
begging for a breath I realize it is a body in a tie and trench-
coat, shrouding me from the dim bulb which lights the landing 
I am lying on. But then I realize who is in that trenchcoat and
flop like a fish, trying to sit up. Heels clatter above me, and
I am looking up at Agent Scully, her face gone yellow in the
screwy light. There is a line between her brows and an enormous
gun in her hands, or rather, it is pointed, its muzzle a gaping
black hole, enormously at my head.

     Finally I can draw breath and I roll over to my side so 
they won't see me trying to wish this disaster away. They must
have seen me coming. What are they doing at their hotel when 
the rest of the agents are still at work. They exchange some 
unintelligible reassurances and then his voice moves higher 
behind me. He is standing, then. He will not have been so care-
ful as to draw his gun, not with her already drawn. We all know
she's an excellent shot. Why haven't they started the official
rigmarole - doesn't matter.

     It's a slim chance but I take it, rolling over and snatch-
ing her ankle and pulling, one great heave as I try to scramble
away and down the steps. She squeaks, I can't see the gun now,
and then her foot is following the direction of my pull, out-
stripping my unbalanced arm and rushing forward to kick me 
square in the jaw.

     I really do see stars. And explosions of color like paint
balls against a dark tree trunk. When I fade in again I touch
my skull and realize I must also have bounced off the wall. Not
hard enough to fracture anything, but Jesus. 

     When she speaks there is something hard in her voice. 
"Alex Krycek." She makes it sound like a curse by itself. "Why
didn't you arrest him when you had the chance."

     I hope she's not talking to me. But she's not; Mulder 
answers after a pause: "I was in a state of shock." I try to 
focus my throbbing eyes on these my captors and they both have
their guns on me now. Mulder is fingering my switchknife ginger-
ly with his free hand, so I must have been out longer than I 
thought. I keep that knife duct-taped to my lower back. They 
have been thorough. Waves of sharp spikes flowing through my 
head and the iron taste of blood in my mouth.

     So. Unarmed and dizzy in a stairwell, the two people most
likely to wish me dead standing over me with rancor in their 
stances. Neither one has yet pulled out the cuffs or invoked 
Miranda so I brace myself for the litany of my crimes. How long
in a cell before I am dead, end of me, end of my purpose, end 
of all hope I can think of. They are still just standing there,
guns at the ready, eyeing one another.

     At last Scully reaches for her cuffs and I lift my wrist 
to meet her. She has the metal touching the plastic of the left
hand before she realizes, crouching in front of me, and she 
looks at me incredulously and starts feeling up to the elbow. I
can't watch her do that. With my eyes closed I hear her expel a
long breath and mutter:

     "Mother of God." She shifts her weight and the cuff ratch-
ets closed and I open my eyes to her white wrist, attached to 
mine. There goes any hope of the sympathy card. "What happened 
to you?"

     Her free hand is tracing the line where plastic takes over
for flesh. It makes me shiver but I keep my mouth shut. A glance
at Mulder reveals a face I have not seen in ages, a face calcul-
ating the impossible, a face falling into some crazy desiring 
dread. He gets ahold of himself admirably and returns to invest-
igative mode without looking at me.

     "We can't interrogate him here." 

     She looks at him doubtfully. "This means we're onto some-
thing I guess."

     "Yeah, but what?" He gestures at me, as if I am going to 
chime in with all the answers. "People like these have sunk to 
eavesdropping before, and by now I wouldn't be surprised if they
bought one of Boyd's men. We need someplace safe, away from the 
official pipeline."

     Something in her sags as she crouches there next to my 
undignified sprawl. "You don't think we should notify Boyd at 
all."

     "Or anyone, Scully. Even if he did roll over on his bosses,
we have no way of guaranteeing he'll stay alive to tell us the 
important parts. You remember what happened to that Cardinal
fellow..." I do. He richly deserved it of course. But he was 
loyal and stupid like a bulldog so they hanged him -- quick, no
fuss. I'm sure they'll work hard to make it spectacular for me.
"What he told me - the immolations a few weeks ago - we have no
way of knowing -"

     "When has he ever spoken truth to either of us?" Scully 
breaks in and in her indignance pulls up her left hand and my 
right with it. I look like a marionette.

     Mulder's shoulders sag and he juts out his jaw. "He has 
information we want. If not about those fires, then about this 
case. He's not here for the orthodontists' conference. If we 
bring him in, he dies and we get nothing. At least this way we
have a chance to find out something."

     She shoots me a look of pure disgust that makes me shy 
away. But then she is helping me stand and looking at Mulder 
with the same wrinkles next to her nose. She is not like before.
She nods her head at her partner and he relaxes and leads the 
way down the stairs, leaving Scully and me to walk like a lucky
pair escaping the party, my hand anchored tight to hers. She is
not like before. What have they found out since I went to Russia.

     She slows up to hide the cuffs as we cross the parking lot.
Mulder walks ahead, pretending he's alert, his hands clenched at
his sides. We stop at a nondescript white car and he looks at 
me over the top of it, all nonchalance, and observes drily: 
"Your one-handed comment was literal, wasn't it?"

     I can't believe this. "Didn't you notice?" I tug irritably
on my short leash. Scully tugs back, hauling me into the back
seat with her. Mulder climbs in behind the wheel slowly, and 
starts the car before he answers.

     "I was too busy staring at the barrel of my own gun."

     The stale air in the car is thick in my throat as he pulls
out. We could be going anywhere. I don't know what to expect 
any more. Scully keeps her eyes on the scenery as she asks: 
"Above the elbow. How far?"

     I hate her casual tone. I hate her science. I answer as 
flippant as I can: "I have about six inches of the arm bone 
left, give or take. Lost almost all of the bicep."

     She is implacable, or else I am a better actor than I 
thought. "What happened?" Mulder glances at me and looks like 
he would like a nice warm bath with eels rather than talk about
this. I don't even know I'm going to do it until it's done:

     "I got to know a grenade too well. Gangrene set in and that
was that." There. I have lied to save... what? His reputation?
His feelings? Mine? She is still giving me that look when she is
not grilling me; at least I don't have to fear her pity. I can
feel him looking at me in the rearview but I don't meet his 
eyes. I watch the road flash by. I should be planning my escape
or my story but I can only sit and sweat and wonder what these
new people will do to me.

* * * * * * *

     Alex Krycek's legs were duct-taped to one of the chairs in
Mulder's mother's kitchen. His right hand was cuffed to its 
ladder back. His left swung lazily, the metal and plastic too 
heavy and unwieldy to be useful in an escape. Except as a blud-
geon, Mulder thought darkly. He was tired and sweaty and too 
hot in his long coat. He kept it on; no point in emphasizing 
the twenty or so pounds' difference between him and his captive.

     But Krycek knew it and seemed to find enjoyment in flexing
his remaining bicep, occasionally jerking the cuff that kept 
his right hand out of sight. They both knew he would have marks
by morning; they had played the handcuff game before. Krycek 
looked up at him with bitter amusement as he mutilated his own
wrist.

     Scully slammed the door hard as she came in and silence 
settled while she adjusted the lamp and got comfortable in her 
chair across the breakfast table from Krycek. He refused to look
at her, making faces to himself for several moments before 
Mulder realized he was self-inventorying his teeth with his 
tongue. Suddenly he spit something pale out of the lamp's arc;
it rattled unseen in a dark corner. Krycek raised his head to 
smile at his captors, grinning broadly so that they could see 
the ragged gap where his upper left canine had been badly 
chipped.

     Mulder knew it must hurt like the Dickens in the same 
moment he noticed that Krycek's mouth was full of blood. But 
Scully was asking a question:

     "Who are you working for this week, Alex?"

     "How are you even sure my name is Alex?" came the reply,
deep in his throat and rasping, delivered through the remnants 
of that megawatt smile. It sounded like a come on and Mulder
squinted in annoyance.

     "I see." Scully shifted, cocking her head in that way 
Mulder knew. "You're right. You could be anyone." Her cold gaze
skewered Krycek, who sat still, closed his eyes, and then opened
them. "What if we just decide to kill you?" Her smirk was malic-
ious in a way that was new and disturbing.

     Krycek licked his lips. In the pool of the single light 
fixture his features were exaggerated, his jaw thinned, his 
cheekbones heightened. His lips were a bright red slash in a 
pale face, coated in his own blood. It made Mulder uncomfort-
able, the femininity in Krycek's face.

     But the man seated, cuffed and duct-taped did not waffle 
or fold. He retreated to a lounging sullenness, an expression 
which implied crazily that he was indulging a pair of irrelevant
fanatics, that this kitchen was his home and the two officers of
the law were invaders. Finally he spoke, cool eyes all on 
Scully:

     "Your bravado is improving. As are your Judo skills, I must
say." He thoughtfully tongued the space in his upper jaw. His 
face was swelling and beginning to turn colors. All of his teeth
reflected a pearly pink, a sickly color. "I can't say I am glad
you caught me, but I have been thinking it's about time for a 
little discussion between us three. Things going on, behind the
scenes, gossip I'm sure you want to hear."

     "Go on." Scully's voice was deeply wary but ached with as 
much curiosity as Mulder strove to hide in his own demeanor. He
was glad again that she had taken charge and watched her to see 
her next move. He felt Krycek's eyes on him but refused to 
engage the man.

     The man waited, however, and waited silently, seeming full
of the patience he somehow knew his captors could not afford. 
The moment stretched like taffy until Scully snapped her fingers
in front of Krycek's face.

     "Make no mistake, your continued comfort depends on your 
sharing that vast store of knowledge. Spill now or things become
unpleasant." She backed up her tone with a hard stare, one 
Krycek could not stand for more than a moment. He did not speak,
but he did not defy her either. Mulder stood quietly agog at 
this Scully before him. She had never threatened a suspect in
her life. She had always looked away when he played his head 
games in little rooms with two-way mirrors. And now...

     Krycek could not look at the table forever, Mulder thought
crazily. His shoulders drew tight as he thought about the last
time he had gotten answers out of that man. He had never told
Scully. Another thing he had never told her, and yet she felt 
authorized to act like this in his presence. It was there, the 
knowledge, thick between them all like a haze. He had no doubt
Krycek would use that information as leverage if he knew of its
weight. Mulder wanted to make him sorry. He knew that Scully 
just wanted to make him talk. "Mulder, uncuff his hand."

     He blinked at the use of his name and had circled behind 
Krycek before he wondered what was going on. He threw her a 
concerned glance over the top of Krycek's severe haircut, as he
took hold of the raw wrist. Krycek had been wearing a watch 
when they caught him, but it was gone now, lost in the struggle
or elsewhere during this unbelievable night. Scully stood up and
leaned on the table casually, maintaining her rare advantage in 
height. Mulder did not know what she was planning but he drank 
in her authority. He felt the calluses on Krycek's hand as he
removed the cuff. Scully gestured at him and he grasped that 
wrist tightly in his fist.

     Krycek's whole arm began to vibrate with coiled tension: 
the tendons stood out at his elbow and dug into the thumb which
covered his pulse. Scully spoke and her voice was honey and
vinegar: "Hold his hand on the table." It was a job, wrestling
Krycek's arm up and forward; Mulder had to grasp his captive 
around the chest and throw his weight against the shoulder. It
seemed as if Krycek already knew what scenario was being re-
hearsed, as if he had played this game also and lost as badly.
He grunted with effort and breathed like a man who has just
climbed a mountain.

     When the hand in question finally lay splayed on the white
table, Mulder was breathing in Krycek's ear and holding on for 
dear life. Scully had turned away, confident for once in his
willingness to do as he was told. When she turned back to the 
tableau in his mother's darkened kitchen she had her gun in her
hand, a block of black that alternately gleamed and ate the 
light. She very carefully and judiciously placed the muzzle atop
the ridged back of Alex Krycek's hand.

     At this Mulder very nearly lost control of the situation;
the body under him convulsed, the great shoulder muscles clench-
ing madly, and he heard an animal growl of terror close in his
ears. That gun pinned the hand to the table, a white ring around
where the muzzle's circle pressed between the index and middle
tendons. Krycek inhaled a sob. As he shook his head spastically
his face brushed lightly against Mulder's cheek.

     Words began to spill. "It -- I have contacts. In the org-
anization. I hear things, you need to know, experiments you 
can't know about, come on, please, get it off me!" Krycek's voice
had increased to a roar, its authority marred by the high pitch
of hysteria which had crept in. He blew out his breath hard when
Scully removed the gun from his hand and pointed it at the ceil-
ing. It left a mark, a round circle of white, and the blood 
rushed back into pale flesh. Scully gave him a look of satis-
faction as she holstered her weapon, and nodded at him to con-
tinue.

     Krycek was only too willing. "You know you have a chip in 
your neck," he gasped. "I heard about you getting drawn to the
lighthouse in Pennsylvania. I'm sure you want to take it out
but don't; it's what's keeping you alive." His tension began to
bleed away and Mulder backed off a little. As he moved the wrist
to cuff it again, Krycek swiveled to meet his eyes for the 
first time. The dilated pupils practically edged out the natural
hazel color and Mulder felt a streak of gladness that for a 
moment at least he did not share even eye color with this man.
It was he who broke the gaze, and continued his downward motion
to reattach Krycek's only arm to the back of the chair.

     Scully snorted in disgust. "Your gossip is out of date, 
Krycek. I came down with cancer a year ago. I know about chimera
cells, and pharyngeal tumors, and bogus chemotherapy." As she
ticked off her list he sat back in the chair, deflated.

     "How did you survive?" he whispered.

     Her arms crossed below her breasts and she regarded him 
coolly. "Another chip. Stolen from the Pentagon. Are you telling
me you didn't know about it?" The bitter coldness in her voice
surprised Mulder and their eyes met above Krycek's dark head. 
Still a prisoner, said the placement of her jaw. Still a victim,
accused the folds of skin which encased her tired eyes.

     Krycek's voice was dull and flat. "They don't tell me 
everything. I've never been more than a foot soldier."

     "The Motherland not welcome you home?" Mulder spoke for the
first time and fittingly it was a taunt. He rather enjoyed 
standing behind and above Krycek's head, fancying his voice 
like the voice of God. It disturbed him that he enjoyed it.

     "I had subcontractors, and I played my own games on the 
side, but I never set policy."

     Scully quirked an eyebrow. "Did you just admit to being an
agent for a foreign power?"

     "I don't know, did I? It's not like you couldn't convict 
me of a million crimes on my own home soil." Krycek had regained
some vim, and with it his flippancy.

     It made Scully go cold. She carefully shifted her body 
before demanding: "Have you committed murder?"

     "Yes," came the answer, neutral and bland.

     "Were you involved in my sister's shooting?" Mulder could 
see the wrinkles next to her nose which presaged the rage she 
tried so hard to hide. He had his own questions but he bit his
tongue and watched.

     Krycek sighed before answering. "You know I was." Something
drained out of Scully. "I was the lookout. I knew what you 
looked like. I fucked up." He hung his head as he said it. 
Scully began a surprising gutter curse but Krycek regained eye 
contact and cut her off. "I can only say I'm thankful we killed 
the wrong woman." At that Scully stopped suddenly, her face a 
blank. She smoothed her slacks over her thighs, came to some 
sort of decision, and walked quickly out of the room.

     Mulder did not quite know how to react but he knew an ad-
vantage when it was handed to him. He stepped around the table
and hissed, "Are you thankful for having killed my father?"

     Krycek's eyes had followed Scully out of the room, but now
he returned to face his other questioner, who leaned inappro-
priately close. Considering his recent show of contrition, 
Krycek's reply was rather shocking: "Yes."

     Mulder's knuckles itched and he stood to knot his fingers 
together behind his back. "What did you say."

     Krycek answered with a snarl. "I loved every fucking minute
of it. I would do it again if he were right here."

     Mulder could not manufacture a reply. He stood and stared 
at the contracting pupils of Krycek's eyes and the fresh energy
that suffused that face. He was damned if he would assault this
prisoner again. Carefully controlling his breathing, Mulder 
gathered his thoughts and asked as coolly as he could, "Why the
enthusiasm?"

     Krycek lowered his head to his left shoulder, a curiously 
withdrawn gesture. "Call it jealousy," he muttered.

     "What, you wanted his power?"

     The look that answered that question doubted how Mulder 
had ever made it out of grade school. "He was retired, he had 
no power." With a breath Krycek plunged in. "But he'd done 
enough. A busy little Boy Scout."

     This was getting strange. "Do you know his history in the 
organization?"

     "Enough," Krycek said.

     Mulder sat in Scully's chair and tried to stare down his 
adversary. "Tell me."

     "You don't want to know."

     "Yes I do."

     Krycek's eyelids lowered wearily. "No you don't. You want 
me to tell you so that you can call me a liar. He was a fucking
animal. I'm glad I killed him." The excitement of his earlier
confession had paled.

     "What did he do, that was so bad?" Mulder asked gently.

     Krycek only looked disbelievingly.

     "What, did he create hybrids, was he engineering plagues, 
was he torturing housecats? Tell me, Krycek." Silence. He heard
Scully's heels as she re-entered the kitchen. He leaned back
and narrowed his eyes and struck. "You don't know anything, do 
you." Mulder spoke on over Krycek's denial. "You want us to 
think you're some secret agent. You'll tell us whatever makes 
it all sound romantic. I bet you applied to the CIA and they 
turned you down."

     "But -" interjected Krycek, eyes rolling anxiously.

     "Lack of intelligence. You couldn't lie your way out of a
paper bag. You're just a dangerous little psychopath who got 
fired and wants to get back at his employers. You can't even
kill the right people." Mulder could feel Scully bristling 
behind him. "My father could have been a gardener, you would be 
telling me he was the devil incarnate."

     Rage had transformed Krycek's face into a stylized mask, 
all white angles and glittering eyes and that red, bloody mouth.
He was breathing hard again, the only noise in the kitchen.

     Mulder let his tone slide into insolence. "I bet my father
was completely innocent."

     "Innocent!" Krycek bellowed, a vein in his forehead stand-
ing out. "It was his project! It was his baby all along! *He* 
ordered a thousand people put to the test. *He* ordered them 
destroyed when he was done. He called them merchandise, they 
meant nothing to him. To volunteer his own children --"

     Everyone stiffened at once and no one spoke.

     It was Scully who finally broke the silence. "What did 
you say?"

     Mulder did not trust himself to speak so he busied himself 
stilling his trembling extremities. Krycek was not answering. 
Krycek was not answering and Mulder would have an answer if he 
had to strangle it out of the man. Scully's hand, firm and 
confident on his shoulder, was like a rope to a drowning man.

     "Nothing," Krycek muttered.

     "Oh no, not nothing," replied Scully, controlled. "We know
what you're talking about." Krycek raised his head in confusion,
first to Mulder, who schooled himself to blankness, and then
to Scully. "We saw the file. We know he chose which of the 
children would be taken."

     The sulkiness which overcame Krycek's face fairly screamed
that there was more. Scully's hand tightened on Mulder's shoul-
der and he kept his silence too. They were rewarded with a
reluctant answer at last: "An experiment."

     They all waited. Mulder felt a drop of sweat work its way 
endlessly down the side of his face. Krycek hazarded a glance 
and then returned to his scrutiny of the table.

     "Intelligence experiments. Inducement of higher IQ through 
chemicals, organic compounds. They tried it on children, to grow
a smarter operative."

     Mulder let out a breath, steadying.

     "It was mostly successful I guess, except for one side 
effect. Every last one of them had seizures." Now Mulder's 
thighs became jelly and he was wildly glad that he was already 
sitting down. Scully's fingers pinched down hard on his shoulder
and abruptly let go.

     "They were all supposed to be taken, disposed of, since 
they were unreliable. The record I saw showed all of them safely
in custody, except for one." Krycek stared hard into Mulder, who
had lost the wherewithal to look away. His voice was apologetic.
"It didn't even have a name, just a serial number." A blink, 
another. "I'm not even sure it's you." Krycek removed his eyes 
from Mulder's field of vision.

* * * * * * *

     Scully took it upon herself to clean up this disastrous 
situation. Mulder had navigated the second floor in a coma, 
leading her to as plain a bedroom as she had ever seen. She 
could not believe that he had ever lived here. But she would 
contemplate the blank walls and standard furniture some other 
time; right now she was removing her partner's shoes as he 
searched the ceiling with his eyes. She would have left him in
his coat and gone to manage the monster downstairs but he 
blinked when she leaned over him and spoke.

     "How did you know his weak point? Why the hand?"

     She took her time responding, sitting by his side and 
smoothing her slacks. "What's the most frightening thing in the
world to a man with one arm? Having no arms." He seemed to have
regained his equilibrium, or maybe he was just withdrawing from
the question at hand. He settled himself on the bed and closed 
his eyes.

     "That's cold."

     "I'm learning a whole new frigid world." She paused, teeth
clenched. She was not going to yell at him after the evening 
he'd had. Scully pinched her own thigh, felt the nail dig and 
the pain was welcome. "Krycek thinks I would do it. And as long 
as he does we've got power over him, maybe the only kind of 
power he understands."

     She saw his exhausted nod and hoped he understood. She 
hoped he would not ask about her brief disappearance; there was
no way she could tell him that she had left her successful
interrogation to jump up and down in silent rage in the next 
room, afraid of showing Krycek her weakness. She knew Mulder 
could not claim the high ground, that he had sunk to the same 
sort of coercion with similar success. What kind of man, she 
wondered, responded only to cruelty?

     That ended their conversation rather differently than she 
had intended and she could not touch him to comfort him. She 
glanced his way in the doorway, but his eyes were closed. Scully
thought briefly that it might be the first time he had slept 
here in his own home in a long time. She didn't want to think 
about that and she let the sound of her heels firm her as she 
returned to the kitchen and Alex Krycek, looking hangdog and 
exhausted.

     When he heard her coming he looked up in alarm; that ex-
pression made Scully hurt in a place right behind her breast-
bone. She tamped her lips together and came to a decision.

     "You look like hell," she told him. It was strange, making
conversation with this man. She had not exchanged words with 
him in more than a year, and truthful words maybe ever. He tried
to roll his shoulders and was restricted by the handcuff. "Will 
you let me look at your arm?"

     "No," he answered, and she had never heard a more sorrowful
word. "But I can't stop you."

     She lowered her head at that. "I don't suppose you'll prom-
ise not to bite if I try to take a look at that tooth of yours."

     "No. I think it's stopped bleeding anyway." Unable to look
for very long at the darkly flowering bruises on his face, she 
could not think of what to say to him or why she felt she needed
to say anything at all.

     "You need a shower." It was out of her mouth before she 
realized he would take it as an offer; they looked at each other
for a startled moment before he nodded assent. "All right, 
then." Dana Scully was not inclined to trust prisoners, and 
inclined even less to allow this prisoner a centimeter of lee-
way. But she let her fingers slide down Krycek's arm to the 
silvery cuff and found that the key was still in the lock. 
Krycek had not even touched it.

     She freed his legs first, and was rewarded with a stiff 
groan and the popping of Achilles tendons like twin fire-
crackers. She looped the loose cuff into its circle and tugged 
on it and Krycek stood like a trained circus animal to follow 
her. He gave her a cold, speculative look when she marched right
into the bathroom with him, his eyes glittering like chips of 
bloodstone. She knew Melissa had had a bloodstone necklace, each
polished bead a deep roiling muddy green with tiny flecks of 
red. That knowledge helped her stay hard.

     He removed his clothes with the efficiency that a career 
soldier can strip a gun, despite the false arm which Scully 
rather thought impeded than assisted his mobility. He did not 
need her help to get that off either and it shuffled to the 
floor in a strangely horrific way. She stood back, her hand on 
the butt of her gun, and watched him climb into the shower, 
facing her, naked and without shame.

     Krycek spent a long time under the hot water. Scully had 
the leisure to inspect him through the frosted glass, to watch 
how he maneuvered with a skinny stump on one side, to count
the marks of red irritation the prosthesis made on his torso. 
She toed his pile of clothes with her shoe, finding jeans with 
grease stains on them, a ragged pullover, and a leather jacket 
which had suffered long with its owner. Krycek's t-shirt and 
underwear were gray, that color whites go when they have been 
washed for a year without bleach. Bachelor gray, homeless gray.
Stark and humiliating and so quotidian Scully couldn't associate
it with the Boogeyman currently standing in Mulder's mother's 
shower.

     The boots were more apropos, square and black with bright 
steel zippers down the side. Zippers. Of course. One-handed. 
There was something different about him, something hopeless
which he had not displayed before even in captivity. She could 
not put her finger on it. Perhaps it had something to do with 
the fact that he was showering with obvious abandon, rolling 
his neck under the spray, trying to reach the middle of his 
back with the soap rather than attempting to escape.

     When he was done he stepped out and accepted the towel she
proffered with a strange expression on his face. "Why," he 
asked haltingly, "are you being so nice?"

     She lowered her eyes and answered, "Bribery works almost 
as well as coercion."

     "If I had been thinking I would have known you weren't 
going to shoot me," he said, as if starting a conversation about
the New York Giants. He took that moment to run the towel
through his short hair, his stump mimicking its whole counter-
part and making useless waving circles away from his body. She
scanned down his frame, noticing the scars which marred the
display of muscle beneath the surface. A bullet, large caliber,
in his abdomen, something she knew to be messy and painful. A 
puckered scar by his knee, sealed by the white dots of staple 
marks. A series of small haphazard cuts, bad enough to have 
needed stitches, along his chest and side, at the level of his 
left nipple. She stifled her shocked intake of breath as his 
head popped out from under the towel. "You didn't capture a 
change of clothes when you captured me, did you?"

     Scully took a moment to control herself. "No." He grimaced 
and crouched to pick up his clothes. 

     "Clean underwear might have been nice."

     Now that he had defused her psychological power over him 
she did not quite know what to do next. Her failure to consider
just driving him to the police station struck her as just ano-
ther symptom of this impossible night. She searched for some-
thing to fill the silence and asked, "What is your name?"

      He looked up at her, startled, in the midst of stepping 
into his jeans. He lowered his head and pulled on the denim.
"I can't tell you. You'll go searching the databases, looking 
for parking tickets or insurance policies, and the wrong people
will start paying attention."

     She crossed her arms and regarded him. "As far as we can 
piece together at least two governments want to see you in 
chains. How much more attention can they pay?"

     The pause he took was eternal, so long that she decided he
was ignoring her while he ran his hand over the stubble on his 
swollen jaw and watched himself in the mirror. Finally he looked
away and replied in a small voice: "I have a family. Groups 
other than governments would use them as leverage."

     "I thought you were working for them again."

     His sigh held disgust and helplessness. "There are fact-
ions. You can't protect me."

     Scully wanted to ask him a million questions, about chips
and lighthouses and experiments and rebellions. She could not 
get past her first question.  "What is your name. It doesn't 
leave this room," she added.

     "None of your beeswax." His voice was in the low end of 
his register like a growl. He held out his wrist for the hand-
cuff she still held. She let the silence grow and slip into the 
corners of the room as she caught and held his eyes. Krycek 
cleared his throat and stood at loose ends, fully dressed and 
apparently cornered in a bathroom by an agent he could easily 
have thrown over his shoulder under different circumstances. It
occurred to Scully to wonder why he had not made a move.

     "Ganya," he muttered, and examined the floor. "In private,
at home, my family called me Ganya."

     They both let out tense breaths and he sought her eyes for
the first time. "I can't tell you more," he said, plaintive and
frightened. "I won't put them in any more danger."
     
* * * * * * *

     She wrings me dry. I talk for hours, telling her the things
I know, the things I can guess, the things that frighten me so 
badly I have not yet dared put them to words. I tell her every-
thing since Kazakhstan, talking in a daze, unable to shut myself
up, and when she puts a glass of water on the table I stare at 
it stupidly before taking a drink. I talk all night long.

     At three a.m. she interrupts me. "Why should I believe 
you?"

     The hard question. I ache all up and down my spine and it's
not just from my tumble earlier. "You don't have to believe in 
space invaders. I've never actually seen one. This is all guess-
work, and rumor, and deduction, you know, nobody's going to come
on out and say it... But something's going on, I don't think 
you can dispute that. Your experience at the lighthouse should
be proof of that. Your... your cancer should be proof of it." 
She is as uncomfortable as I am about that subject, pursing her
lips but unable to speak. "There is a cure to this - thing. I 
held it in my hands. Mulder's been inoculated, and I'm immune 
too. I don't know what it is, so I don't know how to make more.
But I know at least two sets of people who do have it."

     "No," she says, and tilts her head thoughtfully. "I meant 
why should I believe you will honor your side of any deal? All
you've ever done is use us."

     I don't know what to say so I look at the floor. She stands
with a considering look and wanders uselessly to the mantle-
piece. I can tell from here that the photo she is looking at is
of her partner and his sister, looking tanned and happy and 
painfully normal. I don't want to talk about abductions, not 
with her.

     Her mouth is opening, she's taking a breath, and I can't 
stand the thought of telling her about my guilt. I am saved by
the thump of Mulder stumbling down the stairs, looking terrible.
He pulls open the glass door that separates the living room off
and surveys the scene, his eyes going immediately to catalogue 
me sitting in his mother's chair and drinking from his mother's
glass. Scully and I are both unwilling to speak.

     That fury he saves up for me crosses his features. He 
strangles out "Where the hell are the handcuffs" like a pack-
a-day smoker, his hands twitching. He rushes over to me and 
jerks me into the air with two handfuls of my sweater and the 
glass crashes to the floor, rolling and spilling water on what
looks like an expensive Persian rug.

     This I know how to deal with. I lean, letting him take my 
weight, forcing him to catch me as I fall forward or let me go.
He lets go and paces tensely across the room and back. "I don't
know what kind of game you've got going, Krycek -"

     "Listen, Mulder," I say, trying for a reasonable tone. "I 
don't go around hoping people will throw me down a flight of 
stairs. You caught me fair and square this time." Scully is 
watching us both, disappearing into the scenery in that way 
she does.

     "So you're not pulling your patriotic shtick again?" His 
face and his voice hold contempt. I don't bother to answer and 
he keeps going, gesturing absently as his trench coat billows 
behind him. "You come in here with the perfect story, one that 
jives perfectly with my medical history, one with a built-in 
ego massage for God's sake, and you expect me to buy it? You're
just volunteering information out of the goodness of your black
little heart, right?"

     He stops and tries to tower over me from across the room. 
I don't know whether to even try convincing him any more. It's
three in the morning and I rub my eyes. "I only know what I 
read. I pieced together meaning from some raw data. I could even
be wrong."

     "So why are you telling me? Playing some stupid psychol-
ogical game?"

     I'm so tired of him. "I was trying to show you just how 
dirty these people are. To give you a real idea what you're up
against. If you want to be naive, that's your problem." I make 
as if to walk away, then remember who has all of my firepower.
"You go ahead and go back to Washington. Go chase down psychics
and mutants and strange occurrences of nature, if you don't
have the stomach for it. I'll be doing the real work."

     I just can't shut up. He gets in my face and I don't back 
down; we stare right into each other's eyes and I can see my 
reflection in two tiny black mirrors.

     "I should just kill you right now." His breath hot on my 
face.

     "Go ahead. Do it. Prove to me you've got the balls for it.
You've had the opportunity before and you've always chickened 
out." Heat suffuses my face and clamps hard around my throat. 
His eyebrows wrinkle with confusion and the rage begins to drain
out of him. "In Hong Kong I begged you to do it. At Tunguska you
knocked me out with your fists when you could have used the 
knife in your hand." I surprise myself saying so much and look
away.

     Scully is staring at me in dismay. No. She is staring at 
both of us in dismay. Mulder turns to her and the shrug of his
shoulders might be an apology to her. He stays away from me,
though.

     "Well," comes her voice from the corner, warm and reason-
able as has no right to be in this room, "either way, we have
got to cover our bases. I didn't call Boyd last night." Her body
is lithe and graceful as she retrieves the glass from under the
sofa. Mulder's eyes return to her, as always, and something 
passes between them that I can't interpret.

     Some decision having been reached, Mulder sits heavily on 
the couch and regards me balefully. "I'll keep an eye on our 
friend, here," he volunteers with false cheer. He touches his
holster on his hip, as if I didn't already know about that one,
and the one at his ankle, and mine stuffed somewhere down his 
pants. And my switchknife. I'll want that back, if he lets me 
live. "You go ahead and get some sleep. You can check in with 
Boyd in the morning."

     "And you?" I know her face is deadly serious but I can't 
help thinking there is some joke going on.

     "He told me to go home." I am excluded from their look. 
"I'm just following orders." She spares me a hard glance as she
heads out the glass door and toward the staircase and her heels
mark her progress up the stairs.

* * * * *  *

     Sipping coffee with Krycek was not his idea of a leisurely 
breakfast. Mulder felt the acridity in the back of his throat 
and looked around at the varied group in the restaurant. Krycek
dunked his teabag again and again, demonstrating at the same 
time both the clumsiness of his false arm and his own finesse 
at working around it. Mulder wanted Scully to be here; he wanted
someone who could laugh in Krycek's face and call up the local
police. But she had a toxicology report to go read and an SAC
to check in with. And she had insisted coolly, without a glance
at their captive, that there might be something to his story.

     Krycek had slept, finally, near dawn. Mulder had cuffed 
him to his mother's antique desk and hoped she would never find
out. Flipping on the TV, he had surfed irritably, the tele-
vision's light reflecting pale on Krycek's slack features, and
tried to marshal his thoughts. He had been unable to settle on
any one program. A few minutes on the soft-core the premium 
channels show late at night had ended abruptly with a glance at
Krycek, who had displayed all signs of being asleep. Suddenly,
after two hours of absolute stillness, Krycek had awoken with a
myoclonic jerk, his body shifting in pronounced anxiety, deep
purple shadows under his eyes. Mulder had been manufacturing a
flip comment about bad dreams when he too had heard Scully's 
heels on the stairs.

     Despite the minimal sleep, she had looked reasonably 
groomed, her pantsuit unwrinkled, unlike his own clothes. And
she had been adamant that Krycek be held out of the justice
system for just a little while longer. Now, in warm daylight in
a Friendly's in Wallingford, Mulder picked at his toast and 
wondered irritably what could have changed her mind. His captive
looked wan and small on his side of the booth, stubble and a 
bruise covering only some of his pallor. It was nine in the 
morning. They had wasted too much time here and Mulder did not
know where to go next.

     He was fishing in his pocket for his wallet when his phone 
rang, startling Krycek badly enough for him to scald himself 
with his tea. "Mulder," he answered it, wondering why she would
call so soon.

     "I'm being followed," Scully began without preamble. "I 
picked up a man in a blue sedan on the Wilbur Cross Parkway and
he's now parked in the lot at St. Mary's. I'm inside but I don't
know what he looks like. He's got to be after the same data 
Krycek was trying to steal."

     The would-be thief was pouring an amazing amount of sugar
in his tea, a wary eye on Mulder. "Are you with someone?" A few
of the bad situations ran through his head like movies. He rem-
embered the bruises she'd taken during her last days of cancer,
inflicted when she had pursued a follower too diligently. "Now 
is not the time to be taking risks."

     "I'm fine," she replied, without irony. "I've got a few 
CDC people around me and we're also making copies of everything
we can get our hands on. But this changes things, doesn't it."

     "Yes." He glanced again at Krycek, who was now staring 
outright at Mulder. "If you notice anyone suspicious, don't 
hesitate to take him down. In the meantime -"

     Krycek snatched the phone out of Mulder's hand adroitly 
and put it to his own ear. Mulder suppressed a tide of rage and
forbore from grabbing Krycek in such a public place. "Has he 
made any moves?" The man spoke with clear anxiety, his eyes 
darting as some plan worked in his head. "I know exactly who it
is. I mean, I know his type and his function. If he's come this
far out in the open that means we're all in danger." Their eyes
met and Mulder refused to wonder what that concern in Krycek's
face meant. "We got my car. There's no way I can tell you this
over the phone."

     Finally Mulder reached out and took back his telephone, 
rather more roughly than was necessary, as Krycek handed it over
without protest. "It's me again," he supplied, and he heard 
Scully let out a breath before she said anything.

     "Where should we meet?"

     "The mall is only a few blocks from the hospital. We can 
meet there, in the food court." He was already fiddling with his
wallet, throwing a few bills on the table. Krycek downed his tea
at a gulp.

     "Right," she said firmly. "I'll be there."

*

     She was there, small and business-like amongst the sparse 
morning shoppers, another in a long line of Styrofoam coffee
cups at her elbow. Mulder stretched the kink out of his back
and mentally cursed Krycek's compact car while the latter told
about FutureCorp.

     "It wasn't on purpose, that much I know. I spoke to the 
head of development and he was terrified of word getting out. I
don't even know what the compound is, and I'm sure those kids
didn't. They could have been sniffing Drano for all they knew. 
And it killed them." He drummed his fingers on the metal table,
then looked at his hand guiltily.

     "So you're telling me," offered Scully, with no small 
amount of skepticism in her tone, "that a group of girls stole 
a secret formula while on a class trip and just walked out of 
the building with it under their coats?"

     Krycek's face was remarkably serene, considering. "They may
have inhaled it on the premises. I don't know how they did it;
I just got called in to clean up the mess."

     "Did you kill Chloe Adler?" Scully demanded.

     Krycek tensed and then relaxed. "No," he answered with 
relief.

     "Why you?" asked Mulder suddenly, and both of his compan-
ions looked at him in confusion. "What does FutureCorp have to
do with the people you work for? Why so much effort for this 
compound?"

     Krycek's face was hard and sure. "Go do your homework. 
You'll find out that FutureCorp is owned in whole or in part,
through a hundred dummy companies, by the Culmination Group, 
Inc. out of New York City. Keep that name in mind. See if you 
can't track it by its tax records, its holdings. I'm sure it's 
privately owned, but maybe you can twist a few arms in the IRS."
He swallowed, and took a long look around before continuing. 
"As for the compound, I'm not sure. They tell me what, not why.
I know it breaks down quickly and becomes untraceable. From 
what I can guess it's some new kind of nerve agent, probably 
chemical warfare."

     "Well." Scully tucked her chin into her chest, her classic
posture for calculating the unlikely. "That begins to explain 
the blood work," she began reluctantly. "The CDC doctor took one
look at the cell samples I took and went to call the Environ-
mental Protection Agency. He was sure it was toxic waste."

     None of them spoke for a while, and Mulder puzzled over 
the idea of a Connecticut laboratory making chemical weapons. 
The U.S. government had proscribed their manufacture for a long
time, and now a private company had taken up the practice. 
Scully was playing with her coffee cup and giving Krycek a long
appraising look, one Mulder knew from experience was hard
to endure.

      "Those marks on your chest," she said suddenly. "Defensive
wounds."

     Krycek just looked off into the distance.

     "You were awake. You were fighting it. It wasn't gangrene
or a grenade, was it?" Her voice was terrible and gentle and 
full of gravity. Mulder did not quite know who had suddenly
knocked the wind out of him. Krycek pursed his lips sourly and
did not reply.

     "No arm, no test," rasped Mulder, regaining his breath 
shakily. Scully's eyes like saucers sought his own.

     "Sucks to be a victim," replied Krycek, with a savage smile
that twisted like a knife in the wound. His eyes were pure ven-
omous green. Mulder felt a reflexive horror which ran electric-
ity through all of his ten fingers. That, and a strange cold 
sorrow: all those people with empty sleeves. Another in the 
ranks.

     "I guess you blame me for that," he offered.

     "Of course I fucking blame you for it, I had a plan and 
you shot it all to hell." Krycek's body was tense, but his tone
lacked anger. He pushed his chair away from the table, but 
seemed to have nowhere to go. His face collapsed into a bitter
frown.

     "What plan?" asked Mulder solemnly. He recalled the visit
to Tunguska being of his own motivation, but the possibility of
his having been manipulated was rearing its head more often than
he liked. Krycek blinked at him, perhaps considering a reply, 
but before he could open his mouth a phone rang. Mulder was 
beginning to hate that noise.

     It was Scully's, and she answered it warily. "Sir," she 
said sharply, unconsciously straightening where she sat. She 
listened, and both men watched her, her short replies giving no
sense of what she was talking about. Finally she rang off and 
her shoulders fell as she did. Mulder remembered again how much
less sleep she had had than he. "That was Boyd. Another dead 
kid. This one looks like a suicide."

     She stood to go, stuffing her telephone back into her coat
pocket. Krycek gave her a cool glance. "You'll be autopsying
all day, then. You'll be safe in public."

     She grimaced and nodded, resting her gaze on Mulder. "It
was Kenny Kannell," she said, and he felt a cold snake wrap
itself around his spine. Their exchanged looks traded awareness
but conferred no warmth. "I'll call you when I'm finished."

* * * * * * *

     The sun had set when Scully pulled away from the hospital,
the sad colors of the gloaming mirroring her mood. She had 
pulled onto 91 before she realized that she had no idea where 
Mulder had holed up with Krycek to wait out the afternoon. With 
a quick thank-you to Qualcomm for making glow-in-the-dark 
keypads, she speed-dialed and maneuvered her way into the heavy
evening traffic. It rang three times before Mulder answered.

     "Mulder, it's me." He greeted her, shouting over some 
noise which sounded like bowling pins, and shuffled for a long
moment till he found a quiet spot.

     "What did you find?"

     "Kenny Kannell did not commit suicide. He was fed poison."
His long silence sounded as awful as she felt so she filled it
with detail. "His stomach was full of it, but I found a mark on
his hard and soft palates: someone shoved a spoon into his 
mouth. He had developing bruises on his wrists, so he was held
down. Mulder, it was rat poison."

     An angry horn distracted her, as the traffic got heavier
and slower. She cradled the phone on her shoulder and waited for
Mulder to say something. "He had a bite on his arm," he supplied
finally. "Michelle bit him. He was afraid of getting rabies."

     She tried and failed to keep a noise of disgust from esc-
aping. "I opened his skull. His brain was perfectly normal. The
CDC pathologist agreed; Kenny was not exposed to the toxic agent."

     "Hold on, Krycek wants to talk." Mulder's voice was muf-
fled, and then a rustling in her ears as the phone changed 
hands. She wondered, as she looked in her rearview mirror, how 
they had managed not to kill each other already.

     "He was clean," came Krycek's voice, deeper and sharper 
than Mulder's.

     "Yes."

     "I would never have killed him," said Krycek simply. "I had
orders to wait until onset of symptoms." His matter-of-fact tone
disturbed her immensely, and then she paid attention to his
words.

     "Did you kill Michelle Manzarek?" She regretted her shrill
tone, but it got results.

     "She was already dead. Her heart just didn't know it yet."

     Mulder's voice was a buzz in the background and she para-
phrased what he must be asking: "But you didn't kill any of the
others?"

     Krycek paused, then answered with poorly concealed tension.
"Someone else has been sent to make sure my job gets done. He 
is not so choosy about his methods."

     Scully felt as if she were falling. "There are factions, 
you said."

     "Yes. He'll kill me next if he can. And that means he might
kill you too." Another pause, and Krycek seemed to gulp before
he spoke again. "My boss is in the camp that would very much
like to see you two alive. The members are choosing up sides, 
right now, and I can't guarantee anything to you beyond all of
my efforts."

     She held her breath. The clarity in his tone was shocking,
and if coupled with honesty, a powerful weapon. Scully glanced 
at her rearview again and all thoughts of alliances flew out of
her head. "Krycek, I'm being followed again. Please put Mulder 
back on the line."

* * * * * * *

     Krycek could not be kept in cuffs in public, so he had 
wandered all afternoon on a combination of the honor system and
Mulder's own paranoia. Mostly he had sat idle, seeming not even
to view his surroundings, but Mulder began to realize how good
his eyes really were as he reconnoitered the street in front of
Mickey's Quickie Mart. He considered himself careful, but Krycek
eyed the back seats of parked cars, looked in the dumpster, and
tapped thoughtfully on each of the orange construction barrels 
which sealed off the far edge of the back parking lot before he
turned to Mulder and shrugged. They were essentially alone. 
There were few cars passing by, but enough that he did not fear
Scully would be run off the road before she arrived.

     They had spent too long together, constantly checking each
other for signs of weakness, and as he returned to the darkened
back lot from the street Mulder at last felt his sense of
Schadenfreunde kicking in. As Krycek approached him across the
parking lot, he blew out a tense, bored breath and commented,
"I had a dream once, where my arms got cut off, first one and
then the other." Krycek stopped in his tracks with that unread-
able face of his. "Most terrifying nightmare I ever had."

     Ten or twelve yards separated them across the parking lot,
but when Krycek made a noise deep in his throat Mulder felt a 
little bit cornered. A cold stare mirrored the tone of his 
voice: "They've probably been shaping every moment of your life.
Every decision, every milestone. You have to wonder, is any of 
it yours?"

     "What the hell are you talking about."

     "Have they tried to recruit you yet?" Krycek's eyes had 
gone keen and acquisitive.

     Mulder opened his mouth, and then wondered why he would 
ever admit such a thing to Krycek. "They hired you, they'll hire
anyone," he drawled, adopting a languid pose. Krycek flexed his 
shoulders as he took a step forward and Mulder found himself 
happy with the animosity.

     At that moment Scully pulled into the lot, her headlights
raking across first Krycek and then Mulder. "Someday I'll 
bother to tell you," growled Krycek over the noise of her 
engine, "why I followed you under that wire into Tunguska."

     Mulder blinked and stepped forward to pursue it, but Krycek 
was already pulling open Scully's car door, greeting her with a
note in his voice which might have been relief. "You shook him?"

     She didn't reply, but got out of the little car, surveying
the parking lot and the stances of the two men before her. 
Mulder knew surely that she had missed nothing.

     "I think so," she answered finally, and gave Mulder a long
look. He read concern in her cool blue eyes, and curiosity, and
that dreadful tightening which signalled her hatred for playing
the defensive. Krycek relaxed visibly and leaned against the 
hood of the car, looking for all the world like a construction
worker or overgrown student, hanging out after a long day.

     Scully and Mulder stood before him, both in business garb 
and frankly out of place; Mulder felt the awkwardness in his
stance and glanced around. Mickey's Quickie Mart was luckily 
having a slow night. "The man who followed me," began Scully,
considering. "He also works for this Culmination Group?"

     Krycek shifted and tucked his chin into his left shoulder.
"I have to assume so. There are people who -- aren't crazy about
my return to the organization."

     Mulder broke in: "Why did you go back?"

     "Long story," answered Krycek, exhibiting signs it ex-
hausted him just to think about it.

     Scully pursed her lips. "Along what lines are these fact-
ions split?"

     It was a long silence from Krycek, one that made Mulder 
antsy. "There are those," he managed finally, "who think that
rolling over and playing dead is the only way to play. And then
there's the side which would rather go down fighting."

     "You make it sound like a war," commented Scully.

     Krycek snapped back: "It is one."

     "So you want us to join up?" Scully looked at him askance
for his heavy sarcasm but Mulder was in the grip of his con-
tempt. Leaning against the hood of the car, the would-be
revolutionary scratched his head and looked at the gravel at
his feet.

     "That's the general idea."

     "And if we arrest you?" Mulder leaned in, leering. Krycek
just sighed irritably.

     "I'll be dead in a day. And you'll have no one on the 
inside."

     "You want us to let you go."

     "You need information," he argued, his chin pointing 
forward in his vehemence. "I need a public voice, a threat they
know about so they don't see my knife till it's in their backs."

     "Oh, so we're the sacrifice?"

     "Would you rather walk into a trap knowing it's a trap and
knowing why, or would you rather just trip the wire and die
thinking you stumbled over your shoelaces?"

     Mulder did not know how to respond. Scully took a breath,
paused, and said, "That's not much of a choice."

     "No, it's not."

     A long silence built then, as Krycek stared out into the 
distance. It occurred to Mulder that this tableau recorded the
way he imagined Scully had learned of her cancer: unclear evi-
dence, enormous odds, stark possibilities and a mournful bearer
of bad tidings. It made him uncomfortable to compare the two 
scenarios, realizing that already he had cast Krycek as the con-
cerned specialist. This particular specialist, clad in leather
and aloofness, seemed to be sniffing the chill March air like
a coyote.

     The preternatural awareness of Alex Krycek was troubling;
and so it was not entirely a surprise when a low crack resounded
in the air, accompanied by the scuffling sounds of Krycek
throwing himself to the ground without a word. Mulder hit the
ground soon afterwards, his head swiveling as he tried to 
ascertain the source of the shot, and Scully said clearly into
his ear: "Construction site, on our left." They scrambled tog-
ether behind the protection of the car, and realized that Krycek
had gone over the hood and beat them to it. Panting, the three
of them lay still, listening with all their might.

     "A rifle," gasped Krycek. "It's likely not his only weapon,
but it improves my chances if I can get up close." An abortive
motion towards his ribs was clearly his reaching for a gun no 
longer in his waistband.

     Scully's wide, alert eyes made her whole face go to sharp
edges. Her weapon in her right hand, she reached out to Krycek
with her left, and exclaimed abruptly: "Are you hit?" Her middle
finger poked through a hole low in the side of his jacket, be-
fore she went searching down his ribcage for blood.

     Krycek wriggled away from her touch. "No, he missed me,"
he muttered reluctantly. He got to his knees as if trying to
avoid her gaze and sprinted towards the Quickie Mart. Another
shot rang out, unmistakable in the quiet, and Mulder knew that
someone would hear and call the police. Mulder threw himself
after Krycek, gun drawn but with no idea where to aim. He found
himself shoulder to shoulder with the man, against the concrete
side wall of the building, and Scully barreled into him.

     Together they stalked towards the construction site, hudd-
ling in the lee of the scenery. No more bullets flew, and a 
pregnant silence hung over them as they panted in the dark. 
Krycek's hand spasmed as he leaned against the wall of the 
building being worked on, and Scully snatched Mulder by the
lapel.

     "Give him his gun, Mulder," she said, all seriousness. He
looked at her incredulously and she didn't blink. "If he dies,
we get nothing."

     It did not take him long to assess his feelings on Krycek
and firearms. "No," he replied. "He stays with me, Scully. I'm
not giving him a gun." Krycek, eyes cool through this exchange, 
gave a disgusted snort and spun into the doorway.

     Mulder followed, splitting up from Scully, feeling the slow
burn of frustration as Krycek took the lead over and over. For-
ward through the disarray of a refurbishing job in progress,
Mulder feinted behind column after column of structural support.
Up a flight of wooden stairs, which screamed under their feet.
Krycek took them two at a time, and Mulder followed more care-
fully, which was why he managed to step on the board which was
dangerously loose. He pinwheeled his arms and fell ungraciously
forward, banging his chin on the dirty floor. The gun flew from
his hand and skittered into the dark.

     "Jesus, Mulder," said Krycek, crouching at his side.
Mulder looked up at him in time to see him stiffen suddenly and
make that autonomic motion again towards an absent gun. Follow-
ing Krycek's line of vision, Mulder saw a man, rather nonde-
script in black, pausing between two columns about ten yards 
away, a rifle in his hands.

     There was a long moment in which Mulder fancied that all
three of them checked their internal reality-meters to make sure
this wasn't a dream. The man stood still, his hand on the 
rifle's stock, his eyes slipping between the two men before him.
Then Krycek stalked, feline, in a wide circle so that the man
had to turn his head to keep him in sight. Mulder recognized the
tactic as intended to draw fire, and took the opportunity to 
scramble to his feet. His weapon was nowhere in sight, and as 
this stranger's eyes flicked back to him he dared not make a 
move for his ankle holster, not yet.

     Time stretched out immeasurably, leaving Mulder only to 
hope that this High Noon would end before Scully came charging 
up, making another target. He was strangely gratified to see the
small man in black clothing shift his rifle with a sudden expert
movement and point it at Mulder himself. Mulder paused with his
hand on his pant leg and straightened, making no trouble. Krycek
had disappeared from his line of vision. The air was thick and 
dusty and Mulder strove not to cough, even as he wished his 
opponent would come down with wracking allergies. 

     The stillness broke in a rush of air as a rebar swung at 
an acute angle and connected with the assassin's shoulder. The
meaty noise of the impact was sickening, but Mulder thrust the
sensation aside and fled for cover, finally freeing his weapon
from his ankle. The stranger cried out, again, as two more moist
blows fell unseen. When he chanced a look, Mulder saw Krycek in
profile between the two support columns, his one arm upraised 
in a powerful stance reminiscent of Classical statue. The 
comparison stopped with a startling suddenness when he swung 
that arm downward with all the force of his torso, the rebar 
he held striking the man on the floor at hand and temple.

     Blood flew and a weak cry followed. Krycek made no noise 
as he swung, teeth clenched, and the rebar whistled and thudded
over the little wails that came from the stranger. He might have
been pounding nails for the railroad or whipping an animal; 
either way his arm snapped the long dark bar with a swooping 
grace. Mulder knew he heard the crunch of bone and found himself
standing, his weapon hanging useless at his side, as the little
man fell silent under Krycek's ministrations. Six, eight more
well-placed blows, and Krycek decided that he was done.

     It was clear that the man was dead. Krycek straightened,
his shoulders heaving as he caught his breath, and he looked up.
Mulder stared back. His cheeks flushed, his eyes hooded, Krycek
owned the space between them and filled it with a frightening 
electricity. Neither of them spoke and the blood from the 
corpse pooled at Krycek's feet. Mulder stood unmoving with 
every muscle in his body gone loose.

     Krycek still had the rebar, gripped comfortably in his 
hand. As Mulder surveyed the face to avoid those unnerving eyes,
he saw blood in a fine mist down the side of Krycek's face and
the sheen of sweat on his forehead. Krycek took a step towards
him, and he couldn't move, as if this were some primordial
ritual, and he knew with a tingling certainty that if Krycek
were to come after him next, if he were to take two more steps
and swing the rebar in one of those balletic arcs, that he,
Mulder, would be unable to back away, indeed, that he would
stand still in obeyance to some unknown primitive code and 
allow Krycek to strike him.

     Silence, and the sound of Krycek's raw panting. Another
step, and the man was within range, but the rebar sagged in his
hand unused. He was standing too close and Mulder felt the 
oppressive heat Krycek threw off like a rock recently removed
from the desert. Krycek was too close, inclining his head as if
to whisper, his eyes enormous and pregnant with some hard
knowledge. Mulder could not breathe and he could not step away.

     "If this doesn't prove," breathed Krycek in a tone app-
roaching reverence, "that I'm with you, then nothing will."

     Mulder heard his name called out, in that tone he knew so
well, echoing through the cavernous, hollowed-out building. 
Scully's heels announced her as she ran towards him from out
of the darkness. 

* * * * * * *
 
     Scully takes a long look at the body but she doesn't bother
to take its pulse. She takes a second and then she has a handle 
on the situation, lowering her arms so her weapon points away 
from me. I drop the rebar and it makes that resounding noise like
a bell, startling Mulder out of his weird daze. He looks at me,
and then looks at the body, and I think for a second that he's 
going to throw up.

     He is the first to holster his weapon, at his ankle. Then
he goes crouching around in the corners, and I remember that he
dropped his other one when he fell. I notice he never pulled
mine, which should still be at his back, and wonder what that
means. Scully watches me carefully before she puts away her 
weapon and stands in front of the body where I've left it. 
Nobody's said anything and I'm going crazy.

     "You two can't be associated with this," I tell them, but
they give me blank faces, not ready yet to think about their 
cover stories. For a bitter moment I reconsider this alliance,
the terrible things I will ask of them, and then I realize I 
haven't got a choice. "Hey," I say sharply, and they finally both
look at me. "We have to think, and you have to get out of here."

     Mulder is regaining his armor so he sneers at me. "Are we 
just going to let you go?"

     "No," I reply with as much patience as I can muster. Scully
is looking at him strangely; there's a chance she'll understand
what's going on. "You're just going to leave, and I'm going to
take care of this situation. You don't need to be associated 
with this, not directly. I'll make sure it sends a message to
the right people."

     Scully is considering me, squinting up with her hands on 
her hips. My heart is still pounding in my ears. "You're propos-
ing that we leave a crime scene and lie about it."

     "Yes," I tell her, "and that's the least of what will be 
required of you. We're not at a quilting bee, Agent Scully. 
That man would have killed me, and failing that, took a bead on
your partner." Mulder straightens, but doesn't interrupt. He 
looks at her and I don't know whether they're arguing silently
or agreeing.

     Scully's chest rises and falls exaggeratedly, and she 
crosses the floor to stand next to Mulder. "This partnership,"
she begins, and her mouth twists on the word. "How do we know
you won't disappear after tonight?"

     "I may have to disappear, for a while," I reply, on 
tenterhooks. "Clearly there are people who aren't crazy about
my breathing habit."

     Both of them have their eyes narrowed at me. "I don't -" 
she begins, but I cut her off, and even I can tell I'm desperate.

     "Name a place. Be there the first of every month, a set 
time. I'll show up when it's safe - when I can." 

     She looks me up and down like I'm the biggest bug she's
ever seen. "Steps of the Federal Courthouse in Alexandria. One
a.m. Don't make me wait for you."

     She could chip diamonds with that face and I won't make
her wait any longer than I have to. I can breathe again. "All 
right." I roll my shoulders, but they are still standing there.
"I'll be there.  Now go, before someone calls the police."

     Scully nods her head and looks at the floor, and I have so
much sympathy for her mangled principles. But Mulder approaches
me with what he thinks must be stealth, his hands inside his
trench coat. I don't want to fight with him.

     He stands in front of me with that repulsed look for a 
long moment and I can only look back at him blankly. Then with
a flourish he brings his hands from around his back, clutching
my gun and my knife. I don't know how to react and he shoves 
them at me with impatience. I collect the knife, pushing it 
into my pocket, and my hand closes over his, my gun, still hot 
from his body, between us. I am wrapping my fingers around the 
grip when I feel him moving, see with my peripheral vision as 
he leans towards me conspiratorially.

     He kisses me on the cheek. It's shocking, like a slap in 
the face. His lips are soft against my skin and then he with-
draws and looks at me keenly. "Turnabout is fair play," he 
mutters with canny malice, and he swoops away in a swirl of 
trench coat. I can only look on as he comes to his partner and
begins to lead her away. Either he is an uncommon manipulator 
or he - I'm not thinking that.

     Scully's eyebrows have climbed to her hairline but she 
just meets my eyes levelly before turning away under Mulder's
arm. They disappear into the gloom and leave me, holding my gun
loosely, standing next to a dead body. Somehow I wonder if that 
doesn't characterize our relationship.

     But I have work to do. More evidence to clean up. A report 
for Grand Master. And a message to send, its contents cooling
at my feet.

* * * * * * *

     That tang in the back of his throat could have just been 
the awful smoke of the chemicals burning. Mulder kept reminding
himself of that as he stood, useless, behind miles and miles of
plastic yellow police tape. Considering the strange billows of
pale, colored fire that still wrestled with the firefighters, 
he decided that the man whose death he had so recently witnessed 
was a very thorough man.

     Scully wandered back towards him from her consultation 
with the paramedics. "What did you call it," he asked her 
blandly, "not an exercise in subtlety?" Her eyeballs rolled 
under closed eyelids before she answered him.

     "It looks like everyone is accounted for except for one 
janitor and the head of research, a Dr. Brian Halvorsen. By 
everything we can gather they were both in the wing when it went
up."

     "This wing, it was the experimental wing, right?"

     Scully gave a little sigh. "Yes. The one the Meriden kids
toured on Friday." He looked closely at her and she jutted her
chin back at him truculently. He conceded the staring match and
she leaned close to say in a low voice: "There isn't enough time
for this to have been Krycek, if he was truly working alone."

     A shrug was all he could muster in response. She turned 
away, surveying the tangle of hoses and people and haphazardly
parked cars, noting with a frown the arrival of the news vans
already, her face lit strangely by the fire. He recalled her 
dismayed frown as they got off route 91, her hand on the dash-
board, as if she could push the car along faster, their mutual 
knowledge that the raging fire they had seen from the highway
would be none but this building. Mulder couldn't help the shudder 
which ran over him, thinking of the dead man and the dull sheen on
Krycek's sweaty face.

     "It was a mistake," Scully began slowly, "letting him go.
Wasn't it?" Her shoulders slumped as if shouldering all of the 
responsibility. His hand moved of its own volition to touch her
hair and he stopped it in midair.

     "I don't know," he answered, and she nodded absently.

     Abruptly Scully made a little choking noise and he turned 
to see SAC Boyd wandering, perplexed, through the support per-
sonnel. Recognition marked his face with wrinkles and he patted
down his hair as he approached them.

     "Dr. Scully, is this what you called me out here for?" Boyd
used his height to try to intimidate her, then stopped when he
realized he was failing.

     "This is FutureCorp Laboratories, sir," she said crisply. 
"Currently the official story is a vague accident. It looks like
a total loss for the company, total destruction of anything in 
this wing of the building, if not the whole structure." She 
didn't need to look at Mulder to draw out the conspiratorial
possibilities, so Mulder stood quietly and watched. "If the 
contamination source really was this building, then any evidence
of it is conveniently lost," she prompted.

     But Boyd just shook his head in disbelief. "Agent Mulder." 
He gave a displeased little smile. "I'm sure you hung around 
these past few days expecting this sort of thing?"

     "No," replied Mulder. "I, ah, was just visiting my mother's 
place." Scully gave him one of her laser looks and then turned 
away quickly. Another secret, another breathless silence be-
tween them. He tasted that foul flavor in his throat again.

* * * * * * *

     Dana Scully awoke to the noise of shuffling papers. Her 
disorientation cleared as she remembered who had a key to her
apartment and who would be crazy enough to be doing paperwork 
at this hour. She could hear him in her living room, the scritch
of his pen and his slow breathing, trying to make sense of what
he could guess and what he could not say in the official report 
- the autopsies, the murders, the fire which had obscured
everything. He was in her apartment *and* he was doing paperwork
- a bad sign.

     She knew that Mulder had his strange habits, brought on,
she suspected, by his only intermittent contact with the human
race. But this was all wrong, his coming here and spreading
his papers out on her coffee table, giving himself a bad back
by sitting on the floor. Scully stretched a little, but made no
move to get up, only listened to his little sounds from the nest
of her warm bed.

     His presence was oppressive, even a room away. She pondered
not for the first time that if they were to get more serious -
if he were to come knocking every night - that she would grow
sick of him. She considered the flowers which still bloomed in 
her kitchen. Roses. At least they weren't red. Her mind squirmed
away from the suggestions of his neediness.

     The events of the past week had given her a certain tense
awareness of her every move, the likelihood of her being sur-
veilled making her twitch at moments of privacy. Alex Krycek.
Unbelievable. That was the trouble, wasn't it? They could not 
be sure he was lying. Scully turned over the possible impli-
cations of his little speech once more in her mind. An experi-
ment, she wondered. That a father could think of his son as an
experiment. It seemed to confirm a coolness which she had always
suspected in Mulder's awkward family relationships.

     A worse thought occurred to her, and when it did she knew 
it had occurred to Mulder already. If a choice was made, it was
more than daughter or son. It became, in this new vision, the 
altered consciousness of an experimental child or his normal
sister. Sexism could explain it, but a cold, chiding voice 
pointed to the obvious. Allowing the son to be taken would have
been obeying orders. By trading in his daughter, the old man 
had set his son irrevocably on a path of doubt and question 
and refusal to obey. A dagger, she realized, pointed at the 
heart of this organization, of this Culmination Group.

     If it were true, it meant that everything Mulder had done,
every choice he had made, became suspect. That sharp, mocking,
gentle ego of Fox Mulder was no longer inviolate, or rather,
its violations were coming to the fore. If it were true, it 
suggested that her privately held opinion of the father as a 
villain was no longer quite so pure; the sister's disappearance
no longer such a simple tragedy. The seeming duality of the old 
man's loyalty was something she did not care to think about. 
That dark likelihood, based on a tantalizingly possible story by
a man whose sense of truth was sorely lacking: the mere inkling
of it was enough for Mulder to be in her apartment, at some 
ridiculous hour, drinking her orange juice, because he could not 
stand to be alone.

     Scully felt a powerful impulse to get up, to wander, 
sleep-tousled, into her living room and ask him to come to bed.
He might look at her in his offhand way, and come down with a 
sly smile, and ask whatever did she mean as he stood and took
off his glasses. He might, on the other hand, turn towards her
as a blind man does, his face a careful void, and tell her he
really needed to get this work done. She knew which response
would rule him tonight. With a certain pricking dismay, Dana
Scully rolled over and sought sleep. Sucks to be a victim, she
thought, Krycek's childish language ringing strange through her
head. She closed her eyes, irked that he should have the last
word even now.

* * * * * * *
END

TITLE: Signals
AUTHOR: Vehemently (vehemently@yahoo.com)
SPOILERS: The Red and the Black.
RATING: R. For adult situations, scariness, violence implicit
and explicit, and bad language.
ARCHIVE: Gossamer submission copy.
CATEGORY: X (X-File) and A (Angst).
KEYWORDS: Conspiracy. Krycek. Otherwise, read on.
DISCLAIMER: The characters and situations used herein belong to
1013 / Chris Carter and are used without intent to profit.
SUMMARY: Frequency is wavelength divided by time. The same equation
holds true for visible light, radio reception and the gamma rays
which are the result of nuclear weapons. Dangerous thing, a little
knowledge. Sequel to "Scatter."
TIMELINE: Takes place seven months after "Scatter," in September of
1998. Canon divergence was at The Red and The Black; neither The
End nor the movie nor season 6 can be assumed to have happened.
THANKS: To Lena, holder of the transcontinental beta land-speed
record, who knows about pantyhose, and Dahlak, who knows a plot
twist when she sees one.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: End.

* * * * * * *
Signals
by Vehemently
* * * * * * *
  
     The ringing in my ears starts quickly - not a surprise, but
an unhappy likelihood. It's a tiny whine, a jigsaw tracing the inside
of the skull, so small you know it can't be something anyone else
would hear. When you have been surrounded by silence for a very
long time, your ears finally lose all hold on reason and rebel, manu-
facturing sighs and white noise and all such nonsense. Knowing it's
nonsense doesn't make it go away either. 

     I'm thinking about being in the dark, the way it felt, solid so
if I breathed I was letting it inside me, and the way it manifested 
itself in colors I knew weren't really there. Here I have street
lights in that retro-Main Street style so I'm not worried, only
morose with memory. Stiffness setting in, the body's version of
boredom. I have been waiting too long. She is not here.

     I made her a promise and finally I can keep it and she is not 
here. I can spare a moment for regret that I couldn't send someone
to watch in the past months, to tell me whether she came at all,
even the first time, or whether she wrote me off immediately. He
won't have come ever, too wrapped up in his comfortable anger to
see my value. Better that way. The concrete is unyielding under my
hips, and I remember ruefully that I let her set the meeting place, so
desperate I didn't pause to think about sight lines and surveillance
capabilities.
 
     The Federal Courthouse isn't an easy place to case.

     Maybe she planned it that way. It doesn't matter now, if
she's not coming. It's nearing 1:30 and the cars down near Cameron
Run have gone silent and the engineered streets and the little patch
of grass are bleak and empty in front of me. The cops won't circle
back here for another forty minutes if they stay true to form so I
make my mind up to wait, till then at least, so I can walk away from
this sorry deal with right on my side for once. It would have been
nice, I think, better than nice, it would have been halfway towards a
hope if this could have worked out. But I've laid low for too long
and she's lost faith in me. Not that she ever had any, but . . .
  
     A car. Not in the lot itself, but on Duke Street a few blocks 
away. It could just be a devoted lawyer dragging himself back to
his expensive townhouse. But it parks, somewhere I can't see,
somewhere in a commercial space. I hear the door close but no foot-
steps -- it could even be the police deviating from their habits.
I'm up on the second story, behind the bronze statue of blind
Justice, so I should be able to see all comers, but I'll have a
hell of a time running away from here without breaking both my
legs. I take the time to drop back down to the ground, and slip
behind one of the columns in this angular, neo-something building.
  
     Footsteps now, but not heels. Short legs, quick steps close
together, a measured stride and sure. A jangle of keys and this
invisible person has no caution, or is just an innocent. The sounds
stop somewhere in the middle of the sweeping steps, with a last
bored sigh. It can't be. It might. I make a little noise, scraping my
boots against the sidewalk, and my answer is the sure sound of a
weapon swiftly unholstered.
  
     "Who's there?" she says, in a tone attempting calm. Her
voice is low and not loud, but not whispering either. "Identify
yourself."
  
     It's her. It's a wash of relief through me and then a splash of
all the conflicts and strange compromises. I stick my head out from
behind the column, still in shadow, my gun at the ready as hers
surely must be. "It's me, Agent Scully."
  
     Her gun is pointing at me, but only for a moment. As she
lowers it to the ground she hides her face under a cloud of hair -
but I have seen that expression before. Pale and bright, eyes calm
but sharp, she looked at me like that a few moments before she shot
her partner and saved my life. It is a face I envy and dread and I
should have expected she would wear it tonight.
  
* * * * * * *

     Krycek shuddered as he came out from behind the darkened
column, of that Scully was sure. She could not have said why, but
he remained such a mystery to her that she settled for him keeping a
promise. He walked the few steps to the curb to meet her with a
lazy, arrogant sort of grace, easing his weapon back into his jeans
under his jacket. He would understand if she did not holster hers. It
sat in her hand, well-oiled and heavy, a cool marvel of mechanics,
violence held in abeyance by a few pounds of pressure. Sometimes
she hated it, but not tonight.
  
     Seven months she had waited, and he had not come. Seven
months she had endured first sarcasm, then annoyance, and finally a
cold, ragged silence from her partner while she waited, getting up
from his bed in the night, driving to Duke Street, scanning the open
space of the new Courthouse's streets for a silhouette which never
showed up. Seven months Krycek had made her wait and now he stood a
step below in the street as if in deference to their height 
difference. She lifted her chin and took her time looking at him. He
was pale, and as he reached up to scratch at long, thin scabs on his
neck, she saw that he had replaced the tooth she had broken seven
months ago. "Krycek," she said, and the name tasted like a foreign
spice on her tongue.
  
     He ducked his head at the name. Now that she had him,
Scully felt the overwhelming urge to push him, to tear him down to
bluntness and bone as she had done once before. She said it quietly, 
"Ganya," and his eyes flew to hers with shock and outrage and
something else. If it had been fear he hid it quickly, swallowing
everything into his mask of flippant boredom. Scully wondered if
he had forgotten about telling her his name, until she realized he
probably forgot nothing. Of regrets she could not say.
  
     He gave her a quick reproachful look and spoke: "I've been
in hiding, these past few months. I haven't got very much to tell
you. But I thought you'd at least want to know I kept my promise."
His voice ended on an up note, as if he were asking a question.
  
     "After seven months," she replied, and if the streetlights had 
been brighter she could have said surely she saw him shamed. "You
could have contacted either of us, left one of your cryptic notes."
He only shrugged.
  
     "Only way to do it," he replied. "You disappear just like that,
like a fist when you open your hand. Nobody knows which direction
to look." He rubbed his fingers together, feeling the callouses.
  
     Scully did not quite know how to react to him, so she pulled
out her cell phone and dialed Mulder's number. As she told him to
come, she kept her eyes on Krycek, who merely looked back at her
coolly. Mulder's atonal voice, flat in her ear, told her nothing
about his state of mind. The click in her ear signalled finality;
there was nothing to do but wait.
  
     So they waited, Krycek tracing idly at the zipper of his
jacket, his eyes cast downward. She crossed her arms, felt like a
schoolmarm, and uncrossed them. He lifted his chin to scratch once 
again at his scabs and Scully was struck in the gut by an invading
image: Krycek, lying prone, eyes rolled up in his head, throat
exposed and pale in the light of a stairwell. She remembered, with
force more visceral than the mere sight, of it his bitter uneven smile
that night, and that the whole left side of his face had been purple
by the next morning. She shook her head to be free of it.
  
     His eyes were quick; a glance at her seemed to diagnose
everything about her and she quailed internally under his gaze. To
cover her reaction, she said, "Thank you. For coming, I mean. I
didn't think you would." It was the first thing that entered her head.
  
     She did not think he would reply at all, only look at her with
those piercing eyes, when suddenly he looked away and said, "I
made you wait." Scully held her breath but didn't know why. "I'm
sorry." His shoulders sagged as if they carried a heavy burden. But
only for a moment; quickly he turned to confront the sound of an
engine, flexing his knees and reaching for his gun. Scully knew it
was Mulder, but she found herself in a half-crouch too. The car that
pulled up vomited forth Mulder's tense form without turning off its
lights. All three of them stood, squinting, varying shades of pale,
their sharply-drawn shadows reverse portraits cut jagged onto the
front columns of the Courthouse.
  
* * * * * * *
  
     Mulder and Scully spent the early hours of September first
hanging around with Krycek. Mulder found it marvelously instructive
-- not least in terms of the businesses still open in Alexandria
at that hour -- and wildly annoying. He drove, hunched in the front
seat, while Scully and Krycek threw significant glances at each
other. If that had not been bad enough, Krycek refused to just
talk in a public park or some place where distance could be 
achieved. "I'm not some dilettante out for a walk," he said, and
directed them to an all-night coffee place on Mount Vernon Avenue.
  
     So they crowded into a booth by the window, Krycek on one side
and Scully next to Mulder, who found himself afraid that his
opponent would guess what the entire bureau had not found out.
Mulder carefully kept his hands to himself. They all drank bad 
coffee each in respective solitude, Krycek poking at a pitiful
danish.
  
     When Mulder could stand it no longer, he paused to void
antagonism from his voice and asked, "Are you here to prove you
can keep a promise or do you have something for us?" He thought
he had phrased it well, but Scully frowned up at him thoughtfully.
 
     Krycek stuck his finger in the danish's blueberry filling.
"Both," he replied, licking the finger.

     Mulder spat, "Does this mean you have anything to prove
your wild allegations from this spring?" Scully put a hand on
Mulder's thigh under the table, squeezing lightly. Her face was a
miracle of neutrality.
  
     Across from them Krycek frowned for a long moment, and
said, "No. I can't prove it was you in that experiment. The only
reason I saw the file was a very illegal search at FutureCorp; they
aren't going to wave it under my nose. Especially in the current
state of things."

     "Which is?" asked Scully, guardedly. Her hand left Mulder's
thigh and he imagined she was pinching her own leg now.
  
     "A mess." Krycek's shrug was as ironic as a middle-level
bureaucrat could hope to achieve. "I made use of the body you left
me with, so some people in high places really don't like me now." 
  
     "Why would you do such a thing?" asked Scully, her tone in
no way betraying the disgust Mulder hoped she also felt.
  
     "The quickest way to figure out a machine is to throw a
wrench into the gearbox. Then you just watch which piece goes
flying off in which direction." Krycek smiled, a hard, brittle thing.
"Now I know the lay of the Big Cheeses. But I got away with it, for
now. I was lucky enough to have a charismatic boss who was
roundly insulted at having been second-guessed. I'm in OK shape,
with a few grudges on the side."
  
     Scully, ever on target, said, "Who is your boss?"
  
     "He doesn't tell me his name; safer that way, he says. I call
him Grand Master. He's a stuffy old Brit who likes to sneer at me
and boasted of having warned you of . . ." as if sensing himself in a
corner, Krycek slowed and looked down at his sticky fingers, "my
attempt on your life."
  
     As color bloomed in her cheeks, Mulder felt an odd distance
from Scully. Finally, he thought, she remembers we're dealing with
a killer. There was a savageness in that, a reminder to her to 
suffer, that he hated and he damned himself for thinking it. So he
asked nastily, "What do you have for us then?"
  
     "A name." Steadier ground, a simple transaction of information
for action, and Mulder saw Krycek relax his shoulders as if he
felt it as well. "Walker Harkness. He lives here in Washington. I
have no idea who he is, why he might be important. But I -- over-
heard -- he's being looked at for an extraction, maybe a kill.
That doesn't happen often," he admonished.

     "No," replied Scully in a tone that made Mulder take a gulp
of his coffee to get warm again. "Only with impertinent federal
agents."
  
     The shudder that overcame Krycek was unmistakable; the
mug in his hand rattled against the table in counterrhythm to his
shaking shoulders. Mulder thought: Scully did this to him. But he
could not connect the cause with the effect and found himself
squinting over at Krycek, who regained control of his body and
acted as if nothing had happened. "That's all I have right now. I
have to call up Grand Master in a couple of days. I may have more
for you then."
  
     Scully took a long swallow of her coffee and put down the
mug decisively. "How do we contact you?"

     "You shouldn't," answered Krycek, frowning at her. "I
mean, I don't think my cell phone is secure, and I'm not often at
the same land line twice. But I know where both of you live," and
they shared grimaces, "so I can leave you my what, my cryptic
little notes." Krycek's eyes crinkled as if it were a joke, but
Scully didn't laugh and Mulder didn't get it. Krycek dropped the
amusement like a dead rat and hunched down, his eyes ablaze. "I don't
need to tell you not to go around sharing information about me. Go
official with Harkness if you have to; make up something about his
parking tickets or anything. But you leave my name out of it. Got
that?"
  
     Mulder found himself nodding before he remembered that
Krycek was the enemy. What a terrible way to end a meeting.
  
* * * * * * *

     "Mom, you could have called tonight." Dana Scully wrapped her
fingers in the phone cord as she lounged in her partner's chair.
"You know I hate it when Mulder answers. It's awkward."
  
     "There's no reason for it, Dana. I just say hello to him,
and ask for you." Margaret Scully's voice was clear and strong, 
not a voice to say no to. She asked, "Did you get what I sent
you?" just as Mulder opened the door, juggling a file folder and
a potted anemone in luscious full bloom. He waggled his eyebrows
apologetically, and Scully leapt up to help him with his load,
cradling the phone to her shoulder.
  
     "Mulder just brought it in." Scully settled the flowerpot on
the desk, glanced around at her dusky surroundings, and sighed.

     "Good. He takes good care of you, you know. He called me
and told me you needed something to perk you up." Mulder was 
fussing with the folder he held. He rather pointedly did not look
at his partner nor at the red bell of the anemone on his desk. "He
offered to pay for it too. Why aren't you dating him, Dana?"

     Scully felt a sharp pain in her head, skewering her behind
the eyes. "Chuck called early this morning, woke me up. I'm sure
Bill will call as soon as the sun is up in California. I have to
go, mom."
  
     "Busy lady, can't spare any time for her aged mother. I
understand." Her rich alto laugh, fading to a reedy whistle. "A
year of no new growths. Just four years to go, right? Then you're
free?"
  
     "I'll be fine, mom. No cancer." At this Mulder turned to look
at her out of the corners of his eyes, as if she had not caught him
at that trick two weeks after she met him. She said her goodbyes
and turned to Mulder, who held up his folder with a flat look in
his eye.

     "Walker Harkness," he said, and Scully could tell he was trying
hard not to be petulant. "He's a government contractor, ex-navy. He
was arrested once for public drunkenness. When he was twenty-three."
He offered her the file, and she took his chair to have a look. It
did not make for a long read.
  
     As she closed the folder in her lap, Scully took a good look
at her partner and tried to diagnose his attitude. "You think
Krycek is sending us on a wild goose chase."

     "He's good at that," reminded Mulder sourly, and he sat in her
chair and messed with untended paperwork. "I've got Danny doing
more research, but I don't see where this could be going." Well, at
least so far he had backed her play, even if he complained every
second of it.
  
     Scully lowered her head, a gesture she belatedly realized sig-
nalled her acceptance, and jerked back up when her email beeped. She
crossed to Mulder's side and leaned over him to read, though he 
faced away from her. The data which filled her screen made her
thank God for inquisitive librarians. 
  
     "Mulder, have a look at this," she said, blinking at him in
the dimness of the room. She had the sensation that she had been
standing there for a while, but late nights with spies tended to
change one's perception of the passage of time. "I don't think you
should discount Krycek so easily."
  
     He turned, and read right next to her, tense as always when
they got so close, his hair touching her chin as she read over his
shoulder. "Walker Harkness, Annapolis class of '46 graduated a year
early because of the war, erstwhile Beltway bandit. Yes?" It was a
narrow turn for both of them as they faced each other, close enough
to kiss. Then Mulder gave a little hitch and backed away, careful,
as he had promised to be, about the difference between work and play.

     Wordlessly she pointed, then began to read out loud. "This is
from a recent bio from the Navy Alumni: 'University of Maryland,
visiting professor in applied physics, 1973-4. Schaefer Industries,
1974-1994.' Looks like he started his own company after that, con-
tracting to Defense. He patented a few radio parts in the seventies,
and with those profits he has helped back research into environmental
causes of cancer. He's not just a philanthropist; he's got a hard
science background." She made a noise under her breath as she made
the connection and pushed past him to the file cabinet. "Surely 
there's at least one case in here on the co-incidence of cancer and
electrical lines."
  
     Mulder thumbed the corner of his eye while he stewed. "There
are about fifteen of them, and if anybody the EPA should be looking
into them. But I thought you thought that was all false?"
  
     "There are a lot of ridiculous claims about what causes cancer,
Mulder," she said, and between them her months in Hell sat like a
troll guarding a bridge. She looked down before she went on. "I'm
only saying that this Harkness character might have been interested
in the possibility, and if he's run afoul of the . . . the people
Krycek works for, then maybe he really has found a credible environ-
mental carcinogen."
  
     He didn't reply but turned back to the email. "Too bad we 
couldn't get access to those contracts on such short notice. Just the
agencies' names. Lessee, we've got two DIA, an NSA, and three for
good old Defense. Business is booming." 

     "I bet," answered Scully. "It's what Chuck does for the Air 
Force -- digitizing and processing analog signals -- and it's becom-
ing quite an industry. I'm sure DoD has a hundred short-term con-
tracts out to local companies, and those are just the unclassified
ones. All in Silicon Valley East."
  
     Mulder nodded and said, "Harkness lives out in Vienna," and
she eyed him, feeling again the profound twinning of long partnership.
  
     "So, what," he extemporized. "So Harkness is playing with
radio signals, and discovers something. I guess it might be some
straight radio angle. I have a couple of files on government experi-
ments with radio waves, Synthetic Aperture RADAR tests on living 
subjects, but, you know, most of those date back to the early nuclear
era. They're smart enough nowadays not to go blowing up warheads a
hundred miles from Vegas."
  
     "Who would notice," muttered Scully, and ignoring his look of
comic outrage, went back to fingering the red-edged files. "Hark-
ness has spent his whole career in the employ of the military. He
would certainly have had access to classified data, before he re-
tired." She pursed her lips and watched as Mulder watched her. 
"Mulder, is anybody at the Pentagon still speaking to you?"
  
     "A few," chuckled Mulder, then became serious. "It's entirely
possible that he's gone off and started investigating on his own what
he saw with the Navy, and he's found something he shouldn't. That
could be why . . . these people have taken an interest."
  
     "I hate to stoke your ego," she said, swallowing a smile, "but
that sounds halfway logical."
  
     The way Mulder leaned against the desk implied he was actually
a cowboy at the bar. Scully wondered if that made her the damsel in
distress, and then she wondered where on earth her mind was this day.
"We still don't have anything to justify an official investigation
into this Harkness. Are you willing to do it on our own time?" 
  
     "Well," began Mulder, going to join her at the file cabinet,
"he's a contractor. He's got to expect to be audited once in a
while, maybe a check-up on his associates. We could drop by, intim-
idate him a little . . ."
  
     Scully took off her glasses and massaged her eyeballs in dismay.
"You make us sound like secret police."
  
     Mulder only looked up at her, his face a void in that way she
recognized from deep concentration. "For now," he said, "we have to 
be."
  
* * * * * * *
  
     Mulder sat in a nondescript car near Catholic University and
fought a losing battle against boredom. Although he had lived in the
greater Washington area for more than a decade, he had never both-
ered to look for a radio station that played good music, and he 
discovered to his dismay that there was no such thing to be found
on the FM dial. It was evening, and getting dark too soon for his
liking, and a pointy-faced woman in a ratty Subaru had passed him
three times, in hopes of taking his parking space.
  
     He watched the Metro train roll up to the station and presently 
Scully emerged, bouncing up the stairs, her hair vivid in the dim-
ness. She jogged over to him and climbed into the car, holding a
manila folder in her lap. Grimacing she asked, "Is this really the
music you listen to?" And then, "Has he moved?"
  
     "No," he expelled in exasperation, and turned the country
twangings to a news program. "On both counts. I'd have called
if he did. What did you find?"
  
     "More from Danny, who has a crush on me and is charging the
searches he runs to some Congressman from Oklahoma," said Scully,
the mildness of her smile reminding him of their first case together.
"I think that means you've corrupted another government employee."
Now it turned wicked and he found he liked that smile even more.
  
     "I aim to please," he drawled.
  
     With no apparent effort she switched gears and started reading
from her papers. "He's got two daughters, one a Lieutenant Commander
in the Navy, she's in Italy." The Navy got a smile, but then Scully's
face went deceptively bland. He waited with a little worry for her 
to continue. She said: "The other one died in the spring, the circum-
stances were vague in the newspapers, and the record is sealed by 
the family. If we want more on her we'll have to open a file."
  
     Mulder thought hard about dead daughters and Scully's soft
spots while he shifted in his seat to retrieve his badge. "You still
don't want to," he said, scrutinizing his laminated image so as not
to scrutinize his partner.
  
     She shifted next to him as if aware of his tactics. "If we make
it official we have to register our source. There's no way around 
it; we haven't got enough off Harkness's contracts to warrant any-
thing. It will be too obvious, they'll know it's Krycek, and we'll
be putting him in danger unnecessarily. This has to stay off the
books." Her argument was sound, if one could accept Krycek as a
source. Mulder hated to do it.
  
     She tilted her head as if conceding his difficulty, and turned
to look out the windshield. The brief silence broke with her indrawn
breath. "Is that him?"
 
     "Yes," exclaimed Mulder, shifting in his seat. "I still haven't
figured out what he could need at Mullen Library." 
 
     A hale, gray-haired man in a windbreaker hustled in that awkward
gait of men with replacement hips to a large blue minivan and
started up the engine. Mulder was on the verge of pulling out behind
him, when Scully put her hand on his elbow.
  
     "Look," she said, and Mulder watched as a nondescript car very
much like their own pulled into traffic behind Harkness's minivan.
Two heads showed in silhouette from the front seat, two men in trench
coats. "Grounds for a file on Harkness?"
  
     Feeling more than ever like a spy in a movie, Mulder drove after
the followers, south and west. In the dying light of afternoon the
traffic snarled and roared around him, but the caravan of federal
cars was easy to spot; Mulder swirled around a second circle and 
forbore remarking on the fact that Massachusetts was the only other
place in America where traffic circles were considered sane.

     "It would be a good idea," he temporized, "to have the Bureau
resources on this; Harkness strikes me as pretty skittish."
 
     Scully looked at him and suggested, "If he knows something,
then he can request protection, and we can keep Krycek out of things.
Let me talk to Skinner." He almost laughed, rediscovering her ability
to form compromises. 
     
     "I'll let you off at the building. Seems pretty clear Harkness
is going home," said Mulder. Then he thought seriously about what
an average citizen would do, if he were to find himself targeted.
  
     "Call me when you've news," she said, more in ritual than
anything else; they called each other when the weather changed.
  
     Mulder said without catching her eye, "He could disappear and
we never hear from him again." It was what he would do, if he did
not have a reason to be heard from. Scully gazed at him with gentle
eyes and he knew she had read his mind again.

     "If this turns out to be nothing," she said slowly, "if Krycek
lied to us, we can throw him to the wolves."
  
     Mulder eased to a stop in front of the Hoover Building before
he dared ask, "Do you intend to have him prosecuted?"
  
     "Eventually." Scully climbed out of the car without making eye
contact. "Not while he's our only source." And she shut the door and
hustled into the building. Mulder put on his blinker to get back
into traffic.
  
* * * * * * *  

     Late afternoon on a work day, and even so Scully expected
Danny to call any minute. She shuffled the papers on the desk she
shared with Mulder and wanted to laugh at herself, still at work,
still expecting others to work. She really had picked it up from
Mulder, in spades, if she had not suffered from it herself in the
first place. She inhaled through her teeth as she jerked away from
a paper cut and sat, looking down at the papers she was playing with.

     Playing. She knew Skinner was still in his office; he seemed
never to go home. And here she was in the basement, despite what she
had told Mulder, still phrasing in her head how she would ask for a
case number. And what was it she really had to present? A man who
was being followed for unknown reasons by unknown parties. Govern-
ment research contracts. Nerves from Krycek. It amounted to a hash
of paranoia, but no clear facts. Nothing for sure.

     Abruptly Scully stood, snatching up the printouts of the day's
work, and headed for the elevator before she could talk herself
into calling up Mulder and asking him to wait another day. It was
unfair and unrealistic and she knew it. She had a crick in her
shoulders and knew she was being cranky, but the prospect of baking
under Skinner's administrative glare was not something she relished
at this hour of day. 

     She was waiting in Skinner's anteroom when her cell phone
trilled. Mulder's voice, enthusiastic in her ear, reported that the
other followers had peeled off about six blocks from Harkness's
house. "Now's the time to approach him," he said.

     "So close to the house, Mulder," she sighed. "I don't have to
tell you that means they've got his house bugged or under surveill-
ance." Scully blinked in weary anticipation at Skinner's new 
secretary, who gave her a sullen look in reply. It beat the intimi-
dated cringe of most of his secretaries, of which he went through
many, but not by much.

     "It's about time," Mulder was saying, "that we acted instead
of reacted, don't you think?" And then he waited, as if he did
expect her to answer. She didn't know what to say.

     "Call me if anything happens." It was the best she could muster
under the circumstances. And they hung up, without saying goodbye,
as always. Scully thought, as she glanced around the fluorescent-
lit office, that if they ever actually made use of the standard
phrases of conversation with each other they would lapse into
hapless cacophony.

     Skinner's secretary stuck her head into his office and gestured
Scully over with a frown. The ringing of her phone stopped her in
the doorway, and she answered it sharply: "What is it, Mulder?"

     "Hello?" shouted a southern-accented voice over a burst of 
static. "Agent Scully?"

     "Danny." She sighed. Efficiency in others wasn't always helpful.
"I'm about to go into a meeting, Can it wait?"

     She examined the grain of the wooden door while Danny's soft-
edged lilt said, "No ma'am, I think you'll want to know this. It's
about those contracts you asked me to track down?"

     "Yes?"

     "Well, Freedom of Information would take up to 21 days, you
know? And I knew you wanted them quick-like. So I went and checked
the Requests For Proposals file? And matched the contract number
back to the RFP number, you know how they code them so the contract
is clearly labeled?" Skinner pulled his door open in front of
Scully and stopped short, leveling his eyebrows at her. She stuck
up her finger for a minute of silence, and he turned away, sucking
on his teeth.

     "Danny, what do I need to know."

     Scully would have regretted her tone except that it got results.
"Two of the contracts to DIA so far, neither of them classified.
One of them's to design a kind of lossless digital sound format,
in partnership with a company in California. The other one is in
microlithography. That's --"

     Scully felt her fingertips brushing the door in front of her,
the sensation dulled as if she wore mittens. "I know what it is."
Skinner heard something in her voice and turned back to her in
alarm.

     "Wasn't there a case you had, a while back, with a micro-
processor of unknown origin? That lab nut of yours was calling me
at all hours for research help."

     "Yes." She closed her eyes, not knowing whether to thank Krycek
or damn him for getting her into this. She only opened them again
when she felt Skinner's hand at her elbow. He guided her into his
office and shut the door, then withdrew to stand behind his desk,
hands on hips. "Wait a second, Danny, I thought Harkness was a radio
expert. What was he doing with a computer hardware contract?"
Scully glanced at her supervisor, who eyed her back.

     "Testing, looks like," said Danny impassively. "The text of
the RFP looks like it's for testing the machines to make sure they
can withstand types of EM radiation. It mentions cellular channels,
and like that." His tone, diffident but curious, made Scully
inexplicably short with him.

     "Thank you for your help," she said.

     "Does this mean Skins tickets on Sunday?" Hopefulness, after
what he had told her.

     "Danny," she replied, with more force than she felt, "Mulder
owes you the whole stadium." And she hung up on him with a click.
Skinner, standing expectant, opened his mouth, but she spoke first.
"We've been researching a case, sir," she said.

* * * * * * *
  
     "Mr. Harkness?" Mulder stood on the steps of a brick house in
Fairfax County, in a neighborhood that cost half a million a pop
hands down.
  
     "Yes?" The old man emerged, looking well for his seventy-odd
years, lined and stiff but still in possession of all his hair and
teeth. Mulder took a moment to look him up and down, comparing him
to his own father, who had been killed not far from that age. The
sharp blue of Harkness's eyes suggested that he was aging better.
"What do you want? Have you been following me?"
     
     Mulder realized all of a sudden that he could not lie to this
old man. "Mr. Harkness, I'm with the FBI." He showed his badge, the
timeworn gesture. "I don't quite know how to ask you this, sir. I
heard a rumor that a criminal organization I can't name is . . . 
interested in your work. I can't confirm anything . . ." But Hark-
ness's face was confirmation enough, gray as the bark of the oak
trees in his front yard. "Sir, you do know what I'm talking about,
don't you? There's something you're working on, something you've
figured out, which might be dangerous to the wrong people . . ."
  
     As he trailed off Mulder watched Harkness age a decade, more,
as his eyes went to long focus and his hands began to tremble. The
man's mouth worked a little, and he turned to Mulder, as if he
would deny it, as if he could say it was all a joke. Harkness did
not like what he saw and examined his feet as he said, "Yes," and
"Please come inside."

     Harkness regained some of his color by the time he sat on his
couch and wrapped his hands around a stiff shot of whisky. Mulder
wrinkled his nose before he could stop himself, but Harkness wasn't
looking. Mulder did not quite know how to proceed, now that he had
blunderingly got Harkness's attention. "Uh, what can you tell me?"

     "I --" Harkness faltered, shoulders bowed. "My daughter. She
was always a strange child; so unlike her sister. She was the
nervous type, you know, I think she married a local boy so she could
be close to home. She left him a few years ago, was gone for days,
and when she went back to him she claimed she had been kidnapped
but she wouldn't say who had done it. I thought she was lying, and
so did her husband." Harkness took a swig and Mulder began to
want one too.

     Harkness didn't notice his audience's change. Mulder looked
around the room, at the bronze barometer on the wall, the sailing
books on the shelves. There were photos in wooden frames on the
wall; he moved closer to look at them and saw Harkness, with hair
more brown than grey, with his arm around a woman of perhaps thirty.
Harkness was smiling, but the woman was not.
  
     "Kathleen had a group of friends, these last few years. They
all had a scar like she did, on the back of the neck." A thick
gnarled finger snaked up to Harkness's neck in a demonstration he
did not realize was unnecessary. "She said a few of them had taken
out microchips from under the scar. I met one of them, saw his scar,
worked with the chip. I destroyed it in the process, I'm afraid.
But it couldn't be a fake; it was technology I'd never seen before."
Profundity in the bottom of a warm yellow glass of whisky. Mulder
was cold.
  
     "Where is that man now?" he asked.
  
     "He died," said Harkness, and Mulder breathed out slowly. "Of
some rare cancer. That's why Kathleen never took out her chip; she
said everyone who did got the cancer. She thought she was safe. She
had no idea." Harkness put down his whisky on the side table to
bury his head in his hands.
  
     "What happened to her?" asked Mulder warily.
  
     "She disappeared one night. Took her car, left her husband
behind, just went away. We called the police, searched for her
frantically -- I, I thought she was suicidal." Harkness looked up,
sought out the eyes of the agent who stood uselessly in his living
room. Then he looked away, back at his hands, which were empty.
"They identified her by her car's registration, a few days later.
She drove out into the countryside, to a mountain out in the Blue
Ridge."

     Mulder didn't want to ask. "She died in the mass immolation at
Skyland Mountain?"
  
     "Yes," said Harkness, and his sharp eyes belied the weary
wrinkled face. "Yes, she did. How did you know?"
  
     "I think," said Mulder, and he said it very carefully, "that
we have enough for you to warrant federal protection." He pulled out
his phone and dialed Skinner's number.
  
* * * * * * *

     I suppose there are better places to conduct illegal business
over the telephone, but a street corner will do for now. I have to
get out of my apartment sometimes, just have to, and if Grand
Master wants me to call, I call, whether I'm at home or in a brothel.
It actually is great fun, connecting the old gentleman with
prostitution in my head, especially while I'm talking to him. "Alex, 
are you listening to me?" he asks, haughty like an evil queen in an
adventure comic. "I do hope you are writing this down, Alex; I 
wouldn't want you to be late."

     I hold the mini-tape recorder closer and tell him yes, sulkily,
the wayward child called to heel. I swear, the prefab roles he
chivvies people into; how he got to the top with such boxed-up
thinking I don't know. "I'll be picking you and this Crawford guy up
at National, you'll get your own luggage, the new terminal, no later
than 7:15. I know how to listen, sir."

     "And please," he says, with his oppressive amusement, "a car
I wouldn't be ashamed to ride in." I would call him an arrogant
little bastard but he is the one who pays my bills.

     That is his exit line so I hang up, pocket the recorder and
start walking, my hand in my jacket, my crazy foreboding prickle
settling in between my shoulders. I can't explain the feeling but I
have learned the hard way to trust it. It may be something psychic
-- hey, why not -- or spikes in my usual paranoia, or Spidey-sense,
or just the minutiae of being observed that my unconscious picks up
and broadcasts, ever louder, till I finally react to it. Either way,
the last time I ignored it Mulder threw me down a flight of stairs.

     So I case the area while I walk. There aren't many people;
there never are in this one-horse city, even in the nightspots. I 
can hear the thump of music but nobody's come outside for some air.
No witnesses if one of the factions is gunning for my head. I am
about eight blocks from Dupont, where at least there may be late-
night dogwalkers, so I change course, sticking to the edge of the
street. As I am waiting for a light to change near the underpass I
make him, and thank my animal nervousness. Not too tall, slumped
shoulders, like an out-of-towner heading back to his hotel after a
long fruitless night of lobbying. Except that the Marriott is up
the hill away from us and a lobbyist would be burning the cash
taking a taxi.

     I haven't got a great deal of time before the Circle, where he
might peel off in favor of a colleague and I'll have to start all
over again. I duck down Q Street and into a little driveway next to
some chic restaurant. It's shallow and half-lit and I could be corn-
ered in here. A shitty place to defend, but then, I am attacking.

     True to form, my lobbyist turns instead of heading on
toward the Circle and slows up, his steps the only noise now. He
must know I'm in the driveway, or somewhere. It's a terrible place
to stage an assassination, so he wants to talk, which means he's not
working for a faction. The relief of that is so huge that suddenly
I'm smiling in the dark, looking forward to this encounter.

     It's criminally easy to snatch him by the collar as he steps
tentatively in my way and I throw him against the wall while he
chokes. His weapon, once nestled in a shoulder holster, goes into
the soft underside of his chin, and words spill out of his mouth like
blood.

     "Please, I'm just here to convey words from a colleague."
His hands are on his head in the classic position and he's already
given everything away. Criminal, the people getting hired today. I
keep my body against him and the gun at his face as I tell him to
start talking. He has awful breath, and too much gut. He hasn't
chased down a suspect in a while. He sweats as he tells me: "I was
told to approach you if I could, and ask you for a meeting between
you and my employer. At your choosing of course. This is regarding
some . . . information we believe you have, for which we'd be
willing to pay. Handsomely," he adds, like a fool.

     I show him my teeth and ask, "Even with a gun in your face
you keep names out of it? You've got more balls than me." And he
struggles, protesting, so I place the muzzle at his temple and he
goes still. "Doesn't matter," I tell him, and back off. It strikes 
me as funny but he sees no joke. "Tell your boss no. I don't care
who you work for - and don't think I don't recognize those government
manual tactics - I don't talk to messengers and I don't take kindly 
to being surveilled. If he wants to talk he can address me directly."
I remove the clip and give him back his gun, not unkindly I think,
but his look is poison. It's either the funniest thing I've seen in
a long time or the saddest. I tell him: "You haven't got the talent
to be copping the cloak-and-dagger horseshit."

     He doesn't jump on me as I walk away. He doesn't pull a
spare clip from his pocket and put three bullets in my back. He
stands there panting and I round the corner and leave him behind.
Too easy by half, I know, and they might even have a sniper or an
abduction unit waiting, but I'm too damned tired to work out
another escape route. The Metro embraces me with its open arms,
and I descend that endless escalator into hell or somewhere else
halfway safe.

* * * * * * *

     The chip. It dominated Scully's thoughts as she left
Skinner's efficient and chilly briefing. She had left Mulder behind
and didn't care; he didn't have a master switch embedded in his
flesh. Nine men in Skinner's spartan office and she made an odd
tenth, sitting small in her chair and saying nothing. Mulder had
made up a reasonable story for his contact with Harkness, and
after all, it didn't matter, since everyone wanted to know about
Harkness's research. Nobody had mentioned the chip overtly;
nobody had needed to. The meeting had been largely a formality, a
chance to meet the pockmarked, grinning supervisor from Fort
Meade named Vygotsky and his crew of analysts.

     No Such Agency, he had joked. Still stuck in the Cold
War. Scully had no idea how Skinner had managed to call in the
NSA, but the likelihood of encoded messaging, by whatever
means Harkness was playing with, was too great to be ignored.
She wondered if the Agency could be trusted and then she
wondered when she had gotten so paranoid.

     Skinner gave her a look as she fled, a look she refused to
acknowledge. He knew too much; he knew about the chip and her
weakness and Mulder's claustrophobic protection of her. Skinner
had proved himself trustworthy again and again, but she couldn't
expose herself to him. She had felt his eyes on her when Mulder
spoke quickly about Kathleen Kasinger, nee Harkness, and her skin
had burned as if rubbed with dry ice. At least he had said nothing;
the analysts saw her merely as an agent, one whose scowl hopefully
caused them to take her seriously.

     She should be there to supervise the invasion of Harkness's
nice suburban home herself, she reasoned as she pushed her way
into the already crowded elevator. Vygotsky and his crew should
be setting up this evening, under the watchful eyes of an FBI 
guard. She saw Mulder's face as he emerged from Skinner's office,
full of that pensive tautness, and she quickly looked away from
his gaze. If Harkness really had found something, if he really did
know the frequency at which messages could be sent, then . . .
then she might at last have some answers. 

     The drive to Georgetown was, as always, a crosstown
disaster, and by the time she let herself into her apartment she was
stalking with angry tension. Resolutely she turned off her cell
phone, unwilling to answer Mulder's troubled calls, and she kicked
her heels across the living room. When she had, first the left
and then the right, she stood panting in her stocking feet for a long
moment and slumped into her chair. In the dark, her apartment was
round and soft, well-appointed with house plants she was careful to
replace when they died. All of the furniture matched, the color
schemes were thought out in advance and her apartment was
utterly, emptily alien.

     On bad days like this she often called her mother to set up a
shopping date for the weekend. Tonight she refused herself that
luxury and breathed in the controlled air of a room which has no
open windows. If Mulder had made a habit of spending at least one
night here a week, he left no evidence of that fact, and his compli-
ance with her secretive demands darkened her mood further. She
was thirty-four years old, and living alone, and she spared a moment
to thank God she was allergic to cats so at least she couldn't
fulfill that stereotype. If only, she thought, and mercilessly
suppressed the wishing-game. She knew what she would wish for,
and knew she wouldn't know what to do if she got it.

     Involuntarily a hand slipped up to her neck, to caress the
soft hairs which covered her nape, finding without the need to seek
the small scars where chips had entered, left and re-entered her
skin. She knew if she pressed hard enough she would be able to feel
the metal beneath the surface. A sad memory assailed her, of poor
shy Pendrell showing her the capabilities of her chip, pointing at
her a face full of curiosity and concern and respectful distance. And
now he too was dead, another ally sliced away like the breast of a
turkey till only the picked skeleton remained.

     Disgusted with her own morose mood, Dana Scully hopped from
her stuffed chair and turned on several lights. She flipped on
the TV for company and raided her freezer for the last of her
microwave dinners, and resolved to get on with things with the
minimum of self-pity.

* * * * * * *

     I've been riding the Metro for twenty minutes and I'm nowhere
near my apartment. Either I really am losing it, or my paranoia
instincts are on overdrive tonight. I was just getting used to the
idea of having my own place again; I don't want to go back to living
out of my pockets. I find myself on the yellow line before I even
know where I'm going, and I watch the lights of Rosslyn as the
train crosses over the black Potomac in the dark. We come into
Pentagon station and I know where I've unconsciously headed.

     So I go over to his place. He is there, of course, where else
would Mulder be on a Tuesday night, still half-dressed for work and 
stretched out on that couch of his. I don't need to surveill him to
know that. The only light coming through his blinds is that unearth-
ly color of television.

     I knock on his door. I do it before it occurs to me to
wonder why I should be polite. Then it is done, the wood making
its resonant noise, and I stand still with knuckles poised in the
crackling silence. This is stupid, I think, staring at the two golden
digits nailed to his door. I can't talk to him here. What if they
have bugged his place again?

     The door opens and he is standing there with his gun out but
pointed at the floor, barefoot in dress pants and an A shirt, what
they're calling a wifebeater nowadays. "What," he asks in that tone
that summarizes all the times he has confronted me. His eyes
though, they dart around me, seeking out hidden watchers. I lower
my hand and gesture and he stands aside as I cross the threshold.
Just like that. I can smell the frustration in him as he locks the
door behind me.

     His place has not changed in all the years I've known him.
It's dark -- maybe he takes environmentalism too much to heart --
and the television glows like some otherworldly furnace. The
reasonable bachelor mess, the ragged running shoes, the shuffling
piles of paper on the coffee table. I wonder if he will sleep here
tonight, insisting on the TV for a companion, drowsing fitfully and
shuddering awake and claiming he's fine. He did so the only night I
ever watched over him, when Scully was gone and Duane Barry
was dead and I knew I would soon be gone too. Of course I had
given him a great deal to dream about. Later, when we were both in
prison, I don't think either of us slept at all.

     I am dredging up bad memories for no good reason. I turn
to the TV and he has been watching a spy movie. It makes me
terribly sad so I laugh and turn it up. We can talk under cover of a
car chase. "This couldn't wait," I begin, and he comes close to hear
me. He doesn't put down his gun, but he eases the safety back on.
At least he is not manhandling me. "Bad news."

     "Is this an implicit statement that I'm being watched again?" 
He is squinting at me and suddenly I am afraid he will just dismiss
me, leave me hanging out to dry. I don't want to have to depend on
his pique.

     So I play casual, throwing myself on his couch. "Not from
my end," I allow. "But I've already told you I'm not privy to
everything." He has come closer again, sat tentatively on the couch
at its far end. His fingers play uselessly with the papers before
him as he puts down his gun. "I got approached this evening," I
tell him, meeting his surprised eyes. "Or rather, I was followed
and I jumped the guy. Somebody's watching us."

     He can read my grimness or else he has come to the same
conclusions I have. "It's not -" he begins, and tries again. "The
other faction wouldn't try to recruit you, would they?" His tone is
so childishly plaintive.

     "No. Coffin Nail ran that bunch. They wouldn't recruit me
for a soccer match."

     He makes a wry face, interpreting the nickname accurately, 
then he sobers. "He couldn't be alive, could he? Trying to dupe you
-- or all of us -- into something?"

     "The Group had him shot dead," I counter with some irritation.
I wish I had better sources for that whole period than vague rumors.
It sounds like it was a trying time, thanks to the man in front of
me.

     "There are ways he could have survived," he says, and
makes to get up before he remembers why we're muttering to each
other. So he counts off on his fingers, twitching with speculative
energy: "There was too much blood for anyone to have survived.
But what if he had anticipated a hit, packed away a few pints in
advance the way they do for surgery patients? A minor injury could
have been tricked up to seem fatal. Or he could have staged the
whole thing, used someone else's blood entirely. There was no
body, and the prints at the scene matched nobody in any of the
databases."

     "You've got his fingerprints?" I blurt out.

     "Yeah," he answers, then cocks his head sardonically. "If
they're his prints. If he didn't manhandle some kid into that room
before killing him. I've got them on file, but they don't match
anything else."

     Hell. Too much to hope.

     "I don't," I tell him slowly, "think it was him. He tried to
kill me twice; he won't try to meet with me."

     He is blinking slowly and I can tell he has withdrawn into
his skull for the complex computations we need right now. "Another
group," he offers finally. "It might be a third faction, or the
Russians --"

     "No." I cut him off, and he goes keen. "The Russians want
me dead."

     The look he gives me promises I'll be interrogated about that
later. "Then the French," he tries, going on even after I shake
my head. "They obviously aren't in on something, or else they
wouldn't have bought information from you."

     I shrug. What else can I do. He remembers what a disaster that
situation was.

     "All right. The French, maybe. A splinter faction of the Group.
Or -- do you think it could have been a government agency?" He
points at me wide-eyed.

     "Definitely," I tell him, caught up in the lightning exchange
of partners once again after all these years. He is animated, lit
from inside, leaning towards me unconsciously.

     "So, DIA, CIA, NSA, maybe FBI antiterrorism? The military?"
He stops abruptly, and the half-grin wipes itself from his face.
He stands up and paces away from the couch, away from me, away
from that rapport that sprang up so easily again between us.
"Does this have to do with Harkness, with his research?"

     I'm not up for a fight this evening. "I don't know," I sigh.
"I'm just trying to warn you. So you can keep your eyes open." I
can feel the ache in my eyeballs and the raw irritation around my
stump.

     "Krycek," he says, in that tentative tone, and I open my eyes
to him. He is both curious and hostile and he looks me up and down 
with his arms crossed in front of his chest. I have to prompt him 
with a shrug before he says anything else. "About Tunguska. Why
did you? Follow me under that wire?"

     What a can of worms. I roll my shoulders but there's no
massaging away this tension. "When it became clear where you
were going, I realized I could get you arrested and thrown out of
the country none the wiser, or I could try to let you in on a couple
of the projects Culmination didn't know about. Obviously things
went a little haywire." There, that's close enough to the truth. He
doesn't need to know about my begging and wheedling, my pulling
rank and making threats and cursing their mothers in French to
avoid their taking him into the woods and executing him summarily.

     He is carefully not looking at my arm, but massaging his
own, right where I know they injected the cure. His voice comes
out thick with repressed fear: "What they did to me, that was part
of it?"

     "That was all of it, Mulder," I say wearily. "Now you're
immune. That makes you a lot more qualified for the situation we're
facing." He is mulling that one over and I really am not interested
in rehashing that period in detail. "I gotta go."

     He takes a step back as I stand, as if I'm catching. In the
gloom of his apartment he stands a little defensively next to his
television and stuffs his hands in his pockets. I can see the 
tension in his mouth as he looks for something smart to say. But
even after I give him my back and head for the door he keeps quiet.
I close the door behind me, hear the lock click closed, and still
he says nothing. As I walk away down that nice, sane, well-lit
hallway I imagine him standing like that, wrinkling his forehead
as he wonders what to do next.

* * * * * * *

     Mulder sat on his couch, by coincidence in the same spot
Krycek had just vacated. It was still warm from the other man's
body heat. It bothered Mulder so he stood up, moved over a foot
and sat again. He did not like to think about Krycek in such
immediate, corporeal terms. Unwillingly he remembered the night
they had spent in a Russian prison, Krycek in a t-shirt and his own
clothes not much warmer. They had curled around each other,
shivering helplessly, without a word or an acknowledgement of
their predicament between them. He felt again Krycek's chest
expanding under his arm as he sighed, the warm steam they made as
they breathed each other's air. Mulder had not slept at all that
night; nor, he suspected, had Krycek.

     He used to think he liked complicated questions, like the
Rubik's Magic Puzzle, which he had played with for two hours
before he realized it could be solved in three moves. But he could
put down a puzzle in frustration if it wasn't going anywhere, and
this mess just insisted on staying in his way. He knew Scully liked
it even less, but not because it was so frustratingly opaque. She had
fled promptly from the Harkness briefing, with that pinched look on
her face which always troubled him. She either did not hear or did
not answer his offer to come over later. And so Mulder sat alone in
his apartment, eating soggy Cheez-Its by the light of the television.

     He could tell Krycek knew more than he was saying; but
Krycek always knew more than he said. Maybe that chain-smoking
lunatic really was still alive. Mulder remembered with no small
shame how easy it had been to fake a death, to act tangentially to
his previous ideologies while everyone huddled over the dead body.
He did not like to remember that night, dragging a corpse into his
apartment and dressing it in his clothes. He had gone to Scully and 
asked for her help, unable to just fire a shotgun into its emotion-
less face without her moral authority. Another resource for late
sleepless nights, and another reason he was still sitting, tense, in
front of the television.

       It bothered him in so many ways, itching like a healing scar,
and not least because they had to rely on Krycek for their infor-
mation. A more changeable source he had not yet suffered, even his
contact in the United Nations, who had kept quiet for the past
several months. Krycek could be lying, or he could be absolutely
crazy, or he could be twisting the truth to fit some agenda of his
own. Mulder admitted to himself that his impulsive participation in
Krycek's little game had been unwise. He could still remember the
shock on Krycek's face after he had kissed him in a torn-up building
in Connecticut. Shock and revulsion, or shock and respect -- it 
didn't bear thinking about, not the game, not their mutual burning
hatred, not their original partnering. It didn't bear thinking about.

     Mulder stood and muted the TV, running his hand through
his hair as if he could wash these thoughts out of his head.
Everything was spinning out of control, as if he had uncovered the
toe of a dormant giant and was feeling the whole body heave
beneath his feet. Scully at least -- the phone rang. He stared at
it like an idiot and then shook himself and answered it, knowing it
would be bad news.

     "It's me," came Scully's voice, oddly small. "Are you busy?"

     A question like that might have been an invitation in another
tone. He cocked his head against the phone and answered
curiously: "No."

     "I -- what time is it?" He could hear now that her voice was 
thick with sleep, and he wondered at the opposition of their res-
ponses to such stress. He doubted he would sleep tonight at all.

     "It's almost eleven," he supplied, smiling a little. "You've
been sleeping."

     "I was dreaming. It was -- strange. I felt like I have to be 
somewhere, but I don't know where." Mulder felt a cold hand
sliding up his chest, like water come to drown him. He felt it close
around his throat when she said: "It felt like that when..."

     "Skyland Mountain," they said in unison, her voice high and
hushed and his in toneless counterpoint.

     "The chip," he cursed, and felt in his pocket for his keys.
"I'll be right there. Just -- just don't move. Lock yourself in 
if you have to." He hung up on an almost-heard protest and sprinted
down to his car on the street.
  
     The George Washington Parkway was a waste land so he
drove with trembling control, sure that no matter how far above the
limit he sped he would not be in time. They would be identifying
her by her teeth in another massacre, and he smelled that awful
acrid smell of burned hair in his nostrils as he realized his eyes
were blurring with tears of anxiety. The Key Bridge fled behind him
and he navigated Georgetown in a daze, heading steadily north and
east in a zigzag until he found her block and her car still parked
on it.

     Her car sat still in its space, and its presence did nothing 
to reassure him. A light shone in her window, a thick bright yellow
in his keyed-up senses, and he abandoned any interest in parking
legally, pulling the parking brake where he was and galloping up the
brick steps to her segment of the townhouse.

     Mulder used his key and rushed about her apartment, unable
to shout her name, seeking any evidence that she was still there. He
banged the bedroom door open only to squint into the light - and
saw her, sitting huddled in her bed, her orange hair in wild 
disarray.

     "Mulder," Scully said stupidly, as if she had run into him in
the hall of the Hoover Building. "I didn't move." Her hand still
curled around the phone, which now droned its little protest.
Massive blue eyes made her face even paler. Some sort of tension 
filled the room, such that Mulder didn't quite dare bound across the
empty space and snatch her up as he wished to.

     "How do you feel?" he asked instead, feeling like a dolt,
standing still half-dressed in business clothes in the doorway. He 
stuffed his keys back into his pocket as she shrugged and
swallowed and regained something that made her essentially Scully.

     "I'm all right," she sighed finally, and stood in her practical
pajamas as if to shoo him home. She came very close before he
dared put his hands on her shoulders, and felt the frightened energy
which still waited there. Scully looked up at him with that sharp
face and he saw the corners of her mouth go down. As he folded
her to his chest he felt her shudder run through him.

     She controlled it well, and pulled away sooner than Mulder
might have expected, her eyes dry. "Do you," he began, and then
changed what he was going to say, "do you want me to stay?"

       "It was just a dream," she said as if in reply. Scully moved
around the room, straightening her bedspread, and then widened
her scope till she was sweeping imaginary crumbs from the counter-
tops in the kitchen. He followed her quietly, waiting for her to
snap at him to go home. But she didn't snap, only pulled down two
mugs as she set the kettle to heating. "Just a dream," she repeated,
as he settled himself into one of the kitchen chairs and examined the
anemone flower nodding wisely in the corner, feeling both very much
at home and like an intruder. With her back to him as she fetched
tea bags, she offered, "I'm glad you came though."
  
     Curiosity pinched him on the forearms even as he decided
not to badger her on this. He could reasonably guess at the worries
which tugged at her, and would not shame her by bringing them to
the fore. There was nothing he could say, so he said nothing.

     As the kettle warmed and her little ministrations with the
teabags waned, Mulder saw her grasp the counter with both hands,
as for support, before she turned back to face him. "If you don't
mind," she said, and he heard that hard burr of tears in her voice,
"I'd like you to stay here for the next few days. To be safe," she
added. He nodded helplessly, with his eyes on the countertop.
Silence began between them, and Scully filled it by pouring the hot
water for tea.

* * * * * * *

     Scully still didn't like the idea, and had told Mulder so, but
she sat with him in the greasy diner all the same. A day spent
watching over Harkness, or rather, watching as Harkness badgered
the radio technicians in a jargon she could not quite follow. A day
spent doing some badgering of her own, interrogating the neat
identical men on any tests they had performed, any broadcasts 
they had made or received. Resolute and unanimous claims that
they had only done inventory, whole catalogues of wiring and
technological effluvia, and no answers for Dana Scully. She did
not want to be here. But Mulder had come when she called, late
at night and Krycek standing at hand, so she backed her partner's
play in return. Somehow, though, she felt out of place at Florence's
Eats.

     Mulder continued to peruse the menu breezily, as if he came
here often, while Scully felt the headache of a foreign language as
she tried to translate blue plates into caloric contents, inhaling
the heady addictive smell of deep-fat frying. Her fingers slipped
in worn spots on the laminated page and she decided, looking around
at the clientele, that onion rings were alive and well and heartily
enjoyed. Scully watched carefully, comparing herself and Mulder to
the other customers; in jeans and a sweatshirt she blended in
reasonably, but she had no idea where Mulder had come up with a
Peter Frampton t-shirt. Across from her, Mulder lounged in his half
of the booth, gripping his left bicep in his fingers as he eyed her
reading materials with poorly hidden laughter.

     "The pie is really good here," he offered in chortling
apology.

     She was thinking up something pert to say when she saw her 
supervisor, looking like an extraordinarily terse truck driver, pull
open Florence's door and scan the area. Without his glasses, and
under a maniacally molded baseball cap, Walter Skinner's normally
beady eyes became positively frightening. He stalked towards them,
and Scully belatedly gestured for him to sit next to her in the deep
booth.

     His ragged short-sleeve Green Machine shirt revealed hard-
muscled upper arms. She had seen them before, seen him practically
naked, and wondered again why he always kept his sleeves so fastid-
iously rolled down at work. She handed him the menu, which he
accepted without breaking the force of his glare at Mulder.

     "Have you got a reason," he began, breathing his words, "for me
to play dress-up with you two?"

     Mulder only leaned back and fingered his menu. "I hear the 
special today is meat loaf. Sounds good to me." His eyes slitted and
he glanced from one tablemate to the other and back. "Maybe when 
we've all got something to chew on we can get to the meat of this
matter."

     So they suffered in silence. Scully felt herself trapped in
the booth and woefully out of step as she reached for her milkshake,
a third menu, and later, her hamburger, awash in a sea of french
fries. The men before her just compared eyeballs and it was driving
her insane. She apologized for the fourth time, reaching for the
salt, when Skinner rounded on her suddenly, with the pepper in
his hand, and cracked a strained smile.

     "Unlikely situation." He gave up on the smile and she accepted
the pepper with what she hoped was sufficient grace. "Marines are
supposed to be ready for anything, but...." His ironic cock of the
head was so very Mulder that she glanced across the table to make
sure her partner was still there. Mulder merely goggled at her and
pushed onion rings into his mouth, messily. Skinner continued in a
low voice, "But what do they say Marine stands for? My Ass Rides
In Navy Equipment."

     Scully very nearly choked on her chocolate shake, though 
whether it was as a result of the awful timeworn joke or the fact
that her boss was telling it she could not have said. Mulder raised
his eyebrows but did not smile. She watched his pleasantly
misanthropic mien as he calculated the social requirements:
courtesy, friendly overture, establishment of common ground, self-
deprecating joke. As if she had scripted it herself, he concluded
that it was time and started in.

     "We have a new informant," he said, and Skinner stiffened
beside her, crunching hard on a french fry.

     A long pause ensued, in which she imagined that Skinner's lips
moved in withheld curses. Maybe he was just chewing.

     "Is there a reason you're telling me?" he asked finally, 
reaching up to reposition glasses he realized he wasn't wearing.

     "I don't want to keep you out of the loop sir, but this is 
something -- new. This new source is a new avenue into a
conspiracy we've only grasped after in the past."

     Skinner let out a sigh. "Don't even tell me you're venturing
outside the legal arena."

     "I won't," said Mulder. "But in your present position there 
are things it's not safe to know."

     Scully dared not react but she wondered, internally, what 
exactly Mulder's motives in this were. Surely it could not just be 
respect.

     "But you want me to know," Skinner prompted. Mulder's eyes 
were bright and full like moons, staring into his boss's face for 
something Scully couldn't see. She forgot about her shake and
watched the two men warily. 

     "I'd rather you not be broadsided if things begin to come to
light." Now the silent communication passed two ways, and Scully 
was excluded entirely. She had at times felt a distant affinity 
for Skinner, hedged as he was by policy and dignity, despite her
past doubts about to whom he swore his oaths. As she watched him
break eye contact and press his fingers into his eye sockets, she
began to doubt that she understood his actions at all.

     "This sounds like more than anything you've done before," 
Skinner said.

     "It is," replied Mulder, and his voice went strange. "That's
why I wanted you in on it. I know that you would never betray our
confidence."

     The ambient sounds of the busy diner drowned Scully's ears
while the two men before her sealed a pact of which she was not a
part. Finally she cleared her throat, looking reproachfully at
Mulder, and guided him back to the game plan. "We know you
spent several years in the military, sir," Skinner gestured away her
automatic honorific, "and it's rumored you have -- friends. In the
right places."

     His keen look was not a light she cared to bake under, and 
Mulder magically jumped in to help her. "Harkness's case, it's of the
highest importance, I think you'll agree. He was on the technical
side of the intelligence community for several years, and we thought
--" Mulder didn't finish the sentence, so Scully did.

     "We'd like, if it's possible, to meet some of your unofficial
channels." Skinner's eyes went round and he jerked his head to look
her full in the face. Scully, withering under the scrutiny,
remembered how hard it could be to back her partner's play.

* * * * * * *

     It's an open secret in my profession that a good operative is
afraid of the dark. Anybody who expects to keep his head has a little
something, not a full-blown phobia, but a grabbing annoyance of
anxiety when things are too still and objects have no shape. I never
used to have it, but now I do. I know its causes and have dreamed
all the bad dreams but the fear doesn't go away. I'm feeling it now,
in the hallway of my building, fumbling blind for my keys. The
overhead light has been broken for a week, side effect of the need
for anonymity and thrift. I should be used to it by now but... I
silence the jangling of my keys but there's nothing to hear. Just
the smell of old dust and the faint whiff of a man-smell, sweat
that is not my own. A hot metallic taste fills my mouth and I bite
my tongue as the siren wail of tension echoes in my chest. Someone's
there. I can't see him and I can't hear him but he's there, a ghost,
a breath of wind inside with no windows.

     I can't put down my keys without signaling my awareness
and keys aren't much of a weapon. If he's armed he's got the drop
on me and he must know it by now. I can only hope it's a mugger
or a crackhead, so I can plead and whine and give him my wallet
and when he walks away pull the gun that's kissing my lumbar spine
and kill him. That will be nice.

     But that's not how it happens at all. I'm angling my
shoulders to get a better view up the stairs, shaking the keys so
I'll sound oblivious, and a creature falls onto me from behind, a
great hot weight on my shoulders and fingers digging into my chest 
-- a pale hand in the darkness looms at me, stinking of something
chemical and I convulse, jackknifing away in what I know is really
trembling panic but I don't care. I reorient against the opposite
wall and throw my keys at him -- ridiculous gesture -- and reach
for the gun at my back but he rushes me, crushing my fingers 
against my ribs, sending all the air out of my lungs in a rush.
A breath, against my throat, and his face glows in contrast to his
dark clothing. Eyes gleam and then I am shoving him away, pulling
my gun at last, but he knocks it out of my hand. I crash against
him, my left shoulder with its bludgeon swinging hard, and he
grunts over a cracking noise that might be his ribs. I don't wait
to find out but skitter down the stairs, tripping over my own feet
as I flee toward the front door. It bangs open so hard its glass
shudders and breaks as it rebounds, hopefully an obstacle.

     A car, vague in the half-dark, in front of me, orange light
from an open back door. Someone standing, his mouth an O, and I
know him, I've seen him before, doesn't matter where. Five ragged
steps towards him and suddenly I can see inside the car, in the back
seat and my legs falter in the flash that I actually see her. Oh,
God. Reddish hair, a woman's shape, sitting quiet in the seat, a
captive. Scully, the last gasp of breath. I stagger away, hearing
the beat of footfalls behind me close in my ears, a steadier rhythm
than my pulse. I am nearly to the corner before they tackle me
unkindly. Banging my head on the concrete and leaning a knee into
my back, and my knife presses flat into my skin, right there taped
to my back, impossible to reach. One of them flips me over and I'm
staring up at the lobbyist, the dealmaker, his face twisted in
avarice and his chest heaving. I can't breathe. Someone is sitting
on my chest and has embedded my windpipe with shards of glass,
someone has taken all the energy out of my arm so that it twitches
weakly on the ground. I can't think. I can't breathe. I can't think.

     This is the end. I am trying to review the quickest ways to
kill myself and there is nothing in my head. Auburn hair, and the
woman leans over me in a dark suit -- it's not her. I'm wrong, a
warm glow like blood spreading in my chest -- it's not Scully. This
alliance is not exposed, not yet. They can do what they want with
me now. A hand slaps at me from one side, too large and white, 
white like cloth, and then I am breathing sharp medicine and every-
thing goes watery and disappears.

* * * * * * *

     Mulder and Scully walked together back to his apartment
so he could pick up some things before they headed back to her
place. It was quiet, and still warm in that humid September way,
and Scully found herself wondering if this was what normal people
did in the evenings. She wanted to take Mulder's arm but she was
ashamed to reach for it and he did not offer. Skinner was still an
enigma to her, and Mulder had gone quiet as soon as the stars had
come out, and soon they would arrive at his building and her
opportunity to ask him her questions would be gone.

     But on the block before Hegal Place, on a leafy, residential
street, someone was waiting for them in a very expensive car. It
was one of those old-style European limousines, subtle, sleek navy,
with diplomatic plates. She saw it approach, stood back on the
sidewalk as it glided purring to the curb, and watched as Mulder
stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets to hide his apprehension.
As luck would have it they had paused directly beneath a street
light, and she glanced around for witnesses, realizing only belatedly
what that said about her. But enough windows were lit on the street
she expected they would be reasonably safe. Unless it was to be an
assassination.
 
     But apparently it was not; the car came to a halt beside them
and the tinted rear window rolled down smoothly. A woman's head
emerged, framed by a warm orange light like a halo, and she smiled
at them with some strange amusement, her mouth falling into laugh
wrinkles. Mulder cocked his head and Scully glanced at him,
wondering if she should be jealous. The woman was devastating the
way Isabella Rossellini is devastating, but only while she fixed them
both with that canny stare. As she glanced at her surroundings she
receded to an auburn-haired woman of a certain age in a classy suit,
lovely but indistinct in this city of hustling lobbyists. Then she
returned her gaze to Scully.

     "Mr. Mulder, I presume. Dr. Scully. I've got some very
important things I'd like to discuss with you." Scully worked hard
to keep her face neutral as she studied this woman. The object of
her gaze did not seem to mind the careful perusal, she in her finery
and Scully still in her diner costume; rather her nose raised
indulgently and she rested manicured nails on the edge of the
window. "Please get in the car."

     This was no request. Mulder opened his mouth to dismiss her
authority, and stopped. Scully took another look at the woman, at
her cultured smile and her expensive suit, framed by the tinted
car window. Mulder was right; it was all wrong. He stooped to
approach this stranger, to interrogate her about her employers, and
as he did so she simply leaned back in her seat so that they could
see inside the car.

     It was indeed a limousine, with beige leather seats arranged to
face each other in the back and a tasteful opaque divider to cut
off the driver from his cargo. The strange woman sat with her legs
crossed and pointed her chin at the figure which accompanied her.

     Krycek lay sprawled on the seat opposite the woman, eyelids
like wax paper in his too-pale face. He was dressed in his
customary black, his hand dragging the floor of the car, his cheek
covered with blood. Without the nervous energy that so defined
him, Krycek's splayed body looked like a corpse. The woman
interposed herself in Scully's line of vision again, with a bright
smile on her face. "Would you both please get into the car?"

* * * * * * *
  
     "My name is Charlotte MacIlvain," began the woman as the
car pulled away from the curb. She smiled at Mulder, who felt
ungracious scowling back at her. But the driver who had opened
the door for them to climb in -- ladies first, thought Mulder
ironically -- had borne the telltale bulge of a weapon at his side 
and the agents' diner meeting had not warranted such hardware.
Mulder told himself again that they were under physical threat,
instead of obeying some lunatic loyalty to Krycek, who still took
up most of the seat next to him, body loose. It might be nice, he
thought, if Krycek were to bleed on the leather upholstery, maybe
his only chance at revenge. Scully was small and fiercely pale
across from him, staring daggers at this woman MacIlvain.

     "What do you want?" Scully asked, her voice sharp and
chill.

     MacIlvain smiled again, an indulgent turn of the lips at his
tough partner, and Mulder felt rage begin to bubble in his throat.
"I'd like," said the woman, "first to let you know how glad I am to
meet you at last. Your reputations precede you." Mulder couldn't
help his eyebrow and she nodded demurely. "Together you hold the
record for most arrests on military property; you're known far and
wide in my back yard as great annoyances."

     Mulder snorted and crossed his arms over his chest. "Happy
to oblige." Scully gave him a hard look which was embedded with
the powerful loyalty he knew he didn't deserve.

     "Right now," said MacIlvain, as if she had not been insulted,
"we're desperately curious to know what you want with Walker
Harkness. You are still investigating him, yes?"

     "Why is he of concern to you?" Scully asked, playing up her
icy demeanor.

     But MacIlvain just waved her hand dismissively. "He used to
be one of ours. We like to take care of our own."

     "Us meaning CIA?" asked Mulder impudently. He felt
childish next to MacIlvain's measured maturity, and held his ground
like a desperate dog. A glance around the lavish car revealed
nothing beyond his fellow travelers; Krycek still lay bloody . . .
with glittering pinpoints in his shadowed face. Krycek remained
still with his eyes slitted, looking patiently up at Mulder. Who
quickly glanced away to Scully, who was interrogating MacIlvain. 

     "I wonder where the CIA got its charter to operate on U.S.
soil, Ms. MacIlvain."

     The woman inclined her head, as might an urbane player of
baccarat who has conceded a hand. "Sometimes," she said, "rules
have to be bent in order for information to be gathered. Surely you
understand that, Dr. Scully." Mulder chanced another look at
Krycek, who caught his eye and then glanced down his own torso,
once, twice. Mulder wracked his brain for what the signal might
mean.

     "Was it really necessary," asked Mulder, reaching to lift
Krycek upright, "to manhandle him like this?" Scully volunteered a
tissue and Mulder found himself with Krycek's head lolled on his
shoulder, wiping away blood from a long broad scrape. Mulder's
other hand skittered down and found something long and thin taped
to the skin of Krycek's back. And then he remembered searching
this same body, in a similar state of lassitude months ago, and knew
what he was touching.

     MacIlvain was answering, but Mulder hardly caught her
words. "Yes, I'm afraid it was. He wasn't terribly receptive to our
overtures." Mulder gave Scully a long look and she put her hands
on the seat next to her thighs very carefully. He loved her ability
to read minds. With Krycek's weight on his chest, Mulder took a
restricted breath and tapped on his companion's spine three times
next to the knife he had found. "Frankly, Dr. Scully, Mr. Mulder,"
MacIlvain was saying, "what I'd really like to know is what
crusaders like you two are doing with a lowlife like Tim Corwith."

     Scully asked honestly, "Who on earth is Tim Corwith?"
Mulder tapped once, twice, and he and Krycek lunged across the
small space in unison. The knifepoint was at the base of MacIlvain's
left eye before Scully could finish her words; Krycek clamped his
hand over the CIA woman's mouth and sprawled, unbalanced, across
her knees. Scully took a breath, another, and set to searching
the woman for concealed weapons.

     When nothing was forthcoming, she set her pink lips to
MacIlvain's ear and muttered, "The driver is listening, right? Turn
off the intercom." MacIlvain's body was exceedingly still, like a
mouse, alone in a field, which knows it has been sighted. With a
glance at Krycek she reached out and flipped a switch on the door
handle and nodded her head in a small, calm gesture. 

     "Right then," said Krycek like a drill sergeant. "Now we kill
her." Mulder was still staring at him in horror when he realized
Krycek was listening for reaction from the driver. "Good," he said
at last, removing his hand from her mouth, "at least you can follow
orders."

     Mulder eased back to his seat, the knife still open and ready,
while Scully searched the compartments and pockets of the car.
MacIlvain just sat, eyeing them all, and didn't say a word. It
seemed to bother Krycek, who swore and stuck his hand up her skirt.

     "Krycek!" Scully hissed, even as she pulled a gun out of a
pocket in the car door. MacIlvain still said nothing, but her body
was a study in sharp planes. Krycek's motions were exceedingly
awkward, and that jerkiness of his hand under MacIlvain's skirt was
what finally gave Mulder an idea what was going on. When Krycek
had wrestled the woman's pantyhose to her knees, he paused, looked
up at Scully, and spat,

     "Do you see any rope around here?" and he returned to pulling
off the spy woman's hose, shucking off her expensive shoes. "Give
me that," he ordered Mulder, who surrendered the knife and took up
the filmy cloth uncertainly. "Tie her hands behind her back."

     While he was binding MacIlvain, she sat still, and finally
said, in acid tones, "I should have expected as much from you,
Corwith."

     "Quit calling me that," replied Krycek calmly, wiggling the
end of his knife. "My name is Krycek."

     Mulder sat back, unwilling to say anything that might break
the tension. MacIlvain's eyes glittered, warm brown, full of spite.
She opened her mouth, then changed what she was going to say when
Scully pulled up two folders, one stuffed full with papers, the
other nearly empty. "That will make good reading, agents. The first
is the file of Alexis Allan Krycek, date of birth January 22, 1965,
wanted for fraud, conspiracy, murder, and for questioning in matters
of high treason. Colorful record, friend." Her indulgent smile 
showed her teeth, and Mulder found himself glad he was not on the
receiving end of it. "Unfortunately it begins in 1989, whole cloth.
Before then your driver's license, tax, and voting records are all
falsified. Not," she added, "that your name is Corwith either."


    Krycek took the opportunity to scratch his jaw with the flat of
the blade in his hand, staring coolly at Scully, who had not yet
opened either folder. "Are you telling me the CIA couldn't find
out who I really am?" His poise was startling in the face of the
woman before him. It occurred to Mulder suddenly that Krycek might
be enjoying this.

     "You were very thorough, or very lucky. We never managed to
track down a real name nor origin for you." The way MacIlvain's
jacket creased over her shoulders suggested she disliked ambiguities
like this. But Krycek was blowing out a breath which seemed to be
relieved. "We do, I'm afraid, have your fingerprints on file."

     A sardonic smile. "And you never noticed I was working for
the FBI? Frankly, Mac, I'm disappointed." Mulder saw Scully open
the thick folder in her hand, and furrow her brows, but she said
nothing.

     "Call me that again and I'll have you deported, friend." The
malicious banter was beginning to annoy Mulder, and he bit his lips
to keep from interjecting. Something was building here, embers
heating towards a flashpoint, and he dared not disturb it. He looked
at Scully and she was looking back at him, profoundly troubled.

     "To where, Alaska?" cracked Krycek. "Even you must be able to
tell I'm not a foreign mole."

     "What can I say," MacIlvain said after a pause, shrugging as
elegantly as she could, tied up in her own pantyhose. "The prints
we have for you are from 1984, and we have about 90% more data than
we can analyze coming in every day. Nobody noticed."

     "Far be it for me to expose your lovely secrets."

     MacIlvain labored on, unbothered. "You broke your ankle in 
Mazar-i-Sharif. How's it been?"

     "Twelve years healed," Krycek snapped. "What do you really
want?" He pointed the knife at her, but only Mulder shifted uneasily.
He saw the gun on the seat next to Scully, wished he could reach out
and take it without anyone noticing.

    "I'd like," came MacIlvain's warm tones, "to know why you dis-
carded the Corwith identity after six years, and why you refused our
offer of employment."

     "Jesus," said Krycek, and examined her with something app-
roaching horror. "Jesus. That was you? I thought it was the Soviets."
The flashpoint reached, Mulder sat forward to glean what he could.

     MacIlvain did not glance at him but immediately went to sharp
edges and demanded, "Were you working for them even then?" But she
had lost her chance. Her suspect had withdrawn back into his
impassive mask and was twisting the knife blade he held so that it
reflected flashes of light.

     "No," said Krycek slyly. "Corwith never worked for them."

* * * * * * *
  
     Scully was staring down at a pair of photographs in her lap,
only half listening to the conversation, until Krycek snarled, "Let's
get on with humiliating me." He wasn't looking at her as she
examined his face, but it wasn't necessary. On her left thigh was
balanced a black-and-white shot of a young man alone on dusty dry
ground. He was dressed in fatigues with long, shaggy hair, streaked
blond by the sun he was squinting into, and undoubtedly with Krycek's
features. Her right thigh supported a striking shot of a dark-haired
teenager, balancing a martini glass in one hand and a bespangled
woman twice his age in the other. His face was round as he laughed
riotously into the camera, but with the square print of chin and
broad forehead that seemed too familiar. The teenager was naked to
the waist and gleamed with sweat.

     "Who is this?" asked Scully, holding up the two photos for all
to see. A glance at Krycek revealed nothing but blinking hazel eyes
and a vague tightening around his mouth.

     "Those are from the photo archive we keep of assorted minor
figures," volunteered MacIlvain, in a superior tone. "The man is
Tim Corwith, positively identified by his contact. The boy we've
attached to Corwith's file as a possible earlier identity, under
the name Max Thompson. He was apparently active in New York and
Paris, living among the glitterati, no known source of support. We
used to keep an eye on them -- you know, armchair Panthers, radical
chic -- but mostly they're harmless. From what we can guess he 
started buying cocaine for his, ah, friends, in large quantities 
some time in 1981. He may have become a middle man, set himself up
to skim off the top. In 1983, Thompson disappeared without a trace,
except for his striking likeness to Tim Corwith." 

     Scully knew all eyes had rounded on Krycek, but the man sat
impassive. He seemed to have gotten bored with showing his knife,
so he closed it and put it away and took to cracking his knuckles
one-handed.

     "We would have had this information earlier, but we didn't see
his wanted poster till after you testified before Congress in '96."
Scully felt a cool strangeness, as if that strident voice in her
memory was not her own. MacIlvain was eyeing her oddly so she looked
away, but Mulder's expression was vacant as he considered. She
didn't know what to say next and the silence stretched intolerably.

     "What," asked Krycek, with a calculated sullenness, "does this
have to do with Harkness?" Safer ground, thought Scully, then wonder-
ed why she was thinking it. Having traded inquiry into Krycek's life
for inquiry into her own, she felt the poorer for it. She lowered
her head and studied the photos in her lap again. Somehow neither
one of them fit into her mental image of Krycek. She did not think
she had ever seen him laugh. But then, her acquaintance with him
had been brief, intermittent, and acrimonious up to now.

     MacIlvain took her time answering, and her peculiar tone drew
Scully's attention again. "We used to work together, he and I. We
still go drinking together; I'm the only woman he knows who can take
Scotch neat." A sad half-smile. "He told me, about a month ago, that
he had figured out a new high-tech surveillance device." Mulder's
head bobbed up but Scully refused to look at him. She clutched the
photos in her lap so her hands would not stray to her nape. "He
said he thought someone was following him. You know, I hear that
every day, frankly, but I indulged him. And then you showed up in
his living room."

     There was a physical withdrawal in Mulder's turn of the head.
Krycek interjected: "So you bugged the old man's place, and then
what? What makes you think I have anything to do with this?" His
face suggested mild irritation, but he caught and held Scully's
gaze and he was reptilian, plotting.

    "I have my ways," answered MacIlvain. Krycek gritted his teeth,
but said nothing. He very pointedly turned to Mulder, who looked
back and then closed his eyes. "I'd love to know where you found
out about Harkness, Corwith."

     "In your fucking dreams," was all she got as reply.

     "All right," said MacIlvain, turning her torso towards Scully,
"have a look at that folder. You'll find out some very interesting
things about our friend here." Scully just held the folder open on
her thighs. She had flipped through, and not liked what she had seen,
but now she found herself unwilling. "Somewhere near the end of the
file is a list of his pseudonyms, it takes up the whole page. Such
impudence," mused MacIlvain, "using passports from countries where
you don't even speak the language."

     Obediently Scully's fingers walked to a list of names and
nationalities. "Dietrich Halbritter," she read. "Jean-Luc Casson.
David Iliescu. Mathieu Laoussine. Etienne Sancerre. Marek
Kieseritzky. There are thirty names on this list." She looked up at
Krycek, who had tucked his chin to his left shoulder. She thought
again of the name he had confessed as his own, and wondered.

     "Yes," he said, and between them the air was warmed. He assured
her with his steady green gaze that he had not lied. He continued:
"But those were all temporary names, just to get across borders.
Corwith was the base name for all of those."

     "Mazar-i-Sharif is in Afghanistan," said Mulder all of a sudden.
"What were you doing in Afghanistan?"

     MacIlvain's lips twitched in a truly malicious smile. "Selling
arms, all over the Middle East. Corwith first showed up in an
Algerian smuggling ring." Scully felt her breath go out of her,
thinking of the havoc of the early eighties. Bombings every week, it
seemed like then, when she had been in college, and the international
students hadn't walked alone at night.

     She was gazing in dismay at an unresponsive Krycek when Mulder
asked sharply, "Wasn't the CIA arming and training Afghanistan to
fight against the USSR?" MacIlvain straightened her back as if
insulted, but Krycek lifted his head and answered.

     "Yes," he said blandly. "Corwith was point man for their
contract with his organization. That was before the whole Stingray
operation, when it was just penny-ante up front and the Warriors
went out into the field with God and World War I rifles on their
side." He shot a bitter look at MacIlvain, who ignored it.

     "Did you know he spoke French?" she asked instead, and Scully
shook her head. "Like a native. And Russian too, though I guess you
know that. He picked up Pushtu and Arabic like a dream, and I don't
know what other languages. He had caution and our people on the
ground liked him." Krycek wriggled his shoulders at her assessment,
face pinched, but Scully couldn't guess why. "We offered him a job
in '86, right when things were heating up. We didn't," she continued
quickly, "really want to employ him; we wanted first rights in case
the Soviets wanted him. He said no. Turned us down flat and left
Afghanistan entirely soon after. Far as we can tell, he went back
to running valuables across the borders into Communist countries,
little risk, huge profits. And then," MacIlvain paused dramatically,
"he disappeared off the face of the planet."

     Scully saw that look of triumph on MacIlvain's face and was
inexplicably angry. "Fascinating," she said dully. Mulder scrubbed
at his forearms as if he had gooseflesh.

       "He's had us intrigued for quite some time, I'll say. And now
here he is, working with the two most troublesome federal employees
on record. Forgive me if I'm curious." And MacIlvain, apparently
satisfied with Krycek's irked expression, turned her highly tuned
scrutiny on Mulder.

     Who was playing with his fingers, or, realized Scully, twitching
unconsciously as he counted. "Wait a minute," he said, and if it was
misdirection to avoid MacIlvain's curiosity it was effective. "Your
people were working with him in 1984? How old is he?" A swivel
of his head and a stabbing glare at Krycek. "How old are you?"

     "His chief contact reported he looked like he was about
sixteen," offered the spy woman. "I'd guess he's on the far side of
thirty, though I don't know how far."

     Krycek only grumbled and said flatly, "I'm thirty-three years
old, from the birth date listed."

     Scully couldn't keep incredulity out of her voice. "So you've
been a secret agent since before you could vote?"

     "No," interrupted MacIlvain, "he's been a criminal since before
he could vote." Scully found her heart beating too fast when she saw
Krycek's sudden bitter smile.

* * * * * * *

     It takes some maneuvering to get the driver to pull over and
lower the divider so Mulder can cold-cock him. I finally get a look
out the window and realize we've been driving around the outskirts
of Rosslyn, near the Iwo Jima Memorial, and none of us noticed it.
It takes both Mulder and me to drag him into the back seat, then
Mulder climbs forward to take over driving. I'd forgotten what a
control freak he can be behind the wheel.

     Not that driving helps him hold his tongue. "If you're a friend
of Harkness's, then you must know we've set guards on him for his
own safety. He asked for it."

     "You approached him," accuses the MacIlvain woman, her eyes
narrow. "You scared the life out of him, pushing all the right
buttons." She shuts her mouth and looks at me, and I stare her down.
Or rather, she stops trying to flay me with her eyes and makes like
she's going to seduce me, tied up in her own nylons. "We met once,"
she says, and that speculative tone both annoys me and puts me on
guard. "You don't remember. I had brown hair then, and fronted with
the relief organizations. I helped set your ankle."

     Scully is giving me that look. She still has my file in her
hands, and I can't tell whether she's kept on reading it or not. My
shoulders ache and I'm all out of explanations for tonight. "Uh, you
smoked menthols, right?" The MacIlvain woman gives a tight, victor-
ious nod and eyes the compartment to her right.

     "If you'll give me a cigarette I'll tell you what I've got on
Harkness's work."

     I can't help chuckling. "I thought there were screening pro-
cedures to keep addicts out of the upper ranks," I tell her, but I
fish out the pack and hold it up to her. Expertly she takes a
cigarette in her mouth and flicks it up and down, waiting. I'm still
working through the consequences of what she has disclosed about me
in my head; I stare at her for a second before I go back to the
compartment for matches.

     I hold the box in my hand. Matches. I can't even look up. Then
there is movement at my side and Scully takes the box away from me.
Without a glance at me she pulls one, strikes it and lights the
MacIlvain woman's cigarette.

     A drag on the orange flame and a long look at me. "If you want
one, go ahead," she says, as if no time has passed, as if I were
twenty-two again, as if I had ever wanted one in that life either.
Mulder has twisted in his seat, not looking at the red light in front
of him, eyeing me intently.

     "No thanks," I answer, and turn to face him.

     He doesn't acknowledge my motion, but accuses, "I thought you
didn't smoke."

     "I don't," I tell him, fully aware the MacIlvain woman is
absorbing every word and gesture. As I roll my shoulders, I can't
think of a way to signal Mulder, and now I realize confirming my few
truths with him is more important. "I used to, when I was working in
Asia. Everybody smokes in Asia."

     Mulder unwinds a little, which is a very little considering he's
in my presence. I can't remember what he was like when we were
partners. When he turns back to the task of driving, his knuckles are
still pale. "What have you got on Harkness, then?" he asks. Good
thing; I had forgotten the terms of this little deal. Scully is sit-
ting back in the seat, just watching me. She looks like a knife
in winter but says nothing.

     With a puff of that insufferable menthol smoke, the MacIlvain
woman speaks through her cigarette: "He left copies of his research
notebooks with me, just in case. Everything up to about three weeks
ago, I've got it." I don't know if she realizes she looks like a
character from a hard-boiled detective novel, talking like that.

    "Well?" say Mulder, his eyes on the rearview. We've all been
sitting here thinking and he's hot on the trail. "And where are
these notebooks?"

    The MacIlvain woman takes a long, rude look up and down at
Scully. "What have you got to offer?" she asks. Administration
hasn't done much for her field expertise; she finishes the sentence
and a column of ash drops off her cigarette and into her lap. She
deserves a lesson.

     "How about I let you live," I say, as coolly as I can, and put
my hand on her thigh. I hear Scully's indrawn breath and shoot her
a glance; I don't know if she can interpret it correctly or not.
With elaborate care I sweep the ashes out of MacIlvain's lap.

     "I don't have them with me," she says, eyes and tone lower now.
"They're in a safe, at Langley."

     I give her my lascivious smile. "Well then, I guess you'll just
have to owe me." Mulder eyes me in the rearview and pulls over; 
while I've been snapping MacIlvain's garters he has driven us nearer
to the edge of Arlington Cemetery. I can't say for sure whether I
see amusement in his eyes or just happiness that I've proved myself
as cold-blooded as he thinks me.

     He actually has to get out to drag the driver out onto the
grass; I get a good look at him and behold, it's the Lobbyist. Who
knows what happened to the one whose ribs I broke. I pull his trench
coat down over his arms even though I know it's childish; at least
he will have a tougher time of it when he wakes up, trussed like
that. Scully gets out to allow the MacIlvain woman past her. They
look each other up and down, like strange deer in a clearing, then
Scully goes behind the other woman and unties her hands. It's not
smart, says a little voice in my head, but I let Scully do it. The
first thing MacIlvain does is slide her fingers around that cigarette
and take a drag.
 
     I stand aside for Scully to climb into the back seat and she
doesn't meet my eyes. As I'm climbing in, I hear MacIlvain's voice,
indulgent and supercilious: "By the bye, are you going to tell me
how you lost that arm?"

     I shut the door and roll down the window to tell her sweetly,
"No, ma'am, I'm not."

     She stands there, on the grass, her associate a huddle of cheap
suit next to her. "I will find out what's going on between you three,
I promise."

     I can't help my smart mouth; it's been my defense system since
I was just a kid, getting thrown out of ninth grade. "When you do,"
I tell her, leaning out of the window for just that conspiratorial
aura, "don't blame me if you throw up all over those lovely shoes."

* * * * * * *

     MacIlvain seemed to summon good grace as Mulder pulled away from
the street corner, standing straight and not protesting her lack of
pantyhose. Scully, sitting in the backwards-facing seat, wanted to
laugh, but she wanted to vomit first. The first thing out of
Krycek's mouth as soon as they were out of earshot was a strained,
"Peter Frampton?" to which Mulder only pursed his lips in a moue of
distaste.

     "You knew the CIA had a file on you," said Mulder instead, his
eyes on the road. "Why didn't you say anything before now?"

     Krycek shook his head, and caught Scully's eye in a joke that
mystified her. "I knew the CIA could pick me out of a lineup when
I was twenty. I know a lot of people and a lot of things which
will hopefully remain irrelevant to our working relationship." He
settled himself more securely in his leather seat and fiddled with
the box of matches MacIlvain had left behind.

     "You don't think she's trustworthy?" Scully asked, watching for
that twitching of his shoulders that overcame him when he was tense.

     But Krycek just made a noise. "She's the type who was a Cold
Warrior, and now she dresses like a Rockefeller. She's been shunted
into administration and I'm sure it just kills her. She's been seeing
reports, I don't know, maybe stuff from whenever you two get 
arrested, and she's been feeding her curiosity. That's no reason to
think she knows everything and no reason to trust her. Where are we
headed?"

     "Somehow she strikes me as more trustworthy than you," came
Mulder's voice from up front. And then, as an afterthought,
"Headquarters."

     "Oh please, Mulder, come off it. She's bluffing. Do you think
she'd have resorted to the street-mugging brand of interrogation if
she had any authority? The guys who got me, they're probably on
payroll as accountants. She probably bullied them into the job."

     Mulder said, "They caught you, though." Krycek didn't have a
response for that, but he barreled on.

     "This isn't her back yard, Mulder, Scully, I'm serious here.
She's going out on a limb because she's got a hunch. None of this
evening will ever go on any record, not even to her diary. I wouldn't
be surprised if she's been driving herself crazy over hints of the
Culmination Group for years, and is only now starting to put the
clues together." He leaned in on Scully, intent.

     She found herself leaning back from him.

     "Well," drawled Mulder, in that tone Scully knew he practiced,
"she could sure tell a story about you." She did not need to turn
around and see him to know his needling dislike.

     But Krycek went still and cold, lowering his head to his chest
as he lowered his voice. "Be careful, Mulder. How do you think I
knew you were an epileptic kid? There are files on you, extensive
files." Mulder closed up like a bank on Friday, gluing his eyes to
the road in front of him. "I know about how you aced your Deviant
Psych final coked to the gills, and your nervous breakdown, and your
failed marriage, and your --"

     The brakes squealed and Scully thumped back into the seat.
Krycek ended up sitting in the footwell, ruefully wiping blood from
his newly split lip. A glance around showed that Mulder had stopped
the car cold in the middle of a lane on Memorial Bridge; without a
word he started up again and as he gained speed he hit the switch to
raise the divider between front and back seats.

     For a few moments Scully fumed silently at Mulder for leaving
her here with Krycek. Then she stole a look at him, still sitting on
the floor of the car, still contemplating the blood from his face.
"Was that necessary?" she asked, and was strangely gratified to see
him hang his head.

     "Doesn't he tell you everything?" he replied presently, keeping
his eyes down.

     "Enough," said Scully. "He's a private man. Like you." Krycek
looked over at her with narrow eyes and gave his bloody chin a final
swipe.

     "All of what you heard tonight," he said, gesturing, "it was
all irrelevant. It was a long time ago."

     Scully felt the calm of her investigative mode settle upon her.
She sized up Krycek, the way he winced as he settled back into a
seat. "So you were -- are -- a mercenary?"

     "That's not a very nice word."

     "You're not a very nice guy." She instantly regretted saying it,
but he only frowned thoughtfully.

     "Oh. Well -- I never called myself that." A single styptic 
blink and then he returned to the present.
  
     She looked at her hands, and said, "You were so young . . ."

     He scratched the back of his neck, considered. "I fell in with
people who had cash to burn," he offered at last, after Scully was
sure he would not respond. "I saw a need, I found a way to fill it
and make a profit. I didn't set out planning to get into that world,
but it was so easy getting suckered in." His bitter rueful smile.
"It was the first thing I was ever really good at."

     The well-appointed interior of the car made Scully suddenly feel
tawdry until she could suppress her stupid inferiority complexes.
"Krycek," she said, surprising herself as she did so, "That MacIlvain
woman doesn't know you at all, does she?"

     He touched his hand to her wrist quickly and withdrew as if
burned. "Nobody does, Agent Scully. Better that way. You know more
than most." Krycek turned away and a trick of the streetlights
wreathed his face in shadow.

     She heard the name rolling around in her head, liquid, warm,
utterly foreign. Ganya. She wanted to say it aloud for some reason,
maybe to see him answer to it, or to see him blanch as he had the
last time she'd said it. Mulder was on the other side of a thin metal
divider so she forbore. Suddenly it occurred to her to wonder why
she was keeping it from Mulder.

     She realized she was staring at Krycek the same second she
realized he was staring back at her with furrowed brows. "I have
three brothers," he said at last, full of a horrifying solemnity.
"Would you really be willing, if I got killed, to go to their houses
and tell them about my death?"

     Scully felt hot and flushed, flustered by the strangeness which
had overcome him. "Krycek, I --" she said, then stopped, unsure how
she would answer. But all he did was shrug ironically and turn away,
breaking the moment.

     "Doesn't matter." Being unable to see his eyes made her deeply
uneasy. Krycek reached for the polished plate of switches and
lowered the divider. "You'll want to hear this too I guess, Mulder.
There's only one person in the world who can connect Krycek to
the name I was born with," he said after a pause. "Coffin Nail. Old
Smoky. Whatever you call him."

     Scully asked, "How did he know?"

     "I don't know," came the reply, a sigh of exhaustion. "But
you'll understand if I hope he's really dead. Let me off here."

     Mulder slowed to a stop on Constitution Avenue and Krycek
climbed out stiffly, rolling his shoulders. He leaned back in the
window and with a small inexplicable smile he said, "We fight well
together." Then he was gone, jogging into the night, heading for a
Metro station or a hidden car or whatever bolt hole he surely had
planned.

     Scully met Mulder's eyes in the rearview mirror but neither
of them said anything during the short drive to the Hoover Building.
Where Skinner paced along Pennsylvania Avenue, cursing blue magic.

     "Over here," he shouted, unnecessarily, waving as soon as he
saw Mulder through the windshield. Skinner hopped into the passenger
seat before the car came to a complete stop. "Answer your phone
sometime, Mulder. Let's go."

     Scully twisted around, feeling like a child in the back
seat. "Where? What's happened?" Skinner was dialing his cell phone
and only glared at her for a moment.

     "Vygotsky. Yeah, Walt here. Skip picking me up; just head out
there. I know you both own cell phones," he admonished, while Mulder
negotiated the awkward detour around the White House. "This is a hell
of a car," he added.

     "Where are we going?" Mulder asked finally. Scully watched him
and noted how he avoided the subject of the car entirely. Their
sharp-tongued supervisor did not seem to notice.

       Skinner just looked Mulder up and down, then turned his gaze
to Scully. "Harkness's place. All Hell has broken loose."

* * * * * * *

     There was blood everywhere, and where there wasn't blood there
were broken pieces of electrical equipment. Mulder stood, watching
the technicians poke and scrape, and tried to hold himself together.
He kept an eye on Scully, who had declared the two Fort Meade
analysts and the Bureau agent dead on scene, but he realized that
she had never seen her apartment in the wake of her abduction. He
and her mother had cleaned it carefully, replacing the broken glass
and scrubbing the walls, when there had been nothing else to do but
hope she would come back. Vygotsky sat on the front steps with his
head in his hands, and Mulder wished he could say something to the
man.

     A small crowd was gathering out on the sidewalk, late joggers
craning their necks at the crime scene tape, but Mulder knew there
would be no witnesses. There never were. He heard a throat clearing
at his side, and Scully said, "There's no evidence yet that Harkness
was injured at all. His bedclothes are rumpled and the coat tree in
his bedroom was knocked over. He was most likely taken from that
room."

     He chanced a look at her, and realized she was watching him as
closely as he watched her. Their mutual reaction almost quirked a
smile, but then he remembered Vygotsky outside. "Have we got a
sequence for the events?"

     "Yes and no," she answered, and shrugged. "The back door was
broken down, the analysts and the guard shot as they turned towards
the back of the house, so that was quick. The Bureau man hadn't
pulled his weapon all the way. The perps weren't careful either; we've
found three bullets in the ground outside so far." She pursed her
lips, and glanced at the twin chalk marks which denoted the hip place-
ments of the three dead, splayed on beige carpet. "The equipment
was broken after they were killed. But we can't place the taking of
Harkness directly into any of that. He might have been kidnapped
before the shooting, and this was all to cover that, or he could
have come downstairs after and gone running into the night."

     "No reports of screaming pajama-clad men in the neighborhood?"
Mulder asked, but it came out limply. She just shook her head and
turned back to the technicians, who were peering at the pieces of
metal on the floor and making notes.

     Skinner was conversing with a rotund local detective and several
men in dark suitcoats outside. NSA, Mulder thought, and it was
pressed home to him that three federal employees had been executed
not ten feet from where he stood. He had trusted a single federal
agent to protect Harkness and the NSA analysts, a man who hadn't
even been able to protect himself. Mulder realized he didn't know
the dead agent's name. Skinner broke off from what looked like an
argument and hopped up the front steps, glancing cursorily at
Vygotsky.

     "I would dearly love to know what's going on, Agent Mulder," he
said, and for the first time Mulder noticed that Skinner was wearing
a suit and his glasses, while Mulder himself still sported a t-shirt
with his latex gloves. He tried to think what it meant that Skinner
had gone back into the office at night, and couldn't make it make
sense. 

     "Scully's constructed a reasonable idea of the events, sir,"
he said, and gestured at her. Scully heard her name and looked up
from her examination of the broken radio equipment, nodded and
looked down again. "Whoever it was that was threatening Harkness,
they decided they couldn't wait. The guard, the analysts, they were
just inconvenient." Mulder sighed. "My guess is they destroyed the
machines in an effort to obscure whatever new information Harkness
and the analysts had found."

     "You're right, Mulder," Scully interjected. "They had a large
magnet or de-Gaussing machine with them." She lifted a box of DATs
from the floor with two latex-white hands. "They've all been erased."
She let the box drop, the neatly ordered and labeled tapes useless now.
They traded eye contact, and Mulder watched the wrinkles around her
nose emerge as she set her jaw.

     Skinner looked at the floor around him, and his shoulders rose
and fell. "All right," he said, in a subdued tone, and headed back
towards the front door. Scully watched him go, pushing a lock of
hair out of her way with her forearm, and looked back at Mulder.
She looked away, with an expression he didn't like, and headed back
towards the staircase. He followed helplessly, jostling up the steps,
and when she had reached the top stair he caught her shoulder.

     "Look, this doesn't mean . . ." He didn't know what it didn't
mean, but she didn't let him finish. Scully kept her back to him and
walked into the master bedroom, stepping over the overturned
coatrack. Mulder bit his lip, and came to stand in the doorway while
she opened the dresser drawers. He rubbed his fingers together
through his latex gloves, feeling the familiar slippery plastic. He
watched her for a long moment before going to rifle through the
closet shelves, and discovered as he did so that he could speak
if he did not look at her. "Do you remember when we first got
together?"

     Scully paused for a moment, lifting odd socks, and said ruefully,
"You accused me of being a spy."

     "No, I meant -"

     "Oh." She lapsed into silence. Mulder found a dusty box of
cufflinks and the user's manual for a cellular phone, and Scully
still said nothing.

     Because she apparently refused to do so, he immersed himself
in the previous year, in the way she had demanded that she tell him
alone that her cancer had withdrawn. He had wept violently, shame-
fully, with his head in her lap, and all the while her fingers had
carded through his hair. And after her first day back at work, when
she had invited him in, the surprise when she had wrestled him to
the floor and seduced him in her living room. As a psychologist,
he had reasoned out her response to a brush with death; as a man,
he had been undone by her fierceness. Later, after they had given
each other rug burn and knocked all of her tchotchkes off the
coffee table, they had rediscovered the language of their silences.
He shook himself back to the present and said, "I was really a wreck,
wasn't I?"

     "It doesn't matter, Mulder," she replied. "Everyone was a wreck
right then."

     Mulder noticed her impersonal construction and told her, "I was
the one who broke down."

     "Yes." Incurious or incapable of discussing it, she flipped
through the pile of scribbled notes on Harkness's bedside table,
sniffed at the glass which had left a ring on the cherry wood. He
glanced at the doorway, but nobody could overhear.

     "Did you think any less of me?"

     He surprised her enough that she turned around to face him,
her mouth open. After a pause, she answered, "No, I didn't." She
wrinkled her brows and kept his eye. "You know that."

     "And I don't think any less of you."

     Cold around her pursed mouth. She turned away from him again
and settled herself as if to stay that way.

     "Nobody can really claim that their reactions are pure. Not
any more."

     It was enough of a non-sequitur to re-engage her in the conver-
sation. "What do you mean?" she asked, with that wary face she wore
whenever he blundered into philosophy. He struggled not to smile
at her and said:

     "There is input into our minds from every aspect of the ex-
periential world, especially now, in the age of information overload,
the millions of reasons to buy this or prevent against that, the
stifling layers of influences which flow together in a contradict-
ory miasma to constitute our daily reality." Mulder realized he
was gesturing with a shoehorn in his hand.

     Her blue eyes skewered him neatly. "If this is a pep talk you
need some practice."

     He couldn't help it; he ducked his head, ashamed to be smiling.
After a few moments she joined him and they shared a chuckle from
opposite sides of a king-sized bed. But soon her shoulders stilled
and her face grew solemn and the worry lines re-emerged around her
eyes. She hunched forward and regarded him earnestly. Mulder fought
the impulse to pull away.

     "What if I'm not making my own decisions?" she asked, in a 
tone he had heard from her so very rarely. Then her mouth collapsed
into a frown, doing her face a sore injustice. "You know what, forget
it, Mulder. It was just hysteria."

     He looked at the floor, at the wall, anything to avoid her
self-recriminating gaze, and his eyes settled on the television
against the far wall. It was accompanied by a VCR, several remotes
of varying sizes, and a machine Mulder did not recognize. Sidestepp-
ing her confession as he dodged the coatrack, he came close to
examine the dark box, punctured by wires which led into the VCR. On
a hunch, he ejected a videotape from the VCR, pretending not to
hear Scully make a noise beside him. He turned, saw her pinched face,
and without contemplating its meaning he waved the tape in front of
her.

     "Do you think he was paranoid enough to set up surveillance
on his own guards?" Scully blinked up at him, uncrossing her arms,
and took up the videotape.

* * * * * * *

     A meeting in the sweaty dark. This is the way it happens when
you don't have the power behind you. They arrive together and get
out of their car, scanning the shadows. I watch from behind the
townhouse for a moment. A million of them, all alike, going up like
Roman Candles in a house fire, all over Alexandria. And so far
unoccupied. Safer than my place, that's obvious. I don't make them
wait very long, stepping out into the streetlight. Neither one goes
for a weapon; progress I guess.

     It will rain later, but now the clouds are just convenient
cover. They hang low, dusting everything with a dim tacky sheen. I
can't see their eyes until they step into the streetlight's circle.
We're far enough from the road that I'll stand in a spotlight like
this, though it doesn't make me very happy. Mulder takes charge,
hands on hips, and asks:

     "Why did you call?" in a breezy, annoyed tone, as if we were
estranged golfing buddies, as if we had not sprawled together
across the lap of an upper-echelon CIA employee a day ago. He works
hard at that tone and it cracks into suspicion when I don't answer.
"What have you found out?"

     "Nothing," I tell him, at the same second I notice Scully
looking at me. She has her arms crossed in front of her; she's
hardly the same woman as yesterday. I can't believe I was so stupid,
jawing away about my past lives. But now I have to deal with
present problems. "I hear Harkness was taken."

     Scully shifts and drops her arms. "He was, at about the same
time as our little encounter."

     I am calculating the odds that the MacIlvain woman would play
both sides so cavalierly when Mulder shrugs and elaborates, "We
have footage of the driver from last night lingering near Harkness's
house. No obvious evidence that his . . . people took part in the
kidnapping."

     I take a chance and ask, "No lights in the sky?"

     His face wrinkles up and he replies darkly: "Just human corrupt-
ion. Two Fort Meade cryptologists and an FBI agent were murdered
in Harkness's house, around ten o'clock. Their failure to check in
is what alerted us Harkness was gone." A pause, as if he's hesitating.
"We were hoping you had something to add to the investigation."
Scully turns her head towards him, but he doesn't look at her.

     Instead he meets my eyes and doesn't look away till I say, 
"No. Nothing to add."

     His shoulders fall and he turns toward her. A failure. I knew
this would be a failure; we can't cooperate and we have no common
ground. Then I realize and want to smack myself. "Except -- my boss
will be in town this coming week. I don't think he would have
Harkness taken if he's coming. I'm to pick him up, him and a guest,
man named Crawford." I don't like the supplicant tone I'm hearing
out of my mouth, but then I get a look at Scully and she blanches.
Mulder is looking at her intently and she's staring into space.
"You know the name."

     "Kurt Crawford?" Mulder takes a step towards me and those
clenched fists say exactly what he'd like to do. "Was that his
name? Was it?" He has the caution, at least, to growl instead of
shout.

      "Yes," I say, trying to keep the confusion out of my voice.
Scully puts her hand to her face. "What about him? Why's he so
important?"

     "He's a clone," says Scully in a vacant tone, just as Mulder
says, "He worked out of Allentown."

     I look at them, back and forth, Scully and Mulder, pale
in the streetlight.

     "You don't know." Mulder's flat disbelief. He begins to pace,
stalking in and out of the streetlight's glare. What can I do, but
shrug and shake my head. Scully looks like most women do right
before they faint.

     "They knew about the cancer - about everything - they're the
key..." she says, in a little voice I've never heard out of her.
"They were the ones who could explain it all."

     I find myself inexplicably tense as I ask, "Was he the one who
gave you the cure?"

     But Scully doesn't answer, only steps forward and stops Mulder's
pacing. He looks at her and then whirls where he stands. "They're
hybrids, a bunch of them working together --"

     "Hybrids?" I ask. 

     "Green blood," he says, his eyes accusing, as if I might start
oozing the same substance in front of him. I just nod, remembering 
some of the crazier agendas perking around in the Group. I don't
understand it, but then, they never paid me to understand it. I never
thought it would be important to know. Mulder continues, "They were
genetics researchers, making more of their own." His face is all 
scrunched up so all I can see is his nose and his upper lip, curling
around his front teeth. "They knew everything about what they
do to --" And he stops, mouth agape. His teeth click shut.

     Scully gives him a long, long look. Then she faces me with a
frown and says: "Abductees. The man I met was monitoring a cell of
abductees in Allentown, Pennsylvania. They were all dying of cancer."
A shaky breath. "He could explain what caused the cancers, why the
chips were implanted, why --" she falters, and doesn't look at me
as she says, steely, "why every female abductee is returned barren."

     It takes me a long minute to understand the word. It's not a
word people use, not any more. I am thinking about broken corn stalks
in the beaks of crows and empty furrows planted with snow and then
I look at her and I know.

     She looks back at me and doesn't blink.

     "They harvest a woman's ova, her eggs, and experiment with
engineered children," Scully says. She's not meeting my eyes now but
her voice is solid. I don't know what to do with my hand. I don't know
whether I should look at her or not. Barren. That's not a very nice
word, I am thinking, uselessly. You're not a very nice guy.

     Mulder is observing me, finding every weakness but I can't play
to him. I can't play at all. I take a breath and it's unsteady.
"They told me nothing," I say, and realize I have settled on honesty.
I fumble over the words. "I . . . I asked, once, right after the. . . 
Duane Barry incident. He told me, I said I had a right to know and
he said I had no rights. He wouldn't tell me anything."

     She just stands there, not really looking at me but not looking
away either. Scully has a chip in her neck, so she's not dying of
cancer. And then I realize, like a fool, that having that chip got
a lot of people killed, burnt up like leaves in a pile. That con-
nection has never been so stark. She has no ways out, does she, a
corpse or a prisoner, and even then maybe a corpse. What kind of
rebellion am I starting? What the hell am I doing?

* * * * * * *

     Scully didn't quite know how to react to Krycek's discomfort.
She let her peripheral vision tell her he was fidgeting, while she
kept her eyes on Mulder's cool anger. She realized she had not told
all of the story, so she did, dull and helpless. "They create 
children and then torture them. I found one, a girl, but she died
of the tests they were doing to her."

     She hazarded a look at Krycek and he had gone white as he
stared at her. His gaze was not the glittering speculation, nor the
cool planning, nor the flippant distance she knew of him. He just
stood, hand at his side, his broad shoulders shaking a little, his
skin the pasty color of someone who is about to vomit. His eyes were
brown and naked and she shied away from them. She had seen horror
on men's faces before, not least her partner's face, but this
particular sight was singularly disconcerting. He tried and failed
to close his mouth -- like a fish, she thought, but the image did
not make her able to laugh at him. The emotion he displayed made
her wonder and made her feel the gnawing self-pity in her throat.
His body was whipcord-tense and Mulder's hand had strayed to his
holster as if in response.

     There was so much more that wanted to spill out, a thwarted
world of smells and solemn eyes and the empty coffin she had buried,
but she could not say them, not to Krycek, not and let him see her
cry. She had wept a few times, back when it happened, bitter
shaking tears when she had been free of Mulder's presence. She
refused to be weak now. She wrapped her hands around her body and
lowered her head to her chest. She knew Mulder was watching and
willed him silently to keep his distance.

     Abruptly Krycek gave her his back, and the jumble of sounds
that flew from his lips might have been curses in a foreign language.
"She never told me about that stuff," he muttered, shivering.

     "Who told you?" Mulder pounced. Then he relented a little:
"Told you what?"

       Krycek turned and made a face as if Mulder's very presence
annoyed him. Then again, Scully thought, it might, considering their
history. "A girlfriend of mine. She was the one who told me about
the cancer. She knew a couple of people who'd died of it. She never
took out her chip." Scully could see that he wanted to look at her
but that he wanted to do so without being observed. "It was a few
years ago, before, before I went to Hong Kong."

     A thought occurred to her. "You speak as if she's dead."

     "She is," said Krycek wearily.  

     Mulder was not one to miss an opportunity. "Did you kill her?"
he asked, with a quiet dangerous tone.

     "No." Krycek lowered his chin to his left shoulder, looking
wan and ragged. "She died on Skyland Mountain. I'm surprised you
didn't notice," he added. Scully just looked at him and he lost his
ironic tone in a second. "Her name scrolled on the TV, I saw it in
some bar or something when I was in New York City. Her name was
Valerie Arntzen."

     A little ironic shrug acknowledged their recognition of the
name. Mulder forbore, for once, from making a rude noise. "So you
knew her before you met up with those aspiring political scientists?"
He had stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked generally
frustrated.

     Decidedly safer ground, thought Scully, as she watched Krycek
regain some color in his cheeks. "You take names wherever you can
find them. Cab drivers, math teachers. Ex-girlfriends. She said
her grandfather was Ukrainian. It fit the bill."

     "Is there any way," asked Mulder, squinting, "That we could get
ahold of this version of Crawford while he's in DC?"

     Krycek scratched his neck. Scully realized that the scabs of a
few days previous had flaked away when he said, "I don't know.
I'll see what I can do."

     Mulder was still squinting at Krycek. Scully realized she
didn't know what Mulder was thinking at all. "And when did you
suddenly become a hero?" he asked.

     Krycek's answer was quick and spiteful. "Your damned self-
righteous glory-seeking. I just want . . ." He clammed up, deep
wrinkles in his forehead and around his eyes. She watched the effort
he made as he buttoned down his anger. His eyes settled on Scully,
and she set her chin to return the gaze. 

     He looked away. "Till next time," he muttered, and
disappeared out of the light. Just like that, thought Scully,
watching Mulder's tension. Like a fist when you open your hand.

* * * * * * *

      "Your nickname was Lottie, wasn't it?" I ask her, before she's
even shut her door. MacIlvain startles, but she recovers quickly
enough, flipping on a light. I wonder if she's even aware what
this nice, empty apartment says about her.

     "And yours was Jamal. I did have an Arabic dictionary." She
slaps down her purse on the kitchen counter and drops her keys
beside it. Imperturbable. I watch her calm and have to keep a tight
hold on my own self. I can't do anything right any more. We both
know she's armed, and if she sees the chance she'll take it.

       I slide over to shut the door, banging my knapsack against
it. Maybe too optimistic to bring that along. I give her a malicious
grin, wishing I could really scare her. "You ever heard a bunch of 
tribesmen from the Hindu Kush try to say 'Tim?'" Pockets of wrinkles
emerge around her eyes as she chuckles. 

     "Just another name, right?" she says, but it's not a question.
I'm not in the mood so I walk right up to her and press my hips to
hers. While she's formulating a disgusted response I get most of a
body search done and don't even have to put down my gun. I'm very
proud of that maneuver.

     It's a little awkward, holding both my own gun and hers in
the same hand, so I stow it in my knapsack and turn back to her.
She's just beginning to age, maybe fifty, I don't know what women
look like, just the thinness of the skin around her neck and a hint
of looseness in the shape along her jaw. Liver spots on her cheeks.
No indoor lady she. She's about ready to spit fire and that's funny
to watch. I can feel my surety coming back -- this I know how to do.
I gesture her over to the easy chair in the front room, placed alone
in front of the TV.

     How many apartments like these -- at least she has a permanent
address. I settle myself against the laden bookshelves and eyeball
her up and down. She doesn't flinch.

     "You want to continue the conversation in the limo?" she asks.
Now that she's at home that cultured society-lady voice is replaced
by something I can believe once barked orders in a field hospital.

     I decide now's as good a time as any to strike. "Management
really sucks, don't it?" She sneers at me and I sneer back. There's
safety in this antagonism. Outside, someone's laying heavy on the
horn on Route 1. Traffic and the air thick with unshed rain. 

     She can't keep a straight face forever, so she gives up and
reaches out to turn on the light next to her, grimacing. I can see
her, cozying into the chair, reading a good nineteenth century novel
while Jay Leno labors to make government funny. Not now; she puts
her hands in her lap and says, "Well, you and I have walked differ-
ent roads. I got kicked upstairs as soon as the old boys realized
they really had something in the Mujaheddin. And you -- what did
you do?"

     Something odd has come over me and I talk before caution can
shut me up: "I got out before I went crazy." I had no idea I was
going to say that and I duck my head. But she remains silent, and
finally, I tell her, just relieved to be telling anyone. I don't
know that it matters any more anyway. "I got personally involved.
It was just a job, at first, but then I found myself planning raids
with the Warriors. And then -- I was on a mission when I broke my
ankle. Fell out of a stolen Russian truck. It was time to move on."
I don't want to look at her but she's nodding.

    "They were so frightened," she says, misty in the half-dark of
her apartment. "Conquered with hardly a shot fired, strange people
coming in and taking away everything they knew. They were so good
because they were desperate."

     I'm shaking like a dog just out of the rain. I can't believe
she could know me so well. But she's staring off into a corner of
the room heedless, so maybe it's not me she knows. Then she blinks,
and shakes her head, and that strident voice returns: "And how did
you end up a Russian agent, after that?"

     She makes it sound like a betrayal, and then it occurs to me
that it might have been. "I, ah, came down with the flu," I say,
and if she knew what it really was, she still wouldn't believe me.
"And while I was out of it some old enemies caught up with me. They
locked me into the chamber of a missile silo, in North Dakota."

     Lottie snorts, an undignified thing for her to do. "So that's
why your two federal friends went to North Dakota." Oh. Oh my. I
can't react or she'll know what a shock it is. I never had any idea
they came looking for me. But then I remember: they were hoping to
arrest me, not rescue me. I roll my shoulders and get myself under
control.

     "You knew about Hong Kong, right?" She cocks her head, as close
to a no as she'll ever say. "I lived in Hong Kong for a few months,
avoiding the undesirables. Somehow word got out about my language
skills, and a polite old gentleman approached me. Twice, and he
didn't understand why I would turn him down. He kept appealing to
my heritage. He said they could tell from my accent what part of
Russia my family must be from. Embarrassing, actually." Another
truth I'll have to tell them, when I've got the opportunity. My
father really is a Cold War immigrant.

     There is so much they deserve to know. Later. "I woke up one day,
in a hotel room, with bad vodka breath about two inches from my face
and an IV in my arm. They dug me out. They said I almost died of
dehydration. After that I couldn't exactly say no, could I?"

     "That's pretty damn unbelievable," says Lottie, and now her
hands are straying, no longer in her lap.

     I cut her off, angrier than I should be. "And you know as well
as any that a believable story would likely be false. Even arch
criminals get the sniffles sometimes. Isn't that how they caught
the Jackal?"

     Lottie demurs. "Liposuction, Corwith." That name makes me
bristle unaccountably.

     "All right, we've re-established our professional standing.
Care to tell me where you've stashed Harkness?"

     She is sitting tense in that easy chair and it's not change
she's feeling around for with her left hand. Oh, sure, sit back,
catch the Skins, shoot the TV if they lose. "My people didn't take
him," she says warily.

     And Lottie still doesn't get it, or doesn't want to. "Your
people. How much do you think they really tell you? How much do
you tell them?" Apparently she's not a big one for kindness. We
don't have time for her to learn the hard way. "Listen, just give
me Harkness's notebooks then. We can reconstruct if they've already
killed him."

     I blink, and have to blink again. Charlotte MacIlvain is
crying in her living room, sitting in front of a thug like me. She
sniffles a little and the brimming tears fall, just two of them,
and I can't decide whether to shoot her or laugh at her or run away.
"I know where he is," she says, not looking at me. I go still, as
if by moving I would remind her she has an audience. "Army special
intelligence wanted his, uh, extracurricular research bad. They
took him, crowed about it to my boss."

     "And you found out how?"

     "I broke into his email, been doing it for years. His password
is 'god.'" A laugh, hard in her throat, as if the tears hadn't
happened. "1402 Elm Street, Green Break, New Jersey. Walker's a
friend. Corwith, Krycek, whatever your name really is - you get
him out for me."

     That's not a request. She stands and does a very good job of
keeping the weapon out of sight as she leads me down the hall. To
her bathroom, of all places. She has them hidden under the guest linen
-- I'll have to remember that one. She hefts five of those jumbo
grade-school composition books, stuffed with loose pages of notes
and paper-clipped printouts. I have to put my gun away to take
them. So I go whole hog, give her my back as I stuff them into my
knapsack.

     She's not stupid. I'm looking at the pinkie-sized barrel of a
.22, a lovely antique, when I turn back to her. A woman after my
own heart. "You had to expect it," she says, wrinkling her brows.

     I just smile at her, my winningest smile. "I'm putting myself
in harm's way to save your friend. Put that gun away, Lottie."

     She pauses, then, wiping away the drying tears on her cheeks,
tells me, "I'm giving you those notebooks as a sign of faith.
Nobody else knows about them. I want in on your little party."
Hardwood in that stare, and I can't blink.

     I swallow.  "I'll let you know when the invitations have been
printed." I could almost wonder if it might be worthwhile, as she
rubs her thumb down the barrel of that classy little gun. But I
can't commit, not without -- oh hell, without discussing it with 
Mulder and Scully. Why can't I cross the street any more without
asking them first. So I don't say anything else, just head back
towards the door, Lottie a few steps behind.

     "I let you live," she says, as I am opening the door. "I don't
owe you anything now." She sniffs, and it would complete the
portrait of hauteur, but she's just been crying. I let my eyes rest
on her a long time. She doesn't squirm.

     "No," I say as I turn away, and I can't help noticing the
exhaustion in my own voice, "you owe them though." I leave the words
hanging in her doorway and escape down the hall. She just stands
behind me, watching, a little disheveled but somehow keeping her
dignity even so.

* * * * * * *

     The task force meeting was a short and grim one, double the
number of people crammed into the room than had been present when
the Harkness case had been opened. National Security Agency men sat
tight-lipped in cliques in the back of the room while Scully played
the videotape.

     "You see here," she noted, pausing the tape, "that this man
has been loitering across the street for five minutes, ostensibly
checking his watch. We believe he is in the employ of a party or
parties interested in Harkness's research. Now Agent Mulder," she
gestured at her partner, who was wearing too nice a suit to slouch
in his chair like that, "saw unknown people following Harkness
several days ago. We can't say if they were going to approach him,
or had something to do with his disappearance."

     Mulder looked carefully at her, their rehearsed avoidance of
the real facts coming with difficulty to her. She glanced again at
the screen, at the clear countenance of their CIA driver from the
previous night, and wondered whether any of the others in the
meeting might recognize him as well.

     "What time was this footage taken?" asked Vygotsky, who sat
alone in shirtsleeves in the corner. His face was a deceptive void,
but his colleagues had been stealing glances at him since the
meeting began.

     Mulder cleared his throat and said, "About five p.m. The tape
covers six hours' worth of surveillance, and it seems Harkness set
up his camera to view only the front yard." He made eye contact
with Skinner, and looked away when he concluded, "Whoever broke in
came through the back, despite there being a rusty -- and loud --
screen door. We can only assume they knew about the surveillance
of the front."

     Scully was watching Mulder when Vygotsky spoke up again. "If
you found the recording equipment upstairs, then anybody could have
intercepted the transmission from the camera. If it had audio you
could have picked it up on a cordless phone."

     "Well," said Scully finally, "It suggests that the man you see
here is not involved with the later violence, or else that the
intruders did not realize that Harkness was recording off the
camera. Or else," she sighed, "that they were in a hurry and didn't
check the second story of the house." A chorus of low mutters
rolled through the room, the FBI agents cursing quietly to each
other and the NSA men whispering in each other's ears.

     Skinner stood, and came to stand in front of the television.
Scully took the opportunity to stop the tape as he said, "All right,
agents, you have your respective assignments. The computer people
will have a report about the salvageable data by five p.m. Let's
get moving." Scully straightened slowly in front of the TV, a cold
spot emerging suddenly under her sternum. She did not have an
assignment. Nor had Mulder said anything . . .

     She whirled to look at him, already accusing with her eyes,
but he shrugged and nodded his head at the identically-suited men
still shuffling out of the conference room. She lowered her head
to her chest and ordered herself to stay under control. When she
looked up, Vygotsky was standing before her, rolling down his
shirtsleeves.

     He was a dark man, rather short, and the deep pockmarks around
his mouth made him look far older than he probably was. He finished
buttoning his sleeves and looked hard at her for a long moment.
Scully didn't know what to do so she ejected the videotape while
he scrutinized her. "Agent Scully," he said at last, and Skinner,
still shepherding his agents out the door, glanced back at them.
Mulder still slouched in his chair, pretending not to watch.
Vygotsky opened his mouth and closed it again, diffidently.

     "I'm sorry about your men," Scully said, but she knew it was
more because she had nothing to say than because it was true. But
it was what Vygotsky wanted to hear, apparently; his features
hardened, resolved themselves into a mask of determination.

     "Ma'am," he said, with pinpoint rage and a strange hesitation,
"ma'am, anything you find out, anything you need on this case, you
got a fort full of cryptologists behind you. You just ask for Jim
Vygotsky, on or off the clock."

     Scully blinked at him, mouth open, but he seemed to need no
reply. He snatched up his suit jacket and strode through the door
Skinner still held open, his back perhaps a little straighter.
Scully looked at Mulder, who looked back at her with the same baffled
gratitude she felt. Skinner let the door swing shut across the room
and they both quickly looked away.

     "Mulder," said Skinner abruptly. He stood alone at the end of
the conference table, and Scully remembered the horde of indist-
inguishable men who had swept past him a moment before.

     He didn't say anything further and Scully just stood before
him, Mulder towering beside her. She wondered what else they
could have done wrong now, if he would really have the gall to
take her off this case.

     "There's a warehouse on the north end of Elm Street, in Green
Break, New Jersey. Number 1402." Skinner lowered his head as if in
defeat, then looked hard at Scully. She didn't quite dare blink
under his sharp dark gaze. "Unofficial channels suggest that
Harkness is being held there. No," he protested, before Mulder
could draw breath, "I didn't ask on your behalf. This information
was volunteered to me." Skinner worked hard to keep the mystified
tone out of his voice, but his face was solemn and thoughtful.

     Mulder inhaled deeply beside her; Scully felt the cool air
moving through her lungs, felt their capacity measured in cold
sensation behind her breasts, and spared a hope that Harkness was
still breathing too.

     Skinner said, "You won't notice the suspicious behavior you
need for probable cause standing around in Washington." His eyebrows
were level and Scully felt herself shaking with sudden adrenaline.

     The partners blinked at each other, and in a practiced
motion fell into step towards the door. They brushed past Skinner,
leaving him standing in an empty room, while they went to hunt in
points north.

* * * * * * *

     Green Break, New Jersey was like a million other suburban
refuges -- a mixture of chic bars and strip malls and bored, hyper-
active teenagers. It was not very hard to find Elm Street, and
not very hard to drive north along it till the ranch-style houses
gave way to brick tract housing and then to empty lots. Scully
pointed out the delivery entrance to 1402, a steel-and-concrete
squat fortress like any other warehouse with its covered diesel
pumps like advance surveillance towers by the road, as Mulder
drove past at measured speed.

     They did not see any guards, but surely eyes were watching.

     About a mile afterwards, Mulder pulled over onto the gravel
and gave a long look up and down at Scully. She was adjusting the
focus of her MagLite, dressed all in black from her heeled boots
to the knit cap which covered her hair. She caught him looking
and gave him a weak smile. "This is a crazy idea, Mulder."

     "I know. That's why we're doing it, right?" He raised his
eyebrows at her, but she looked at her lap. She didn't say anything.
  
     Mulder put off saying anything else while he pulled on his
gloves. Finally, out of tasks to distract himself, he turned to her
and told her, "If you don't trust yourself, you can, I mean, I'll
go --"

     She stopped him with a little gesture and the taut expression
on her face. "No, Mulder. I'm not letting you go in there alone."

     He couldn't argue so he opened the car door. He checked his
weapon in the chill of the evening, touched his flashlight,
binoculars, and then his ID. "I guess we should leave these behind."

     She flipped hers onto the seat she had vacated. He did the
same, and then there was no more preparing to do. Scully came close
and put her hand on his elbow, and together they turned to jog
back towards the warehouse.

     It was easy to get in; it was too easy. They jimmied the lock
on an emergency exit and no guard shouted into the night, nor shot
to kill. It was as if they had been invited in. Inside the building
proved to be more than just storage space; Mulder stalked his way
through a suite of empty offices with late seventies colors painted
on the concrete walls and deep gouges in the wooden floors. The
fluorescent lights made every room stark and papers scattered the
cheap desks as if everyone would be right back, but Scully lifted
a sheaf of them and showed him wordlessly that each page was blank.
The computer console they found in one room was made of styrofoam.
Nothing.

     He was beginning to think that the entire raid was going to be
a bust when Mulder heard a noise, vague through the walls. A rhythmic
sound, like a dryer in the next room, and he waved Scully out of 
the doorway with his gun hand.

     "What is it?" she asked, sotto voce, but then she stiffened,
listening, and came to look over his shoulder out into the hall. The
rubber in the soles of the soldier's boots echoed dully as he paced
that even stride; Mulder noticed that he was Army and that he was
armed to the teeth in the same moment. Under his crisp cap, the
soldier's eyes were shadowed, but his head swivelled back and forth
as he patrolled the long empty hallway.

     Scully shifted, and put her lips to Mulder's ear to speak, when
a dark shape pounced from a recessed doorway and fell without a sound
atop the soldier. Mulder discerned a man-shape, all in black like
himself, even as he heard the nerve-tweaking crack which is the
sound of bone breaking. The soldier slumped to the floor, his head
lolling on his shoulder, and the man in black crouched over him.
Mulder was rooted in place, finally recognizing the face he saw.

     It was a hard face, square planes and angles without rondure.
The pale hair, slicked back to the skull, gave it the mirage of
endless forehead. The eyes were light blue and empty. "That's the
guy," he breathed. "The one from the submarine."
  
     Scully's mouth at his ear and the barrel of her gun nudging his
forearm. "The one who traded me for --"

     "Yes." Mulder's guts turned to lead as he watched that express-
ionless face wriggle, writhe, and flow into another shape. Perhaps
he gasped, or maybe it was another effect of the thing's other-
worldly calm, but the man in black raised its head and stared
directly at the door which sheltered the two agents. It now wore
the soldier's face, and lacking the hat, Mulder could see those eyes
were brown.

     It stood, took two long, powerful strides, and broke into an
effortless run. Mulder didn't wait to see more but elbowed Scully
towards the adjoining office. She jostled her weapon into the air,
looking at him in confusion, but she scuttled under his outstretched
arm and into a room with two other exits. 

     "Its blood," he muttered, shuddering in memory. "That
retrovirus. We've got to run." A room away, a door banged open and
bounced back. Scully stood at one door, Mulder at the other, their
eyes on each other and wide.

     "Go," Scully said, her voice as sharp as her face, and she
shouldered her way through her door. Mulder didn't wait for the
sight of her back before slipping through the other brown door.
He listened as he ran, but could hear no sound of pursuit over the
tangle of his own nervous feet.

* * * * * * *
  
     Scully rounded the corner at a trot, service weapon in hand and
completely lost in the damned sameness of the building's interior.
A long hallway stretched before her, a line of doors dotting the
starkly lit concrete walls. Dust and stray papers made an incompre-
hensible pattern on the floor.

     Perhaps sixteen closed doors, more space than she had thought
possible in this cramped area. She advanced cautiously, flicking
glances over her shoulder, apparently alone in enemy territory.
Her pulse pounded at her temple and sent a flush into her face and
neck; she clamped down hard on her fear and reached out to touch the
tin doorknobs.

     Locked, every one. Four doors in ten yards and no progress and
maybe that man-creature had followed her instead of Mulder. Scully
did not doubt that it would kill her, despite past allowances
afforded a powerless enemy. Five, six, and still no progress. As
she reached out for the seventh door it opened away from her with
a jerk, casting a weak shaft of light into the static blackness of
the room beyond. A hand, disembodied on the end of a black-clad
arm, reached out to clutch her forearm, and yanked her forward.

     She stumbled, unbalanced, her weapon pointing wildly at her
own feet, and a choked noise escaped her throat. The arm swung her
hard and she regained her balance gathered in its embrace, a large,
hard forearm tensing like a snake between her breasts, a hot body
pressed against her back. Her gun was gone in the darkness,
clattering away on the wood floor, distant. An inhaled gasp came
thickly through the heavy leather-covered hand which clamped itself
across her jaw.

     A breath, moist, in her ear, and a chin at her temple. She
shivered at the heat this enveloping presence conferred, every
muscle going vertical in one painful snap. She was steeling herself
for the inevitable when the door swung shut and left her blind,
the only light a stripe of cold fluorescence against the concrete
floor.

     The body around her heaved a breath, and spoke. "Please just
hold still." The voice was low and dry, that tight tone Krycek got
when he had been unwilling to speak. It was worse, somehow, that
the thing had taken Krycek's demeanor, that she would be killed
ostensibly by an ally who for once was proving himself faithful. 

     "Scully, don't move," it whispered, and she knew she was
struggling even as she doubted it would do any good, her gun lost
to her, and useless anyway. "It's me, it's Krycek, please shut up
or we'll both get caught." She flexed and wriggled halfway out of
that powerful grasp, and realized that the thing had not used the
left arm at all. She found a gloved forefinger against her lips and
bit down hard.

     A hiss escaped its lips but it did not let go; rather she
found herself turned bodily into the crook of the creature's arm,
her face pressed against its pectoral muscle. Her arms swung wildly
but did not do any damage. Her lips pressed hard against a wall of
muscle, her cries amounted to muffled whimpers.

     "Please." The voice was feverish. "It's me, you know it's me
or I'd have killed you already. I don't know what you're doing
here but you have to leave." She could hear a heart beating under
her ear, racing away in tandem with heaving lungs. Her arms decreased
their period and she came to a stop, an exalted helplessness working
like lassitude over her bones. In response the arm around her neck
relaxed, enough for her to turn her head and growl:

       "I saw the thing upstairs. I saw it change shape. It could
be anybody." The head above her expelled a heavy breath and let
her go. Two steps away, she could see almost nothing, but felt a
presence, like a blind spot in her vision, dark on dark. Her gun
was gone and she did not dare get on her knees to search for it.

       It spoke and as it did so it moved lower, down to her level,
down so it must be crouching on the floor. "My name is Ganya. You're
the only person who knows that name." That voice. That tone, and
she knew it was him. A noise escaped her throat, and she dropped to
her knees to find him. 

       "Ganya," she whispered, reaching out into nothingness for
his customary leather jacket, and then, "Krycek." His hand found
her face, his gloved fingertips brushing briefly across her cheek.
Then he caught her hand as if he could see and he squeezed it briefly
before leading it to the floor, where she felt the contours of her
weapon. "What are you doing here."
  
      "Finding Harkness," he said, and they stood together. "Did
Mulder drag you here?"

      "It was my idea." A surge of discomfort splashed her as she
thought of her partner, defending him automatically even from his
allies. "He's somewhere in the building; we got separated."

     Krycek put his hand on her shoulder and guided her to the
door. "Let's go find him," he said, and withdrew his hand to turn
the doorknob.

*

     Their first notice that Mulder was nearby was a shout, hoarse
in desperation: "Scully! Down!" She didn't think; she hit the floor
and Krycek rolled to cover her. 

     Silence, then, and a few muted footfalls. "Get off of her," 
came a voice she hardly knew. She had heard it before, long ago,
when Mulder had put a pistol to his own temple. And then she 
realized what was going on and poked Krycek in the ribs.

     He was already rolling off, his hand raised. Scully sat up to
find Mulder standing over them, jittering fear in the tight skin
over his cheekbones. "It's really Krycek," she said quietly, but 
Mulder didn't relax. "Mulder, it's me, your partner, the one who
watched you leave your FBI identification on the front seat of a
Chevy Cavalier an hour ago." He blinked the sweat out of his eyes
and scrutinized her as he eased out of the Weaver stance.

     "What the hell is he doing here," said Mulder, stepping out
of the doorway of the office area. His voice echoed in the high-
ceilinged storage room as he helped her to her feet. Krycek sat
on the floor for a moment, then got up himself and kept his eyes
down. He did not have his gun out, a fact which bothered Scully
until she realized he had been opening doors. He could not turn
a doorknob and hold a gun at the same time.

     He was already moving on his toes down the hall from which 
Mulder had come when he answered, "I got a tip that Harkness was
here. That the Army was holding him. If what Scully says is true,
then we're not the only ones who want to bust him out." He allowed
a glance back in their direction with an irritated expression on
his face. "Aren't you coming?"

     "I searched those offices already," muttered Mulder, keeping
his voice low even if Krycek did not. Scully looked from one man
to the other. "I came through the last door there; they're the
offices we were in when we first broke in."

     Krycek looked him up and down dubiously and said, "We've
searched that whole end of the building. There's got to be something
up here you missed." And he turned around and started walking.
Mulder and Scully looked at each other, and Mulder seemed to be
tasting something bitter. Scully began to think she knew why he hated
Krycek so viscerally.

     She was about to suggest caustically that this great anonymous
tip was a fake when all decisions were made for them. From the
other end of the great storage area came a clatter and a shout,
the high note of alarm in a man's voice. The three people looked
at each other's blank faces and crowded through the doorway back
into the offices. 

     "Now they decide to stand guard," Mulder said drily. They
arranged themselves against the wall by the door and listened with
all their might. Scully counted four or five distinct sets of feet,
and at least three mouths which would need to be washed out with
soap. It seemed as if they would stand around cursing at each other
for a while, when abruptly the mood of their unseen pursuers changed.

     A sharp whistle through teeth silenced the chattering voices
and weapons clicked into readiness. It killed Scully, not being
able to see what was going on. The gunfire which burst forth, a
short staccato tattoo, startled her even as she watched the two men
across from her both tense involuntarily. It might have been worth
commenting, the way they gauged each other's reaction, but then the
screaming started.

     It was a horror to hear, a thing Scully wanted to shut away
with hands over her ears, but something cold and logical inside her
refused that luxury. There was a hissing sound, quiet in counter-
point to the pained wails, that she recognized. Acid. The green
blood. She caught Mulder's look, wild-eyed. The retrovirus.
Krycek had snatched out his weapon and held it at his thigh, but
seemed unperturbed or unaware of their danger. 

     Without a word Scully jumped across the open doorway and
together they fled down the hall, boots slapping the concrete, an
acrid stink chasing them under the bright lights. They ducked into
an office, Scully didn't remember which one, and found themselves
without any other exits. She could no longer hear the screaming.

     Three heaving chests and the sound of breathing. "What now,"
panted Krycek, diagnosing the walls as if they would grow another
door. She and Mulder stared at each other, their guns hanging
useless in their lowered hands. She opened her mouth and closed it
and looked at her shoes. With her eyes lowered she only saw the
legs of the men before her. Mulder balanced on his toes, but Krycek
stood still like an oak tree. 

     Abruptly he fell to his knees before her, eyes on the floor,
and an involuntary recoil shook Scully hard, her free hand flying
up as if to defend. "What - what are you *doing*, Krycek," she 
breathed, her skin bloodless, fearing, as she saw his head, bowed,
at her waist level, what he would ask of her. Her heels danced on
the hardwood as she backed away in the cramped space, the noise of
the wood reminding her of a hundred confessionals. The air was
thick and hard to breathe and time stretched immeasurably. Unable
to say anything further, she stared down at him, dark hair thick
and short like the pelt of some animal, a mink, an otter.

     "There's a trap door under us," muttered Krycek, his hand
digging at the wood. Scully's breath escaped from her throat in a
rush. He did not seem to have noticed her reaction, but a glance at
Mulder revealed him watching her carefully. "I can't quite - could
one of you help me? It needs two hands."
  
* * * * * * *
  
     I open a hole into Hell -- total darkness -- and I can't go
any further. Mulder, kneeling next to me, elbows me aside and sticks
head and shoulders into the trapdoor, just like that, lying on the
floor. Dinosaurs' mouths are like this in my mind's eye. I reel
backwards and find myself sitting on my heels and staring at Scully.

     She's giving me a wary look, but then Mulder makes a noise and
she sets aside whatever is bothering her and drops to her knees to
help him. So I stare at the empty walls while they grunt and shine
their pitiful little flashlights into the maw. Somewhere one of those
things is hunting, one of those creatures I've heard gossip about
but never seen. This whole night is just tailored to exploit my
fears.

     Mulder makes a yelp of discovery, and leans up, beckoning me
down to see. I can't, I have to hold tight to the edge just to look,
and lo in a pool of bluish white light is a chair full of Harkness.
It's about fifteen feet down, and as Scully swivels the second
flashlight around I realize it is a large, sloping room with metal walls.

     "Gas tank," I tell them, and let out a breath. "The old kind.
I think this is the only way in or out." Mulder just blinks at me,
evaluating, as ever, whether the obvious could be turned to a lie.
He decides not, I guess, and in a few efficient motions has let
himself down to hang from the edge, and let go.

     It doubles my heart rate to see him disappear, but then he
emerges into Scully's spotlight and leans over Harkness. The guy's
an old man; I expect him to be dead of whatever torture they've
been doing but he jerks up his head, chest heaving. Mulder doesn't
say a word but fiddles with the ropes that hold the old man down.
I watch him for a second, then pull out my switchknife and hold it
in front of me. I have to work up enough spit to say, "Hey, here,"
and I toss it down to him.

     Mulder catches it like a parlor trick and I feel the sweat
roll down my head as he saws away the ropes. Harkness is gaining
color, and he gasps a few times before he can be understood: 
"Please -- the door. Please let me go." Scully next to me lets out
a breath, and I don't think she realizes she's leaning on me at all.

     "Drop me that extra flashlight?" Mulder asks, and I do, and
while we watch from above he surveys Harkness's metal room in a slow
spin. He stops suddenly, and squints up into Scully's light. "He's
right," he calls. "There's a door cut in the metal over here."

     She doesn't say anything. She just hands me the flashlight
and starts scrambling over the edge. I want to help her down, but
I've got my hand full and suddenly I'm aware I'm alone in the room
with that creature somewhere hunting us down. The flashlight goes
into my belt next to the gun and I'm sitting on the lip, my legs
dangling over into darkness, Scully's high voice a little echo below.

     I give the trapdoor a good heave as I jackknife off my seat;
it means I land awkwardly, bruising my hip, but the trapdoor gives
a resounding thud and leaves us in near-total darkness. Two panicked
breaths and I remember like an idiot I've got a flashlight in my
belt.

     Still sitting in his wooden chair, Harkness looks me up and
down with narrow eyes. "Who are you?" he demands, his voice rusty
from disuse or screaming. I recognize the slow flexing of his hands
as the first return of sensation to numbed tissue.

     "I'm the guy who's carrying you out," I smirk at him, and try
to chafe life back into his wrist. "Unless you can walk?" He shakes
his head ruefully and I know the feeling well. "Come on, old man."
Like two lepers at a busstop, we lean on each other, jockeying
awkwardly till I can get his body over my shoulder. He's hardly
any weight in a fireman's carry and I heft him over to where Mulder
and Scully are poking at the crude door.

     Harkness says to my ass, "The door open yet?" and it would be
funny except that it isn't. Then I hear a snap and a ping and a
curse word from Scully and light angles in as the door swings wide.
I would offer a prayer of thanks if I believed in any gods. 

     Mulder goes first, gun and flashlight at the ready, and Scully
brings up the rear. I step through the soldered steel door as she
says behind me, "We broke your knife opening it." I wish I could
wallow in the memory of that knife, how I kept it after pulling it
out of my knee in a bar fight, how I kicked its original owner
across the room, how many times I've used it for illegal
sorts of things. But we've still got to get out of this building.

* * * * * * *

     Krycek jostled his cargo surprisingly little as he jogged back
to the car. Mulder kept a close eye on Harkness, who hung head down
and either amazingly patient or semi-conscious over Krycek's shoulder.
They made an odd caravan, for sure, hot-footing through the run-down
parts of New Jersey suburbia, clustering around the plain white car as
Mulder fumbled with the keys, Scully standing by the back tire with
every sense on full alert.

     The car started with a little more force than was really
necessary, Mulder stomped on the gas and tore back onto the road.
Scully leaned over her seat to look over Harkness, who half-lay
in Krycek's lap in the back seat. Somewhere she had lost her cap
and her hair tangled wildly across her forehead.

     "They're not following," Krycek said at last, twisting around
to watch the road behind them. He settled into his seat and watched
Scully taking Harkness's pulse, and asked irritably, "who tipped
you?"

     Mulder watched the man in his rearview mirror but said nothing.
Beside him, Scully let out a curse and grabbed his shoulder, start-
ling him badly enough to swerve across the empty lanes. But she
only stuck her foot in his lap and proceeded to clamber into the
back seat. "Push over, Krycek," she said shortly as she thumbed
open Harkness's eyelids. "He's in bad shape, Mulder. We need a
hospital."

     Harkness was on his left, so Krycek couldn't maneuver the old
man well; he nudged with his shoulder and offered, "I know of a
clinic in Newark that would ask no questions." Mulder wished he
could see better what Scully was doing. "You're driving north anyway,
and unless you want to explain how you came to deliver a missing man
to a hospital . . . ?" Krycek's voice was annoyingly playful, and
Mulder caught the end of a smirk in the mirror.

     He could feel his face tightening into a sneer, but he didn't
have anything to say. Scully interjected, "He's dehydrated and his
circulation is bad. I can only guess what drugs they've given
him." She gave Krycek a look, as if he would know, but he leaned
forward to speak into Mulder's ear.

     "If he dies, his research can still be recovered." The cool
practicality of that voice bothered Mulder immensely. He glanced
at Scully, but she hadn't heard, or didn't react, lowering Harkness's
torso into her lap. The old man jerked, spluttered, and began to
mutter as Scully soothed his brow.

     Mulder pitched his voice low. "Then why did you come here?" he
asked, and got a little expelled breath in reply.

     "Better to have the man than just his papers," Krycek said, and
leaned back with a troubled expression. He took up one of Harkness's
hands, by coincidence the left, and massaged the wrist with his
thumb.

     Several miles passed like that, Scully's mouth tight as she
hovered over Harkness and Krycek hand-holding. Mulder had begun
to relax off the adrenaline high when suddenly Harkness gave a cry,
and shrieked, "Don't you touch her!" He convulsed on Scully's lap,
trying to rise, and all of her comforting did not make him desist.
Mulder was getting ready to pull over when Krycek leaned over and
took Harkness's jaw in hand.

     He loomed over the old man's face and barked, "We won't hurt
her, Walker. You're safe now." For a wonder, Harkness relaxed, went
limp as if his bones had been removed, and sighed. "Can you tell me
what happened?"

     At this Mulder did steer off the road and into the lot of one
of the faceless Parkway-side gas stations, maneuvering into a space
in the dark while he listened to Harkness's deep disturbed rumble.
"I'm not stupid, soldier. You won't get any more out of me with
honey than with vinegar." Mulder cut the engine over Krycek's
strange gasp of bitter laughter, and turned in time to see the
rolling whites of his eyes as he straightened in his seat.

     "Mr. Harkness," said Scully, in a startling gentle voice,
"we're with the FBI. I'm Agent Scully and this is Agent Mulder."
Mulder was wildly aware, under Harkness's blinking gaze, that
he was wearing all black like a cartoon ninja. "Do you remember
when we put guards on your house?"

     The lights of the gas station, blinking occasionally, gave
Harkness a pale sheen which did not make him look any healthier.
Mulder sat still, twisted around in the front seat, and let Harkness
look him over where he lay. "I never saw you before," he said
finally, scowling.

     Krycek gave Scully a stare, but she was nodding a little at
Mulder. He ventured, "Mr. Harkness, what kind of research do you do?"

     The old man closed his eyes, and said, "Radios. I do radios for
the Navy."

     "The Navy?" asked Scully, and he opened his eyes to look up at
her. "You aren't a contractor to the NSA, as well as Defense? You
haven't got contracts in microlithography testing?"

     "Ma'am, I don't," muttered Harkness, "know what you're talking
about." And he closed his eyes again and seemed to fall unconscious.
Scully shifted with his head in her lap and didn't have to say
anything to Mulder. He spun back into his own seat and came up with
quiet but elaborate versions of "Dammit!" for about thirty seconds
before Krycek said something.

     "He doesn't remember anything?" From the angle where Mulder
sat, he could only see the upper half of Krycek's face in the mirror.
A pair of eyebrows drew down like twin frowns. "Did they, like, give
him a lobotomy?"

     Mulder took a firm grip on himself so he would not launch
himself at Krycek. "Erasure. We knew the Air Force had use of
something like this. Well, what do you suggest we do now?"

     Krycek pulled at his lip, staring into space, and then shook
himself and said, "Jesus, I don't know what to do about him. I
didn't know you could do that, just erase somebody's memory."  

     "It's not a subtle procedure." Krycek's look went sour, as
sour as Mulder was feeling. "Well, let's get him to that clinic,
then." He turned the key and negotiated his way onto the Garden
State Parkway. He had gone a mile, the car prevailing in silence,
when he spat, "Another thing you conveniently didn't know about."

     Scully opened her mouth, but Krycek growled, before she could
comment, "Why is it so goddamned hard for you to see my value? I
haven't lied to you since we made our deal."

     "Oh yeah?" Mulder felt his anger building like a blush up his
cheeks. "And we've had nothing but failure since then. Why would you
make a deal with people you hate except we had you tied up?"

     A jerk of his head, and Krycek seemed about to respond, but
instead he leaned back and looked out the window. Scully, her hands
still protectively over Harkness, watched both of them, her eyes
blinking back and forth and her expression blank. Mulder was think-
ing, with paradoxical unhappiness, that he had won this argument,
when Krycek muttered towards the New Jersey countryside, "That's
where you've always been wrong. All the violence -- it's all on
you, Mulder. I never hated you."

     "You used me," he accused, realizing only as he said it that it
felt like a wail.

     "I guess I did," replied Krycek, and shut up. Mulder listened
to the sound of the engine and Harkness's breathing and wondered
why the admission wasn't satisfying. Nobody said anything and the
aggressive city traffic picked up, headlights like persecuting
spotlights on all sides. 

     "My prints are on the blade of that knife," said Krycek
abruptly. "I had a glove on but not when I last cleaned that knife.
They'll blame me." Mulder realized, with a bit of a jolt, that it
was true. But then, he rationalized, there were a hundred ways
in which such a fact could be meaningless. He caught himself
thinking up ever more intricate ways in which Krycek could betray
them, and realized he was being foolish. Thus occupied, Mulder
drove automatically past the city limits of Newark.

* * * * * * *

     Except for the immediate details of Walker Harkness being found
in a clinic in Newark, Scully let the case lie fallow till the
Tuesday after Labor Day. She had the paperwork finished and ready to
file, and realized, as she stepped into the elevator, that she was
once again dreading a meeting with Skinner. Mulder stood quiet at
her side, eyeing her occasionally but keeping to himself; knowing
her so well, he had found something to keep him away for most of
the previous day. She didn't ask, and he didn't volunteer, and she
thumbed again at the pages in her hands.

     He opened his mouth four or five times before he said anything.
"I talked to Harkness's other daughter," he offered, not looking at
her. "She's getting some kind of compassionate leave to take care
of him."

     "They're calling it rapid onset of Alzheimer's," she concluded,
and he nodded. "Of course." They had not talked over the events of
their night-time excursion, and Scully did not expect them to do
so. She had only noticed a day later, when Mulder had pointed it
out to her, where the sleeve of her black sweater had been sliced,
presumably by Krycek's switchknife blade as it spun away. Mulder had
merely poked his finger through the hole, and given her a look,
and she had gone to fetch her sewing kit. "You haven't heard --"

     "No. Nothing," replied Mulder, his face closed. Nothing from
Krycek, who had faded into a rush of people in the clinic waiting
room, who had gone back to the people he worked for, who had left
his fingerprints behind at the scene. Scully didn't know whether
she should worry or not, and she realized she also didn't know
whether she did worry or not.

     They hit their floor and swept out of the elevator, she taking
her measured steps and listening to his loping stride behind her.
Skinner's sullen secretary sat typing as if to punish the keyboard,
and Scully stood in front of her for a long moment, waiting. "Yes?"
the woman said at last, cocking her head at Mulder with a suggestive
smile.

     "We're here to see the AD," said Scully, and Mulder met her
eyes with that little glimmer which both accused and exonerated her
of jealousy. She raised her chin at him and he lowered his eyes,
swallowing a chuckle.

     The woman rolled her eyes and picked up her phone, but hung it
on her shoulder when an office worker stuck his head in the room.
"What?" she asked, the frown wrinkles around her mouth getting an
extra workout.

     "Uh, I thought I saw -- Agents Mulder, Scully, X-Files division,
right?" His adam's apple bobbed as he threw glances at the secretary,
who stared Death at him and went about calling her superior. "We
got a package for you, it came Saturday, but, you know, nobody got
to it till today. It's marked urgent."

     He handed Mulder a large package wrapped in brown paper, sent
U.S. Mail, postmarked Metuchen, New Jersey. Scully came to stand by
her partner's shoulder as she nodded dismissal at the clerk, while
Mulder stood still, running his finger along the address space.
"Mulder & Scully, X-Files," it read, with the Hoover Building
address and their room number in the basement in a squarish, all-
caps block print. Scully had never seen the handwriting before, but
she looked up at Mulder and he was pursing his lips.

     "It's him," he said, not looking at anything in particular. He
lowered his voice and she automatically leaned close. "Krycek's
handwriting." And that was how Skinner found them, when he came
through his office door. He seemed to look them both up and down
before he gestured them in, but Scully couldn't have said, since
the light glinted off his glasses.

     As she stepped past him, he glanced with a grimace at his
secretary, and followed her back into his office. "I understand you
have a report for me?" Scully tapped it against her hip a few times
before she surrendered it. But Skinner hardly looked at it; instead
he took it to his desk, propped it open, and smoothed an extra sheet
of paper into it.

     Scully could see her partner opening his mouth to ask, when
Skinner looked up and skewered them both with his gaze. "This is
your copy of the file, I assume. Here." And he handed it to Mulder,
who accepted it, blinking, and held it atop the brown parcel. "You
can send me up the permanent file copy later this morning."

     Mulder looked sidelong at her, but she had no idea what was
going on. "Sir, I'd like to discuss . . ." she began, but stopped
when he raised his hand. It was a large hand silhouetted in the
morning sunlight, fingers straight as if party to an oath. Peasant
fingers, her mother called them, kneading at her husband's hands
when he had been at the paperwork too long, sausage fingers. Skinner
held that hand up a little longer than was necessary, and then spoke.

     "We all do what we can, Agent Scully," he said, and she
couldn't see behind his glasses again. "Good then. I've got evalu-
ations to go through. Carry on," he finished, settling himself into
his chair.

     Scully wanted to say something. She wanted to argue with him,
to hash out the lies and half-truths and slippage between agencies.
She bit her lip and followed when Mulder steered her by her elbow
out the door. She was still frowning to herself when she heard the
crackle of new paper, and Mulder held the file out to her wordlessly.

     The added page was a list of fourteen names and telephone
numbers, all within the greater Washington-Baltimore area, all
written in Skinner's practiced fountain pen scrawl. Across the
bottom he had written: "Unofficial Channels," and left the page
unsigned. Scully lifted her head to meet Mulder's round eyes and he
stared back at her, luminous with the possibility.

     She dropped her head to the list again, full of contradictory
emotion. The letters swam in her eyes, now making names, now
scattering into jumbled syllables. Suddenly a name assembled itself
in front of her, and she inhaled sharply. Mulder, reading over her
shoulder, made a little noise and turned away. Seventh on the list
of fourteen people was Charlotte MacIlvain.
    
* * * * * * *
  
     They are cool and composed in the back seat as I glance at
them, Grand Master reading his leather-bound ledger and Crawford
just staring out the window. He doesn't look like much, just a man,
just anyone on the street. Hard to believe he's a miracle of modern
science, in his badly-fitted suit and irritated expression. As I am
crossing the bridge the old man looks up and says,
  
     "Very good, Alex; I am glad to see you can conjure a respect-
able vehicle if pressed."
 
     "Would you settle for anything less?" I ask. Anything less
than a Mercedes I boosted from the Long Term lot not ten minutes
before I picked them up. But Grand Master just smiles, like some
contemptuously benevolent god, and it occurs to me that he might
know anyway and not care.
  
     "I shall need four hours at Sixteenth Street," he says mildly,
catching my eye in the rearview. "I'm afraid I've got some convin-
cing to do before our little coup can come off."  I frown, and
glance at Crawford, but he is still staring out the window at the
National Mall. He is a little man, neat, hands folded in his lap.
"You needn't worry about our Mr. Crawford," answers Grand Master,
and he squints one eye at me. "He will be useful in our future
struggles."
  
     "Right," I say, and pull up before the dignified hotel. Its
facade is all plain white marble, but I'm kissing up next to a
Rolls Royce. I held that cure in my hands and then I lost it. 
Jesus, the profit I could have made. Doesn't matter now.
  
     "Call for me at midnight," says the old man, checking his
Rolex. As far as I know it's still two seconds after the last time
he checked, and still 8:00. I've never seen him nervous before. 
"In the meantime, you may take Mr. Crawford to the Atco Corporation
on L Street. They will expect him in perhaps an hour." The glint in
his eye says for sure he knows it's a ten-second drive from here.
What am I thinking, that man has no nerves.
  
     "Yes sir," I tell him, mystified. Sometimes I dream of the
days when I can make him eat all the honorifics he demands, but not
today.
  
     He climbs out of the car, then leans his head back in and winks
at me. "Say hello to our mutual friends in the city, will you?" And
he is gone, hurrying up to the door and inside, straightening his
impeccable tie.

     Crawford pulls the door closed absently and I pull back out
into traffic like a robot.
  
     I have driven ten blocks in a daze reviewing all of the poss-
ible ways he can have found out about us, when I realize it
doesn't matter. Mulder and Scully will want what Crawford
has to say; let them figure out what to do next. I've got fifty-five
minutes left.
  
     "So," I begin, trying for casual, as I turn around to get to
Georgetown. Scully lives in Georgetown now, and it's way closer
than Alexandria. Mulder will just have to get the recap from her.
 "Mr. Kurt Crawford."

     He looks up, looks at me in the rearview, startled. His eyes
are vacant, like animal eyes. I can't help the drawl that creeps
into my voice. "I hear you're a clone."
  
* * * * * * *

     Mulder came in from the street to find Scully sitting at her
dining room table, still poring over the Harkness journals. He knew
she knew very little about cryptography, and probably even less
about computer hardware, but still she read the crabbed little
handwriting of a man who no longer could comprehend his own notes. 

     "Did you send off the last five copies?" she asked, not looking
up from the pages. Mulder took off his jacket before he replied, so
that he could observe her, the text reflecting off her round glasses.

     "Yeah," he said at last, "Fedex doesn't close till 8:30. I
overnighted them." The last five of twenty copies, staple-bound and
parcel-wrapped, and Kinko's thought he was a great customer. He had
lugged them all to be mailed in batches, as soon as Scully finished
a personal note to each recipient -- and Mulder had never seen her
anywhere near this paranoid. It made him admire her a little and it
made him a little afraid. "I also sent a copy to the Lone Gunmen,"
he offered.

     "That's nice," replied Scully, in a tone which suggested she
hadn't heard a thing.

     He considered catching her agreeing with an outrageous
statement, the way she had done when he got off on tangents, but
dropped the idea. Instead he went into the kitchen, calling over
his shoulder, "You thirsty? Want some orange juice?" As he opened
the fridge he looked at the red anemone. The bloom's edges had
gone brittle and pale; its soil was bone dry.

     "Sure," she said. He poured them both glasses, and turned on
the overhead light as he came back to the table.

     "You'll give yourself eyestrain," he said, feeling lamely like
a mother hen, but she only gave him her soft smile and accepted the
juice. She took a sip and turned back to the book open before her.
Mulder felt a little at a loss, watching her like that, but didn't
know what to say.

     So, knowing it was unwise, he made small talk. "The National
Science Foundation will be interested, for sure. And Maryland
will want a look, just because Harkness was a professor there.
This won't get swept under the rug."

     She looked up at him, uncomprehending, and Mulder cringed
inwardly. The rigorous control under which she held herself was
something he could never hope to replicate. His own habits could be
antisocial, he realized, but she seemed at times to cultivate polite
misanthropy the way some women cultivated herb gardens. There were
times that, after six years together, one of those years in bed,
he swore he did not know her.

     He needed something to do so he stood behind her and rested
his hands on her shoulders. "Massage?" he asked, and though she
was not given to such things she nodded. He dug his fingertips into
the massive tension that lay coiled in her, and hoped that his
contribution was something at least. His knuckles began to ache and
he decided that a massage was something he needed to offer her
more often.

     There was still something which had not been decided, and
would be soon, but he did not know how to bring it up. He took the
luxury of opening and closing his mouth several times behind her
head, trying for the right phrase, before he said casually, "I need
to get more clothes from my place. Skinner's starting to notice."
Her head inclined a little in front of him and her hair tickled
his wrists. "Or if you like," he offered slowly, "I can go back
to my place tomorrow."

     "Yes, Mulder," she said, but her voice was absent, incidental,
"if you want to." A powerful urge came over him, to grasp her by
the chin and turn her around bodily, to make her look him in the
eye and then to seduce her on the glossy-finish table, to make
her squeal and fill this dreadful silence.

     He did none of those things. He relaxed his fingers against her
back, allowing himself to brush lightly along the back of her neck,
and leaned down to kiss her hair. Then he went to the kitchen to
water the forgotten anemone flower. Over the sound of her turning
another page, he heard a knocking at the door.

* * * * * * *
  
END