Title: Craven Author: RM >lebontrager@iname.com< Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. No fringe is intended. Spoilers::: Season Six. Mulder's mental abilities have not happened. Oneida Indian Nation really has received bomb threats, and the FBI is currently involved in this case. Other than that, all information I sort of fudged on or made up. No offense is intended to New Yorkers or Oneidas. ====== Craven ====== Chapter One "SCIENCE! meet daughter of old Time thou art Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes! Why prey'st thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture! whose wings are dull realities! How should he love thee--or how deem thee wise Who woulds't not leave him, in his wandering, To seek for treasure in the jewell'd skies Albeit, he soar with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not dragg'd Diana from her car, And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star? The gentle Naiad from her fountain-flood? The elfin from the green grass? and from me The summer dream beneath the shrubbery?" --"Sonnet--To Science" Edgar Allan Poe ====== It started with a dream about being awake. She was opening her eyes and finding her room at home, when she was still six, with the blue bunnies and purple birds flying in skies of soft, pale yellow. Her bedspread was that same checked yellow and blue that had always put a smile on her mother's face when it was washed and clean. The stuffed rabbits were green and purple and a rainbow drawing her brother had made curved on the wall over her bed. Her curtains flapped in the summer breeze from the open window, and that small detail gave her an odd sense of dread and fear. But she was six again and back home, and she had the feeling that she would always be six, never the thin woman with pale hands and limp breasts. She would be six and at home. The dream faded and she was once again in the whiteness of the White, the very center of everything in the world. This White was all she knew, all she had known since that night when she was six and the window was finally allowed to be open. White and white and then the pale darkness of her fingernails as she dug into her veins. The blood dropped open like spilling treasure on the floor and she watched it run. She wanted to run. She had not really moved in a long long time. Maybe since she had been six, but that didn't seem right. Maybe she had just not moved today. The doctors came in at once, cold and silent in their efficiency. They never spoke, and now, she no longer remembered how to speak. There was the White and silence and she only could hold on to one scrap of memory--color. They led her from the White and into more halls of white, but she broke from them as soon as they dropped their hands and their guards and she was running and running and screaming in her mind with colors, with all those colors she knew and saw, screaming red and green to the other women-children that had white rooms just like hers. She felt them stir, felt their colors sharp and pricked against her mind like a needle to the skin and she kept running, free of the White, free free Free-- ====== The man was old and rickety, the kind of age that sat crippled in a wheelchair most days, and saw almost no light or sea or sky. He was watching the girl run past his window like a bird scaring from the brush, but her eyes were tightly closed and her arms were streaming blood. Richard Duke only saw her this day because the nurse had propped him up, letting him see the whole of the Army hospital, which was like a jail with bars on the windows and men complaining of their rights and their privileges. Fort Craven was somewhat beautiful in daylight, being so close to the edging forest and wooded area, with the long field of tall grass that offered ample cover to any converging enemy. The men and women who worked Fort Craven were so obviously not military it was funny, to the old man anyway, and he laughed to himself when the civilian scientists came in and pretended to be Army or Navy doctors. No one had really said which Craven was supposed to be, Army or Navy, but Duke guessed it was something much more secret, something not too official. Duke was propped, then, that cloudy winter day, watching the wind tickle the long dead grass in the field, caressing ice with ice and pressing the strands to the ground. That's when the pale woman ran by, trailed by two other women, who couldn't quite keep up, blinking in the sun as they were and stumbling around as if they were blind. Duke saw the pale woman flee, her eyes tightly shut as if she knew the sun would be too much, even as cloudy and overcast as it was. Or maybe it was because the world offered so much color, compared to the pale pale women with their white hospital gowns and limp, lifeless hair. They had a certain ethereal beauty that entranced Duke and he watched them run. The pale girl made it to the woods just as the two behind her stopped suddenly. Duke twisted his neck to see why they had stopped, and noticed the two women were turning around, facing something behind them just as a condemned man faces his executioner. Two scientists walked calmly to them, taking them carefully by the wrists, and then started back for the Army Jeep sitting on the edge of the field. The women went docilely and the scientists didn't seem to notice that those two had been fleeing for their lives moments ago. Duke expected the pale woman would be caught eventually, and he lowered himself back to the bed, breathing rapidly and trying to clear the clouds passing before his eyes. It always happened when he got excited. It would pass. Duke forgot to mention the pale women but did not forget that day of watching the field. It was not that spectacular. Things like that always happened, but for some reason, that one pale woman remained burned into his mind. She might have escaped. She might have broken free. ====== It always started with a dream. She was standing, sitting, running towards him, away from him, beside him. It was 'the dream' and it was them, and that was all that mattered. She woke feeling suffocated, held down to the bed by some unseen Hand, crushing her to her nightmare. The sheets were soaked through and clung tightly like clammy fingers, the pillow was on the floor and the bedspread was twisted into a tight clutch around her waist like a snake coiling around the Tree of Knowledge. She shoved everything off the bed with her feet and rolled to her side, breathing through her mouth and sounding heavy and perverse, dangerous. When she could close her eyes without seeing specters looming from the absolute dark, she allowed her body to relax and her mind to settle. The frantic pace of nightmare left her in a kind of exhalation, gentle and suprisingly swift. She breathed out and sighed. Mulder. She lurched from the bed and treaded the wooden floor in her bare feet, ignoring the sting of cold and the curl of her toes as she shuffled for the door. No sounds and no movements, only the chill of winter silence and the emptiness of a woman. He had left. The couch was neatly made again, the three blankets had been replaced on the linen closet shelf, and the glass of milk was washed and put back right where it had been. If she hadn't known better, she would have thought his coming was all a dream. But she had opened the door to him that night and gently let him have his quiet and his refuge. She had gone to bed and so had he, and then . . . now nothing. Not a trace. He didn't often spend the night on her couch, and he had only come to her door at three in the morning a handful of times. He didn't like intruding on her space, on her after-hours peace. She liked the aloneness, and the silence, of being home alone. She always had. She no longer felt awed at having her own bedroom, but the memories of sharing a room with Melissa never faded completely. But once he was here, he usually didn't leave. Was that her nightmare? An unconscious knowledge that he had left, crept from her apartment with no trace that he'd ever been? Maybe a kind of clutching panic on her part, no trace of Mulder equalling no Mulder. Scully impatiently brushed away these early morning ruminations and headed back for her bedroom, her feet now used to the chill of the floor and her way clearly lit from the street lamps outside. When she got to her bed, she only slightly paused before sliding beneath the sheets. She had no more of 'the dream.' ====== His hands were tapping with boundless energy over his kneecap as she walked into their office. A case folder was placed neatly on her desk with Mulder's careful precision, and she made sure to deposit her briefcase and shed her coat before picking it up. "This is something. . .we need to talk somewhere a bit more private, Scully." She glanced up in surprise but wordlessly followed him out into the hallway. Mulder said nothing as he walked purposefully to the elevator and stepped into it. When she opened her mouth to speak, he shook his head and glanced meaningfully at the little black panel set into the control box. A camera? Scully highly doubted it, but she remained silent and waited for him to feel less paranoid. They walked from the elevator through the lobby doors and into the main corridor, passing the small line for the metal detectors and finally into the cold sunshine. She shivered and pressed her hands to her upper arms. He looked down at her regretfully, gripping her elbow in a comforting gesture. "Meant to warn you, Scully. I didn't think we could talk in there. This case was sort of pilfered to us by Skinner, intended to be misfiled and misdirected." She could feel the ridiculously ominous portents of the dream descending on her and then settling like a thick fog, obscuring her view and her scientific detachment. "What's the case?" "In New York, the FBI has been called in because of some mailed bomb threats sent to the Oneida Indian Nation. Skinner is putting us on that case, but only superficially. That folder in your hand is our real case." She glanced to the manila folder and quickly thumbed it open, biting her lip as she caught snatches of testimony about mysterious women and secluded government testing. "Mulder, what's this about?" "It seems Rome, New York, has a Dea Muta." Scully just glared at him, freezing in the wind whipping off the buildings and cranky from her inadequate sleep. She wanted to go back inside, and she didn't see how Rome, New York, was privvy to any amount of secrecy. "A what?" "Dea Muta. The Silent Goddess." "Mulder-" He cut off her whine with a shake of his head, taking the folder from her with a frown. "Just listen for a moment. The eye witness accounts never match on description of this goddess and occasionally, two women are sighted at the same time, all in rather wooded areas, all in short hospital type gowns, and both mute and deaf. The witness would call out to the woman or women and there would be no indication that the women heard. One witness said the woman lifted her hand and seemed to be pleading with him, but when he got closer, she ran." "So we have at least two women, running around in the forest nearly nude? Why does this sound like some kind of nymph or something?" Mulder flashed her a grin and pulled her closer to the Hoover Building, out of the traffic of pedestrians. The winter months had robbed DC of her tourists, and the official men in their suits seemed even more ruthless than the throngs of camera-arrayed visitors. "Well, that's what the newspapers are calling her. A nymph. Dea Muta, the Silent Goddess. No one believes the eye witnesses really saw anything, but it makes for interesting reading." "So why are we going there, especially under the guise of the Oneida bomb threats?" Mulder glanced around, as if checking for eavesdroppers, but she knew he was nervous about telling her something, and it made that fog of doom drape heavier on her shoulders. "There are about four forts near the Rome area, not including the National Monument, Fort Stanwix." "Yes, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. . ." "Right. Well, these women were sighted in a small radius around one of these forts. No one really made a connection because the sightings seemed so random. But a detective in Rome noticed the correlation and died three days later." "What?" Scully reared back from Mulder's touch, feeling that panic of her dream settle close to her heart. Something in here was screaming that she run, run hard and long and far away. "Discreetly of course. Heart attack was the official explanation. His wife doesn't sit well with that idea though, protesting loudly that her husband was fit and exercised regularly." "Mulder, we're not taking this case because a grieving widow refuses to let her husband's memory rest in peace-" "No. You're right. We're not taking this case because of that. We're taking this case because that fort has come up for military grants in the last ten years and received them. But the money isn't from the national budget, it's from the Department of Defense, routed there by a conglomerate." "Wait, wait. What are you saying? Mulder, stop giving me little pieces of the puzzle and just tell me what's going on." He licked his lips and she got the sense that he delayed because he didn't know how to say what he thought. "Well, I think these women are part of the same experiments you were. They tried to escape, but for some reason, they couldn't speak or get away. I've got a lot of coincidences, here, Scully, and I know you need solid proof, but I just don't have that-" "Mulder." They both stopped, pausing in the early winter morning light, breathing softly and almost in synch. That seemed a great metaphor for their partnership, almost in synch. "I'll the read the case file on the flight over." Mulder sighed and nodded, then scratched at his chin. "Officially, we're extra manpower sent over in case the National Freedom Fighters do start killing Oneidas. But we'll be free to investigate this how we like." Scully nodded, and Mulder ushered her back inside the building, the warmth of his arm pressed to her shoulder somehow oddly disconcerting. The vague impressions of her nightmare had receded again, but she still remembered the chill. ====== They flew in a kind of crackling silence, neither comfortable but both unwilling to speak about the case. Scully was having a hard time finding evidence to support Mulder's wildly assuming theory, but he often had those leaps of logic that turned out to be completely on target, and he obviously was convinced in the rightness of this latest one. She was willing to have an open mind about the science of the body, about the actual facts, since very little had been collected, but she needed more than hunches to commit to the idea that Fort Craven in Rome, New York, was conducting experiments. "Did you notice the railroad, Scully?" he suddenly asked. Scully glanced to the map of Rome where Fort Stanwix was situated, close to the other four forts, and noticed the rail tracks that ran south of the National Monument. She let her eyes trail up and noticed Forts Williams and Craven also in the same area. "And this is the fort where the women were spotted?" Mulder nodded eagerly and she had to sigh. "Yes, the railroad. I see it. If your theory is right, then it's conceivable the women are transported to the railroad here at Lower Landing Place." Mulder looked at her in surprise. "Don't be shocked, Mulder. I'm very thorough. I already noticed the similarities between the boxcar I was in and the rail line here." "I. . .I just assumed you weren't too supportive of this idea." "Mulder, I'm trying to be very objective about this. Besides, if I'm going to disprove your theory, I have to take notice of every detail." She lifted a brow to show that she was teasing, and he relaxed in his seat, worrying the edge of the map with his small finger. She wished she could take back her words, but they weren't doing much damage at the moment. "Scully. . ." he said finally, hesitating. "I'm doing this because I want to know what happened to you. I need to know. But if you don't want-" "No, Mulder. I'm all right. It's not that I refuse to believe, I'm just trying to be very careful about jumping to conclusions. We're on thin ice as it is, going up there under false pretenses." "Skinner must have thought there was something to it, otherwise he wouldn't have sent it to me. We would never have known at all." "I realize, Mulder. But you know that it takes me awhile to warm-up to things like this. I still don't like to think that this happens." He nodded and sighed heavily, as if he were trying to release the burdens of his soul in that one great breath. "I get lonely up here sometimes, Scully." Her brows wrinkled in confusion and she closed the file folder to concentrate more on Mulder's weary look of resolution. "Where's up there?" "This cuckoo's nest. It gets lonely." She cracked a smile despite herself and shook her head, letting her hair fall to cover the grin, trying not to chuckle. Mulder made a grunt and took her chin in his fingers. "No way you're hiding from me. If you're going to laugh at me, at least let me enjoy your smile." She grinned even wider and raised her head to meet his gaze, a laugh threatening the corners of her mouth and eyes. She looked vibrant and colorful, like a perfect picture of delight. He wanted to capture the moment forever, the feeling that he had made her laugh, made her ice crack. Her heart was beating too fast, her pulse flighty and threading through her veins like an old shaking woman, but her voice was remarkably calm when she spoke. "Well, thank you for your self-sacrifice. But you're not crazy, Mulder." "Sure, humor me, thanks." She shook her head, but continued to smile. Mulder eased into his seat and felt the warmth from that encounter spread over him like a blanket in winter, soft and comforting and cozy. He felt her hand touch his fingers and he quickly grabbed it, then squeezed, a kind of nonverbal invitation for her to stay. She smiled again and left her hand in his for a moment, then pulled away. Mulder sighed and closed his eyes for a quick nap, thinking about all the personal snares they were bound to encounter on this case, not to mention the official obstacles. ====== It smelled like apple cider, everywhere, all in the airport, in the clothes of the people who passed them, in the crisp fall air that scrabbled across the parking lots with their dead leaves and brown grass. Scully breathed in an unfamiliar scent of fall and decay and chilled spirits, while Mulder remembered impressions from Martha's Vineyard growing rapidly against the backdrop of New England weather. They both shivered and hurried to their rental car, a moderately nice Ford with hand-applied tinted windows that had bubbled and cracked from use. They dumped the two small carryons into the trunk and slid into the front seats, locking the doors behind them. Mulder sat breathing for a moment, blinking away the sting in his eyes from the wind and rubbing his cold fingers. The overcast day had lent an eerie sense of Halloween to the town that managed to seep into his bones and crowd his fears. Scully was equally as quiet. "So how's this going to work, Mulder?" Her partner slowly rounded to face her, his eyes distant but warm, as if he had been thinking hard about her or them or something similar. She tamped down the urge to blush and held his gaze with a steady look of her own. "The FBI have offices set up here temporarily, and we'll check in, get some runaround assignments that we'll be able to do in an hour, and then we can visit these witnesses." "So we're going to skimp on the bomb-threats? Mulder, I don't think that's a great idea-" "Scully. We're not going to get real assignments. The Agent in Charge is a friend of Skinner's who will vouch for us to anyone who comes looking. It will seem that we've been called up here to help out with the bomb-threats, given our sterling record with the incident this summer." Scully's brows raised and she shook her head. "Do you really think that whoever's protecting these experiments is going to believe that we've been assigned to another bomb-threat?" "Why not? It's a kind of poetic justice." Mulder shoved the key into the steering column and cranked the car to a sputtering life. The vents erupted with chilled air on high, and the engine knocked as they backed out. Scully kept her thoughts to herself and simply watched the landscape drift past the window, still able to smell the apple orchards and the cinnamon overcast to the skies. ====== Dr. Burke Harding was a thin man with large spectacles that made his nose seem both large and thin at the same time. Duke didn't like the doctor's voice, which reminded him of an old old man who couldn't keep his head from shaking back and forth. That's what Dr. Harding's voice sounded like, not exactly shaky, but just fluctuating back and forth between low and extra syllables. Duke sometimes wondered if Dr. Harding was a Southerner. That kind of irked him, that a Southerner would have such control over a Yank like him. God getting him back, he figured. He'd seen no more pale women running from the hospital, but he also hadn't seen the scientists capture that first woman, so he held onto his fantasies where the pale woman came for him and led him from his bed and into heaven. It was a kind of nutty thing to dream about, but Duke's dreams had never been that stable. Not since Korea. Never again after Korea. Most people forgot that the war with Korea even occurred, but not him. He could never forget Korea. Korea had put him in this hospital, crippled in body and mind and watching the window for the pale women. Duke sighed. The pale women were all under him now, all buried far beneath the hospital's exteriors, like the veterans' ward he was in now, or the oncology department that was secreted away in the west wing. All these secrets, all these hauntings from the old days. Duke was a part of it, and he knew it, but Korea was too heavy a burden for an eighteen year old boy from Ohio. Eighteen was far away, just as the pale women were far away, and Duke wanted to help them, to somehow reclaim that which he had lost because of Korea. Because of a war the government did not even acknowledge. Dr. Harding was poking at his ribs and muttering, so Duke opened his eyes and settled them on the thin doctor. "Could I watch the news?" he asked, politely because Dr. Harding liked it when he could get people to acknowledge his power. "I don't see why not, Richard. I'll call a nurse in here." Duke winced, praying the nurse would do as she was told. The nurses liked to rebel against Dr. Harding because he was so demanding, so oriented on his personal importance. Arrogance at its finest, that's what Duke's mother would say, had she been alive still. The newest addition to the nursing staff happened to answer Dr. Harding's call, so she came up quickly and nodded eagerly to them both. Harding and Duke watched in growing arousal as the short woman stood on tiptoe on the old plastic chair to reach the power button. Her thighs were thin and toned beneath the hose and her arms held no ounce of fat. Duke felt a growing sense of anger as Dr. Harding stepped forward to catch her as she pushed on the television, helping her down from the chair with a charming smile intended to win him a night in her bed. Duke would have said something, but Harding had power, especially over a cripple man in bed, and the news was more important than this honest little nurse. The nurse would come to understand. Or Duke could mention it later, in that grandfatherly voice he used to manipulate the younger nurses. The news was on. His link to a reality outside this prison of white walls and kidney-shaped bedpans. The reporter was a brisk and efficient woman standing outside a small municipal building with a full parking lot. The shot was too wide and the woman seemed insignificant amongst cars and trees and the backdrop of the building. Duke ignored the doctor and nurse as they left, concentrating only on the words the news reporter spoke. "--bomb-threats which have angered many members of the Oneida Indian Nation, and have been, as officials in Rome, New York, say, "taken seriously." The threats specified Thanksgiving as the start of their massacre, killing one Native American every three days, and then depositing truck bombs at the Turning Stone Casion, owned and operated by the Oneida Indian Nation--" Duke felt his hair rise as he watched a car drive into the lot, then park well off-screen. Two people were in the front seat, looking grim and subdued as they drove. When they re-entered the shot, the woman was striding purposefully toward the municipal building, the taller man walking behind her. Duke knew her. That woman with the red hair and steel-eyes that seemed to bore holes in the camera's film. She walked with an easy assurance that had been seen by Duke in another place, maybe here, as a pale woman running. Could she be the one who escape the other day? That pale woman had managed to make it to the woods, was she now to come back? Duke couldn't remember the specifics of the pale woman, but he didn't think she had that bright red hair. The man hovered behind her then they entered the building simultaneously. The reporter was gripping her mike and pressing the earpiece closer so she could hear what was said on the other end. "Yes, Tom. I've just received word that the FBI have called in for more manpower to cover this developing situation. As Thanksgiving looms ahead, only six days away now, both Agents Mulder and Scully, whom you just saw arrive, and the rest of the FBI's task force are working around the clock to negate this threat. A reward of $25,000--" Duke tuned out the reporter as soon as the names were processed. Mulder and Scully of the FBI. They were involved in the Oneida threats, but she would want to know about this, about the pale women running and how she was so familiar. It was important. Duke turned over in his bed, managing to roll so that he had a direct view out of the small-paned window set into the door. His wheelchair was set on this side too, and he had everything planned out before he even realized what he was contemplating. He would call them tonight. Get their number from the FBI working in the municipal building and then convince them to come visit him, discreetly of course. Duke licked his lips and rolled onto his back again, breathing heavily. Hopefully his weak heart could withstand the exertion. This was important. ====== Chapter Two "Sweet is the lure which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous forms of things: -- We murder to dissect." --"The Tables Turned" William Wordsworth ====== The room was busy and overcrowded with desks and computers and lamps and people, plus the press conference being held in the main lobby of the Oneida County Municipal Building in Rome, New York. Mulder fought his way through after spotting the Agent in Charge in a far corner, towing Scully behind him because she could not see over the throng. As soon as they came into view, the man glanced up, his glare similar to the impassive face of their own Assistant Director, so stern and disapproving was his look. He waved them over and dismissed the two men he was conversing with, then nodded to them. "I leaked your names to the press, hopefully to put at ease whoever would be suspicious. Not that I really understand what's going on, but Skinner's not one for over-exaggeration." Mulder shook hands with the man as he talked, and then introduced them to the brisk man. "I'm Fox Mulder, and this is my partner Dana Scully. We appreciate your helping us." "I'm Rob Glenn, agent in charge here. Can you tell me what's going on in Rome besides this bomb threat?" "How much did the Assistant Director tell you?" "Only that you're two of his best agents and that you deal with the paranormal." Mulder flashed the man a brief smile, then glanced around at the busy room. "Is there a place we could talk privately?" Glenn watched Mulder's eyes track the people moving about in the room and nodded. He headed for a door set into the east wall and they followed along behind him. The office space was small and cluttered, but the noise level decreased dramatically once the door was shut. "So?" Mulder and Scully sat down, and Mulder took up the job of explaining with a knowing look to Scully. "There've been reports about lost women in these woods, mute and running, but I think it's relative UFO activity, maybe dropping people off." Scully's surprise was intangible and Mulder was secretly relieved it didn't show to Glenn. His lie was a necessary defense. Mulder had always trusted Skinner, but a lot of things had happened to keep a certain level of wariness, even with trusted friends of the Assistant Director's. "UFO's? Well. . .I don't really see why this needs to be done undercover." Mulder shrugged and leaned back in the chair. "The government is trying to hide their existence from us, they have been ever since Roswell. They've done numerous things to my partner and I once we've gotten too close. It doesn't hurt to be prepared." Glenn was staring at Mulder as if he were the alien, his face incredulous, his eyes occasionally darting to Scully for confirmation. But Glenn had heard the Spooky stories about Fox Mulder and he believed the man's outlandish theories were truly the partners' primary motivation. Scully was impressed by Mulder's maneuvering and made a mental note to comment on the reasons later. He had used his reputation to divert any suspicion and to deflect any probing questions by the agent in charge. "Well, sir, is there anything you need from us?" "Just one question, if I'm not being too offensive." "Go ahead." Glenn's head swivelled to Scully and he took her in with an intense, almost hungry look. He had not directly addressed her since Mulder had introduced them, and Scully had already dismissed him as being a closet male chauvinist, but his keen observation had left out nothing. "Do you believe all this about UFO's?" Glenn asked her, his face neutral but contemplative. Scully hedged for only a moment, then answered him with a kind of challenging glint in her eyes. "There have been strange things that have happened to me while working with Agent Mulder, and I cannot discount the government's role in a massive conspiracy to subvert known society. Mulder and I just differ on the people behind all of this. I know there is someone out there kidnapping people, doing terrible experiments on them, but I don't believe in aliens." Mulder tensed beside her and she knew there would be questions later, but she kept her gaze on Glenn and watched him analyze her response. He would have to believe they were both willing to risk an official reprimand for the subterfuge they were undertaking, and she hoped her truthful reply would give him that confidence in her. He was already convinced Mulder would do anything for little grey men, and would go to any lengths to keep "Them" from finding out his plans, but he needed to know that Scully was not just humoring her partner if he was to believe that they were searching for UFO's. Glenn finally nodded and stood up, his manner clearly dismissing them. Mulder and Scully rose as one and headed for the door. "Agents, I only ask that you check in every day. You're under me now, and I have to know that all my agents are accounted for. If you go off someplace, leave a note with me where you're going so that I can send in reinforcement if you don't come back the next day. Do you understand?" Scully nodded, but Mulder reached into his pocket and fished out a scrap of green paper. He presented it to Glenn and said, "This is my motel room number, should you need to reach me." Glenn took the scrap and motioned for them to leave. Once outside the office, the noise and movement of the crowd pushed them along to the lobby, where the press had just left for their respective stations. The few agents left were heading for the bullpen, and the open area was relatively empty. "Are you going to explain to me why you left Agent Glenn in the dark, Mulder?" Scully was watching him carefully, hands in her coat pocket and hair pushed behind her ears. "Yeah, as soon as we get out of here. This place has eyes and ears everywhere." Mulder's hand came to her back and ushered her outside into the chill of apples and winter, the rental car waiting for them like the giant fish who swallowed up Jonah. Scully felt the same, as if she were defying God by making this journey, refusing to acknowledge her true purpose and heading off to the sea to escape her fate. The inside of the car was cold and the heater refused to work. She sat in the passenger seat and shivered. ====== "I didn't tell him because I trust you." Scully blinked and pushed into his motel room wearing her sweatpants and thin long-sleeved T-shirt. "There's going to be some kind of circular logic behind this, isn't there?" He grinned. "Well, I know you don't completely trust Skinner. And I'm less inclined to trust anyone else, even if he is Skinner's friend, and especially if he will so easily be persuaded to help us out without any kind of information. Plus, I don't like that he gave our names to the press." Scully ignored the remark about the press and focused on his central argument. "So you're afraid he'd unknowingly be persuaded to help someone else out." "Right. So I trust your instincts." Mulder moved to the bed and slipped his arms out of his Oxford shirt, relaxing in just his white undershirt and dress pants. She sat down at the head of the bed and shot him a questioning look. "My instincts?" "Yeah, you tensed up when he ignored you at the beginning. You don't trust him, and I wasn't sure if I did or not." "So you made up the UFO part." "Yeah. It's not UFO's. It's those government tests, and that's much more serious than searching for lights. I let him believe I was as nuts as he'd heard. And he needed to believe that I'd duped you into thinking I actually had a solid lead." "That's why I replied like that. He knew I would be too smart for just a random UFO hunting under such an elaborate guise as this." Mulder rubbed a hand along his calf for a moment, then looked at her with his brown warm eyes. He seemed slightly wary, as if she was suddenly the opposition, the one to sidestep around. "So you invented that response?" She blinked and shook her head. "No. He wouldn't have believed anything but the truth from me." She was waiting for him to say something about her words, about how he'd been pushing her for along time to simply believe, about how they'd seen so much and she still refused. There was nothing but silence from him and she wished he would say anything to dispel the odd quiet that had descended. She needed him to either rage or fume at her, not this stony, hurtful silence. "That's fine," Mulder said finally and took a deep breath, as if steadying himself to keep from exploding. "Mulder?" "I don't think it would be a good time to talk about this, Scully." She shut up, recoiling against the headboard with his words. She wasn't afraid of him, but his quiet manner and betrayed voice were like fists in her gut. This always came between them. Her science, his belief. They each had a faith of their own, would it ever merge? "I'm going to bed then." Mulder nodded and his jaw worked beneath his chin, but he managed to glance up at her as she stood. "Sweet dreams, Scully." He said it almost melancholic, as if with bittersweet remembrance. She stopped at the door, fighting an overwhelming need to comfort him, to reestablish his belief in her. Her lips parted, her tongue moved to the roof of her mouth, but no words came. She knew of nothing she could say that would make it right again. "Good night, Mulder." He glanced once more to her and saw the remorse shining like twin suns in two blue skies. And then she was gone. ====== Water. The truck had plunged into a river. She was going to drown-- Scully fought at the iron bars of the bird cage she was trapped inside, slicing her fingers on its rough, rusted edges and ripping off her fingernails in the attempt. The cage was perched on a bench in the back of this milk truck, and the milk bottles clinked around her as the water from the river began to fill up. There were waves of nasty lake water splashing into her face as she rattled the bars and screamed at the top of her lungs for help. She gulped down a mouthful of brime and choked on the air trying to escape her lungs. Panic seized her tightly and she began to cry, shaking the cage with all her might and sobbing. The water crept to her chin and she held up her head, blinking at the tears and rattling the bars with her weakening muscles. She sucked in a breath of splash and gagged, then the water was over her head. She went instantly still and her breath stopped cold. There was such finality. It was no use. No use. There was absolutely no way of escaping; she would not survive. The bird cage was her death. She would die. As soon as she gave up, she seemed to be outside her body, watching herself slump down into the corner of the rounded cage, her fingers fall from the bars. There was someone else there. Trapped just as she was, a small boy clutching the bars and her knees. Scully stirred within the ethereal body she now encompassed and yearned to reach for the child, but she was already waking, already falling from the dream and back into the motel bed soaked in her sweat. The phone. She blinked and the water and cage cleared from her vision and the phone was ringing and Mulder was banging on her door and calling her name. They didn't have a connecting door. Scully tripped on the bedside table as she stumbled up, then grabbed the phone and answered with a breathless hello as she reached for the door knob. Mulder fell inside and onto her, causing Scully to wind up crushed to the bed while the voice on the other end whispered hello in one tense and rigid word. "Hello?" Scully said, distracted and trying to wriggle out from under Mulder. They got untangled and Scully listened intensely to the man on the phone. "Agent Scully, you have to come." "Who is this?" she asked, still feeling out of place from the dream. "This is Richard Duke. I'm at Fort Craven Army Hospital, third floor. I know some valuable information that you need." "Information about the bomb-threat?" "What? No. . .No. I. . .you are here because of the pale women in the woods, right?" Scully's breath hissed in and she glanced sharply to Mulder. "How do you know about the women?" "I know about *you,* Agent Scully. That's why you have to see me." "Duke, Fort Craven, third floor?" "Yes. You can't let them know though." "Know what?" "That you're FBI. Say you're my niece. They know I have a niece who's been promising to come; they'll be more ready to agree to let you visit me alone." "They monitor who you visit?" "Yeah. Isn't that shameful? And me a Korean vet, stuck in this hosp--" Scully heard a sudden sharp silence, but soon Duke's breathing was softly received. There were a few minutes of tense quiet, and then Duke came back on the line. "I have to go now. I have to go. Tomorrow, Agent Scully. And bring your partner. My niece has a husband." And then the line was dead and Scully was left with a very curious Mulder. ====== She supposed she liked the White. It was all she had. There had been a time, a time when she was four, when the White would be eye-soar, would be like looking into the sun for too long. That was four. She was older now. She had heard another one had escaped. Escaped. She had tried, but her legs were too weak from laying on the steel bed, and her head was filled with too many images, too much color. She didn't like it. She wanted to be back in the White. They had punished her for running from the White, and she had deserved it so completely, she knew that. She was not four any longer, not that small child who thought that she ought not to be here, that there was somehow a home she belonged to. At thirty or so, she knew that the four year old inside her was wrong, was dead wrong, was perhaps dead now, and that this was all there was. White was relief, was happiness and contentment. There was a gentle rain to being in complete White, to being enveloped by the reflection of all color. She told her little four year old self that the reflection of all color meant she was absorbing all color, that those rays were directed inside to her soul, and that inside herself, she was a rainbow. She was a rainbow. The four year old woman liked that. She let loose of a whimper, not intending to but there nonetheless, and the whimper released the four year old, and that tiny girl began to cry like a banshee. Make her shut up, make that four year old shut up.... She sobbed and she sobbed and she wanted her mommy back again, wanted the colors on the outside, not on the inside, wanted to be rid of White forever. ====== "We're here to see Richard Duke? I'm his niece. He's expecting me." The nurse glanced up carefully, then smiled widely, as if she were programmed for such a movement at such a time, given to such a person. Relative, her programming supplied, must be careful to make a good impression. Can't have a fuss being made about treatment. "Oh yes, Richard Duke. He's quite a lively old man. Always inventing wild stories." Scully wondered if the nurse said this to keep from appearing as incompetent as she actually was, or if the old man really did invent stories. She felt Mulder's warm palm press to her back, a kind of signal. She glanced back to him with a nod, then turned and followed the nurse down the hall. The door at the end of the hallway was opened and a modicum of sunlight slithered out. Scully went inside and wondered which one of the many bedded veterans was her 'uncle' and hoped the nurse couldn't tell that she didn't know. "Karen! My niece! I'm so glad you decided to come. These folks were starting to think I'd invented you." Scully smiled in relief and made her way to the older gentleman sitting upright in bed, his lower body belted firmly into the hospital bed and one of his arms secured to the railing. She wondered if he was being restrained, or if he was paralyzed. "I'm glad your husband could come too. I appreciate that," the man continued, with a thoughtful look at Mulder indicating his gratefulness. Scully kept up the idle chatter until the nurse decided she could leave them alone, but as soon as the door shut behind her, Scully began to question him. "What's going on here?" "How did you know what our true purpose is?" Mulder asked, casting a suspicious look at the vet. Duke sighed and scratched at his tethered arm, then licked his parched lips. "I saw you two on the news, and I recognized Ms. Scully. Plus, about three days ago, one of them escaped." "One of who escaped?" Scully asked, brow furrowed. "One of the pale women. One of you." "One of us?" Duke shook his head and rolled his eyes slightly. "No, one of you, Dana. One of the pale women." "I'm not. . .what are you talking about?" "Look, this is getting us all nowhere. Now, if you'll hold your questions for later, I'll explain everything as best I can. Let me just get a sip of water here." Duke brought the plastic cup to his lips and his nose quivered slightly at the distinct smell of almonds. His eyes blinked and he set the cup back without taking a drink. His face seemed expressionless. "Mr. Duke?" "I. . .ah. . ." Duke muttered to himself as if he could not believe what he had just seen or thought. "Mr. Duke? Don't you want your water?" Scully asked, reaching her hand out to take the glass. Duke snatched her wrist before she could even touch the tray, and his eyes burned with a fervor unmatched by anything Scully had seen. It seemed almost demonic. "Maybe later." Scully shrugged and wrenched her hand back from the old man, feeling that she was being left out of some important revelation. "Okay, see I've been a patient here, or rather, a prisoner, since the Korean War. Excuse me, the Korean Police Action as the Congress likes to put it. Because it wasn't a war, I really can't get much in the way of benefits. That sucks, yeah, yeah, but I'm over it now. This isn't some kind of bitter war vet intent on destroying the United States. You have to know that now." Mulder nodded, impressed with the man's powers of reasoning, not only in the presentation of his story, but in his appreciation of psychological matters. The man knew what some of the counter-arguments could be to his story, but he was attempting to curtail those now. "You guys get settled in there, and I'll start on my story." Scully pulled up a chair from the bed next to Duke's muttering a half-apology to the comatose man occupying the neighboring bed, while Mulder was content to lean against the foot of the bed. "All right. I'm going to relish this. I don't get many visitors. As you can see, I'm paralyzed from the waist down, and then this one arm here. Plus a bit of my leg is missing. So I can't walk. They don't think much of me over here, so I'm allowed to get away with things. Like seeing the news occasionally or having my bed propped up to see out the window." Licking his chapped lips again and looking almost longingly at the water on his tray, Duke took a deep breath and continued his tale. "Agent Mulder, you see that out that window is a wide field of thick and relatively tall grass. Beyond that is a densely wooded area. But that field is a good hundred yards or more between Fort Craven and those woods. Pretty difficult to cross without someone noticing. Well, about five, six years ago, three women leaped into my view. I was propped up like I sometimes am, and the window offers a limited view, so I was really very surprised. I call them the pale women. Mostly because they're ghostly looking, all white and skinny like they'd been locked away a long time." Mulder was glancing out the window as if lost in the story-telling, but Scully was intently watching the man's face, knowing instinctively what Duke was going to reveal. "One of those pale women that day was you, Agent Scully. I'll never forget every single one of the faces of those women, but yours was a bit more uncontrolled, a bit more free than the others. Most of the times, the pale women look stone cold and mechanical, as if it has been years that they have been hidden away. Sometimes they run out and they're blinking and stumbling, as if they haven't walked in a long time, and haven't seen the real world in an even longer time." Mulder glanced to Scully and saw that her face was waxen, as if she would faint, and her hands clutched the guard rail tightly in an effort to keep upright. He moved around to stand beside her, hoping that his presence would comfort her, if nothing else. "This happens about once a year, on average. Last year there was nothing, and one year it happened twice. I used to wonder why they had such bad security, but then I started thinking that maybe they make it easy to escape on purpose. If one of the pale ones isn't working out, they let her slip away, then they have an excuse for killing her. They don't expect her to actually escape. But three days ago, one of them did. One of those pale women made it out of this place and disappeared in the woods. I never saw her brought back. And the docs here have been really tense." "How is it that Scully didn't get killed if she was allowed to escape?" Mulder's question was harsh, but it needed to be asked. "I don't know. I just assumed she'd been killed too, until I saw the news. Most of them get killed. One of the guys who used to live in this room, he saw it too and told. He died about a week later and I'm convinced it's because he ratted. So I've stayed quiet. Until now." Duke hung his head, then let his gaze travel to the window again, as if apologizing to all those women he witnessed running for their lives. "So what are you saying, Duke?" Scully asked quietly. "I'm saying that there's some kind of government testing going on down there, about three levels below us. There's a shaft in the -3 floor, meaning third floor down, that tunnels up to that field out there. It's part of the old defense system, a kind of last resort retreat. They know about it, and it's heavily guarded most times, but I guess they enjoy tracking the pale women." "They're playing with them, letting them think they can escape, and then crushing their hopes right out of them," Mulder said, shaking his head. "It's an effective method in psychology. Aversion therapy. It's used for eliminating destructive behavior. They've twisted it." Scully wasn't so sure jumping to this conclusion was very wise. All they had was the testimony of a man known by the staff for inventing wild stories, correlating to vague reports of phantasmical women in the woods. "If this is happening, why hasn't someone noticed it before now?" she asked. Mulder and Duke turned to her as one, their faces incredulous and sharp, seeming to hint at her lack of sanity for disbelieving such an obviously true account. Mulder shook his head and sighed, then sat down on the foot of Duke's bed, watching her. "Maybe they have. Maybe people have noticed it and they've been effectively silenced before now. If this is the first women to escape, as Duke says, then things are out of control, in upheaval down there, and they're not going to be as thorough." Duke shook his head. "I have a gut feeling that they're very thorough. I think I probably don't have that long to live." He was watching the glass of water with dead eyes. Scully shook her head. "If this is happening, it's on a grand scale, a scale that's impossible to hide." "Notice that it's not so hidden anymore, Scully. You're right, it is impossible. And their luck just ran out." Scully sighed and gave up trying to convince him this was worthless. She still did not believe that this government organization would be so lax in policy and protection, nor did she think that these tests were taking place right below her feet. It was all a bit contrived. In fact, it made her slightly nervous to think that this was all being set up for the sole purpose of bringing them down. She bit her lip and thought over the facts. Skinner had supposedly sent this case down to them, but Mulder had pulled it from an unmarked envelope, and had admitted that he hadn't talked to Skinner directly. They had explained it away as a need for security, but maybe Skinner hadn't actually given them this assignment. Then there was the press coverage of their arrival. Glenn had said it was to convince whoever might be suspicious that they were really there for the bomb threats. And Mulder had admitted to feeling uneasy about Rob Glenn and his affability. Scully was less inclined to take Richard Duke at his word even more now, and Mulder's oblivious belief was going to bring them to a shuddering halt in the midst of their 'investigation.' Mulder reviewed the information and asked a few more questions, gathering details for his theory, but Scully cautiously scanned the room and its occupants. Two of the patients seemed to be a little too feigned in their uninterest, but they were too far away to be getting any details. She still felt trapped, set-up, just waiting for the axe to fall. Something in this whole situation was rotten, but she couldn't pinpoint the source. From the nurse's exaggerated reaction at their arrival, to the contrived account from Richard Duke, Scully felt something was very wrong. Dana Scully didn't get gut feelings that often, but when she did, and when they were this strong, she knew she had to act. "Let's go, Mulder. Right now." She grabbed his shoulder and pushed him from the edge of the bed, her eyes dancing with fire and fear. Mulder noticed her reaction and politely excused them from Duke's bedside, promising to come back later if they could. Scully shook her head and explained that they wouldn't be back; it was too dangerous. Especially if the theory were true. Walking quickly, Scully led the way from the room, then back down the hallway of the Army hospital, feeling hunted and trapped at the same time. Someone was watching them, something was stalking them. It was a crushing experience, a force of nature shoving her into unreality, pushing her far from sense and reason, into a realm she was unfamiliar with. Someone had laid a trap, and they were about to be caught in its sword-sharp teeth. They would bleed, they would bleed, she could feel it everywhere in her, they would bleed red and black life out onto the ground of their partnership. ====== Chapter Three All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. --Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" Section 6 (rev. 1881) Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. --Walt Whitman "Song of Myself" Section 2 (rev. 1881) ====== Dr. Harding watched the screens as the two agents left, their images like dark matter against a swirling field of light. The man next to the doctor was smoking in the small security office, and the stench of cinnamon-flavored tobacco was strong enough to make the security chief want to gag. Agent Glenn sat beside the smoker and tried to hold his breath, but at some point, he knew he would have to have oxygen. The curl of blue smoke wrapped around his visage like a grave veil, and the rotting decay of death seemed pervasive in the small office banked with television screens and control panels. Harding didn't know exactly what the consoles were for, but he knew that this room allowed for the tracking of every patient and visitor and staff member in the hospital. "Did you know this would happen?" Harding asked impatiently. The smoker glanced to him with a feral snarl. "We had guessed as much. However, that is not of your concern, is it?" "They're under control, Harding," Glenn supplied, nastily. Harding's eyes narrowed, unused to being degraded in his own private medical kingdom. But he nodded and grudgingly gave his superiors due respect. He took small comfort in the knowledge that cigarette smoke killed and that the smoker was old enough to have serious medical problems, whereas, he, Harding, was in perfect health. Agent Glenn would no doubt die in the line of duty someday. The televisions depicted the pair walking to their car, calmly but passionately discussing something pertinent to the case, or maybe not. They looked good together, Harding admitted to himself, but that did not deter their potential threat. "What are you going to do now? At the risk of sounding like a cliched, narrow-minded scientist, this could ruin our work here." The smoker dismissed him with a wave of his cigarette wielding hand. "Don't concern yourself with these matters, Doctor. Everything is falling into place." Dr. Harding watched the agents drive away, somehow unrelieved by the smoker's reassurances. Mulder and Scully looked smarter and quicker than any plot devised by the Syndicate. At least, smarter than merely falling into place. ====== It was mid-morning but the rain was slapping into the car like tree branches against panes of glass on a windy day. The clouds completely covered the sun like thin fingers of the hand of death, and the thunderstorm kept visibility down to nothing. The chill in the air could not be dispelled even by the rental car's heater, which was working again, but Scully remained stiff and unrelenting in her seat. Mulder glanced back every once in a while, watching the dark colored sedan following behind them, switching lanes occasionally, but always five car lengths away. He was growing worried. "I think someone is following us." She glanced back discreetly, then nodded as she watched the car turn the corner after them. "This doesn't feel right at all, Mulder." She glanced over at him and his eyes were set hard and steely, his hands clutching the steering wheel tightly. But he said no more and they spent the drive in silence. Mulder wanted to talk about Duke's information, about his recognizing her, but she didn't seem to be willing to talk. They pulled into the motel lot, the clouded sun casting a sickly yellow light across the blacktop. He could only see a few feet in front of him, and he concentrated on parking between the white lines. The sedan drove on past the entrance to the motel lot, but Scully felt the man's baleful stare like a needle under her skin. She opened her door and got out, slamming it shut again and shivering in the rain. The fat drops smacked into her forehead and dribbled down into her eyes, but she jogged for the motel room, splashing through the puddles. Mulder followed her inside, shaking off his wet shoes on the carpet and then cranking up her heater, trying to dispel the chill of the rain and the cold of being followed. "We're getting close to something," he said softly, watching her run those thin fingers through her wet hair. "Mulder, I really don't take stock in any of Richard Duke's account. He's an old man who's desperate for company. . ." "Scully." "No, Mulder. Think about what he said. He *saw* me? That's not possible. We've already discovered that I was on a boxcar, just like Cassandra Spender, being tested on. How could I also be hidden beneath Fort Craven, even escaping? It doesn't fit; he's got pieces to the wrong puzzle." Mulder sat down wordlessly, rubbing his chin with a broken-nailed thumb and repressing the shivers that wanted to zip up his spine. His mind was working like a grave digger, turning spades of dirt over and over in search of a better coffin. He wasn't sure who he was trying to bury, himself, the truth, or Scully. "Maybe he has pieces to a different part of the puzzle, Scully. Maybe you just look enough like these women for him to think he knows you. But he knew your name--" "Which he could have gotten from the oh-so-helpful Agent Glenn--" "--and he seemed convinced he didn't have long to tell his story." "He's an old man, Mulder. Old men die." "Scully." "Mulder, I don't see it. I just don't." "But there's something there. Admit that at least. There's something wrong in Fort Craven. There are saner folks seeing women in the woods, and they're not seeing some kind of Silent Goddess." Scully sighed, arms crossed and lips pursed, standing over him while he slumped in the chair and watched her with his head hung. She shook her head once, then sat opposite him on the other side of the cheap formica table. "Yes. Something is wrong at Fort Craven." Mulder rubbed his forehead and glanced over at her, his eyes sorrowed and deep. He wished it didn't have to be so hard, wished he didn't have to pry the truth from her like a dentist pulling wisdom teeth. It seemed just as painful. "Now, we have to decide what to do about it." ====== Richard Duke glanced once more to the glass sitting on the roll-away tray at his side. It was just a clear plastic cup with ridges for easier gripping and a rim so that it would not dribble down his chin. The water looked slightly cloudy, but then, most of the tap water had enough minerals and chemicals in an attempt to purify it that it always looked cloudy. He fingered the strap holding his perpetually still arm onto the bed, then licked his lips. The features of the pale women floated into his memory, but they hazed over into the supple lips and thick eyebrows and exaggerated forehead of his deceased wife. Korea had taken more than his legs, than his arm, than his functioning; it had taken his wife's own sanity as well. And then, ultimately, her very life. His good hand reached out immediately and grasped the cup, heedless of religion or morals, ignoring the screaming of his self-preservation instincts. The water smelled of almonds, smelled of arsenic, smelled of a poison that would put him beyond misery, beyond the control of the scientists and doctors. He downed the entire glass with a satisfied grin, then waited for the tremors, the convulsions, the pain of dying. Death, when it came, would be welcomed. They had not triumphed, the war had not won. ====== She was looking out the window when she saw him. Tight-lipped, dark suited, a man with hands searching around in his trench coat pockets standing in the rain right outside Mulder's motel room. Scully gasped and backed up reflexively, but the specter in the shadows did not seem to be looking at her. She let the curtains fall back into place and grabbed Mulder's sleeve, her eyes wild and almost frightened. Mulder sprang to his feet, wakened from a rough sleep, and blinked as she shushed him. "There's someone right outside your door," she said. "My door?" She nodded. They had both decided to camp out in her room for a few hours, reviewing the details of the case, picking out the inconsistencies of the witnesses' testimonies, going over and over again Richard Duke's words in the hospital. They hadn't wanted to talk any longer about what needed to be done; they couldn't agree. He'd fallen into a light sleep. Mulder moved to the window, licking his lips nervously, his heart thudding like deer racing through the woods with a hunter in pursuit. He had this sick feeling a face would be peering back at him when he parted curtains, cigarette smoke curling around the features. Scully was at his side, one hand clamped tightly around his bicep, her breath like whistling arrows to his hearing. She stepped forward before he could muster the courage and pulled back the draperies. A slant of light from the room's overhead globe made a glare on the window, so Mulder pressed his face to the pane. The man was at his motel room door, his hands working at the knob with steeled instruments that reflected the purple neon of the motel sign, the lock-picking almost silent. "He's breaking into my room," Mulder said softly. Scully tensed behind him, sliding her eyes to watch his. "Mulder. It's only four in the afternoon. What is he doing?" "It's fairly dark outside, so maybe he's taking a chance. But I don't think so. Somehow, he knows we're both in here, and he knows exactly what he's looking for." "This is such a risk. What's behind this? What could he possibly hope to find?" she asked, her eyes once more on the dark window. Mulder turned to her slowly. "The files. He wants the reports, all of them. You know how evidence tends to disappear on us." She turned once more to the window, sliding between Mulder and the glass to see out. His body was close to hers and giving off heat, while the window seeped chill from the weather outside. Mulder could still see over her head, and they watched the man silently from behind the curtains. When the lock snapped and the knob twisted, the man glanced up, looking for witnesses. Scully gasped and ducked back and Mulder held the curtains closed, one arm holding her to his chest. She wiggled free when they heard the door open and pulled the curtains from his grip. "What if he's not there to steal files?" Her breath smoked the glass and she felt him tense behind her, his arms dropping to his sides. "What do you mean?" "What if he's there to kill you?" she asked, her brow wrinkling and her fingers gripping the edges of the curtains tightly. "Well, you'd have one less nuisance, right?" She spun around, pelting him with a hot but grief-stricken glare. "Mulder." He shrugged. "What? If he's there to kill me that's obviously bad." "Mulder, what are we going to do? If they're trying to kill you or me. . .at some point our guard will drop and. . ." He pressed his hand to her shoulder and pulled her back from the window, then closed the curtains. She watched him in silence, letting him think. "We'll have to leave. If he doesn't get what he's looking for, then he might come over here. And if you're right, he could be setting up some elaborate booby-trap for me." He wiggled his eyebrows and gave her a tight smile, obviously trying to lighten the mood. She didn't fall for it, but his sarcasm made her less edgy, more in control. "All right. Let's go while we can." Mulder shoved the file and all the reports into her briefcase, then snapped shut the laptop and put it away in its carrier. Scully grabbed her overnight bag and quickly stuffed her cosmetics and toiletries back inside. Mulder added the files to the stack and she zipped it tight. Grabbing the carryon and handing her the laptop, he headed for the door, weapon drawn and ready, eyes scanning the darkness. Scully eased open the door and then slid outside, quiet and quick as a cat. Mulder followed, pulling the door to but not shutting it completely. They opened the car doors and got inside, but did not close them all the way either, waiting until they were out of hearing range of the man inside Mulder's room. The car started loudly, it seemed, and Mulder yanked the gears into reverse. Scully held tightly to the laptop and the door handle, her eyes riveted on the motel. But they backed away slowly, creeping out of the parking space, and then finally from the lot. Only when they were on the street again did Scully slam shut her door and stop looking back. "Where are we going?" she whispered, feeling hunted and cautious. "Another motel. We won't let Glenn know we've moved either. Hopefully, it will cut down on our night time visitors." She smiled tightly, but the joke fell flat and Mulder didn't feel very amusing. The late afternoon was dark with the storm clouds, but not a drop of rain fell to the earth. It was very still and very calm, no wind or breath moving across the city. Scully felt as if she were waiting for a horrible thunderstorm, sharp and ragged and raging, but in that deadly calm where she knew it was coming but couldn't tell from where. "Scully." She shook out of her reverie and glanced over at his tight-lipped, paled face. "Yeah?" "I don't think this is going to end well." ====== Beyond herself, there was a rushing of water and a thundering of clouds, but they did not register quite like they should have. She knew only escape, only colors, only the immediate reality surrounding her. At some point, she had ceased being the six year old woman and finally grown into the new woman, the thirty something woman who needed to find a way out of this. Out of this. She wasn't sure how she had managed to escape them all, only that she had and now she had to get somewhere, find help for her, because she was fast being overwhelmed. Six when abducted, thirty now, she was not prepared for the cold, for the winter, for the forest and the animals and the fear. She was very very close to stopping and laying down, giving up. Dying. Finally away. But the Others were keeping her moving. She had made a promise to the Others, to the Reals and the Others, but mainly to the Others. She would tell their story, tell it and have it known. She knew of the Others and their fate, and she would tell it loudly. Not many would believe, but she had to speak. The Others weren't human. They had no souls. They wanted peace. The Others surrounded her on every side, showing her colors and flashes and reality; they kept her going, they held her up, the were the phantasms of another woman. The Others cried for mercy, the Others needed their mother. Now, a six year old girl turned thirty something woman would bring them peace. And so she kept stumbling through forest and forest and forest and there was nothing but forest, Others, help, there's only green and brown and black and grey and I want purple and yellow, I want home. Others please, take me home. ====== "Agent Glenn, we just wanted to inform you that tomorrow we'll be interviewing the witnesses more thoroughly. We've called it a day." "Ah, it's only five thirty." Mulder glanced to Scully and raised his eyebrows. "Well, sir, we can't really begin on anything else so late, plus it will be easier to knock out all the witnesses in one day." "If you think that's best. Isn't there something else you need to do?" Mulder narrowed his eyes at his cellular phone. "Not really." "All right. Well, have a good night. I assume you can find your accommodations?" Mulder hesitated, then spoke. "Yes sir. I'm sure we can." The agent hung up and Mulder was left standing in his new motel room, puzzled and suspicious. Leaving the phone on his bed, he strode over to the connecting door, tapping lightly twice, then opened it and walked into Scully's room. She was sitting on the bed in plaid pajama pants and a white men's T-shirt without a bra. He was momentarily captivated by the loose freedom of her breasts and the soft highlight of her hair surrounding her face before he managed to walk over and sit down next to her. "I called Glenn. He seemed very anxious about our turning in for the night." "You didn't tell him where we were, did you?" "No. He thought we hadn't been back yet." "Oh." "Right." "He sent the man to our motel rooms." "That's what struck me." She leaned forward to prop her elbows on her knees, letting her breasts swing and her hair fall, then chewed on her lip for a moment. "I take it we won't be coordinating much through him." "Right. I'm going to call Skinner and see if he really did give us this assignment." "You think we were set up?" "Yes. Maybe to fail, or maybe to expose what's going on out here. I don't know which." She nodded and picked at a thread in her shirt before looking up at him. "I feel like something big is happening here, but I can't see past the crowd to make it out." He smiled briefly and traced his thumbs on the tops of his knees, shying away from her look. "I feel the same. I think we need to check out those woods tonight. I told Glenn we'd be speaking to the witnesses tomorrow, and we were calling it a day, but that was for deception's sake." "What do you hope to find in the woods?" "No mothmen, that's for sure." She smiled gently and took his hand in her own, glancing away from his startled gaze to the fine winter cracks in his knuckles. She could feel the heat of his palm on her thigh, and the thrum of blood in his pulse. He curled his fingers slightly and she felt her leg tingle, then flame to her core and her breasts. She closed her eyes and breathed in, then let go of his hand and stood up. "You need to buy clothes tomorrow, Mulder. All your suits are back at the motel." He grinned at her back and shook his head. "Yeah. I was going to borrow some shampoo from you, is that all right?" She turned to smile at him and headed for the bathroom. "Yeah, let me get it." Mulder followed closely behind her, and when she turned around, shampoo bottle in hand, she bumped into his chest and felt as if the air had been knocked from her lungs. "Here," she said softly, silently cursing Mulder's playful attitude tonight. He took it from her and backed away, smiling his thanks. "Can you be changed and ready to go in an hour?" "Yeah." "Good, then we'll head for K-mart and buy some dark clothes for me, then on to the woods." She nodded and simply watched in silence as he left for his own room, hips and thighs and arms swaying in time to the rhythm of his walk. Scully sat down on her bed and pressed her fingers to her forehead, ruthlessly clamping down on all the bubbling emotions. "Not here, not today," she whispered. ====== The Others made her stop. She slumped to the road in relief and sucked in great lungfuls of air, trying to stop the hiccup sobbing that had taken hold about two miles ago. She felt weak and small, like a six year old stuck in a woman's body. Her legs were thin and emaciated, her elbows and wrists like great jagged rocks jutting from the beach of her arm. Her face was smooth but pale and dirty with the forest. A car's headlights snapped around the curve and she struggled to her feet and hid in the trees, shivering in the wet dampness of rain and dew. It was still and dark and quiet, and the roar and swish of tires on wet road slipped through like a song in a dream. She sat down in the wet bush and ignored the cold seeping through her bones. The mud was warm after a few moments and she eased back against the tree to close her eyes. She couldn't really sleep, only rest, but it was enough for now. An Other touched her arm, then her forehead, then her chest, seeping warmth into her soul and healing into her bones. The woman Other was small and slight, but quick and smart, with soft eyes and a childlike smile. The six year old still in this thirty something woman liked to call her Mamma, but the woman could never be anyone's mother. "Thank you Red," she whispered, and wished she knew the Other's real name. She wished she knew her own name, knew something about herself besides the bunnies and the colors and being six and abducted and a test subject. "No, thank you, S4," the woman Other whispered and kissed her head. The vision faded and the six-thirty year old woman called S4 by the Others was asleep, lost in her memories of the White and wishing for home. ====== Harding paced the hall outside the White room, waiting for the red light to signal his entrance. The women were restless again, and part of that restlessness was due to their special needs and special powers, but Harding did not tolerate the kind of insubordination that came with this. The subject inside was projecting again, but with a few doses of powerful barbituates, she would be sleeping soundly, once more reverting back to her infantile stage, the age of her acceptance into the program. Harding was still amused by the level of achievement in his facility, by the way things had turned out so very differently from the original goal. Currently, only thirteen subjects remained in vital health, and three were tormented enough to be considered terminate. Of those thirteen, eleven could project and receive, and the remaining two could simply receive. Unfortunately, a projector and receiver had escaped the previous week, but, fortunately, she would be thought quite mad by doctors. She was not much of a problem. The agents were, though, and Harding hoped the smoker had them well under control, or falling into place, as the arrogant man thought. The clones were also a great success, but so far they'd only received two swatches of DNA to clone from, and so there were only two types available, the Greens and the Reds. The subjects liked to call them Others. It was a cute nickname and Harding permitted it. The light flashed over the room and Harding waited the half second for it to go off before entering the White room. Subject 2 was bound to the table, but listless and remote, her mind in her far off place, in the residence of the infant. Subject 2 had been drafted into the program at fourteen months, and her language was rudimentary at best. Of course, the program did not encourage wide verbal skills, but hers were markedly less than the other subjects. S2 was prone to babble, even when receiving, and while it had some drawbacks, the uses far outweighed. She was the easiest to control, easiest to receive and project, and her pictures were the clearest. "Sir?" Harding glanced to the young man in his white lab coat and white face. He tried to recall the name but it eluded him. The handlers weren't always that important, plus they tended to grow attached to the subjects. "Yes. Tell me her projections this time." "Nothing of the escaped subject, S4, but two of the agents, sir. Both times in their motel rooms." "That's fine. Now, has she had any projections in the foreign relations department?" "No sir. Not tonight. Yesterday, though-" "Yes, handler. I've seen those." "Yes, sir. Very good, sir. S2 has progressed since the new treatment of drugs and her projections can be controlled. You can now tell her specific landmarks in town, or even in countries, and she can accurately project at a 54% success rate." "That's remarkable. Thank you. Is she docile now?" "Yes sir. Back at fourteen months." "You can leave now, handler." The young man turned, white coat twirling, and stepped outside, closing the door softly behind him. Harding nodded with quiet gratitude; he abhorred the loud clanging of the door slamming shut. S2 was still and silent on the table, her eyes wide but unfocused, her lips in a slight drugged smile. She smacked her mouth at him and blinked, her babyish manners like a balm to Harding's troubled mind. She was such a comfort, at all times, with her innocence and acceptance. She was a woman, yes, but a child in mind. She received horror after horror in that small mind of hers, and then projected these secrets onto the walls of the White room for all to see, but she remained untainted, pristine, a child. Harding knew that the projections were really pictures she put into their minds, but the program had developed a less invasive seeming procedure that allowed the researchers to feel as if the scenes were happening outside of them. Everyone knew they weren't, but it was more normal for the received images to be projected onto the walls like a movie or hologram, rather than playing out inside your head. Harding bent over S2 and stroked her head, making soothing noises of comfort and nonsense to the baby-woman, touching her cheeks and chin with his long fingers. She smiled and gurgled at him, then closed her eyes and allowed him to lull her into sleep. He stepped back and watched her for a moment, then opened the door and shut her back inside her room. The hallway was White and bright, like an open and loving entity, only it was Harding's own creation. The halls had doors which led to more of the children, the woman-babies in their White rooms with their images inside their heads or on the walls. They were his babies, his creations, and he couldn't imagine life without them. He walked slowly down to the empty room, a growing feeling of sorrow and rage within him. How dare S4 want to leave him, her father and protector? How dare she run from him? He was good to them all, he kept them alive, he gave them abilities that ordinary children never had. He had no tolerance for sexual or physical abuse, he let them bathe and eat and sleep. Why had she left? Her friends were here; the Others doted on them all; this was her family. Dr. Harding blinked back tears and passed by S4's door. Stolen S4, escaped S4. Naughty daughter. Naughty girl. ====== 'Get up. Move, move, girl.' S4 stumbled to her feet with fear clutching her heart like vengeful witch doctor. She pushed away from the tree and ran for the forest again, skirting the closely wooded area to parallel the road, hoping that someone good would find her. The Others pushed her on, their thin limbs and brittle hair waving in the rain. She shivered and nearly fell down with the force of it, but carried on, her hands in tight fists. Her head hurt from receiving constantly, and her body felt starved and weak. She had eaten a squirrel caught in a trap, but refused to cook the rabbit she had found yesterday. It was dead already, but the thought repulsed her. She was crying again, great alligator tears that rolled down her cheeks and blended with the rain. They tasted salty and slick, and she shivered some more and tripped down a steep embankment. Thick vines entangled her and that's when she felt it. The probe of a Subject, of one of the Reals that were her sisters. They were searching for her, but not very hard, hoping she would get away. It would take little energy to redirect their attempts to receive her reality, but it was energy she didn't have to give. S4 buried herself in leaves and undergrowth and let the Real receive. There was nothing to the projection but rain and woods. No lost subject to be found, only a steep incline, a snarl of brush and trees, and the white stripes of the road. The Subject was allowed to stop and S4 closed her eyes. The Others let her rest, now that the danger was over, and she pulled the tangle of vines and leaves closer around her, making a nest. She fell into sleep again. ====== Chapter Four ". . .this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come, and to endure always. . .But were the coming narrative to reveal, in any instance, the complete abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of valour in the soul." --"Moby-Dick," Herman Melville ====== Scully blinked in the storm and night to find anything worthwhile in the thick underbrush of the wooded area. Mulder led them on, about five or six feet in front of her, his black anorak sheeted with drops of fat rain. Their flashlights was weak and flickering, and Scully felt cold and wet, but something kept them searching. This is crazy, she thought. Crazy. But they kept going, slogging through, cold and wet and muddy. They made it to the rough location where two hunters had first seen the woman, and glanced to the ground for evidence or signs of life. They scared a damp squirrel from its nest in the hollow of a tree, and two owls fluttered over their heads, but Scully saw nothing that could be left by a woman. She was crouched down beating the brush for tracks when a flash of white at the corner of her eyes caught her attention. "Mulder?" "Yeah?" He answered from somewhere behind her. "Did you see that?" she whispered, hardly heard over the rain slapping into the leaves. "What?" Mulder scuttled up to her side and crouched down next to her. He held out the flashlight and scanned the trees, but there was nothing. "I saw a shape, a flash of white, moving off to the left." She was still intently studying the area, her eyes narrowed to keep out the rain and her hands clenched tightly on her weapon and her flashlight. "Okay," he said softly and stood up. She watched him move cautiously forward, his gun trained on the line of trees just ahead of them. Just when he turned around to signal all clear, a flash of white darted behind her. "I saw it!" he yelled. Scully whipped around, weapon black and shaking as she watched the trees sway in the wind. A second form appeared, then disappeared, then appeared closer to her. Scully yelped and jumped back, landing hard into Mulder who had been coming to her side. The white form of a pale woman shrank back, then disappeared among the trees. "Let's go, Scully," he said and pushed her forward. Mulder forged ahead of her but she hung back for an instant, her heart thudding painfully. The white flash of the woman had jarred something inside her. She had only caught one glimpse of the face, pale and spectral, before it had disappeared, but it was enough to see clearly. It was her own ghost. ====== S7 was behaving oddly after that last sweep of the woods. Dr. Harding wasn't sure if she was mourning over the loss of S4, or covering up for the escaped subject, but her looks were dark and forboding, and her projections included violence and death. Her handler attempted to sedate her, but she lashed out, putting the projections inside his own head and scaring him so badly, he had wet himself, then run from the room. Harding was called in and he had to give her the injections, but she eventually calmed and fell asleep. She had been accepted into the program at twelve, and so always a bit harder to handle. A Red Other came into the room and pulled the blankets up, then dimmed the lights. The clone was half hidden in the darkness, but Harding was still amazed at how much she was, for all intents and purposes, Agent Scully. Obviously, the DNA swatch had been Scully's, but Harding had never expected to see the Real up close and personal. He'd always assumed the Reals were killed or kept for experiments. The Red Other smiled softly to him and left the room without a word. Most of them never spoke, although they were programmed for language, and he had always sensed a bit of solid mysticism about them. Harding liked dealing with the Greens better; those Others were as transparent as glass. Harding waited in the darkness until S7's dreams were projected onto the White room walls, their intensity almost too much for him. They were riots of colors and images, but no sound, all visions of childhood and her family. Harding liked to view the dreams, mostly to know their minds, but sometimes because his children had such beautiful dreams. S7's began to take shape, first of an egg, then of a dragon hatching, and then she was on a fairy tale ride above clouds and castles, her joy as catching as sharing a smile. Harding began to feel better, and he left her room to let her dream. There was still no projection on S4, and Harding was starting to worry they would never find his stolen child. ====== Scully turned a bend in the trampled path Mulder had made and ran headlong into his back. She stumbled and he grabbed her, turning to face her. "Scully," he said gently. She pulled away from him and peeked around his body to see the host of clones standing in the forest, huddled in a protective ring around the woman sleeping buried in leaves. "I thought so," she said. Mulder let her walk forward, but he stayed back, hedging the outside, unsure of whether these ghostly women would let him in. They seemed somewhat crazed and unearthly, besides being the perfect image of his partner. "That's why Duke said he saw you," he said softly. She nodded and crouched beside the woman. The rain was puddling around them in splashes of droplets and the thunder echoed the deep sense of guilt and horror building inside her. Lightning illuminated the woman's face and then went dark again. "Mulder, come help me," she said. He went to her side, sensing the barely contained hostility in the creatures surrounding them. He picked up the woman and stood again, beginning to walk back towards their car. Scully turned back at the last moment to have the others follow them, but when she did, they were gone. ====== "No. No. This is no good. Get me that man, right now. Our contact." Harding screamed the orders at a handler and stalked along behind the frightened man as he scrambled for a phone. All the doctor could see was Agent Mulder, that horrible unworthy man, picking up his daughter, his S4, and carrying her away. Now, the agents had seen the subject and the Others. The thing was, he knew there were no Others missing. None. All he could think was that S4 had projected the Others for Scully and Mulder to find, but he was amazed at the power of the projection in her sleep, and the absolute clarity with which it was maintained. Still, she had betrayed them all. S4 had betrayed him and her sisters. The smoker was nonchalant on the phone, promising and promising things. Harding didn't believe his promises anymore. "Listen, you have to get her back. Now." "No, Dr. Harding, you listen. Terminate them all and come back here. The program is over." "No. You can't. We're successful. We've raised them for twenty five years-" "Terminate them all. Leave nothing behind. You've been compromised." Harding slammed down the phone and then kicked the desk. His anger raged like a lion in the wilds of Africa, untamed and blood thirsty. He was not killing his children; he was not about to end the program. Walking in a storm from the office, Harding opened all the rooms, leading the children out with a strong and firm shove. The handlers crowded around him, but he shooed them like buzzing flies around a rotting corpse. "Leave now," he snarled at them. "The project has been terminated. If you don't go now, I'll be forced to kill you." Soon, there was only him and his children, his daughters clustered around him like chicks beneath the hen's wing. He gathered them to him and hugged them all. The chosen twelve, he thought idly to himself, destined for great and beautiful things. He remembered every dream projected on his White walls, every baby-sigh from their lips, every day he had cultured them. He put them all inside the first room, the Others' room, which was just as spartan as the other quarters, then took the Reds and Greens outside. One by one, he plunged the needle into their necks, brushing aside the Reds' hair, caressing their arms as he did. They were not his children, merely his servants, but it hurt to have to terminate them. Two of his daughters were still comatose, those put into the altered state with the intent to terminate them. They had rebelled, they had not worked, they had been unworthy. Before, it had been hard to know they would have to die, now he calmly went into their rooms and injected them with poison. The daughters took the Others and placed them in their beds; he told them they were sleeping and assuaged their fears. He could see the projections even now; fear and worry, childhood memories mixed with rituals and thoughts. They were in a jumble across the White wall but Harding could separate them out. He'd had the most experience with them all. He gathered the remaining daughters to him and led them out into the hallway, intending to escape with them. He could handle them himself, give them their shots and their vitamins, help them grow in their abilities. Harding had just turned the first corner when the projection caught his attention. They were projecting simultaneously, all the same picture. But it was too late. He rounded the corner even as he became aware, and the assassin sent to keep him from ever making it out alive did his job. Harding slumped to the White floor, his chest already stained with blood. The daughters tried to run, but there was nowhere to go. Flames engulfed their lifeless bodies and then destroyed all evidence that the program had ever been in existence. ====== The car was noisy on the rain-slicked streets, but Mulder drove quickly to get to a hospital. Scully was in the backseat with the unconscious woman, just in case she needed medical attention, and he was trying to understand the clones they had seen in the rain. They had disappeared as soon as Scully had picked up the woman, and then they hadn't seen a single one afterwards. It didn't make sense. The woman awoke and sighed, lifting a hand to Scully's arm to tug on it. She turned around and saw the opened eyes and waited for a response. The woman simply stared for a long moment, then smiled. "Red." "My name is Dana, can you tell me your name?" The woman's mouth moved again and her eyes narrowed briefly, then widened again. She turned her head, but started violently at seeing Mulder. A kind of animal scream tore from her throat and she buried into Scully for protection. "It's okay, it's okay. He found you. You're going to be just fine. Can you tell me your name?" "S4." Scully blinked and stroked the woman's cheek, pushing back the wet hair from her eyes. "Your name. Do you remember your name?" "S4. S4. Stop it, you know who I am," she said, but her voice was scratchy and rough. "No, I'm sorry, I don't. I've never met you before." "Scully," Mulder hissed from the front seat. "That's not a good idea, psychologically." Suddenly a woman was sitting in the passenger seat, white and pale and the exact image of Scully. Mulder jerked, causing the car to swerve dangerously into the other lane, before he got it under control. "What-" "Mulder-" "Red." Scully glanced to the woman, who was sitting up now and leaning forward to touch the apparition in the front seat. When her hands passed through the woman, she began to shake, her body quivering like a seizure. "Who is that?" "She called me Red. She called this thing Red. But Mulder, this thing isn't real." Scully closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them to find the image gone. "What happened to it?" she said, panic fluttering in her voice. "It disappeared again." "Red," the woman said again and then laughed like a child. "Take me home, Red. Please please, take me home." "We will," Scully said gently. "But we need to know your name." "S4, S4. S4." Her agitation made her face twist and once again, the clone image was sitting in the passenger seat, ethereal and full of mist. Mulder glanced back to Scully, then to the replica sitting beside him. The phantom turned and stared at him. He felt chills creep up and down his arms. Then it wafted into nothing. At any moment he expected it to appear like a rotting corpse, maggots hanging from its eye sockets -- just like his worse nightmares. "Scully, I think she's doing it. She's making these things appear." "But why me? Why my face? We saw them before she ever saw me." "Maybe they were with her, wherever she's been. She thinks you ought to know her. She thinks you can take her home." "All I know is we have to get her to a hospital. She's been in the woods and rain for a long time. She's not well; she doesn't know her name. We can do DNA test there and check with Missing Persons." Mulder nodded and glanced once more to the rear view mirror. Scully's face was lined with fear and confusion, her head in her hands. He wanted to say something to help her, but he didn't think he really could make her feel any more secure. He drove in silence and was grateful when the woman slipped into unconscious again. ====== "She hasn't come out of the coma yet, Mulder." He stood as Scully approached him, the blur of the waiting room fading into the background as he watched her. She looked haggard and pale, almost as sorrowful and ghostly as the image of her clone sitting beside him the car. "Will she wake up?" "I don't know. There's no way to tell." He was frustrated by the turn of events; he could see everything leading back to Fort Craven, to the secrets beneath its hospital, and the experiments. He knew Scully wouldn't see it that way, and she would talk him out of doing anything else. "Are you staying here, or do you want me to take you somewhere?" Scully glanced to him in surprise, a little stunned at his consideration. She sat down in the chair next to his and he followed suit, settling back into the hard plastic with a sigh. "I don't know. I suppose I could be most effective here. But what are you going to do?" Mulder hedged, then finally shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know." It was a lie, and he had a feeling she could see it, but she let him pretend and did not ask. He knew exactly where he was going, only he didn't want to have a lecture from her about it. If there were more women in Fort Craven, he had to rescue them; it was his nature. He didn't really think of himself as the white knight, but simply as his calling as a human being. He couldn't leave others to a fate Scully had been put through. "If you go, tell me," she said quietly, looking away from him. "Go?" "Mulder," she warned with a hiss of her breath. "I want to go with you." "Scully. . .what about the woman? We can't leave her here unprotected." "We can post a guard. Get a policeman or maybe another agent." He shook his head. "Scully, I don't trust these agents. And the police aren't going to waste manpower on a case they're not involved in, nor can they be told about." She was watching the floor, one hand working at the stuffing that was leaking from the brown plastic, her eyebrows furrowed. "I don't want you going alone," she said finally. "And I need to see this." Mulder rubbed his jaw and closed his eyes for a moment, unsure of what he was about to suggest. "What if you went alone?" She glanced to him quickly, shots of hope illuminating her eyes like blue crystal. Her hand came to rest on his arm, one eyebrow crooked. "I don't really want you to go alone, but you're the one who needs to do this. And somebody needs to stay with the woman here." Scully was afraid, but she was more afraid to not know what was going on. Mulder always had a tendency to protect her, to keep the truth from her when it may hurt her. She had to know what they were doing down there, with clones that looked like her. "Thanks, Mulder. . .I have to know what's going on there." He nodded gruffly, greatly opposed to the idea, but knowing it was the best option they had right now. Someone needed to get over there before it all disappeared, and yet the woman was their only witness, and she needed to be protected. "Besides," he said roughly, "you'll blend in with all the other clones." Scully gave him a half-hurt smile and nodded somberly, her hair falling back into her face as she glanced to the floor again. "Well, I should probably go." "Yeah." They stood as one, awkwardly maneuvering around each other until Scully was by the exit doors and Mulder was situated closer to ICU. She nibbled her bottom lip, then sighed. "Mulder, what am I supposed to do? Just walk on in?" "Sure, if all else fails. See if you can get in a back way, a door that's unlocked. Use your status as a doctor to bluff your way through." She nodded, then shuffled backwards, still not looking at him. Mulder waited for her words, knowing they would come. "Be careful," she said finally, then reached up to kiss his cheek, blushing. He bent into the slight touch of her lips and smiled gently. "I should be saying that to you." He gave her a soft shove and she turned around and headed outside, away from Mulder and towards a fate unknown. Mulder had never been more afraid in his entire life. "Scully!" he shouted. She whirled around, face in a mask of concern and tightly controlled fear. "Call me in two hours." She nodded and gave him a thumbs-up sign, then pushed open the doors and was really gone. For good, he couldn't help think. ====== She crept through the halls with bare feet, her heels held in one hand and her weapon in the other. It wasn't quite as deserted as it seemed upon first entering, but there was a certain stillness that made her nervous. The rooms were mostly closed from the hall, but occasionally she could make out the sounds of nurses or coughing. Her feet were cold on the tile and she had stepped in a wet spot and gotten her hose soaked. She felt ridiculously like Nancy Drew, red hair and nosy personality and all, but she tried to shake that image from her behind before she lost confidence. As she turned a corner carefully, she checked the hall for doctors or nurses, then walked slowly down the long corridor, the glare from the overhead fluorescent lights like stepping stones across the linoleum. A noise startled her and she threw open a door and stepped inside. It was a supply closet. She heard voices of alarm, but then the wheezing sounds of a man fighting for breath. No one had spotted her; they'd been rushing toward an emergency. She let out a sigh and listened as the doctors called out instructions and terse readings. To occupy herself, Scully glanced around the little closet but found only gauze and hospital sheets and gowns. Nothing medical, nothing to hide her in the tangle of white halls and sterile patients. As soon as the rush was over and the emergency taken care of, Scully slipped back outside, feeling somewhat at a loss. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to do, or how she was supposed to find this secret underground lab. She felt like a rat in a maze, running into dead ends as she learned the trap, trying to discover that one passage that would lead to all the answers. There were two stair cases to her right and left, set into the hallway and marked by a simple black sign. She headed for the one on her left, picking her choice at random. Braille bumps raised the smooth black plastic and the door handle was cold. Scully opened the door and peeked inside. This couldn't be it; it only led up. She closed the door again and headed for the one on the right, realizing she would have to check every staircase for the one that led down. Down to the three floors below ground, down to the experiments, down to the clones with her face. ====== Mulder was dozing in the chair next to the woman's bed, having gained entrance to the ICU ward by flashing his badge and making a commotion. The doctor, once Mulder had explained the situation, finally agreed to letting the woman be guarded, but only for her own health. If he caused problems or became detrimental to the nurses ability to provide quality care for the other patients, then he was out. He was worried about Scully, but he also hadn't slept well yesterday and they'd had a crazy day today, so his energy was rapidly declining. He wanted to stay up and wait for Scully's call, but he was falling asleep. He roused himself enough to check his watch, but found it had only been an hour and a half, and the woman on the bed was still comatose, her eyes firmly shut and her hands pale and limp on the bedsheets. He had an uncomfortable flash of Scully's clone, sitting on the passenger seat and turning that cold, pale face to look at him. The image had been so clear, so very real, that he had put out a hand to touch it. Mist, cold and vapored, with the faint sense of unreality that came from seeing solid but feeling air. He sighed and moved his head to glance at the nurses' station, the thick dark wood like a beached whale in the midst of a sterile sea. Presently, there was one woman working, a black woman with thick hands and thin ankles and a glare for him every time they made eye contact. She didn't like Mulder. He was being allowed to break the rules. Mulder turned back around and felt a chill work up his spine. The feeling was so sharp and clear that he stood up and pulled his gun, eyes darting around the white-curtained area with apprehension. No one was near by and the other patients looked near death, so he should not be having this feeling of danger. He walked outside the curtained area and checked the ICU waiting room, then walked back. The curtains were sighing in the breeze from his hasty departure, and he pushed them aside to sit next to the woman's bed again. His eyes strayed to her face, noting the deep lines and thin, almost translucent skin. He glanced back to the curtains and saw they were alive. Alive. Mulder jumped from his seat and spun around, watching the curtains undulate and hiss with sound and picture. He felt his heart hammering, his palms greased with sweat, his eyes clear and sharp but somehow wrong. This had to be wrong. It was like someone had turned on a projector in the middle of the room to show a video all over the curtained area. The pictures were more real than anything he had seen, and that quality of image made him disbelieve all the more what he was seeing. Fire. Fire everywhere. Burning the sheets, burning the ceiling, alive and moving like snakes across the curtains. Brilliant and bright, deadly and hot, he could feel them on his face, the metal of his gun was burning his hand, his eyebrows were being singed. He glanced back to the woman, so still and quiet on the bed, her face like a mask of nothing. He remembered seeing the clone of Scully, the way those flashes of white had led them straight to her body. She was doing it again, but all over the room, like a theatre of fire surrounding him. Why? Why all the fire, the stench of burning flesh and singed hair, why the realness of it all? He huddled closer to the woman, farther from the heat, his very soul shaking from the nightmares around him. Fire fire burning bright.... ====== Scully eyed the lone elevator once more, watching for people, but surveying the door before her. This was the way down; she could feel it in her bones. The stairs only led up, and the bank of elevators in the lobby led up, but this small, tucked away elevator had to lead down. It was situated on the third floor of the hospital, probably to keep any visitors from accidentally wandering on, and the hall it was on had no other patient rooms. But she was afraid to go down. Elevators were death traps. If they were waiting for her, when the doors opened all they had to do was shoot. She would be dead before she knew what was happening. If she stayed to either side, she wouldn't be able to see out, or someone might even get on. She didn't want to maim or kill anyone, but she didn't want to be killed either. But the elevator was the only way down. Only way. Mulder was counting on her to find the truth here; she wanted to know herself. She pressed the call button, and waited silently off to the side. She heard a click, then a small tone, and the doors slid open. No one was inside. Scully took a deep breath and walked into the car. The doors closed around her, enconsing her inside this metal coffin. She reached for the control panel and pressed the button. -3. That's what Duke had said, exactly as he'd said. She had a brief panicked thought. How could Duke know? He was restricted to his wheelchair, how could he know that the elevator would go down to -3 floors? The car lurched and she was heading down. Her heart thudding wildly, her breath coming in brief bursts of fear, she waited for the end. ====== Chapter Five I have heard what the talkers are talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now. --"Song of Myself" Section 3, Walt Whitman ====== What was this? What was this? Harsh unreality folding and fluttering in the curtains, fire bright and burning. He wanted to scream. No one knew what was happening. No one could see the woman behind the curtains; Mulder was not making a noise. The fire was hot like an unbearable sort of warm, close and close, marshmallows over the bonfire, but not quite black. He felt like he would catch on fire, but he did not. "Stop it, stop it," he whispered, and tried to crawl from the curtained room, but the fire was everywhere and he was half certain it was real. His fear was an alive and living and breathing thing. He could not control it; it was everywhere. And then there was a picture in the fire, pictures of women, burned and dying, green oozed and bloodied, all in a mix, clone and human, other and real. He stopped cowering, started paying attention to the warning on the walls. She was projecting reality onto the hospital walls, maybe unconsciously, maybe empathically with the women dying there. Mulder closed his eyes and rolled them under his lids in the dryness of his sockets. When courage was stock-piled in him, he opened his eyes again and looked straight at the dying. Scully. They were all Scully. All dying, burned burning burn, Scully. He felt oddly frozen inside, cold all the way through, despite the hot of the make-believe fire. Scully. That's where she was going, that would be her fate, that might be her right there. The clones, dying there, that's what they were, merely faces of his partner, but still. Maybe, still, she had already made it down there, had stepped out into the fire and been burned. He yanked his cellular from his back pocket and hit the fast dial for her own phone. It was quick and soon it was ringing, ringing, ringing. Mulder waited with growing sickness, seeing the flames surround, encompassing the dead. Please, no. Not Scully. ====== It was uncomfortable. Almost warm, but not quite. The elevator continued to hum down and she was being lulled into a quiet comfort. She wanted to be ready for trouble, but the warmth and the hum was like soothing hands-- Scully jerked at the sudden noise, like a gunshot in the small space of the elevator. But it was her phone and it was ringing in her jacket pocket. Sighing, she pulled it out and leaned against the wall of the car. The heat bit straight through her clothes and she yelped, dropping her still ringing phone. Scully yanked off her suit jacket and looked at her shoulder. Angry red and stinging, hot still but rapidly cooling. Cautiously, she put her hand to the wall again, the usually cool metal walls. It was all hot, burning hot. Panic blinded her, deafened her for a moment, and then the phone ringing cut into her discovery. She scrambled for it, mind reeling. "Scully." "Scully?" "Mulder?" "Scully, it's on fire, you have to get out of there, the whole place is one fire, I can see them dying-" "Mulder. Stop, wait. What?" "It's on fire. You have to get out of there." She glanced to the hot walls, the burn on her shoulder. "I just figured it out." "Where are you, Scully? You're breaking up." "I'm on an elevator, going down. The walls are like lava." There was a brief moment of silent panic, and then she jabbed at the stop button just as Mulder began to talk. "You have to stop it. It's everywhere. If the elevator doors open onto the floor, the fire will rush inside for more oxygen." "Mulder." Her voice was tight with fear and panic. "Yeah?" "I can't get it to stop." Her breath was harsh and stilted with the sudden knowledge of her fate, that this was it, the end, and she was riding down into fire. God, please, help, make it stop. "Scully." It sounded like a keen. "I can't make it stop, Mulder. I keep pushing the button for the emergency stop and it doesn't work. None of the buttons will make it stop--" "Scully." He was in control now, calmed by the pressure. "Yeah?" she whispered, slumping to the floor to look at the control panel, slumping to the floor because she could not hold herself up any longer. "I've got the hospital calling the fire department right now. You're going to be okay." "Mulder, it won't stop," she whispered, not even seeing the buttons anymore. "We'll make it stop. It's okay. We're going to call Fort Craven and let them know, and they'll stop all the elevators." "They won't know about this one." "Tell me where it is; we'll let them know." She began to describe how she'd found it, but she had been so lost inside the hospital, she wasn't sure she had the directions right. Despair was closing in on her, the walls of the elevator were heating up and making her dizzy with warmth. "Scully? Tell me all the buttons on the elevator now." She rattled those off too, realizing he was just trying to make her concentrate on something beside the fire. But she could feel it even in the floor, and she had to sqaut on her toes to keep from hitting the sides of the elevator. Tears were slipping down her cheeks by the time she had listed all the buttons and pressed every single one except the -3. She didn't know when she had started crying, but it seemed a ridiculous thing to her. She had asked to come, she had known the dangers beforehand. So she would die. What was there to be afraid of? Fire. Being burned alive. That was a good healthy fear. She closed her eyes again and listened intently to the mindless drone coming from Mulder, not really hearing his words but understanding the tones of his voice. He was afraid, and he was still hopeful, but somewhere deep inside him, he was already mourning her. "Mulder," she said, interrupting. "Yeah?" "I'm going to hang up when the elevator stops." "No! No, Scully, please don't hang up." "I don't want you to hear it. Mulder-" "Scully, no. Don't, please." "Just when it stops." "No." "I'm just letting you know." "Scully-" "Mulder, stop." They both quieted, breathing loud on the phone in harmony and company. She wished there was something exceptional to say, but she wasn't sure what he needed to hear, or what she needed to hear. To say all those things they never said might cause more harm than good. "Mulder?" "I'm here." "I. . .I-" "Don't Scully. You're going to be okay." She nodded, swallowing her confession, admission, whatever it had almost been. "Thank you," she finally said. "For what?" "Everything." He was silent, but accepted the offer, knowing it was all she could give, all he could bear to receive. There was a jerk and she gasped, then let out her breath slowly. Somehow, he'd given her courage. "The car stopped. I've got to go." "No, Scully-" "Bye, Mulder." ====== "Scully!" He listened to dead air, then the dial tone. It was like a laugh, menacing and cruel, in his ear and slamming through his head in time. He closed his eyes, shut them to the projection on the curtain, praying and crying at the same time. He let the phone dangle from his grip and his hands moved to cradle his face as the tears slid down. He was mourning, but some part of him was still wildly hoping, wildly praying that the fire would be not real, the hot walls of the elevator just a design flaw. Please, please, Scully. It was a dark place, this hole of fear and not knowing, his imagination giving him image after image of her burning alive, supplied by the earlier projections the unconscious woman had been casting onto the curtain. He was very close to numbness, to nothing but blank mind and blank heart. He was folding in on himself and crushing out his spirit with the thoughts, the images, the knowledge of her-- His phone was ringing. Mulder jerked up, breath in and out like sprint runner's pumping legs, fast quick tight. "Hello?" "Mulder!" He was too dazed to reply, too giddy, with just that precise elation and joy and confusion all dazzling into one. "Scully?" "Mulder, it stopped on the second floor below ground. It's hot, but not on fire." "Scully, you're okay?" "I'm okay!" she said and laughed. "Can you get out of there?" "No. There's no stairs and I'm not getting back on the elevator. What if it just keeps going down?" Mulder was relieved, but that was tinged with darkness again. "How are you going to get out?" "The firemen. They'll come, right?" "Yes. Yes, right." But he wasn't sure. Would they risk it? He jerked to his feet and slipped past the sheet again, wincing at the almost unbearable heat, and then sliding out into the cool air of the ICU ward. He'd told no one that he had gotten the information from some pictures being played on the curtains. The nurse was looking concerned as he approached, ready to help him again. He asked her to call the fire department again and update them about Scully's whereabouts. The woman nodded and punched in the numbers, relaying information as Mulder got it from his partner. "They know where to find you. They'll be able to come right down." "Okay." They were silent, listening to each other breathe, both grateful she was alive. He wanted to hug her, but she was far away from him. She almost sounded weary, tired. "They were destroying all the evidence Mulder. There's nothing up here either. No files. I'm checking right now. It looks like it was a sleeping area, and a dining room too. Probably for researchers." He wanted to laugh. She'd almost been dead, and now she was looking for evidence. "Don't worry about proof, Scully." "But I have my proof, Mulder. Just seeing all this. It tells me they were down here." "How can you tell?" "I just feel it." He sobered and glanced to the floor, hearing her breathe again. "Oh. I can hear them." "Who?" "The firemen." Mulder let out a sigh of relief. He hadn't been so sure they'd come, that they'd risk it. "Here they come. I'm going to hang up, Mulder. My batteries are almost dead and our connection's fuzzy." "No. Scully." "It's okay, Mulder. I'm okay. I'll see you in a little bit." "Okay," he sighed and then the line was cut again. ====== When he saw her again, he was shocked. "You're hurt," he said. "Minor burns," she answered, then smiled at him. He'd been looking for her for an hour and a half, getting the runaround from nurses and doctors as he tried to locate where she'd been sent to. She was right in the same hospital with the woman, but in the emergency room, in bed and bandaged. Her eyebrows were singed and her shoulders had large patches of burned skin, but she was doing well. "I thought you said you were okay." "I am, Mulder. I'm not dead, right?" He frowned and moved to sit on her bed, taking the bandaged hand in his carefully. "This hurt?" he whispered. She shook her head, but winced, and he eased his grip to loosen their contact. She gave him a weak smile and bit her lip. "Thank you, Mulder." He nodded and leaned forward to kiss her temples, then stroked her cheek. "I'm glad you're all right." "How did you know?" she said, and she had obviously been thinking about it for awhile. "You wouldn't believe me." "After seeing myself in those woods, I'd believe a lot of things." "I saw the fire. The woman was projecting it onto the curtains all around us. I could feel it." "She was projecting it?" "Like she did the hologram of your clone out in the woods. She was trying to get our attention out there, and she was trying to warn me tonight." Scully glanced down to their linked hands and her eyes were troubled. "I didn't see any clones. . ." "You didn't see much of anything." "Not really." He shook his head. "That's okay, Scully. You don't have to believe me." "I do believe you, Mulder." He shrugged, knowing that a few days later she would be doubting again. It was how she worked, how she was able to stay sane. He needed her sane. She shifted painfully on the bed and he noticed her legs were elevated slightly. "What happened, Scully?" "When?" she asked, smiling a little. He traced her calf under the sheet, then drew away when her eyes tightened with pain. She was burned in other places. "How'd you get all these burns?" "The door opened to the second floor, underground, but not all the way. I had to pry it open the rest of the way. I burned my hands." Mulder turned over her palms in his hands and smoothed his fingers over her bandages, light and soothing. He was shaking his head. "Somehow, there was fire in the shaft, feeding off the grease, I guess. That's what a fireman said to me. Anyway, it was licking up the sides, almost like I was at the door to hell and I was looking through flames. They weren't high, but high enough for me to have to jump. So I did." "You jumped over flames?" She nodded and pointed to her legs. "I have some second degree burns in the places where my suit pants caught on fire." He was gaping at her, blinking his eyes, imagining this all. "You told me you were fine." "I said I was okay. And I am." Mulder stroked her cheek again, then closed his eyes with the overwhelming ability to touch her. When he opened them again, she was watching him carefully. "I'm really going to be fine. The burns aren't serious. You can take me back to the motel now." "I will." She sat up, right into his arms, leaning against his chest with a sigh. He hugged her immediately, liking the feel of her safe. "There was a lot I wanted to say to you," she whispered softly. "But I didn't say it because I thought it might make things worse. . .if I died." "Scully," he started, rubbing her hair with his hand. She pulled back, her eyes dark and rimmed with soft strands of hair. He pushed them away and stroked her cheeks, wondering if he should kiss her. So much already unspoken, and now that she was alive again, or at least certain that she would be able to live, able to see him again, her resolutions in the underground labs were fading. There was so much more harm than good to come from saying anything at all. He said nothing, but the slight disappoint was in his eyes like a thin veil. He grasped her hands tightly, reminding himself of her reality. She was not burned by fire; she was healthy and here and admitting to more than he'd ever thought she would. Scully closed her eyes briefly, summoning her courage with a lick of her lips, then leaned back into Mulder's arms, breathing in his aftershave and sweat and even residual fear. His palms warmed her back and she wanted to drift away on a current of sleep. "You don't have to say anything," he spoke up suddenly, his voice humming in his chest and tremoring into her heart. She shook her head, still not trusting herself to speak. Mulder tilted his head until he could see her leaning against his chest, her eyes drooping and her hands curled into small fists like a newborn. He bent down and kissed her forehead, content with that closeness. But she moved forward, pushing her mouth into his kiss, connecting them in a tight, tense bolt that dropped his hands from her back. Her neck was angled and he slipped his fingers down the line of it like a tear drop on skin. She was soft and peach fuzzed, warm and alive under his hands and lips. When the broke for space and breath, she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, as if savoring a rich flavor. Her eyes beamed open suddenly and looked at him. "No, I don't have to say a thing," she answered and smiled gently, as if testing it out. He smiled back and took her hand with a new sense of familiarity and security. ====== "What do you mean she's gone?" The nurse was shaking her head, hands held up in surrender, shoulders shrugging. "Sir, someone checked her out. I don't-" "Who? Who checked her out?" Mulder was almost panicked, definitely enraged. He was afraid for her. "Agent Mulder checked her out." "But I'm Agent Mulder." "Well, that's what the discharge says. He had the authority too; otherwise we wouldn't have let him check out a patient." "How could you have let her leave? She was in ICU." "She was going to be transferred to a stable floor." Mulder turned at the sound of two doctors making their way into the ICU ward. They were stern-faced and watching him carefully, making sure everything was under control. Mulder felt stymied; there was nothing more to do. He couldn't trace the woman; in fact, he wasn't even sure she really existed. But Scully had seen her. He backed away, shaking his head but letting it go. There was nothing to be done; they had managed to erase all traces of the woman. He knew there would be no paperwork, no blood samples, and soon, not even the discharge papers. But Scully had seen her. Mulder headed back down to the emergency section, that mantra repeating in his mind. It was heartening and frustrating that the woman was gone, but Scully had also seen her, had been confronted with the reality of the experiments and the test subjects. Scully needed that. He knew denial was a defense mechanism used by those who couldn't confront reality, but in their precarious situation, she needed to be fully aware of every aspect of the truth. Maybe he was blind to things too, but something had to give eventually. She'd gone too long denying things. When he entered her room, she was about to be moved to the fourth floor for recuperation. She was shaking her head to the nurses, but when he walked in, she allowed them to deposit her in the wheelchair. She held out her hand to him and Mulder took it gladly, placing a kiss on her knuckles. "What happened?" she asked immediately. "She's gone. I should have posted a guard or. . ." "No. You were right earlier. The police wouldn't have come and the agents can't be trusted." He nodded, but his eyebrows were still worked into a knit of confusion. "What's bothering you, Mulder? We did all we could. . ." "What were we supposed to learn from this? Someone set us up, sent us here to either expose the project or. . . It just doesn't make sense." "It does if we were meant to stop the tests. Someone decides they're not getting enough out of the program and so they want to put a stop to it without going through any of the other members. We've done their dirty work. We stopped it, allowed them an excuse to burn everything." "But-" She shook her head and gripped his hand tighter as she was wheeled through the hallways. "If we were truly sent up here to expose them, we'd have been allowed some kind of proof. Something." "But you saw it all. That's proof enough. Maybe we were sent here to make you believe." She frowned but couldn't say anything to contradict his statement. "I still don't like being manipulated," she finally said. Mulder shook his head. "I feel that we're always being yanked around. Our lives hang by a thread, and instead of the Three Fates deciding when it gets snipped, some smoking bastard holds the scissors." Scully sighed and tugged on his arm, looking up at him meaningfully. "That's why this is so important," she said softly and brought his hand to her lips. His frown twisted and disappeared, a faint smile gradually growing into a look of disbelieving joy that spread over his face. Mulder bent down and gently pressed his lips into hers as she was rolled down the hall. "This is most important, Scully. Nothing else compares." She smiled back, remembering that first night in the blackened motel room, his passionate speech about what was important to him. "Nothing else," he echoed and followed her wheelchair into the elevator. ====== end all adios RM