Fugues Fiction Archive

Title – Theory and Practice

Author – Nascent

Category – XA

Spoilers – Demons

Summary – Scully and Mulder investigate mysterious deaths at a biotechnology company and quickly find themselves at odds over a working hypothesis. Oh yeah, and Scully has cancer.

Timeline – set between Demons and Gethsemane

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“Theory and Practice”

by Nascent

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

They started as beta readers, but they quickly became editors. This story would not be what you’re reading if it were not for the wonderful, herculean (xenan? <g>) efforts of Flywoman, Dahlak, and Maya, whose comments, criticism and encouragement made this piece possible. If you like something, thank them for encouraging the shaping of it. If you don’t like something, it’s probably my fault for not listening to one of them on some count. But mostly, I listened.

Flywoman was one of my earliest friends in this cyber-community, and we found each other through our common interests in biology and Scully. Since both play a big role in this piece, her help was invaluable. She was not afraid to tell me where I’m going wrong, and let me know what worked as well. She has a great instinct for this stuff–I highly recommend checking out her fiction, particularly “Cold Comfort” and “A Murder of One” at Gossamer. She also writes beautiful poetry, and although the word “poetry” in fanfic really makes me nervous, this is EXCELLENT stuff that I wish I could write, but will never be able to. Check out “Tumour” and “Mything” at the Gossamer specialty archive (http://www.busprod.com/aclaybor/gossamer/poems.htm).

Dahlak was one of the very few people who actually sent me significant critical feedback on my earlier stories, and from the start I loved her for it. Everyone (myself included) is always afraid to say bad things, but not so Dahlak, and she does it in a way that neither coddles nor offends. We corresponded quite a bit about those earlier works, about our views on the M/S relationship, etc., and suddenly she offered to beta-read for me! She probably regrets that now, but she’s too nice to tell me. =) Also a devout Scullyist, Dahlak has published some excellent pieces which get deeply inside the characters’ heads and showcase her understanding for both Scully and Mulder: the short vignette “At the Crossroads” and an insightful investigation into Scully’s position on the Holy Remission Chip, to which there really must be a sequel (write her and tell her to hurry that along!). The latter is “Circumscribed Path,” and both can be found at Gossamer.

I asked Maya (woman of the infinitely many clever sigs) to beta-read for me after she’d written me wonderfully detailed and critical feedback letters on my earlier stories, and she took to the task with more dedication and helpfulness than I ever could have expected. Unafraid to tell me what didn’t feel right or what parts of the plot didn’t make much sense, she was also a great source of encouragement. One of the best things about beta-readers is you get feedback throughout the writing process, so you don’t feel like you have to publish fast to get that “fix.” Maybe Maya realized that, because she kept me patient. =)

I cannot express my gratitude to these folks deeply enough; for once I actually _revised_ and thought and I think both I and my work are the better for it. Consequently, this story is for these most excellent individuals, and they’ll be getting a percentage of my profits.

Of course, as a very wise archivist once told me, “Ten percent of zilch is zero.” Sorry, my friends, my undying gratitude and a dedication will have to do. =)

Thanks also to everyone who ever invented anything on the internet. See why in my references section at the end.

NOTES:

I’m trying something a little different here.

First, I wanted to write an X-File where something rare and wonderful happens, but I can’t tell you right now what that is without giving away a crucial part of the plot.

Second, this is set after Demons, near the peak of the cancer arc. There’s been a lot of fanfic about this period asserting that Mulder is trying to get Scully to talk about the disease because it’ll be good for them both. I don’t exactly see that in the show, though–Elegy would seem to indicate that they don’t talk about it but that he understands she prefers it that way and respects that. I think the disease _does_ cause problems for their relationship, but it’s something more complex than that, which is what I’ve tried to present here.

DISCLAIMER:

Mulder and Scully and the X-Files are mere pawns whose lives take on a warped significance to fit Chris Carter’s megalomaniacal cosmology. I’m just borrowing them for my own less-than-megalomaniacal cosmology, and I promise to return them in the same condition I found them: depressed, neurotic and endlessly endearing.

PRELUDE

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April 19, 1997

Anticorps, Inc.

South San Francisco

12:33 a.m.

“…Baby go and you push me down

I know you like to watch me crawl…”

Dr. Charlie Jorgensen bounced in cadence with the song, carrying two plastic bottles filled with yellow broth from the centrifuge to the counter. He decanted the broth into the metal sink, revealing the mushy white mass of bacteria at the bottom, packed together against the plastic by the super-gravitational force of the centrifuge’s powerful rotor.

He was the only one in the lab at that hour, so his loud music blared from the CD player, and he sang the words under his breath:

“…No air, headed my direction

I need help I need some protection

Can’t seem to breathe without obstruction

I need air, I need to breathe.

“See me

Feel me

Watch me turn blue…”

Charlie had always been a night person. Not by any choice made by his body, but only so he could work alone, no fighting over equipment, no one to tell him to turn down his music.

“…Now I know I look good in blue

It’s no excuse for what you do

So you come and suck my hair

You suffocate me and call it care…”

He added a measured amount of a clear detergent to the bacterial pellet and closed the bottles, shook them violently.

“…Wish me passion, I might feel,

Wish me dead, I’ll be healed…”

But Charlie Jorgensen was not alone in the lab that night. Through the glass-paneled door, a man was watching. Waiting.

Oblivious, Charlie added another solution to the bottles and mixed them again.

“…No fair, can’t resist seduction

No man, you follow this destruction

My air, feed it to you suction

I need air, I need air…”

The face in the doorway disappeared. A minute passed.

Suddenly, a high-pitched keening noise pierced through the music. The bottles forgotten, Charlie started to raise his hands to his ears, an expression of agony on his face.

His hands didn’t make it.

Charlie’s flesh began to boil obscenely. It was too late to scream–his vocal cords were likewise bubbling, as was every organ in his body. Mercifully, his nerves severed a moment later, and within a few seconds, all that was left of Charlie Jorgensen was a pinkish puddle on the ground, surrounding crumpled, sticky clothing.

The noise stopped; the music played on unaccompanied.

“…See me

Feel me

Watch me turn blue…”

—————————————————

Georgetown Hospital

Washington, D.C.

Dana Scully tried to find a more comfortable position–she hated sleeping on her back but the discomfort of the bandages at her armpit and groin made any other pose untenable. She couldn’t sleep.

She had joined the FBI so she wouldn’t have to spend so much time in hospitals. Obviously she’d made a career mistake somewhere along the way.

It didn’t help that she was far too used to sleeping in a double bed. Maybe that’s why you’ve stayed single all these years, Dana. No, that’s not why. Besides, a single bed was better than the chair she’d slept in for two nights at the last hospital, just last week.

That time, Mulder’d gotten the bed.

He’d left her scant hours before; if she closed her eyes she could still feel his cool lips against her cheek. She was as resentful of that touch as she was thankful for it. He had never kissed her before all of…this…and though the affection was touching, it was also unnerving. She counted on Mulder where her family failed: to have faith in her to fight past this disease. True, he never spoke of it in any terms except those of possible treatments and cures. He never treated her like an invalid. But the kisses, combined with the increased frequency of light touches: his arm against hers, his hand on her shoulder or waist–they all outlined to her a crack in his faith. He was hedging his bets, and she resented it. It was her job to doubt, his to believe.

She was terrified he’d one day soon tell her he loved her.

Not that she didn’t know it, but that wasn’t the point. Saying it, thus ameliorating regret, would be the ultimate acknowledgement of her mortality. Her mother asked her at least twice a week when she would stop working; Scully had a feeling that would be the day.

But even with Mulder’s faith and support, she had to admit to herself the day was coming soon. The cells they had withdrawn from her lymphatic system might this time reveal the invaders she dreaded daily.

And that was an invasion no faith could repel.

The light from the full moon outside caught the edge of her necklace, lying on the bedstand table beside her, and it glittered in her peripheral vision, distracting her. She frowned and stretched out a hand to move it out of the light, wishing hospitals provided more substantial curtains.

CHAPTER ONE

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Anticorps, Inc.

South San Francisco

8:16 p.m.

Mulder stooped over the sticky puddle, holding a handkerchief over his nose to mask the thick, unpleasant smell. It reminded him of the one time he’d tried a diet shake, multiplied a hundred-fold. The photographers had finished their job almost twelve hours ago, and Mulder was regretting his insistence that the crime scene–if that’s what it was–remain untouched until he’d had a chance to survey it. He’d been scouring the room for clues for almost two hours, and this after three hours of belligerent argument with the local police.

He grimaced at the memory. Cases were always much more difficult when the locals felt their territory was being invaded. And the detective who’d called him in obviously hadn’t had the wholehearted approval of the police chief.

The chief had railed alternately at Mulder and the woman–Detective Vasquez–for hours, insisting that this was a waste of funds and manpower, that it was a job for a haz mat team, not the police. Vasquez, whose cool responses had quickly earned Mulder’s respect, had answered that with the FBI around, South San Francisco’s limited police funds could be reserved for the chief’s more pressing concerns. The kind of crime lab analysis needed for this case, to which the PD had limited access, would cost the FBI pocket change. And, she’d insisted, she wouldn’t need any other manpower with two FBI agents on the case.

“Where the hell’s the other one?” the chief had exclaimed. “I only see one, and I may not have some fancy-ass Berkeley degree but I’m pretty sure I can count.”

Vasquez, who, Mulder assumed, held the fancy-ass Berkeley degree, had answered smoothly before Mulder could. “Agent Mulder’s partner had an appointment this morning. She’s scheduled to arrive tonight. She’s a pathologist with a background in hard sciences–I think her knowledge might be especially useful on this case.”

Mulder shot Vasquez a grateful look. He had euphemistically spoken of Scully’s “appointment,” and was relieved when she didn’t inquire further. In actuality, Scully was being released that morning after another hospital stay, another biopsy to check for metastasis.

With much grumbling and several half-veiled threats, the chief had finally given in. “All right,” he’d cautioned Mulder. “It’s your case. But I’ve done my background reading on you, sir, and as God is my witness, if you go telling my city that we’re investigating a murderer who turns his victims into puddles of pinkish putty with an alien ray gun, I swear I’ll have your superiors up your ass faster than you can say ‘flying saucer.’”

Mulder’s only answer was a short, smirking, ‘very funny’ laugh.

“X-Files,” the chief muttered disdainfully. “If the public had any idea what you feds waste their money on….”

This seemed to be a dismissal, or at least, Mulder had taken it as such. Never mind. He had the case.

And a fascinating case it was. He wrinkled his nose at the gooey puddle on the floor of the laboratory. This puddle had once been a person, or so the clothes resting within it suggested. It was the third such puddle discovered in a month. Vasquez had contacted him that morning, having read about his work a week earlier while searching the NCIC database.

Could this be the work of a second Virgil Incanto, the fat-sucking mutant-man? He was pleased to discover Vasquez hoped so. If it were, if such an experiment had been repeated (by nature or something with a more sinister agenda), it could lend validity to the claims so casually dismissed two and a half years ago, when he and Scully had tracked that internet-trolling killer. He had learned many things from Scully, and one thing was that evidence had to be reproducible.

He heard the click of heels approaching down the hallway from outside and glanced at his watch. He closed his eyes for a moment, measuring the gait against his memory of his partner’s familiar rhythms, concluded before the door opened that it wasn’t her. When the footsteps stopped at the door, he straightened.

“Detective Vasquez,” he said, without turning. “Are they pressuring us to get this mess cleaned up?”

“How’d you know?” she asked, and now he turned to face her.

She was a tall woman, whose waves of short dark hair framed her rosy-tanned cheeks with carefully-modelled precision. Her shoulders were strong and square, and her grey skirt flared slightly over her hips. Although she was near his age, she’d confessed to him on the way here that she was relatively new to the force, having abandoned a career as a lobbyist for an environmental group. When he’d asked her why, her answer had been simple: “I was tired of talking. I wanted to make something happen. And I like the idea of having a new problem to solve all the time, instead of rehashing the same issues again and again.”

He’d wondered whether the police force was satisfying her wish. Doubtful.

“How’d you know?” she repeated, and he chided himself for his momentary distraction, then pretended she’d been asking about the clean-up, instead of his “spooky” display. “I’ve been through this many times,” he told her.

She tilted her head and her mouth twisted in a smile. “I can see that,” she answered. “I think you’re the first guy who’s seen this mess and not thrown up.”

Mulder grimaced, deciding not to confess how, a few years ago, he would’ve been running to make an offering to the porcelain god. “So, they want us out of here,” he restated.

“Yeah,” answered Vasquez. “They say you should’ve had long enough. It’s late, the clean-up people want to get home.”

“My partner hasn’t seen it yet. She really should be here any minute. She called me from the airport forty-five minutes ago.”

“Well, I’ll try to hold them off a little bit longer. I hope your partner’s quicker at a crime scene than you are, Agent Mulder.”

“Oh, she is,” Mulder replied absently, looking back to the floor.

Anna Vasquez nodded shortly and stepped out the door again. She made her way down the long tiled hallway, past a handful of glass-mirrored doors. Despite the nearby crime scene, several scientists were scurrying about in these rooms, having begged to be allowed to stay due to the time-sensitive nature of their experiments. A small cluster of them at the end of the hall eyed her warily as she passed, their voices dropping in conspiratorial worry.

They didn’t wear labcoats, as on TV. Like most denizens of Silicon Valley and Biotech Bay, T-shirts and jeans were the norm. Anna felt oddly out-of-place here, in her trim, efficient suit and heels, while everyone around her subtly boasted their Ph.D.’s and incredibly inflated salaries by their lack of power-dress. But they were scared. Anybody could see that. Scientists or no, they were hoping she could give them some answers, even if they didn’t believe them.

After the first death, Anna had spoken with every member of the small research company. A Haz Mat team had been through, and a Public Health Officer had carefully inspected the grounds, but found nothing. The death had been ruled a lab accident. But when a death with an identical MO was uncovered at Alameda, far from any high-tech biology lab, Anna had opened a case. And now, horrified though she was by the this third apparent murder, a small part of her couldn’t help but whisper ‘I told you so.’ In the somewhat erratic path of her career, Anna had already collided once or twice with the glass ceiling, and had the bruises to prove it. She had been fully aware that the chief’s reaction to her pursuit of the case had nothing to do with its validity and everything to do with the boys’ club, of which the man was a card-carrying member.

She was actually relieved that the FBI had come onto the case. She’d read up on the X-Files a few days ago after discovering the Incanto case in the NCIC database, and this new murder had prompted her to seek out the division, of which she had never before heard. Their work sounded crazy, but then, so did this case. Agents Mulder and Scully seemed to specialize in puddles of goo.

And anyway, in the few hours she’d known him, Agent Mulder had proved easier to work with than any man on her squad, despite the transparently intentional attempts to set people off guard. She knew that trick–take control of a situation by unbalancing the others from the beginning. Especially effective for an attractive, confident man like him. It was a strategy that no doubt served Mulder well, but she wasn’t going to fall for it.

Still, it was easy to ignore without treading on his ego. She’d had plenty of time to practice that art while working the legislature in Sacramento.

When she reached the break room, where the clean-up team had been waiting for Mulder to finish, she knew she’d met the partner.

A red-haired, trenchcoat-clad woman, badge in hand, was listening steely-eyed to Officer Murdoch, who was in the middle of explaining why she couldn’t see the crime scene.

“…understand that, ma’am, but we were supposed to have this cleaned up hours ago. We can’t wait around for someone else to go through it. We’ve taken pictures and samples and dusted for prints–everything we’re supposed to do. But we’re on overtime here.”

Agent Scully tucked her badge into her coat. “I understand your frustration. I’m sorry I couldn’t be here earlier. Now where is the room?”

“Ma’am–”

Anna stepped in. “Agent Scully?”

The woman turned, looked Anna up and down. “Yes?” she asked.

“I’m Detective Vasquez,” Anna informed her. “The one who contacted the Bureau. Your partner’s down here. Come with me.”

Murdoch opened his mouth to protest, but Anna silenced him with a glare. “We’ll get you home as soon as possible,” she assured him curtly.

She walked away, aware that Scully was following her in step. The woman was a full head shorter than she, not at all what Vasquez had expected for an FBI agent. Short, young and a woman. The only thing she had going for her was being Caucasian. Anna wondered fleetingly if the agent had done any bedroom-hopping to get where she was, but something about the woman’s steady stride and perfectly professional mask made her think not.

“I appreciate your coming,” Anna said as they walked. “Did you have a chance to review the files on the way out here?”

“Not in their entirety,” Scully replied. “In fact, I only received the lab results and the overview by fax–none of the interviews or photos.”

Anna frowned. “I’m sorry about that. Our secretary must have made a mistake.” Silently, she added, Or the chief made a stupid decision.

“Well, it kept me busy,” Scully said as Anna pushed open the door to the crime scene.

Mulder had been staring out the window, but turned at their entry. The room was divided into long bays by waist-high lab benches; the puddle was out of sight between them.

His only acknowledgement of his partner’s arrival was a brief onceover, looking her up and down as if appraising her. Anna might have been offended, but there was no trace of a leer in his glance.

“So what do you think, Scully?” he asked her, by way of greeting.

Scully crossed the room to meet him, but included Vasquez in her answer. “Well, it’s not another Virgil Incanto,” she said immediately. “On the surface, the MO is similar, but no biochemical components were detected missing in the lab analysis, whereas, I’m sure you remember, Incanto’s victims were depleted of adipose tissue. Everything is there in its correct proportion: lipids, protein, nucleic acids and small molecules. It’s as if they just melted. But not from heat.”

“Why not from heat?” Mulder asked.

Even Anna knew the answer to that.

“Heat oxidizes, Mulder. You get carbon.” Scully said, and he began nodding as if he had just realized it.

“Here,” she continued, “your molecules are mostly intact. It’s more likely some kind of…chemical meltdown, though neither I nor anyone at the Bureau labs have any idea what kind of chemical would leave so little damage to individual molecules yet disintegrate the person.”

Mulder turned to Vasquez. “So put out an APB on a young girl with pigtails and red-sequined shoes traveling with three oddly-dressed men,” he deadpanned.

Anna didn’t miss a beat. “From what I could tell, Agent Mulder, none of the victims wore black hats. I think your theory needs a little refinement.”

He rewarded her with a pleased half-smile, and she thought, See? I can play too.

“Where is the bo–er–remains?” Scully asked, looking around.

“You can’t smell it?” Anna asked, her eyebrows raised.

Scully blinked at her. “I have a poor sense of smell,” she answered.

“Guess that’s a good thing, for a pathologist,” Anna said lightly. She walked around the two lab benches and Scully followed, not acknowledging Mulder’s significant gaze.

She saw the puddle and squatted in front of it, regarding it dispassionately. It was roughly three-feet in diameter, touching the base of one of the benches on one side. A pair of jeans, shoes and a T-shirt were all evident in the mess; they appeared unscathed. Scully knew from reading the reports that the clothing from the previous incidents had yielded no trace evidence.

The puddle was a thick, pinkish-white, shapeless paste–even the bones were gone. Scully’s first inclination was to believe this wasn’t a person at all, and if it hadn’t been for the previous two deaths she might have said as much. But those two men hadn’t returned and she suspected this one wouldn’t either. There was a definite mystery here.

Mulder’s voice startled her out of her study. “Was there any evidence of peptidases in the samples?”

“No,” Scully replied, following his train of thought. “No digestive enzymes of any kind. All the proteins were completely broken down.”

She turned to look past Vasquez at her partner. “Sorry to disappoint you, Mulder, but I see no evidence of any regurgatory quasi-human monster here.”

“Then where’s the fun?” Mulder teased.

Neither woman laughed.

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Peking Duck Restaurant

9:48 p.m.

Scully barely picked at her pork, feeling like she had to enjoy it after Vasquez’ enthusiastic endorsement of this place for a late dinner. Scully had always been a decent eater, never one of those women who ordered salads out of self-consciousness. But when your taste buds betrayed you, the fun was gone. Eating good food was a stinging reminder of what she’d lost. Was losing.

She knew that Mulder had been trying unobtrusively to get her alone all evening, and she’d been thwarting him at every opportunity–walking faster when he fell back, even announcing she’d also visit the ladies’ room when Anna did. She knew he’d ask about the hospital, how she was, when she’d get the biopsy results back. And she didn’t want to discuss it.

There was nothing to discuss anyway. They wouldn’t have the results for another week or so. Worrying about it wouldn’t do either of them any good.

She’d gratefully endorsed Vasquez’ suggestion that they discuss the case over dinner. Not only did it delay Mulder’s inevitable questions and potential attempts to comfort, but she wanted to be filled in on the case anyway. So here she sat, beside her partner as usual, facing the young detective.

“Two biologists and an army officer,” Scully was saying. “What’s the connection?”

“Well, Anticorps does have some military contracts,” Vasquez supplied. “They’re working on new ways to kill microorganisms, a popular field now with all this antibiotic resistance going around.”

Scully nodded. She appreciated this woman–helpful and intelligent. Not to mention a convenient barrier for the moment. “Did the two dead scientists work on antibiotic resistance?”

“Well,” Vasquez answered, “the first wasn’t actually working for Anticorps. He _had_ worked for them, but quit last year and went to another company. He was what’s called a bioinformaticist, in very high demand in this area. But everyone at Anticorps works on antibiotics of one form or another.”

“What exactly is a bioinformaticist, anyway?” Mulder asked.

“A programmer-slash-biologist,” Scully answered quickly. “Someone who is trying to figure out how to give meaning to enormous volumes of biological data, like the human genome project.”

“Or in this case,” Vasquez added, “bacterial metabolism. Bioinformatics is very big in industry right now because there’s a new field for drug design using computers. I’ve learned a lot about this in the past few weeks. Biologists have traditionally experimented in vitro–that is, in a test tube–or in vivo–in an organism. Now, they’re experimenting in silico–on a computer chip.”

“I’ve read about this,” Scully supplied, nodding enthusiastically. “You write a program that simulates metabolism for a particular microbe, then have the computer simulate what would happen to the organism’s growth rate if you blocked a particular metabolic pathway. Then you can use a computer to predict what kind of small molecule would best inhibit the key enzyme in that pathway, then turn it over to the organic chemists for synthesis.”

“Right,” said Vasquez. “I’m no expert on the science, but that’s more or less what the first victim had been doing for Anticorps. His new job was at Genentech, though, and there he was working on genome analysis. But he died while visiting some old friends at Anticorps one night.”

“And no one saw anything,” Scully said. It was not a question.

“Right,” confirmed Vasquez. “It happened in an elevator.”

Mulder frowned. “You say he was working on microbial metabolism? Could this company have developed some kind of engineered bacterial strain that–”

“–devours human flesh in under an hour, having meanwhile rendered the victim motionless?” Scully finished sharply. “I don’t think so, Mulder.”

Anna blinked at the acerbic tone, uncertain whether Scully was joking. Although she wasn’t smiling, Mulder didn’t look angry either; he looked thoughtful. Anna decided to press on, deftly snagging a won-ton with her chopsticks.

“Okay,” she continued. “So. Department dismisses it as a lab accident, even though there’s no evidence of that and the guy didn’t work with chemicals. Then Col. Packard of Alameda turns up dead, so we know we’re not dealing with a hazard isolated to a South City lab.”

“South City?” Mulder asked.

“Sorry, South San Francisco,” Anna corrected herself. “A separate city from the real San Francisco, hence the moniker. Surely you saw the letters coming in from the airport.”

“Ah yes, the big white letters on the hillside.” Mulder nodded sagely. “‘South San Francisco, The Industrial City.’”

“That was up there even before I lived here,” Scully said, grinning. Then, to Mulder, “We’ve been through SFO airport twice on cases before Mulder, and I’ve pointed it out both times.”

Anna raised her eyebrows at Scully. “You lived here before?”

“Yeah, at Alameda, actually. My dad was stationed there for awhile. I spent my freshman year at Berkeley, but then he was transferred and so I transferred too.”

“Really? I’m a Cal grad myself,” Anna answered. “What year were you there?”

“Eighty-two.”

Anna smiled, pleased. “I was a sophomore that year. What department?”

“Physics.”

“Oh,” Anna replied, unfazed. “I was in poli sci. Still. We probably knew a lot of the same people. Strange coincidence. Why’d you transfer?”

Scully looked down. “My family moved. We moved a lot. Military. I ended up at UMD.”

It seemed strange to Anna that a college-age woman would follow her family, and she was trying to think of a tactful way to ask about this when Mulder smoothly cut in.

“So, Col. Packard died alone in his office at Alameda,” he said. “Another puddle, this time on the chair. No signs of a struggle, no physical evidence except for the remains. No apparent connections to Anticorps or to any of the Anticorps scientists. And he had just moved to the area too, little time to make an enemy.”

Anna sensed that she had just been diverted. She was uncertain what to make of these two: at first, their terse, factual manner with each other had made her assume they didn’t like each other much. But after only an hour with them, she had begun to sense that the terseness was just a shorthand, a convenient economy of the familiar. She wondered how long they’d been working together, and exactly what the nature of their relationship was. Only a professional interest, she assured herself, glancing at Mulder’s coolly polished features. Or perhaps she was cautioning herself….

Scully’s voice snapped her back to attention. “Col. Packard died, and now, a week later, we have this Dr. Jorgensen dead this morning. What did Dr. Jorgensen research?”

“Jorgensen was an MIT-educated biochemist,” Anna supplied. “He’s been with Anticorps since the company was founded three years ago. No one’s been able to give me a straight answer about what he’s doing yet–everyone’s afraid of leaking as-yet unpatented information. I’ve arranged an appointment with the company president, herself a scientist, for nine tomorrow morning. I’d already told Agent Mulder, I hope that’s all right with you.”

“Yes, sure,” Scully said, sipping her tea. “I’d like a chance to talk to as many of the scientists as possible.”

Anna saw her eyes slide to Mulder, who had been mostly silent and thoughtful throughout the briefing. He gave an almost imperceptible nod. “I’ll be reviewing the background checks on the Anticorps employees tonight,” he said, and Anna detected a note of caution in his voice. “I’ll know better tomorrow what path to pursue.”

The business conducted insofar as it could be that night, Anna and Scully traded a few Berkeley stories and were soon laughing over shared acquaintances and events. Mulder jumped in with an occasional sarcastic comment but was mostly silent, sipping his tea reflectively.

INTERLUDE

*****************************************************************

THE HOSTAGE AT GUNPOINT

*

In its extensive dealings with terrorist situations, the FBI has adopted a four-point general strategy for managing the conflict safely. The goal is to obtain the terrorist’s trust, keep him from lashing out in anger or fear by acknowledging his emotions. The steps are:

1) Honesty

2) Containment

3) Conciliation

4) Resolution

A good terrorist response team will avoid the execution of tactical movements at all cost, attempting to ensure the safety of the hostages through a peaceful resolution.

However, it rarely happens that the trained negotiator is in fact the hostage. And no Quantico course teaches the Agent how to behave when the identities of the hostage and terrorist are inextricably tangled and confused.

*

Silence lay heavy in the car, not like a comfortable shared blanket, but like a thick, smothering cloak, unfamiliar to the two in weight and texture.

She had sensed his concern and he had sensed her evasions, and neither wished to acknowledge the existence of either. Sadly, the chaotically successful myth of communication can sometimes fail even the most lauded of linguists, and this is what happened that night to Mulder and Scully.

Autonomic nervous systems drove them through the mindlessly familiar hotel check-in procedures, and they took two rooms across from one another. Watching her key into her room with the thin plastic card, he fumbled frantically for words that might stop her, might make her hear him, but finding none he only mumbled an acknowledgement of her “Good night,” and then she was gone.

He was acutely aware that something much more imposing than two cheaply paneled hotel room doors separated them. The awareness left him feeling oddly unconnected, as if his inner ear were mounted on a wobbly platform suspended from some unseen hook high above him. Perhaps perversely, he resented her for it.

He perused a few pages of background notes but the lines blurred before him, and after realizing he’d read the same paragraph four times and still could not understand it, he resolved to right this thing between them, right it now and ground himself again.

So he found himself at her door, expectant and disconcertingly nervous. Tapping softly.

Her shoes were off but she was still fully dressed. She did not invite him inside but he pushed past her, pretending not to notice. He took a seat on her bed; she leaned against the opposite wall, arms folded across her chest.

They appraised each other across an invisible but tangible line of challenge.

She crossed it first. “I was expecting you.”

He thrust. “I wanted to know what the doctors said.”

Parry. “I know.”

He waited, feigning injury. The bluff paid off; she continued at last. “The results won’t be back for at least a week, probably more.”

They regarded each other silently across the seemingly infinite gap, though the swords of their spirits were tangled in an-almost stalemate, each one pushing with every ounce of strength, willing the other to yield first.

Finally, Mulder conceded, adopted a defensive pose. “I just want to know how you’re doing.”

Her answering blow struck him hard. “I’m fine, Mulder.”

He acknowledged the strike with a lowering of his head. He hated when she lied to him.

Perhaps his next move was somewhat unfair, but the rules of this game are unclear and often broken. He attacked before she was ready. “Well, when you stop being ‘fine,’ Scully, I hope you’ll admit it to yourself if not to me, rather than endangering us both by pretending everything’s still normal. I don’t appreciate games of ‘let’s pretend,’ and you of all people should know that imagining something won’t make it true.”

Her response was quick and cold. “I don’t think I’m the one with the poor sense of reality here. I’m dying, Mulder, and I do not deny it. Neither should you.”

He gritted his teeth; she had cut deep with that blow.

“But ‘endangering us both,’ Mulder?” She crossed the room to tower over him, fierce and taut. “Do you not trust me to know my own limits? Do you not trust me to have our best interests in mind? Do you not trust me to watch your back?”

She had beaten him to the ground, and he couldn’t meet her eyes. “No, Scully,” he mumbled. “Of course I trust you. Of course I do. I’m just…I wish you could trust me with what’s happening to you.”

It was a feeble blow, and not quite a truthful one, yet it seemed to have struck a sensitive spot, for her face crinkled and her eyes softened.

But before Mulder could sigh with relief, her next move crippled him.

She sank onto the bed beside him and reached for his hand where it rested on his knee. Instead of clasping it, though, she patted it awkwardly, rubbed her thumb over his wrist, never meeting his eyes. “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” she whispered–he could barely hear her. “It’s that I don’t trust myself. Not yet.” It was the first honest thing she’d said to him that night.

He looked down at their hands helplessly, feeling his lip begin to tremble and halfheartedly hating her for it. He turned to search her eyes–which still would not meet his–for the malice or deception he suspected might be there. Though she didn’t look at him, her blue gaze was more sad than malicious, more resigned than afraid.

He squeezed her fingers roughly, conceding her victory. There was nothing else he could say, but the only other options were to leave or sit in silence, and both seemed equally unappealing.

So he compromised, raising her fingers briefly and somewhat helplessly to his lips, just for a second, then stood and began the journey to the door. He thought he might be limping–he certainly felt like he should be.

He had always been his own man, his emotions never subjugated to the whims of another, at least, not another who could be seen and heard and felt. He resented that Scully now wielded this power over him, and even as he granted her that power he begrudged her it.

Why couldn’t she see that he needed to know the weight of her burden, support the half that was rightfully his?

Perhaps it is too bad he could not see the woman he’d just left on the other side of that cheaply paneled hotel door. She had fallen backwards onto the bed, forearm across her eyes, which were tightly closed and holding back tears. For she thought that he had won that battle, and in her grief and fear she resented him for holding that same power over her.

Why couldn’t he see that she needed this facade–not to maintain an illusion but to maintain her own strength?

Mulder and Scully had discovered that it is a frightening and wonderful thing to be at the mercy of one whom you love. Even the purest and deepest of friendships can begin to make you feel like a hostage.

But perhaps this is all love is: mutual terrorism of the heart.

*****************************************************************

CHAPTER TWO

—————————————————

April 20, 1997

Anticorps, Inc.

9:24 a.m.

“I assure you, we’ll cooperate in every way we can,” the dark, short–haired woman was telling them.

Mulder again glanced down at his notes. Reba Gregor had a Ph.D. in microbiology from Duke University and had been with Anticorps since its initiation in 1994. Under her direction, the company had blossomed and only recently gone public. Of course she’d cooperate, Mulder thought cynically. She had hundreds of stockholders breathing down her neck.

“After the last incident,” Gregor continued, “we closed everything down, did everything in our power to investigate a possible on-site hazard, but Environmental Health and Safety, OSHA–they all came up with nothing. We thought it was a one-time thing.”

“Yet your labs are open now,” Scully said evenly. She was seated beside Mulder, tablet balanced on her knee. Vasquez stood beside Gregor’s desk, listening silently.

“Well, yes,” Gregor admitted. “But not the one where Dr. Jorgensen died, of course. But really, we just can’t afford to shut down now, and since there’s no evidence of any known environmental hazard…”

“Do your laboratories do any genetic engineering of microorganisms?” Mulder asked. He felt Vasquez’ slightly amused gaze on him. So she remembered Scully’s dismissal the previous night.

“Agent Mulder, almost all biological research labs do genetic engineering of microorganisms. It’s how we get the work done. The Human Genome Project relies on it. The insulin that diabetics take is produced by genetically engineered bacteria.”

Mulder started to interrupt but Gregor held up her hand. “I’m not telling you this to be evasive, sir. I’m just giving you a preamble to explain that we understand such genetic manipulation very well, because I can see where you’re going. So, yes, we do genetically engineer microorganisms, but only in very controlled ways. No bug could’ve been responsible for the deaths we’ve seen.”

Scully leaned forward, changing the topic. “Exactly what kind of research did Dr. Jorgensen do, ma’am?” she asked.

“Well, I can’t give you the specifics–patents, you know,” Gregor smiled apologetically and Mulder frowned to himself. He didn’t like this woman. “But,” she continued, “I can tell you that he was looking for a way to block multi-drug resistance in bacteria.”

“Was he having any success?” Scully asked.

“It was too early to tell,” Gregor answered. Mulder saw her eyes drop, wondered what she was hiding. He slid his eyes sideways to Scully to see if she’d caught it.

She didn’t meet his glance. “Can we have a list of anyone who has worked with Jorgensen in the last year?” she asked. “We’d like to talk to them.”

“Certainly,” Gregor replied. “But I should tell you, this is a very small company–less than forty employees. People have been deeply affected by this, and not just because they’re afraid. Many might not be in today. I’d appreciate it if you treated them….respectfully.”

Vasquez spoke smoothly before either of the agents could register their offense. “Of course, Dr. Gregor. I hope you don’t mind that we’ll need to be talking to people from time to time throughout the next few days, and will probably need to come back to you as well.”

“As I said,” Gregor answered with a polite smile which Mulder thought was strained, “I’ll cooperate in any way I can. I’d like this closed up as quietly and efficiently as I’m sure you would.”

“We appreciate that, ma’am,” Vasquez answered.

—————————————————

3:05 p.m.

“Do you think that any of Dr. Jorgensen’s work could’ve made enemies?” Scully asked. Just as she had asked four other men and women today.

Dr. Liu gave a by-now familiar answer. “I couldn’t see how. I mean, there’s a lot of competition in this field from the big drug companies, but we’re the only place doing it exclusively. We have a couple of military contracts which other companies might envy us for, but nothing huge.”

“Why is the military interested in your work, Dr. Liu?” Scully already knew the answer, having asked this question several times as well.

“Well, the military is of course interested in antibiotic resistance. Antibiotics have done wonders for the practice of war, as I’m sure you’re aware, being a doctor. If penicillin hadn’t been discovered, millions more would’ve died in World War II than actually did. Back then, though, the whole world thought we’d found the end to disease; now, of course, penicillin is practically useless. You don’t unnecessarily prescribe antibiotics, do you, Dr. Scully?”

“I’m a pathologist,” she replied. “I don’t prescribe much of anything.”

“Oh. Sorry, I just can’t pass up an opportunity to evangelize.” The man leaned back in his chair, looked around the room at the three of them. Scully was seated across the table from him, having taken over the interrogations early on as the necessary questions were frequently technical. Mulder was seated in a chair a few feet behind her, browsing background files. Scully had long been aware that he was only half-listening, and she was increasingly irritated by his inattention. She was accustomed to taking the lead in an interrogation, to ferreting out the necessary facts, while Mulder’s sixth sense honed in on the testimony, sniffing for lies and pouncing when he caught a whiff of something suspicious. Though he hadn’t said a word, she could tell he’d already written off these interviews as a waste of time. She wasn’t sure which she resented more: his inattention or his lack of attempts to cut this short, apparently “indulging” her.

Anna Vasquez had already interviewed most of these people after the first death, and so she hovered in the background, occasionally prompting additional testimony with a short question. She had been scheduling the interviews and herding the scientists in and out of the impromptu interrogation room (formerly a coffee lounge), for which Scully was grateful.

“Dr. Jorgensen’s work was not funded from a military contract, though,” Scully continued. “In fact, he hadn’t had any results as far as I’ve heard.”

She waited for Liu to contradict her, but he didn’t. “That’s right. I wasn’t working on his project, but I was in the same group. If he’d found anything, he hadn’t told us yet. But I doubt he could have. I mean, he’d only been working on the project for about seven months.”

“I see,” Scully said. She’d known that too.

To her surprise, Mulder spoke up. “Sir, what had Dr. Jorgensen been working on before his most recent project?”

Scully glanced at him briefly, trying to grasp the significance of his question. They already knew the answer to this too. Or had he not been listening? When he didn’t look back at her, she returned her gaze to Liu, awaiting his answer.

“He was in the biophysics group,” Liu answered. “Probing the bacterial cell wall for reliable drug targets. Really, scientific competition can get ugly, but not this ugly. I really can’t think of any reason why someone would do….this…kill him, I mean, for his research. To be perfectly honest, the guy was pretty fresh–not exactly a genius or anything. I think if you believe it’s a murderer, you should be looking for personal enemies.”

After pausing for a second in case Mulder wanted to follow up, Scully continued. “Did Dr. Jorgensen have any personal enemies that you were aware of?”

Liu shrugged and shook his head. “I didn’t know the guy that well. I’ve only been with the company about six months myself. I’ve got a family, you know? I just get here and get the work done, I’m not one of those live-in-the-lab types who’s got hours to kill socializing. But far as I could tell, he was just a normal guy.”

“Is there anyone here who you believe might have had reason to dislike Dr. Jorgensen?” Scully asked, aware that Mulder had gone back to his reading.

Liu shrugged again. “Well, he had a reputation for having something of a temper. Yelled when things weren’t going well, blamed mistakes on the technicians. I heard him yelling at one of the glassware people once. It was really uncalled for, and I stepped in and stopped him. But he’d just been upset over a gel that hadn’t run right. He apologized. That kind of thing. But really, I don’t mean to overstate that. No one here would have, could have, killed him for it.”

Scully nodded. Another coworker had told a similar story, but it didn’t sound like much to go on to her. “Okay, Dr. Liu, one more question.” Here you go, Mulder, she thought. “What bacteria do you work on?”

Liu frowned, as if uncertain of the relevance of the question. “We’re not equipped for BL3 organisms, only BL2. We have a lot of noscomials around–pseudomonas, strep, that kind of thing. Nothing that a person with an uncompromised immune system should even blink at.”

“Are you aware of anyone doing cross-species engineering which might increase the toxicity of those bacteria?” Scully persisted.

Liu abruptly understood. “Oh! You think that the–that it was bacteria? That’s crazy. Even if an organism capable of such destruction could be engineered, we certainly wouldn’t do it. I’m not naive, don’t worry, I’m sure the government is doing that kind of thing, treaties or no. But you’d know more about that than me, right?” He grinned, but when Scully only stared back at him, continued awkwardly. “Really, though. If something like that did exist, it could never act over such a short time period. Why wouldn’t Jorgensen have called for help? And we would’ve seen the bacteria in the chemical analyses of the remains, wouldn’t we?”

“Answer the question, please,” Scully insisted, resisting the urge to glance at Mulder.

Liu blinked. “Oh. No, I’m not aware of anyone making a better bug. I mean, making more toxic bacteria.”

Scully glanced back at Vasquez and Mulder, but seeing no questions in their eyes, turned back to Liu. “Thank you, Dr. Liu, I think that’ll be all.”

As he left, Vasquez showed the next scientist, a young man, into the room. “Have a seat, Dr. Crothers,” she said, gesturing at the chair Liu had just vacated. “We know you’re probably upset over your colleague’s death. We just need to ask you a few questions.”

Crothers sat down, hands clasped nervously in front of him.

Scully finished adjusting the tape recorder and settled back in her own chair. “Dr. Crothers,” she began, starting from the top. “In what capacity did you know Dr. Jorgensen?”

Mulder heard the next interview start and closed the folder he was reading, chewing on his lower lip. This was going nowhere. A dozen scientists had worked with Jorgensen, and they had already spoken with half of them, but all had seemed surprised and totally ignorant about his death. Mulder was fairly confident that they were dealing with something more complex than research envy or mad scientists. They were focusing too much on the man’s history, and not enough on his connections to the other victims. The link between the biotechnologist and bioinformaticist–that was easy and obvious. But the link between those two men and an army colonel–Mulder was certain the key lay in that connection. But none of these scientists were going to be able to explain it.

“When did you last see Dr. Jorgensen?” He heard Scully’s voice drone out the next question–he could tell she already knew them by heart. But that last one on Liu had been new. What was that about? Okay, Scully, I get it, no one thinks the bacteria idea is plausible. Fine. Guess we’re back to the mutant murderer theory, huh? Because I’ve yet to hear your idea.

A flash of fabric caught Mulder’s eye through the glass panel on the door. He turned, but it was already gone. Imprinted in his memory was the fleeting image of a face. That same guy, Mulder was sure of it. He must’ve passed the door a dozen times in the last few hours. What was he doing?

Mulder rose, put the files on his chair. Scully turned to look at him, raising her eyebrows questioningly, and he crossed the room to touch her shoulder and lean over by her ear.

“There’s a peeping tom outside, I’m gonna check it out,” he whispered, and she nodded.

Mulder nodded at Vasquez, who was looking at him expectantly, then moved smoothly out of the room and glanced up and down the hallway.

Laboratory doors lined both sides of the hall; Mulder speculated that the watcher might have been just using equipment in two rooms and moving between them frequently. But something in the man’s curious, furtive glances into the interrogation room made Mulder think there was more to it than that. He started down the longer direction of the hall, glancing into open doors as he walked.

Suddenly, the man leaned out of a doorway to Mulder’s right and beckoned. Mulder started to enter the lab, but the man shook his head quickly and started walking down the hall away from Mulder. With a patient sigh, Mulder followed at a distance.

The man was in his mid-thirties, bearded, and clad in jeans and an untucked red flannel shirt. Mulder smirked–the fashion sense of the scientific community was truly appalling. No wonder he wasn’t a scientist.

He thought the man was about to get on the elevators, but instead he made a sharp turn and entered the emergency stairwell. Mulder glanced around, unsnapped the catch on his holster with a precautionary click, and went through the door.

The man was waiting on the landing half a flight below him. Mulder waited until the door closed behind him before speaking. “So, here we are,” he said in a conversational tone. “Got something to tell me or are you just flirting with me?”

“I needed to talk to you in private,” the man hissed, gesturing for Mulder to join him.

Deciding he presented no realistic physical threat, Mulder closed the distance between them with a few strides, skipping every other stair.

“What’s your name?” Mulder asked, reaching the man.

“Warren Gegenmir. Who’re you?”

“Fox Mulder, FBI.” Mulder automatically produced his badge.

“So it’s true,” Gegenmir answered, looking askance. “What’d they bring the FBI in for?”

“My partner and I have experience in…unusual cases like this one. The South City police called us in.”

“So you’ve seen this before?”

Mulder frowned at the man’s curiosity. “I didn’t say that,” he said slowly. “You said you had something to tell me.”

Gegenmir swallowed, and Mulder noticed the man kept running his thumb over his forefinger in an unconscious nervous gesture. “Uh…yeah. Listen, you’re talking to the people he worked with, but the one you should be talking to isn’t here today.”

“Who’s that?” Mulder asked calmly.

Gegenmir bit his lip. “I don’t like saying. I mean, if I’m wrong, I’m a real asshole, right? And he’s a nice guy, mostly. Deceptively so. But he’s…weird. And I think–he had reason to–”

“Who?” Mulder repeated.

“Neil Ledbetter,” Gegenmir said finally. “He’s just a tech down in the chemistry lab. Didn’t work with Charlie Jorgensen per se. But I got a feeling…”

“Why do you think we should be suspicious of Neil, Mr. Gegenmir? Or is it Dr. Gegenmir?”

“Doctor, but–whatever. You should be suspicious of him because I know he hated Jorgensen. Jorgensen gave him hell, a real hard time, and was pressuring him to get this drug synthesis completed. Kept saying it was easy. Neil was working his ass off, too, but he couldn’t get this one thing right. The day before Charlie died, they had a big fight when Charlie went to see Neil, and I heard Charlie say he’d talk to Neil’s director, get him fired.”

“So you think Neil might’ve killed Charlie Jorgensen?” Mulder persisted. “How would he have turned Charlie into a puddle?”

Gegenmir looked distinctly uncomfortable with that description. “Well, I don’t know,” he said. “But I know that if anyone would be capable, it’d be Neil. Like I said, the guy’s nice, but not in a believable way. And he’s weird…. This’ll sound crazy, but…he does this…black magic thing. He’s one of those, you know, like, witches or something. Not that I believe any of that crap, but if he found a way, you know, some kind of chemical thing….”

“How do you know all that, Dr. Gegenmir?”

“Oh, everybody here knows it. They just don’t talk about it outside of closed circles, though, you know, this is the Bay Area. One big happy PC family. Guy wants to do black magic, let him. But I’m just saying there’s something weird about him. And I know he was fighting with Charlie.”

“That night, when you heard them fighting,” Mulder said. “How did you hear them?”

“Outside my office. I wasn’t trying to hear, believe me.”

“Do you work in a lab?”

“Not anymore. That’s why I’m a little nervous about…all this. I’ve got a new job, see, overseeing the non-antibiotic antimicrobials labs. It’s good money, and I don’t have to get my hands dirty anymore. I don’t really want to risk it pointing fingers…. Listen, I can’t be away long, I’m supposed to be meeting with Reba in a few minutes. Maybe I could catch up with you tomorrow, off the premises or something?”

Mulder considered. “Sure,” he said finally, handing Gegenmir a business card. “My cell number is on the back. Just give me a call.”

He didn’t add that he would have to get this man’s testimony on record if any of this panned out. And there was something Gegenmir obviously wasn’t saying. But he had opened up a new avenue that looked a little more hopeful.

He’d have to meet this Neil Ledbetter to be sure.

Gegenmir went on down the stairs while Mulder climbed back up. He walked back down the hallway quickly, intending to leave the rest of the interviews to Vasquez so he and Scully could check Ledbetter out.

But Vasquez met him in the hallway.

“Where’d you go?” she asked, approaching him.

“To meet an informant,” he said with a deliberately mysterious smile.

“Cut the crap, Agent Mulder,” she said. “Seriously. You look like you’re in a hurry–you must’ve found out something.”

He chuckled appreciatively at her dismissal. “Yeah, a guy approached me. Gave me a lead.”

“More solid than what we’re getting in there?” Vasquez jerked her head at the door behind which Scully was still talking to Dr. Crothers.

“You don’t think that’s useful?” Mulder asked, careful not to let his own opinion color his voice.

“I’ve heard it all before,” Vasquez answered. “Same as last time–they don’t know how it could have happened and they’re certain no one here would have or could have done it.”

Mulder nodded, his plans changing. “Why don’t you come with me to follow up on this?” he suggested.

She shrugged. “Okay. You gonna tell me about it?”

“On the way. We have to drive.”

“What about Dana?”

Mulder noted that she had already decided on appropriate names: he was still Mulder but Scully was Dana. Interesting. He wondered if Scully had said something to her or if it was just a female thing. “She can handle the interviews on her own,” he said. “If there’s anything to be gotten from them, she’ll get it.”

“Okay. Your call,” Vasquez said.

Mulder reached for the pad and pencil in Vasquez’s hands, and she gave them over, eyebrows raised.

Mulder scribbled a short note: Following up on a lead. He handed the paper to Vasquez. “Take that inside and put it on my chair but don’t interrupt her. I have to go get an address from Gregor’s secretary. I’ll meet you at the car.”

Vasquez nodded her assent.

—————————————————

Ledbetter Residence

San Mateo

4:46 p.m.

The man who opened the door looked like hell. He was immensely overweight, and appeared to be wearing nothing but an enormous black terrycloth robe. His sand-colored hair was greasy and uncombed, and his eyes and nose were both red. His narrow, dark eyes, which deserved the term beady more than the eyes of anyone Anna had ever met, regarded them with nervous suspicion.

When Mulder didn’t speak right away, she assumed he expected her to take the lead, so she did.

“Mr. Ledbetter?” He nodded dumbly at her and she continued. “I’m Detective Vasquez and this is Special Agent Fox Mulder, with the FBI. We’re investigating the death of Charles Jorgensen. Can we come in for a few minutes?”

Ledbetter looked back into his apartment, which Vasquez could see very little of through the small foyer. He seemed to be considering.

“Just a few questions, sir,” Mulder prompted. “It won’t take long.”

Ledbetter swallowed and nodded. “Okay,” he said, opening the door wider. “Do you mind if I put some clothes on?”

“Please do,” Anna replied, and as he turned away, she caught Mulder’s amused smirk. As the possible interpretations of her words hit her, she shrugged and grinned back.

Mulder moved past her into the living room. The apartment was small, cluttered and dirty. Following Mulder, Anna reflected that some strange product of a cross between Alex Crowley and a fraternity boy must have done the decorating. The windows were hung with black curtains decorated with inverted gold five-pointed stars, a geometric theme that was repeated throughout the room on walls, books and knickknacks. Candles were scattered haphazardly around the furniture, which was mostly worn black leather. A genuine-looking bear rug, complete with gaping head, lay on the floor, and murky incense was burning from a gold censor in the corner. But the incense couldn’t mask the omnipresent smell of rot emanating from the empty pizza boxes scattered about the room, and a pyramid of empty beer cans in one corner rose almost to Anna’s waist. The windows were taped with masking tape where they’d once been broken, and peering around the corner into the kitchen, Anna could see that the it was in a similar state of total disarray, with more dishes piled in the sink than a single man should even own.

It was a bizarre place.

Mulder was studying the bookshelves, which were crammed with much-used paperbacks. Anna moved over behind him, peering over his shoulder. “Wow,” she whispered, scanning the titles, which were mostly of an occult theme. “This guy _is_ the wicked witch of the west.”

Mulder ran one finger horizontally along the spines of the books. “Yeah,” he said, holding up his fingertip. It was coated with dust. “He knows all his spells by heart, apparently. And he’s obviously a very goal-oriented kind of guy.” He gestured at the two rows of books just below eye level, and Anna peered closer, scanning the titles.

Spells of Seduction was appropriately positioned next to _Heart’s Desire_, which was followed by a long row of books with titles like Hot and Spicy, Tit for Tat, and Debbie Joins a Sorority. Both rows were similarly organized, and these spines didn’t look quite as dusty.

“I’m sensing that this guy’s a little…sexually frustrated,” she whispered.

“Hey, just because he has a little…collection…doesn’t mean he’s not getting any,” Mulder whispered back.

Something in his grin made Anna abruptly very conscious of how close they were standing and how strongly he smelled of cologne. She couldn’t exactly say she didn’t like it, but she backed away awkwardly all the same.

Fortunately, Ledbetter choose that moment to return to the room. He was now clothed in a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt with “MAUI” printed in big blue letters over a beach sunset. A few hula girls bounced on the cotton as he walked.

He saw what they’d been looking at and blushed fervently, but didn’t comment. Instead, he just cleared some newspapers off the couch. “Have a seat,” he offered, taking the chair opposite them.

Mulder moved to the couch, and Vasquez seated herself beside him and crossed her legs. He glanced at her navy skirt and smiled inwardly. It hadn’t taken much time working with him for Scully to realize skirts were a bad idea in the kind of field work they tended to find themselves dealing with. He wondered if Vasquez was going to learn that lesson on this case. Fixing his gaze on Ledbetter’s bulk, Mulder doubted it.

And frankly, that was fine with him.

Stop that, idiot, he chided himself. Just because you’re really not getting any….

While he was rambling internally, Vasquez had produced a tape recorder and started the interrogation.

“Interesting hobby you have, Mr. Ledbetter,” she said coolly, making a pointed sweep of the room with her eyes.

For a moment, Ledbetter’s eyes flashed with anger or irritation–Mulder couldn’t tell which. “I’m not sure I’d use that word, ma’am, but yes, it is interesting.”

Vasquez nodded absently as if she’d only been asking out of polite curiosity. “Well,” she continued briskly, “we’re just checking in on Anticorps employees, finding out if they saw or heard anything the night of Dr. Jorgensen’s death. We wondered if you could tell us anything you remember from that night.”

Glad she was competently taking the lead, Mulder crossed his arms and studied Ledbetter silently. This apparently made the man nervous–he kept casting anxious glances at Mulder as he spoke.

“Oookay. I was working that night. Down in the basement, where my bench is. I’m a research associate, master’s in organic synthesis from USC.” Scully had briefly schooled him in laboratory hierarchy that morning, and he recognized the use of the term ‘research associate.’

“Ph.D.’s call them techs, they call themselves RAs,” she’d told him. “They’re usually people who dropped out of doctorate programs, hence the tension.”

As Ledbetter continued, Mulder thought ‘tension’ was a slight understatement. “I suppose you’re coming to me because I didn’t like him, is that it?” Ledbetter asked. He didn’t wait for an answer, forging ahead. “Well, I didn’t, but I wasn’t the only one. Anyway, yeah, I saw him that night. We were both working late. Why not–not much to come home to, right?” He gestured helplessly around the room. “He came down to ask again about this synthesis he’s been wanting me to do. But Charlie was no chemist. He just couldn’t understand why it wasn’t easy. The crazy thing is, I think I figured it out that night, right after he left. Right as he was…I guess when he was…dying.” The last word was strained, and Ledbetter looked away, swallowing as if trying to get control.

Mulder was not impressed.

“Could you tell us everything that happened exactly as you remember it?” Vasquez prompted. “Sequentially?”

Ledbetter swallowed. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m just a little shaken up. I mean, this is the second guy, you know? So. Okay. I was working at my bench and Charlie came down. He asked if I had figured out the problem yet, and I said no, not yet. He asked me, what was I doing then, and I said I was doing a synthesis for Mark. Mark Gingham. He’s a guy working in–well, you don’t care. Anyway, Charlie said I should be focusing on his stuff, that he had deadlines and didn’t I know that, and he was really in my face, you know? And so I started yelling back that I had a million projects for a million people and he’s not the only guy in this company and stuff like that. We had it out. We’d been on the verge of having it out for months. I thought it was okay, though. You know, sometimes guys who work together gotta do that. And the awful thing is, after he left, I suddenly thought of how to do it. I haven’t tried it yet, of course, I’ve been here at home, but…”

“So you didn’t see Dr. Jorgensen at all after your argument?”

“No.”

“And what time was that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t pay much attention to the clock, just to my timer, you know? Probably, eight o’clock or so.”

“Why haven’t you been at work the past two days, Mr. Ledbetter?”

Good. Exactly what Mulder had wanted next.

“What do you mean?” Ledbetter’s face assumed several pouty wrinkles. “I’m upset. I mean, I might’ve been the last guy to speak to the guy, and we were just yelling at each other. And after Grady last month….”

“Grady? The bioinformaticist?”

“Yeah. I knew him back when he worked for us. Not well, but, you know. Okay. I’m not used to people I know dying, especially not like that.”

Vasquez leaned back and crossed her arms. “Funny,” she remarked casually. “I wouldn’t think a practitioner of black magic would be so upset by death.”

Mulder smiled inwardly, approving. Sounded like something Scully would’ve said.

Ledbetter’s eyes flashed again. “You’ve obviously got some prejudices to work through, ma’am. Followers of the Temple of Set don’t promote what the world calls ‘evil.’ Evil and good are just made-up words for a dichotomy that humans have created and artificially imposed on reality. What you call white magic is actually just Magic of the Right Hand,while we practice Magic of the Left Hand. Different ways to do things, but our only goal is self-awareness.”

Mulder noted the sudden change in vocabulary and diction. “Are you a practicing member of the Temple of Set?” he asked.

Ledbetter pursed his lips, as if surprised Mulder had spoken. “I think I already said so, but why?”

“I’m curious,” Mulder answered. “I have a professional interest in those sorts of things. Do you belong to an order within the temple?”

“Yes, the Order of the Trapezoid,” Ledbetter replied, irritated. “What does this have to do with Charlie?”

Mulder was about to answer when his cell phone shrilled abruptly. Knowing who it was, he considered ignoring it and pleading ignorance later. But knowing what it was probably about, he decided she’d be less pissed later if he answered now. He retrieved his phone, and answered in a rough voice that he hoped she’d correctly interpret as busy. “Mulder.”

She sounded angry and irritated. “Where are you?”

“I’m talking to someone,” he answered, glancing from Ledbetter to Vasquez.

“Is Anna with you?”

Anna. Not Vasquez. What’s in a name? “Yes.”

He heard her exasperated expulsion of breath. “Why didn’t you tell me where you were going?”

“You were in the middle of something,” he answered, aware of the defensive tone already creeping into his voice.

“You ditched me during an interrogation.”

He bit back his first response, which was to remind her of the not-so-distant time he’d told her that, and willed himself to answer her calmly in front of this audience. “You didn’t need me. You had everything under control.”

“You should have told me.”

“This is a bad time,” he said in a low voice. “I’ll meet you back at the hotel by six, okay?”

Her voice was icy. “You took the car.”

“Oh. Right. We’ll pick you up then.”

“Fine,” she said, in a tone of voice which clearly indicated that it was not. The line went dead.

Mulder tried not to let his face betray his emotions, willfully returning himself to the interrogation. This sniping, this latent hostility…what the hell was happening to them?

He was distracted, he’d forgotten his place. Ledbetter and Vasquez were both looking at him expectantly.

He spotted an iron statuette over Ledbetter’s shoulder: a trapezoid inscripted with an inverted five-pointed star. Right. Order of the Trapezoid.

He turned to Ledbetter. “The Temple of Set. So you believe in the Words of the Aeons? Forgive my ignorance, I’m a little rusty here.”

This was untrue. Mulder had reread much of his literature on black magic shortly after seeing a woman cough up a pound of nails. But he was curious as to how serious this man was.

He wasn’t disappointed. Ledbetter appeared pleased to show off his knowledge. “Well, it’s actually a voluntary choice to take a Word to heart in the Temple of Set, but everyone I know has done it. The word of the Aeon of HarWer was Thelema, which is the will by which stars chart their courses through the universe. The Word of the Age of Satan as Indulgence, and the Word of this Aeon, the Aeon of Set is Xeper, which means coming into being as an alert, oriented, balanced magician capable of creating change in accord with Will. But the secondary Word of this Age, which I have also taken to heart, is Remanifestion, which implies ‘a rebirth of the self through deliberate use of all that has been previously in order to bring about a Magician who Comes Into Being as a new and more fully faceted Being.’ So you see, my goal is higher awareness. What you call evil has been wrongly associated with black magic in this Age. Nobody gets that, they all automatically hate you because they have these neatly constructed prejudices, and then you don’t get the job, don’t get the promotion, don’t get the–”

Mulder cut him off, nodding. “Are you an adept?”

Ledbetter blushed and looked down. “Well, I’m trying to become a Master,” he admitted. “But it’s taking awhile.”

“Spells aren’t working for you?” Mulder said sympathetically, and Ledbetter’s eyes flashed with offense.

“Look, I really don’t see what this has to do with Charlie,” he said firmly. “Now if you don’t have any other questions….”

“One more question,” Mulder insisted, holding up his hand. “We need to know if you knew Colonel Robert Packard.”

Ledbetter blinked and frowned. “Packard,” he said slowly. “No, I don’t think so.”

Mulder took a gamble. “That’s funny, he seemed to know you,” he lied. He was aware of Vasquez’ subtle glance, but she thankfully didn’t look surprised.

Ledbetter swallowed and one hand knotted in his shirttail. “What do you mean?” he asked.

That was all Mulder needed. “Doesn’t matter, he’s dead now,” he said lightly, starting to rise.

Ledbetter seemed to want to say something else, but he was obviously uncertain what. He fumbled for a moment before he finally said, “Well, um, okay. I hope you figure things out.”

Mulder nodded and Vasquez thanked the chemist.

—————————————————

6:31 p.m.

“…but it turned out the nurse was the good guy. Or girl. Whatever. We never caught the doctor, unfortunately.”

Anna’s brow furrowed in disbelief. “So you believe there’s some plastic surgeon running around out there killing people to make himself eternally young? Again and again?”

“Yes,” Mulder replied. He turned their car into the Anticorps parking lot. Before they reached the lobby doors, Scully appeared, striding purposefully toward the car with a bundle of files under her arm.

“I still don’t understand how the snake could’ve gotten to the man’s house,” Anna said, unbuckling her seatbelt to move to the back.

“Snake? Oh, you mean the Satanists.”

Scully had opened the back door, shaking her head at Anna. “It’s all right,” she said. “You can sit up front.” Then: “Satanists? What are you telling her, Mulder?”

She situated herself in the backseat, and Anna heard the seatbelt click. Mulder pulled away.

“We’re going to an Italian place in the city, Scully. Sound okay?”

“Sure. You’re late.”

“Traffic,” Mulder replied to the rearview mirror. He turned back to Anna. “I have no idea how the snake got there. But I don’t think it was an ordinary snake.”

Anna turned to include Scully in the conversation. “Mulder’s been telling me about some of your cases. We thought it’d be appropriate briefing after this interview today.”

Scully cocked her head at an angle, raised her eyebrows at the rearview mirror. “Which interview was that?” she asked.

There was a subtle, almost undetectable sharpness in her voice, but Anna heard it.

“I hope you didn’t mind that we went to look into this,” she said, when Mulder didn’t speak. “But we may have a suspect.”

“What makes you think that?”

When Mulder still didn’t answer, Anna continued. “Well, he’s got a believable motive, was seen fighting with Jorgensen the night Jorgensen was killed, and has a connection to Col. Packard, which is the thing that stands out most.”

“Okay, how’d he do it?” Scully asked.

“Witchcraft,” Mulder answered shortly.

Anna was half-turned in her seat and saw Scully’s reaction: she turned her face toward the window, lips pursed. After a second, she responded. “Well, I certainly didn’t see that coming.”

Mulder chuckled. “You talked me out of the bacteria theory,” he said defensively. “Where’s that leave me?”

“With the rest of the case,” she answered quickly, as if it should be obvious. “Mulder, there’s so much to work with here! Mysterious deaths which are suspected to have been caused by some hazardous material are occurring at a scientific research company. There’s no need to go looking for the answer in occult practices. Save that one for next time.”

“Hear me out, Scully. This guy is lonely, paranoid and is the worst kind of nerd–the kind without any kind of congratulations from society, like a doctorate. He fits the profile–”

“Profile? Since when is there a profile? This morning the profile was for a unicellular life form.”

“There’s a new profile,” Mulder answered calmly, with a hint of a smile.

Scully snorted derisively. “Okay. So he fits the profile. Where’s the witchcraft come in?”

Mulder explained his encounter with Gegenmir in the hallway and their interview with Ledbetter. The story was somewhat disjointed as Anna gave him directions. They were well within the city now, headed for North Beach, San Francisco’s Little Italy.

Scully listened quietly, occasionally prompting him with short questions, her arms crossed and her lips drawn into a thin line.

She waited until they had found a parking lot, eight blocks from the restaurant, to respond.

The trio exited the car and Mulder handed his keys to the attendant.

“Just because the man thinks he’s practicing witchcraft doesn’t make him a suspect, Mulder. And what you’re suggesting is nothing like the kind of thing we’ve seen before. You’ve done enough reading on the subject–have you ever come across a recipe for a potion that can turn people into puddles of sticky goo?”

“No, but I did see one once for turning people into tasty pudding desserts with chocolate and strawberries.”

“I think you’re getting your reading materials confused, Mulder.”

Mulder flipped out his palm. “Okay, what about the connection to Packard?”

“Mulder, he said he didn’t know Packard!”

“He was lying.”

“You thought he was lying.”

“He did get nervous,” Vasquez interjected.

“Well, he probably read in the papers that the guy’s dead. He probably realized you suspected him. Of course he got nervous when you told him Packard knew him.”

Vasquez blinked. She had a point.

“Okay, so what’s your big theory?” Mulder demanded finally.

Scully stopped walking and was silent for a long moment. “I think you’re overlooking something important about the research,” she said at last. “You’re completely ignoring the location, the obvious ties between the victims, in your pursuit of something so obscure as to be potentially irrelevant.”

Until now, Anna had stayed awkwardly out of the conversation. But now she felt she had better interrupt and start playing mediator before things got ugly. “Dana, I know it sounds crazy and I frankly have a lot of trouble believing it too. But there might be something to it. Maybe the guy just thinks he’s casting a spell or something, but has really made some sort of poison. I don’t know. But I think he was lying to us today and I want to know why.”

Scully turned to meet Anna’s eyes with the beginnings of what might have been an apologetic, indulgent smile. Anna had started to contemplate the meaning of that expression, deciding whether or not to be embarrassed for interrupting, when she was distracted by Scully’s face.

“Dana, you’re bleeding,” she said, reaching out a concerned hand.

“Oh,” Scully put her the back of her finger up to her nose, pulled it away and looked at it. “It’s nothing,” she said, frowning and dabbing at her face with the back of her hand. “A–a bloody nose. I get them sometimes.”

She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and covered her face. Mulder’s expression was unreadable, but his voice was suddenly quieter. “You okay?” he asked.

A cabbie stopped beside them on the street, hoping for a fare. Mulder waved him on.

“Yeah, I’m…okay,” Scully answered, wiping away the blood. But more stubbornly trickled out of her nostril.

“Maybe you should sit down,” Anna suggested, gesturing at a bench a few yards away.

“No, it’ll be–” Scully stopped, closing her eyes. She swayed a little and Mulder immediately grasped her upper arm.

Anna followed as he led her over to the bench. She sank onto it and Anna noticed how Mulder’s hand slid up she arm and lingered briefly on her shoulder before moving away. Scully tilted her head back and held the cloth to her nose as Anna approached.

Anna prided herself on being very good with people, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on these two. Moments earlier they had been arguing fiercely, all but calling each other idiots, but now Mulder’s concern was clearly more than professional. And Scully’s condition was clearly more than a bloody nose.

“Should I call a doctor?” Anna asked uncertainly, then as both of them half-grinned at her, she realized her mistake. “Or,” she said lightly, “should I just see if my ankle will fit in my mouth along with my foot?”

“It’s okay,” Scully assured her, removing the kerchief and wadding it up, apparently satisfied. “I just got a little dizzy for a second. I think the bleeding’s stopped now.”

She stood and they continued on to the restaurant. Scully and Mulder had stopped arguing.

INTERLUDE

*****************************************************************

1. HONESTY

*

The first rule in hostage negotiation is to “be as honest as possible.”

In the court of public opinion, honesty always wins out over truth. In a court of law, exactly the opposite is meant to occur. This is a well-accepted fact that illustrates the distinction between two noble concepts. Any negotiator recognizes that one can be completely truthful, yet not completely honest, or completely honest but not completely truthful. It is the latter strategy that she must pursue in resolving the hostage situation, saving the truth for the inevitable trial.

Unfortunately, this tack is rarely sufficient.

*

“I would’ve liked your thoughts on the people I interviewed to after you left.”

No matter how they’re closed, car doors have the unfortunate habit of sounding as if they are slamming. Scully discovered this too late, having just punctuated her words with the closing of a door. It made them sound snappier than she had intended.

“Are you still angry about that?” Mulder’s voice was irritated, which made Scully decide that her answer should be ‘yes.’

Humans are not as rational creatures as they believe themselves to be.

“I would have appreciated being consulted, yes.” The black-cloaked pair walked side-by-side through the parking garage to the elevator, where a young couple was waiting by the glowing button.

Mulder did not reply. Like an old married couple, they knew better than to fight in front of strangers. Arguing–now that was a different matter. Depending on the stranger, Scully thought, reminded of Vasquez’ amusing foray into peacekeeping earlier that day.

The young couple standing with them apparently had not yet learned these rules.

“We’ve been doing all your stupid stuff ever since we got here,” the woman hissed. Her blond hair was neatly coiffured on top of her head, and her short blue silk dress glistened beneath her white coat. “The least you could do is sit through one play.”

The man was clothed in a spiffy, expensive suit that hung and stretched in all the wrong places. “Shakespeare in the nude is not my idea of theatre,” he replied archly.

Scully and Mulder looked at the floor, the cars, the elevator button, anywhere but at the arguing couple or each other.

The silvery doors slid open in invitation, and the four moved inside.

“No,” the anonymous blond was replying, “Grown men tackling each other over a stuffed piece of leather is your idea of theatre.” Before he could defend himself, she held up a hand and continued. “I didn’t like the show either, but that’s not the point. It’s the _principle_ of the thing.”

“What principle?” the man exploded. “You didn’t like the show, I didn’t like the show, so why waste our time?”

Scully leaned against the back of the elevator and jammed her hands in her pockets, studying her shoes.

“This is about more than a ’show,’” the woman told him scathingly. Thankfully, the elevator dinged softly, reminding Scully and Mulder to exit. They did so, leaving the young couple behind to uncover for themselves the true meaning of Shakespeare in the nude.

The pause had stolen their argument’s momentum before it even began rolling. Nonetheless, Scully followed Mulder wordlessly into his room.

As Mulder shucked off his jacket and loosened his tie, she toed off her shoes and slipped out of her coat in an odd parody of a couple returning home after a long day’s work. Which in a way they were, Scully knew, and the knowledge made the hotel’s floral prints more strikingly gaudy than they actually were.

Mulder deposited the files on the table and Scully took a seat before them, shrugging out of her jacket. She shuffled through them until she found the one she was looking for and began skimming its pages intently, looking for something.

Mulder sank onto the bed and watched her, wondering if they were going to finish the argument. He suspected they were not: it was one of those discussions which has no real end, but which repeats itself endlessly, droning throughout the years. The words might vary slightly, and they might try different tones ranging from professional upbraiding to personal hurt, but occasionally it was easier just to assume they both had read the script and move on.

So he watched her silently, taking rare advantage of her turned back to memorize her here. This was a guilty indulgence, and he would never have confessed to her the album he kept in his head, the Scrapbook of a Thousand Scullys. He had been keeping it for years, ever aware that she might vanish from his life at any moment yet not quite acknowledging the possibility. But in recent months the pages had been turning more quickly, crammed more tightly with mental photos as he selfishly strove to preserve everything about her in what he stubbornly refused to call her last months.

Her flame-red hair was slightly tousled, revealing a triangle of creamy skin at the back of her neck. The white silk of her blouse glistened, but was not quite sufficiently opaque to disguise the ridges outlining her bra. When she leaned forward as she was now, her shoulderblades protruded slightly, knobby testaments to the disturbing reality that she was, in fact, blood and bone, like any other mortal.

The chair hid her hips and thighs, but Mulder could see her feet, neatly crossed at the ankles and colored dark grey by her stockings. The seams of the stockings were not quite aligned with her toes.

It occurred to him that he ought to be wondering what she was reading, ought to be thinking about the case, but the juncture between her neck and her blouse had a much more powerful grip on his attention and he surrendered to it.

Her hand reached back, obscuring the object of his quiet musing from view as it rubbed her neck absently. Mulder crossed the room automatically before considering what he was doing. “Here,” he said matter-of-factly, pushing her hand aside with his own. His hands landed on her shoulders, kneading firmly, while his thumbs traced tight circles over the lower part of her neck.

She bowed forward, accepting the gesture with a soft sigh which was music to Mulder’s ears.

It would be so easy, she thought, so easy to lose herself in this simple sensation. Lately, she wouldn’t much mind losing herself. Dying Dana was depressing. When she closed her eyes at night, she saw visions of a tangled, fibrous mass stretching out dark fingers to tempt the surrounding network of blood vessels closer, closer, evilly harnassing her body’s natural processes for its own dark ends. She saw engorged, elongated cells with unnatural nuclei, sometimes two per cell, creeping across the thin endothelial membrane and tumbling away, free and easy, alongside neutrophils and erythrocytes to locations all over her body. Angiogenesis. Metastasis.

There were times when she would surrender almost anything to rid herself of those images, replace them with something kinder so that she could sleep peacefully again.

The obvious mechanism towered over her right now, digging his fingertips into the hard, thankfully resistant muscle of her back. What would he do if she leaned back right now, what would he do if she kissed him and lost herself that way?

He’d kiss her back, she supposed. No, that wasn’t true–he wouldn’t. He’d accuse her of giving up, of starting to check things off a list of things to do before she died, which might be partly true. Or maybe he’d tell her this wasn’t the way to escape, make her face the truth of that fibrous mass anyway. No. She would never give Mulder the need to tell her to confront reality: that was a shame she would not endure.

Even if he said neither of those things, even if he did kiss her, he would think them. Equally unacceptable.

So she said the most reasonable thing she could think of, which was: “I’m certain this is linked to a research project people don’t want to talk about, Mulder. Maybe a military contract, which may be how Packard fits.”

Well, it was honest.

Mulder was only half-listening to her words, focused, as humans often are, on something more visceral than rational investigation. Like the blood rushing through veins and arteries beneath his hands. So his reply was automatic. “That doesn’t mean it can’t be witchcraft. You’re talking motive, I’m talking mechanism.”

Not bad for automatic.

Scully continued. “After you left, I talked to several others–none of them really knew what Jorgensen had been working on before he started his current project. Except this woman–Thrush.” She gestured at the file before her. “I think she knew. She dodged around it, saying it was company secret. It would’ve been nice to have you there.”

Bait.

Mulder didn’t bite. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

This case had not gripped him as he’d hoped it might. It had only served to remind him that the more pressing investigation lay beneath his fingertips.

The truth is in me, she’d told him once, and right now he didn’t really give a damn about truth, he just wanted whatever it was out of her.

Sometimes when we cannot think of the words to hold our thoughts, or perhaps when we are too ashamed of the thoughts to speak them aloud, we say something else. Maybe that is what happened to Mulder.

“Look, Scully, there’s nothing more we can accomplish tonight. Why don’t you go take it easy for the night.”

He felt her stiffen beneath his hands, but she didn’t look at him. “I feel fine, Mulder,” she said guardedly. There was a long pause, as she debated whether to continue, but then she forged ahead anyway. “I thought we’d been through this. I can make my own decisions about when I do or do not need rest.”

He’d stepped back. He hadn’t meant that. He had meant to convey that, but he hadn’t meant that. So of course, he said, “That’s not what I said at all.”

She turned in her chair. “It is what you said. You’ve never in all the years I’ve known you told me to ‘take it easy’–it’s always been assumed that when I needed to I would and if you asked me to do something I didn’t want to do, I’d say no. Same goes for you. But now–now, that is what you said.”

“Okay,” he said, backing away, hands raised. “Don’t take it easy. Do whatever the hell you want. You’re fine, I know.”

“Do you think I’m lying when I say that?”

“I don’t know!” he exploded. “I don’t know what you mean when you say that. It sounds to me more like, ‘fuck off, it’s none of your business,’ but maybe that’s just me.”

Not quite true, but honest.

“That’s not what it means,” she said darkly, standing up. “It means exactly what it sounds like. I’m fine. I’m content with current circumstances and do not ask that they be altered.” She was moving toward the door, scooping up shoes and jacket on the way. Near the door, she stopped and turned to face him coolly. “I can’t talk about it just because you want all the gory details, Mulder. When I do want to talk, you’ll be the first to know.”

Mulder rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “Scully….” he began.

“You’re right, Mulder,” she said. “There’s nothing more to be done tonight. But I’d appreciate it if you’d look over that file on Thrush and talk to her tomorrow. Okay?”

Mulder nodded at the floor. “Okay,” he sighed, accepting her truce.

Honest, but not quite true.

Which was good, because the negotiations would have been far bloodier had they spoken in truths.

*****************************************************************

CHAPTER THREE

—————————————————

April 21, 1997

10:05 a.m.

Mulder rapped sharply on the door. “Dr. Gegenmir?” he called, when there was no answer.

There was some shuffling behind the door and finally Warren Gegenmir emerged, his hair ruffled and eyes wide. He ushered Mulder quickly inside the small Anticorps office.

When the door was safely shut, he hissed: “I thought I made it clear that I was approaching you confidentially.”

Mulder nodded. “I realize that, sir, but we’re talking to almost everyone here, so I don’t think it will appear strange that I’m talking to you. Please, sit down.”

Gegenmir gestured that Mulder should sit, reminding them both whose office it was.

As Gegenmir moved around behind the desk and took a seat, Mulder eased himself into the facing chair and turned his gaze around the office. Several file cabinets lined the far wall, and the wall to Mulder’s left was almost entirely composed of bookshelves. Mulder scanned the titles–mostly biology and chemistry texts and literature, but also some physics and philosophy of science. On the wall to his right was a long, worn red couch that looked like it had been teleported in from the seventies. A scruffy pillow and blanket were crumpled on it, and the imprint of a body was still apparent on the cushions. Mulder would’ve bet money that the cushions were still warm.

“I have a couple of questions for you, Dr. Gegenmir,” he said finally. “Do you mind if I use a tape recorder?”

“Actually, I’d prefer you didn’t,” Gegenmir answered sharply.

Mulder shrugged and produced a tablet and pen from his pocket, crossed one leg over the other to balance the pad on his knee. “Okay,” he said. “So. I talked to Mr. Ledbetter, and I’m curious about something.” He paused, watched Gegenmir’s invitingly raised eyebrows. “You said you heard Ledbetter and Jorgensen fighting outside your office. But Mr. Ledbetter works in the basement, and your office is up here on the fourth floor. Maybe you could give me a clearer picture of exactly what you heard and where.”

Gegenmir had the grace to look guilty. “Did I say from my office?” he asked. “That’s not what I meant.”

“That’s what you said,” Mulder replied solidly.

“I meant, I was walking by the chem labs in the basement.”

“Why were you doing that at such a late hour?” Mulder persisted.

Gegenmir swallowed and looked down at his hands, then at the single picture on his desk. Mulder put his pen down and leaned forward to look at the photo: a young smiling woman holding a small boy.

No answer appeared forthcoming. “Is this your wife and son?” he asked finally.

“Yeah,” Gegenmir answered, reaching out to turn the picture a little more toward Mulder. “Tracy and Sean.”

“I bet they don’t like it when you spend the night at work, huh?” Mulder asked, gesturing at the recently slept-on couch.

He had anticipated a hostile answer, evidence of a marital conflict, but he wasn’t quite prepared for what he got instead.

“They’re dead,” Gegenmir said simply, blankly.

Mulder blinked, cursing himself. Not where he’d wanted to go. But here he was, so…. “I’m very sorry,” he said soberly. “May I ask how it happened?”

Gegenmir continued to regard him stonily. His answering query was terse, clipped. “Have you ever lost someone close to you, Agent Mulder?”

Mulder nodded slowly. “Yes, I have,” he answered quietly, trying to keep the wariness out of his voice.

Gegenmir accepted that answer. “Have you ever _watched_ someone you love die–lived with them every day knowing that in a month or a week they’d be gone and you’d never see them again?” His voice remained dry and toneless.

Mulder hesitated only a second. “No,” he said. “I haven’t.”

He meant it.

Willing himself to put aside any personal empathy, he forged ahead, trying to regain control of the interview which was not exactly an interview. “But you have, haven’t you, Dr. Gegenmir,” he intoned gently.

“Yes,” the man answered huskily, his blank facade finally cracking.”Sean–my son–he died. Two months from the time we took him to the doctor. That’s all it took. He was only four. Tracy…Tracy was so broken up over it, she couldn’t…she didn’t….”

His voice trailed off and Mulder looked away, hearing the words he hadn’t said. An oddly distant part of him wondered how she’d done it–sleeping pills? razor blade? Statistically, women attempted suicide more frequently, but men more often succeed because they chose more reliable methods. Like pistols.

He shook his head to clear it. This was not good. This was not how things were supposed to be going. He could almost hear Scully’s voice in his head: You’re empathizing with the victim, Mulder. Losing your objectivity.

Victim? Gegenmir wasn’t a victim, at least, he wasn’t the victim.

But glancing again at the framed photo, Mulder had a sudden eerie suspicion that Gegenmir thought he was. Otherwise, why had he allowed–encouraged–Mulder to pursue such a sensitive and seemingly irrelevant line of questioning?

He phrased his next words carefully, deliberately. “I’m sorry for your loss, Dr. Gegenmir. I know what it’s like to lose someone, and so lose yourself in your work.”

“What are you?” Gegenmir snapped. “Some kind of shrink?”

Mulder shook his head, and there was silence in the room. Uncomfortable silence. Mulder regarded Gegenmir calmly as the man grew increasingly agitated and finally spoke, unable to bear the silence any longer.

“You want to know why I was in the basement,” he said, leaning forward. “You want to know why I think it’s Ledbetter.”

Mulder nodded solemnly, holding the man’s uncertain gaze and waiting.

“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” he whispered.

Mulder leaned forward, tucking the pad significantly back into his coat pocket as he willed the man to trust him.

“I’ve been following Neil Ledbetter,” Gegenmir whispered harshly. “Watching him. For eight or nine months now, ever since Sean…” –he broke off, took a moment to recover.

“I’d always had this creepy feeling about him, and when I found out he practiced black magic and other crazy shit like that, I thought, oh, okay, that’s why. He’s really…odd…friendly and sometimes a little stupid, but if you get him talking he gets…like I said. Creepy.”

Mulder was careful not to betray his agreement with that evaluation. “Do you think he had something to do with your son’s death?” he prompted quietly.

“I know it sounds ridiculous,” Gegenmir said, pleading with his eyes for Mulder to disagree. “But no doctor had ever seen a patient with Sean’s symptoms. No one had the faintest idea where to begin, and before anyone could figure it out, it was too late. He’d sometimes get these fits where he’d just cry and scream in the most horrible pain for hours and hours, but we couldn’t find anything wrong with him.”

“Why do you think Ledbetter was involved?” Mulder asked.

“It was the timing,” Gegenmir said softly. “These things only happened to Sean after Neil and I had had one of our…discussions….”

“Discussions?”

Gegenmir sighed and paused for a long time, as if considering whether or not to continue. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Discussions. Neil was…I guess you could call it blackmail. Anyway, I was paying him. And when I kept threatening to tell someone, the things started happening to Sean. When the doctors decided he was dying…I…I’m sorry.”

Gegenmir covered his face with one hand and took several deep breaths. Mulder waited patiently.

When he spoke again, his voice was muffled by his hand. “After Tracy killed herself, I thought for awhile that there was nothing left, that I shouldn’t even try. I thought….I thought a lot of things. But I finally realized that I could still have a purpose, a goal, that it was still worth living.”

“You wanted to prove Neil Ledbetter did it,” Mulder finished for him.

Gegenmir looked up in surprise. “Yes,” he said softly. “Yes. So I followed him. I watched him at work and I watched him at home and I watched him go to his meetings with the people, the people involved with the Temple of Set.

“I don’t know how much you know about this, Agent Mulder. I know how absolutely crazy it sounds. But I think Neil Ledbetter is practicing black magic for his own ends. How else could you explain how a man got turned into a puddle, when no scientist has yet been able to offer an explanation?”

He stopped, studying Mulder’s face intently for any sign of derision.

“What was he blackmailing you for?” Mulder asked neutrally.

Gegenmir’s face fell. “I don’t want to discuss that,” he said. Then, hopelessly: “You don’t believe me, do you?”

Mulder considered carefully. “In following this man, have you gathered evidence of him blackmailing others? Or have you seen him practicing these acts?”

“No, I haven’t found him blackmailing others,” Gegenmir answered. “You have to realize, I’m not an expert at this, I’m just a biologist. But yes, I’ve seen him doing spells. I’ve seen him do some pretty weird shit. I’ve even seen some stuff I can’t quite explain. And I’ve found some stuff in his lab notebooks…. I know it’s nuts. If I were you, I’d be laughing at me right now. Hell, just a year ago, I’d've been laughing at me. But now….”

Mulder nodded. “Can I see the lab books?” he asked.

Gegenmir bit his lip. “Well, some of it is confidential for patent reasons, of course. But I made photocopies of the stuff I thought looked strange. I guess I could show them to you.”

Mulder nodded. “I’d appreciate that.”

This had turned out better than he’d hoped.

—————————————————

Alameda Naval Base

10:32 a.m.

“I don’t understand it,” Anna murmured, leafing through the files. “This office is supposed to have gone untouched. They knew I was coming back here….”

Scully frowned, digging through a desk drawer. The office was large and oddly airy for a military establishment. Scully sat behind the great teak desk, while Vasquez knelt on the floor, rummaging through filing cabinets.

“You didn’t take all the files out immediately after the murder?” Scully asked.

“No,” Anna admitted sheepishly, looking over at Scully. “It took us awhile to get this out of the hands of the Haz Mat people, and then the military police of course wanted to take care of this. I had other cases, too. Only after Jorgensen’s death did this become priority. But they promised me they weren’t going to touch anything.”

“And they have,” Scully said slowly, regarding the other woman steadily.

Anna shrugged. “Someone has. These files have the same names, but the forms inside are different.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I remember some things. This file was thicker, that one had red copy-proof papers in it. Things like that.”

Scully was nodding, sucking quietly on one cheek. Anna felt increasingly miserable. “Who would do this? Why? I should’ve hauled everything out right away….”

“No,” Scully answered slowly, absently. “You had no reason to distrust the military.”

There was some unspoken irony in her voice which Anna could not quite put her finger on. She bit her lip in frustration and swiveled her gaze around the room. Col. Packard had died right here. The stain was still on the carpet.

Scully was also staring fixedly at the stain. “How?” she said softly, almost to herself. “If it’s some kind of chemical, how do you smuggle enough of it into a well-guarded military installation? You have to be military, and then you raid the crime scene, the office, to cover your tracks.”

Anna nodded, tugging at the waist of her jacket as she stood. “But if it’s some kind of chemical, you’d expect that to have come out of the biotech world, where the other deaths occurred, not the military. What if our UNSUB doesn’t need a chemical?”

Scully gave Vasquez a bemused glance. “So Mulder’s got you hooked, huh?” she said, half-smiling, one eyebrow raised.

Anna felt herself blush slightly, even as she furiously tried to control it. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “It sounds absolutely crazy. But it’s easier to believe than some things right now. What if he’s got something he calls a magic potion, but it’s really some chemical catalyst that causes a self-perpetuating degenerative reaction?”

Scully’s brow furrowed. “That’s an interesting theory,” she admitted. She was silent for another long moment as she scanned the room thoughtfully. Anna watched her tentatively, until her gaze stopped on the computer. She reached under the desk and flipped on the power.

Anna circled the desk to stand behind Scully’s chair, watching the screen intently, understanding what she had in mind. But a few clicks of the mouse revealed that the hard drive was blank; it had been formatted two days earlier.

“Damn,” Anna muttered. “How could they do this?”

Scully had picked up Packard’s phone and was dialing. At first, Anna assumed she was calling Mulder, but a second later she was speaking to someone else.

“This is Scully. Can you kill the tape-recorder?…I mean it….Okay. Alameda Naval Base. I got a job for you, okay?”

A look of irritation passed across her face. “I’m fine, Frohike, and he’s not here.”

Anna moved away. There was a low leather couch on the wall by the door, and she began halfheartedly digging her gloved hand between the cushions.

“This is probably Byers’ schtick, but I’ve got something for you too, if you’re interested….Yes, it’s a good story, at least, it’s shaping up that way….I’m on a land line, office of a Colonel…can’t do any better than that.”

Anna’s fingers brushed against something hard and smooth.

“I need you to find out if there are any tape back-ups online of the following client: 36.102.43.2….Yes….I don’t really know. Anything to do with the biotech company Anticorps–that’s like Peace Corps but one word–or any biologists. Or”–she glanced at Vasquez–”Neil Ledbetter. Okay?”

Anna pulled a pen out from the folds of the couch. For a moment she was disappointed, but upon closer examination she was rewarded.

“And also, look into Anticorps’ history, all right? One last thing–have any of you heard of any kind of chemical that could cause a body to disintegrate into a puddle of sticky lipids and amino acids? Some kind of catalyst?” She exchanged another significant look with Vasquez. “Just think about it, okay? I’ll tell you more later. Thanks….”

She hung up.

“DC lab?” Anna asked.

Scully’s lips twitched in a half-smile. “Sort of,” she answered.

“Didn’t know they’d break into military computers,” Anna said, letting her amusement creep into her voice.

“Like I said,” Scully answered, “sort of. What do you have there?”

Anna crossed the room and handed the pen across the desk. Scully turned it in her fingers, eyebrows raised in satisfaction. “Well,” she said, nodding. “What exactly did Col. Packard do at this base?”

The pen was an advertisement, the kind given by drug companies as freebies to doctors to encourage prescriptions. “Finamycin” was printed in capital, italicized letters along the side. Underneath, in smaller print, were the words: “The next wave in antimicrobial therapy.”

—————————————————

South San Francisco

3:12 p.m.

Mulder was leaning over the table in his hotel room, having retreated there to find the quiet he needed to work. Well, not precisely quiet. The TV flickered and chattered softly in the background. But he needed the privacy.

Nonetheless, when his cell phone began ringing, he leapt to answer it.

“Mulder.”

“Ledbetter was lying,” Scully’s voice told him.

Mulder frowned, ran a hand through his hair. “Where are you?”

“At the base, where else? Listen, someone’s gone through Packard’s office. Moved files around, formatted his hard drive. I had the gunmen check for a tape backup, though, and they found Ledbetter’s name in a spreadsheet that had been deleted from Packard’s computer.”

“What kind of spreadsheet?”

“An accounting one,” Scully replied. “Ledbetter was getting checks from Packard. I can’t really tell much more than that–Byers is going to email this to you.”

“Where’s your laptop?” Mulder wanted to download the file immediately.

“With me. But listen, there’s more. Did you know Packard had an M.D., residency in infectious diseases?”

Mulder raised his eyebrows and an eager smile started to creep across his face. “Really?” he asked, piqued.

“And you might wonder what an army man is doing at a naval base, right?”

“Sure.”

“So would I. He manages some contracts using Alameda as a base. The contracts are with various drug companies prospecting for antimicrobial agents, among them Anticorps. He came here after spending thirteen years at USAMRIID.”

“The army’s answer to the CDC,” Mulder murmured. “Think he got tired of working in a space suit?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “Listen, how soon can you get back here? I think we can get a warrant for Ledbetter.”

“That spreadsheet is currently inadmissible, Mulder,” she warned. “We’ve filed a request with the base for a copy of the backed-up hard drive but it’ll take a day or two to process and I wouldn’t be surprised if the information magically disappears or the request is denied. The gunmen have a copy, but it’s going to take days for them to sort through it. They say it’s pretty cryptic. And anything they find is, like I said, inadmissible.”

“Well, if I’m right, Scully, we’re not going to have much time. We’ll have to get together enough evidence another way. I got some interesting material from Anticorps today, some stuff from Ledbetter’s lab journals. Can you look at it and tell me what it is?”

“A chemistry lab notebook?” Scully said incredulously. “Mulder, I’m flattered, but I only worked part-time in a lab for a couple of years in med school, and that was a virology lab. I was good at orgo but I really don’t think–”

Mulder drummed his fingers impatiently on the table. “Well, do you know someone? I don’t want to just send this back to the Bureau–they’re not going to look for what I want. And if the gunmen are busy with that computer….”

He could hear her thinking, could virtually see her intent face. This was always the best part of a case. “Yeah,” she said finally. “Yeah, I know somebody. A professor at UCSF. An old acquaintance of mine.”

“Great,” Mulder said. “Can you give her–him–whatever, a call, meet up for dinner?”

“Him. Ben Hsu. Yeah, I’ll call him.” There was a pause, and he heard Anna’s muffled voice in the background.

Then Scully was speaking to him again. “I think we’re done here for now,” she said. “We’ll be back in an hour or so.”

“Okay. I’m at the hotel.”

Mulder disconnected abruptly and returned to the notepad in front of him. He picked up a pen and began scribbling numbers with renewed energy.

—————————————————

4:43 p.m.

Scully found the door was propped open, the lever that had replaced a chain turned two-hundred degrees so that it was scissored between the door and frame. She pushed lightly on the wood and stepped inside. “Mulder?”

Anna followed. At first glance, the room, though strewn with crumpled papers and file folders, was devoid of human life, but a second later the bathroom door opened immediately to her right and Mulder came careening through, crashing into her.

“Oh, hey, sorry,” he said, gripping her shoulders to keep her balanced. Anna was too startled to speak. He’d discarded his suit for a pair of jeans and a black turtleneck. She recovered quickly though, and as he stepped away gestured at his new attire.

“What’s with the duds?” she asked. “Going undercover?”

He smirked, turning slightly to include Scully in the expression. “Don’t want to scare our friendly scientists with the G-man routine.”

“So you settled on starving artist instead?” Anna quipped. “I’ve got some plainclothes in the car, lemme run down and get them, okay?”

“Sure,” Mulder answered. As Anna left, he turned to Scully. “We barely have time to talk. What took you so long?”

“Traffic,” she replied evenly, a faint smile playing about her lips.

He snorted, conceding the point, and moved across the room to the table, took the chair in which she had sat the previous night.

“She’s better than most of our local contacts, don’t you think?” he asked, nodding at the door. “How was your day with her?”

“You’re just saying that because you’ve got her starting to believe you,” Scully answered, folding her arms across her chest. “But, yes, she’s more than helpful. What do you got there?”

“I’d rather wait til she gets back, not tell the story twice. But I’ll give you the punchline, just to give you some time to think about your argument in advance, how’s that?” His words might have seemed harsh but his grin was genuine, and she found herself returning it unwillingly.

She shook her head slowly and looked away, shoulders shaking in a brief, silent chuckle even as a wave of sad nostalgia swept over her. His quip returned her to the train of thought she’d disembarked from the night before: they didn’t even argue like they used to. There was an unsettling cushion between them that prevented hard blows and encouraged indulgence. She wasn’t quite sure who’d started it, who feared hurting whom, but it hadn’t used to be necessary and she suspected their investigations suffered for it.

Though she usually preferred working alone with Mulder, this time she was oddly grateful for Vasquez’ efficient presence: it dispelled at least some of the surface tension between them–they both had to pretend as if everything were normal.

She became aware that Mulder was regarding her with an almost wistful expression that made her uncomfortable even as it touched her. She wondered if he’d been thinking the same thing, and prayed he wouldn’t say it. As soon as such admissions were laid on the table between them, any attempt to rectify them would seem insincere.

Thankfully, Vasquez breezed back into the room at that moment, plainclothes folded neatly under her arm. She stopped just inside and looked from Scully to Mulder, as if uncertain what she had interrupted, then recovered quickly. “Can I use your bathroom to change?” she asked him.

He gave a ‘go-ahead’ wave of his hand, about to reply, but Scully spoke first. “Actually, I want to change too. Why don’t we just go over to my room?”

Anna shrugged and nodded.

Mulder raised a suggestive eyebrow. “Can I come too?”

Anna was already partway out the door but stopped to call back, “Agent Mulder, one of these days you’re going to wind up getting slapped with a sexual harassment suit.”

“Sounds kinky!” he called after them.

Five minutes later they were all denim-clad and assembled around the table, which Mulder had pulled over to the edge of the bed to compensate for the presence of only two chairs.

“Okay,” he said, looking at Scully. “I promised I’d tell you the punchline first. I think he chooses his dates and times to kill based on the numbers. But before I go into that”–he tapped his notepad–”let me tell you about the conversation I had this morning.”

He recapped the story quickly, explaining that Gegenmir believed Ledbetter was responsible for his son’s death and, indirectly, his wife’s subsequent suicide.

“Do you believe him?” Scully asked.

“I believe he believes he’s telling the truth, and I don’t think that a molecular biologist would be easy to convince of paranormal powers like that.”

“Ledbetter’s a scientist–he believes,” Vasquez pointed out.

“Yes, but Ledbetter is not a normal guy,” Mulder replied. “As I explained in my profile. Gegenmir–he was just a normal, intelligent, working man, with a wife and a kid and a good job.”

“Then it all fell apart,” Scully said. “Couldn’t that make him grasp at straws for an explanation? He’s looking for someone to blame, and Ledbetter hasn’t exactly kept his hobby a secret. If Gegenmir had any kind of prejudice toward that sort of thing, it could be exploited.”

“My initial thoughts exactly,” Mulder answered. “But then he provided me with these.” He placed a poorly collated stack of photocopied pages on the table, perhaps 100 in all. Scully took the top sheet and Anna followed her lead, taking the second sheet.

Each page was numbered and dated in a messy ink scrawl. Scully recognized chemical reactions and chemical names, tables describing amounts, and the numbered steps of protocols, telling what was mixed with what and when.

“Ledbetter’s lab journals,” Mulder said. “This is what I need your friend to look at, Scully.”

She raised her eyebrows and nodded. “Well, I’m glad we called him, then, because there’s no way I’m going to be able to wade through this. Maybe we should send it back to the Bureau labs, if you’re so sure it’s important.”

“Can’t,” Mulder answered shortly. “Company secrets. Gegenmir gave this stuff to me only with the explicit promise that I wouldn’t let anyone who could _do_ anything with it see it. He could lose his job, maybe even be prosecuted, and without a warrant that evidence is inadmissible anyway.”

“So we have a pile of inadmissible evidence and a suspect who’s been implicated by a man who is not a witness and whose judgment is psychologically questionable,” said Vasquez. “Great. Is this how you two always work?”

“Only in even months,” replied Mulder smoothly. “Which brings us to the final point, which may be the best admissible thing we have to work with.”

Both women looked up, listening. Mulder placed a new sheet of paper in front of them, this one containing several short arithmetic problems.

“I started looking for significance in the dates of the murders, which would be a signature of a sacrificial killing. Although such cases are poorly substantiated”–this with a significant glance at Scully–”the lore depends on obscure numerology.

“After a few false starts, the pattern was glaringly obvious. The first victim died at night on March 23, though he was discovered on March 24.”

“Well, actually, we can’t pinpoint the time of death,” Anna reminded him.

Mulder shook his head. “Just a minute. The second death occurred fourteen days later on April 6, which might suggest a pattern, but the third was on April 18. All the remains were discovered on the following day and the deaths presumed to have occurred sometime during the night. At first, I looked for combinations of numbers with our calendar, and then I turned to more strictly lunar calendars, which led me to check on the phases of the moons on these dates. March 23 was a new moon, April 6 a waxing half-moon, and April 18 a waxing gibbous moon.”

“Gibbous?” Scully asked.

“A moon which is not quite full, but appears to be,” Mulder answered. “Adherents of the Temple of Set believe that power is derived from five pillars erected at the vertices of a pentagon. When these pillars were actually physically constructed, they were built so that they would align with the rising moon in different phases and different seasons. The phases were the new moon, the waxing half-moon, the waking gibbous moon and its sister, the waning gibbous moon, and the waning half-moon.”

Anna asked the question on both their minds. “Why not a full moon?”

“Because they practice black magic,” said Mulder. “You don’t celebrate the brightest night. I’m sure it’s more thoroughly justified than that, but that’s my interpretation.”

“So you’re suggesting that the next death will be tomorrow, aren’t you?” Scully said. “For the waning gibbous moon? You only have three data points–I’m not sure you should be extrapolating with such confidence.”

“It’s a pretty compelling coincidence, Scully. Rituals were often performed at the same phases of the moon, hence the positions of the pillars.”

“But you said the pillars were built to correspond to moonrises in different seasons as well.”

“Yeah, that is a problem. I think he’s in a hurry. Maybe he doesn’t have to adhere strictly to all the tenets of this faith.”

“Sort of like a Cafeteria Catholic?” Anna asked. “Cafeteria Satanist?”

“The Temple of Set isn’t a Satanist organization, but yes, that’s the idea,” Mulder told her. “Also, the rituals I mentioned were usually performed so as to climax at midnight, which is when I’d wager these deaths are occurring.”

“But why?” Scully insisted. “What’s the motive?”

Mulder held up a finger. “Ah, that’s the good part. Members of the Temple of Set divide history into Ages, and each Age has a word of power which is itself a goal. Ledbetter wants to fulfill the goal of this Age, to infuse the word with power and thus gain self-awareness. He may have concocted a ritual he believes will do this, will grant him understanding of ‘Xeper.’ And it requires that he kill people in this bizarre way on astrologically significant dates.”

“But why Packard? Why Jorgensen?”

“I don’t think the person matters much. It goes back to who Ledbetter is. He’s got this image of himself as someone who’s misunderstood, persecuted, but he’s going to show them. He needs someone to kill, so he chooses people who’ve pissed him off somehow.”

Scully was frowning; Anna looked intrigued. “So who would he go after next?” she asked.

“I don’t know. And I still don’t know how he’s doing it.”

“This is all speculation, Mulder,” Scully said finally, “and whenever the circumstances don’t exactly fit, you’re brushing over it by saying he just hasn’t done his homework. But if he hasn’t done his homework, why is he so successful at this bizarre M.O., which you’re suggesting requires magical power of some kind?”

“Maybe it’s not magic, Scully. This guy’s a chemist. That’s why we need to go through these journals.”

Anna glanced at her watch. “Speaking of which….” she hummed.

“Right,” Mulder said. “Where are we meeting?”

“Mission district,” Anna replied. “Let’s take my car.”

As they waited for the elevator, Scully suddenly remembered. “By the way, Mulder,” she said. “Did you get a chance to talk to Dr. Thrush today?”

“Thrush?” He looked momentarily confused, then remembered. “Oh, the woman you talked to yesterday. No. Sorry. I’ve been working on this.” He nodded down at the notes. At Scully’s slightly disapproving glance, he added: “Tomorrow.”

CHAPTER FOUR

—————————————————

Mission District

San Francisco

6:30 p.m.

The three entered the restaurant, Scully leading the way. She stopped to speak to the waiter playing host, but a call from midway back in the restaurant stopped her. “Dana!”

All three turned to the source of the voice, a tall, clean-cut Asian man wearing narrow round glasses and waving from a large round table. Scully’s face assumed the wide, social smile that Mulder so rarely saw, and she led them back to meet them.

Ben Hsu moved immediately to embrace Scully, ducking to kiss her cheek. “Haven’t grown any, I see,” he quipped. “And what’s with the hair? I thought people got greyer with age, not redder. But really, you look great.”

Mulder felt slightly off-balance, wondering exactly how well Scully knew this man and why he’d never heard of him. But he didn’t have much time to think about it because Scully was already introducing them, and there were hands to be shaken.

“It’s good to see you too, Ben,” she was saying, that smile still decorating her face. “This is Detective Anna Vasquez, with the South City P.D., and this is my partner, Fox Mulder.”

“Anna, Fox,” Ben was saying, nodding to them. He looked directly at Mulder. “Fox, huh? Guess you’ve probably heard all the jokes anyone can imagine, so I’ll forego them. Besides, I don’t know–do FBI agents joke?”

Mulder smiled thinly. “That’s a government secret, Dr. Hsu. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

“Mulder isn’t your average FBI agent,” Scully said, with a slight emphasis on the first word which Mulder appreciated, knowing she’d spoken the sentence only as an excuse to say his name. The wide smile of the Scully he barely knew had melted into a more familiar pleasant expression, much to his relief.

A young woman in her early twenties stood up from the table, and Mulder noticed her for the first time. She was clad in a red T-shirt and green flannel, her shoulder-length blonde hair clasped back in a poorly-contained ponytail.

“Oh, and this is one of my graduate students,” Ben supplied hurriedly. “Isabelle Frank. She knows chemistry better than I do, so I asked her to come along.”

“Thanks for coming,” Scully said, reaching across Ben to shake the young woman’s hand.

“Sure,” Isabelle replied. “Free food, right?”

Mulder snorted, tapped his back pocket. “Courtesy of your Uncle Sam,” he assured her.

“Cool,” she said vaguely, barely clasping his hand to shake it.

They arranged themselves around the table, Scully beside Ben and Anna beside her, leaving Mulder next to Isabelle. Ben passed laminated menus around to all of them. “The burgers are great,” he said. “I figured you east coasters would want something a little more traditional.”

Mulder barely glanced at the menu, not very interested in food, then tucked it pointedly under the pile of lab notes he’d set on the table. He caught a slight glance from Scully warning him to slow down and took the hint: these two owed them nothing and probably didn’t share their sense of urgency. He wondered exactly what kind of imposition this was, trying to gauge how quickly he could pace things.

“So how long have you and Scully known each other?” he asked Ben.

Ben looked up from his menu, glanced sideways at Scully. “Scully, huh? Wow, you really have gone all the way with this FBI thing. Should I not call you Dana anymore?”

Scully snorted. “Dana’s fine.” To Mulder, she said, “Ben and I knew each other in college. But I haven’t seen in him in–what?–six years?”

Ben shook his head. “Yeah, well, you just made one wrong choice after another, Dana,” he sighed with mock regret. “Leaving science for medicine, then leaving medicine for law enforcement….” He paused, then said seriously, “I never would’ve pictured you where you are now.” Then, as if realizing how that sounded, he amended hurriedly: “Not that that’s a bad place to be. Do you like it?”

Scully resisted the urge to look at Mulder. “Yes, I do. Very much.”

Something in her voice stopped Ben from making the obvious joke and asking if she’d speak differently in Mulder’s absence. Instead, he just smiled sincerely at her. “I’m glad you found what you wanted, then.”

“What about you, Ben?” she asked. “Academia treating you well?”

Ben glanced sidelong at Isabelle, who was poring over her menu with a bored expression, oblivious to the pleasantries. “It’s passable,” he answered. “I have great people in my lab, and the work’s been going well. A little more political than I thought it’d be, though.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t kept up with your work,” Scully said apologetically. “Are you still interested strictly in DNA-binding proteins?”

Hsu seemed inordinately pleased that she’d asked, and proceeded to tell her about work in the lab while Mulder and Anna listened and Isabelle studiously ignored them all. After the waitress took their orders and poured their water, Scully apparently decided it was time to get down to business.

At a convenient pause in the conversation, she reached across the table for the papers in front of Mulder, pulled them across in front of Ben. “We were hoping you could look these over for us,” she said. “I have to ask that they be kept confidential.”

“Of course,” Ben answered, picking up the top sheet just as Scully had done scant hours earlier. “Can I ask what it’s about?” He glanced at Mulder and grinned. “Or will you have to kill me?”

“It’s a lab notebook from a synthetic organic chemist at a local biotech company involved in finding new ways to combat microbes,” Scully explained.

Isabelle abruptly sat forward, leaning her thin elbows on the table. “Anticorps? Are you working on the deaths there?”

“You know about them?” Anna asked, surprised. She’d managed to keep the press mostly quiet by repeating the truth: that it was still officially a lab accident.

“Sure,” Isabelle replied. “Everybody does. We’re all talking about how it could’ve happened. Other students, I mean.”

“Come up with anything good?” Mulder asked her hopefully.

She grinned. “Nope. But if you give me some of the details, maybe.” She too lifted a sheet from the stack of papers.

“We’ve had scientists and Haz Mat crews review the data,” Anna told her.

Isabelle shrugged, as if she didn’t have much faith in either recourse. “Is this the journal from the guy who died?” she asked.

“No,” Scully said quickly. “Just someone who worked there.”

“You think his work might’ve done it?”

“We’d like to see what you think,” Scully told her carefully.

Isabelle took a sip of her water and nodded, then leaned over the page in front of her.

For the next twenty minutes, the two scientists reviewed the information quietly, occasionally conferring with one another or pointing out interesting readouts on graphs that were interspersed with the handwritten text. The investigators looked on silently, understanding few of the tersely exchanged phrases.

When their food arrived, Ben pushed the pages back. “Well, I think one thing’s clear,” he said. “We’re going to have to take these back to the lab. Need some books to identify a lot of this. This guy takes terrible notes. Sorta like you, Isabelle.” He grinned wryly at his student.

She wrinkled her nose and pursed her lips distastefully. “At least my handwriting is legible, unlike that of some,” she replied.

“Does it look like ordinary lab work?” Scully asked. “Something that Anticorps would be interested in?”

“It’s really impossible to tell without some references,” Hsu said apologetically. “We just can’t identify these things by memory–they’re hydrocarbon rings. Could be anything.”

“Well, maybe we could go back to your lab after dinner,” suggested Mulder. There was a slight edge of impatience in his voice which Scully hoped only she could detect.

Anna might have heard it too, though, or at least caught the agents’ shared glance, because there was a certain purpose to her next words. “So, Isabelle. You’re a doctoral student?”

“Fourth year,” the young woman confirmed, nodding. Ben asked Scully a question which Mulder didn’t hear, and she smiled politely, answered.

The party returned to exchanging the staple of unfamiliar company: pleasantries and stories. Scully was soon discussing college with both Ben and Anna, and then the talk returned to research, skirting the case by touching on methods of antibiotic resistance in microbes. Mulder listened with only one ear, rarely participating. He was anxious to get back to work and vaguely irritated that his fellow investigators did not seem to feel the same pressure.

When he had finished his meal, he saw that no one else was even halfway done, and felt his impatience grow. Small talk had never been his forte, and besides, they had work to do. They needed to get a warrant tonight if they hoped to prevent the next death.

He folded his napkin and tucked it under his plate, excused himself. He weaved through the tables back to the restroom, which he quickly discovered was a one-room, one-person affair. He tried the handle–it was locked. So he leaned up against the wall outside, waiting.

He knew the scientists were doing them a favor, and that they couldn’t be expected to translate Ledbetter’s notes from memory. It was difficult to emphasize the urgency he felt without risking their spreading rumors about how they had helped with a murder investigation. Further, he knew that if he spoke up, tried to hurry them, Scully would be irritated. It’s only fifteen more minutes, she’d remind him severely with her eyes.

He recognized semi-consciously that a large portion of his irritation wasn’t related to the delay, but stemmed somehow from Scully. She had been chatting amiably with Ben and Anna throughout the meal, and though both had made attempts to include Mulder, she seemed to recognize he wasn’t in the mood. Which was fine, good. But for some undefinable reason it irritated him that she was participating. One of the things he liked best about their partnership was that they didn’t indulge in the chatter he found so false and irrelevant. If there was nothing to say, neither said anything, and that was it. To see her so easily engaged in artificial socializing annoyed him.

The restroom door opened, and a man exited. Mulder entered and locked the door.

Then there was the matter of Ben Hsu. He hadn’t missed the man’s affectionate greeting, nor had he missed the subtle glances at Scully’s fingers or the way the man leaned toward her, engaged in prolonged eye contact when she spoke. So what? he thought. This isn’t the first time someone’s flirted with her.

Was he jealous? Well, not in any traditional sense. Whatever their history, he knew that the past he and Scully shared was stronger; it was hard to feel threatened. And hell, as far as he knew, she hadn’t been on a date in years, except for the one that ended going up in flames. Literally. How could he begrudge her a little flattering attention from an old friend?

Six months ago, it wouldn’t have bothered him. Now….

Now he felt oddly possessive. He knew this was somehow linked to her cancer, but it was not a connection he wished to pursue very deeply.

Anyway, there were other things to think about. Like the case, for instance.

He rinsed his hands and exited the restroom. Halfway across the room, though, he stopped, caught by the image of his partner, her face turned away from him toward Anna, laughing. Not chuckling or smirking, but genuinely laughing. With Anna. Ben and Isabelle were smiling politely.

He found the sight disconcerting; this was not a Dana Scully he had had encountered very often, and that it surprised him was disturbing. More disturbing was the sudden, incredibly vivid memory of a much younger Scully, standing in an Oregon cemetery drenched in cold, pouring rain. Laughing with him.

She’d thought he was crazy.

He couldn’t remember the last time they’d laughed like that. Maybe that was the last time.

Isabelle caught sight of him, and her gaze drew Scully’s attention, for she turned to see him standing still, watching them. Her laughter faded to a more familiar smile, and she slowly turned back to Anna, leaving Mulder feeling a little silly at having been caught staring. He straightened his tie and moved quickly back to his seat just as Ben began telling some newly irrelevant story about his childhood.

Luckily, the check came quickly. Outside they divided into the two cars, Isabelle riding with Mulder and Anna so she could direct them. Ben, of course, suggested that Scully ride with him, so that they could continue to ‘catch up.’

As they walked back to the car, Isabelle trailing behind in by-now characteristic silence, Vasquez leaned into Mulder slightly. “What’s wrong with you?” she murmured.

He glared at her, irritated both that she’d recognized his mood and that she’d pointed it out. “Just wanting to get to work on the case,” he answered.

“Oh,” she said, nodding.

—————————————————

University of California

San Francisco

7:41 p.m.

UCSF–hospital and medical school–was built into the side of a hill, so that if one entered on the ground from the back, one found oneself on the fifth floor. Scully had always loved the topography of San Francisco; the hills gave a layered effect to the city’s buildings that made the skyscape far more aesthetically appealing than that of any other city she had visited. And Scully had visited a lot of cities.

The other three arrived minutes later, and they entered the building together. Scully gazed with an odd fondness at the tall grey freezers and steel carts lining the hallway, smiling faintly at the simple memories the rundown, quasi-industrial corridor engendered.

She remembered how nervous she’d been before presenting data at her first lab meetings in her second year of medical school, the only year during which she’d worked in a biology lab. She remembered how her friends, who had opted out of the laboratory experience, had winced when she told them how one sacrificed a mouse–grip the back of its neck between thumb and forefinger, then give a sharp yank on its tail.

“Ugh, that’s so gross, Dana! How can you do that? Why don’t you just gas them or something?”

“It’s much kinder,” she’d answered. “Instant. Gas can take minutes, and they essentially suffocate.”

It hadn’t been as easy as she’d pretended, but it had been somehow important to her not to distance herself from the act of killing, not allow herself to pretend it was anything else. It was only fair to the mouse.

Ben Hsu’s lab had no mice, however, only chemicals. While he and Isabelle went to work looking up the properties of the compounds in Ledbetter’s lab journal, Mulder commandeered a laboratory computer and downloaded his email, hoping for something new from the gunmen. Feeling useless, Scully asked Ben for a list of compounds she herself could check, while he and Isabelle instead tried to predict the purposes behind the protocols.

Armed with a Sigma catalog and an organic chemistry book, Scully set to work pinning down the names and origins of the chemicals. Within thirty minutes, a trend was obvious. She called Mulder and Anna over to see.

“They’re natural products,” she announced. “Polypropinates, isonitriles, a haliclonacyclamine. He’s synthesizing and reacting compound aromatics, largely by testing creative catalytic agents and sometimes even by reverse-engineering enzymes.”

“English, Scully,” Mulder prompted. Anna had a blank look on her face.

“Natural products are chemicals produced by biosynthetic pathways of plants or animals or bacteria that can have therapeutic value. Taxol, for instance, is an anti-cancer drug that comes from a South American tree. Originally, it had to be distilled from the bark of that tree, but recently an organic chemist figured out how to synthesize it in the laboratory. It looks like that’s what Ledbetter’s been doing.”

She could see that Mulder was beginning to get excited. “Do you know what they’re from?”

“A couple of them,” Scully said. “This is from a sponge, this from seaweed, this from some sort of plant in the Atropa family. But most of them I only recognize by their relatedness to other compounds.”

“From plants?”

She saw where he was going. “Well, yes, but–”

Mulder placed his hands flat on the table in front of her and leaned forward. Anna had to step closer to hear.

“He’s making potions, Scully,” Mulder said. “He’s using the active ingredients from traditional herbs and animal or bacterial preparations to perform spells.”

“Mulder, he works for a company looking for ways to kill bacteria! Plants, fungi and even other bacteria have worked out strategies for doing this over millions of years–that’s what most natural product therapies are! All our current antibiotics were discovered this way!”

“Do the notes say what he’s doing with them?” Mulder challenged, speaking more loudly now. “Is he testing their antimicrobial effectiveness or is he mixing them together for no apparent reason?”

“I’d say he’s mixing them,” said Isabelle suddenly. She was seated several feet away but had apparently overheard. She held up several sheets of paper which showed printouts of spiky graphs. “See these spectra? These are the products of reactions he engineered between the chemicals Dana has. I haven’t come across any antimicrobial assays at all.”

Ben was now listening too, perched on a stool on the lab bench next to Isabelle. “Can you interpret the spectra?” he asked her.

“Well, he hasn’t given me any clues, which is odd, because I’d think he’d write down the compound structure himself, but these notes are obviously both poor and incomplete, you know?” she said. “So I’ve figured out a few of them, but they’re nothing in any of the books. Multicyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Probably have biological activity. This one’s kinda cool–it resembles a neurotransmitter.”

“Isabelle can read NMR spectra in her sleep,” Ben said proudly.

“Neurotransmitter?” Mulder repeated. “So these chemicals could have effects on brain processes?”

“This one could,” Isabelle acknowledged. “But there’s absolutely no evidence of that here. He might have been trying to make a channel inhibitor or something, but he hadn’t gotten to the testing phase. But that has nothing to do with bacteria, I have no idea why he’d do that.”

“Is there anything at all in the notes to suggest antimicrobial research?” Mulder persisted.

“The only bacteria he’s worked with, as far as I’ve seen, are E. coli,” Ben supplied, “and we all use E. coli for cloning. Nothing unusual there. To me, it looks like he’s been trying to recreate plant molecular pathways in harmless bacteria.”

“Why would he do that?” Anna asked.

“To get the bacteria to synthesize the plant products?” Mulder asked with a glance at Scully, who shrugged and nodded, acknowledging the possibility.

“But, Mulder, there’s no evidence that these are actually chemicals from herbal lore. And even if they are, they might be part of some herbal medicine experiment. Maybe he’s trying to find ways to synthesize the active ingredients of traditional herbal treatments. Anyway, if he were making potions, why wouldn’t he just use the plants themselves?”

“Potions?” Ben asked.

Mulder ignored him. “Maybe he can’t get them in Northern California? Maybe they’re psychoactive and therefore illegal?”

Scully rolled her eyes. “You can get any psychoactive plant in Northern California, Mulder.”

“Well, maybe he’s looking for a better, faster way to do it. Lots of ancient spells called for herbs to be treated or dried for months. Maybe those instructions exist just to encourage the production of chemicals Ledbetter wants to make. C’mon, Scully, this could be a scientific explanation for something that’s always been considered supernatural.”

Isabelle and Ben exchanged confused glances and Anna wet her lips nervously.

Scully raised one eyebrow. “Don’t you think some chemist would’ve figured that out by now? And some trace of such a chemical would have been present in the analysis of the remains. Let’s figure out what plants and fungi make these things before we jump to any conclusions.”

“There’s not time for that,” Mulder said. “Ledbetter’s our man. The gunmen sent me the spreadsheet, and it details eleven payments from Packard to Ledbetter, personal checks. Gegenmir said Ledbetter was trying to blackmail him too.”

Scully frowned. “Mulder, if Packard was being blackmailed, why would he keep records of his payments on his computer at work?”

“Not everybody has home computers?” Mulder suggested. “I don’t know. What I do know is that we have enough to pull Ledbetter in for questioning, and maybe even enough to arrest him.”

“There’s no way you’re going to get a warrant for this,” Scully replied heatedly. The others in the room were now looking away, at walls or papers or anything except Mulder and Scully. “None of this”–she gestured at the notes in front of her–”is admissible, and neither is that spreadsheet. What are you going to do, go to a judge with just Gegenmir’s testimony that Ledbetter made his son sick by exercising powers of darkness and ask for a warrant?”

Mulder put his hands on his hips, turned sideways and drew an exasperated breath. It occurred to Scully that her partner was genuinely angry. His next words confirmed it.

“Can I speak to you for a minute?”

Scully glanced at Anna, who pointedly did not meet her eyes. She looked at Ben and Isabelle, who had both turned back to their papers, pretending not to hear though they obviously had. Then her eyes returned to Mulder, who was watching her closely. Though he stood four feet away, she had the sudden sensation that he was invading the air around her that she considered her space. It unnerved her even as it exacerbated her own…what? Anger?

She stood and strode past him, hearing him follow her into the hallway. They walked side-by-side in silence to the end of the hall, where he quite suddenly was invading her space, leaning over her to whisper harshly, “Scully, I don’t expect you to agree with me and I certainly don’t expect you to keep your mouth shut when you disagree, but I do expect that you don’t belittle my theories in front of the people I have to convince if I’m to get anything accomplished.”

Yes, she was definitely angry. “You mean Anna?” she asked, then hesitated just long enough to let the implication sink in but not so long that he could accuse her of implying anything. “Anna’s heard your theory. She’s been rather surprisingly tolerant of it. You say you don’t want me to keep my objections to myself, but at the same time you’re telling me not to speak up because it undermines your goal? Whose goal are we talking about here–yours or _ours_?”

“It’s not your objections I have a problem with, it’s the tone in which you’re choosing to voice them. Sarcasm is fine between us, Scully, but not in public.”

“Bullshit, Mulder,” she hissed. “If that were a rule, you’d be guilty of violating it a hundred times over. In any case, it was hardly public. Anna deserves to hear anything pertaining to the case–it’s still her case, after all. And Ben and Isabelle have no impact on this case beyond their conclusions, which they will justify with facts regardless of what they think of our investigation. But I really want to know, Mulder, whose goal is it?”

He leaned even further over her, making her feel every inch of his superior height, and she resented him for it. “I don’t know,” he answered acidly. “I’m not quite sure what our goal is.”

“I thought it was to solve this case.”

“That and keep anyone else from dying. We have just over twenty-four hours to do that, Scully, but you don’t seem terribly concerned about this timeframe.”

“I’m not convinced of the timeframe! But even if I were, that’s no reason to rush. If we rush, we’ll get sloppy. Arresting the wrong man isn’t going to stop someone else from dying.”

“But arresting the right man might.”

“You’re willing to put an innocent man in jail on that chance?”

He considered only a moment. “Frankly, yes, I am,” he replied. His next words were deliberately emphasized. “But I don’t think he’s innocent.”

She heard the subtext which he would never speak: And I’m rarely wrong about these things, so you should trust me. She broke his gaze and looked off to the side, hesitating.

Finally, she looked back at him. “Okay, Mulder. I still say there’s no way you’re going to get a warrant. Pull him in for questioning if you can find him, and get a court order to turn over his journals so that this evidence is admissible and we’ll go from there. Is that acceptable?”

“That’s fine,” he answered, relaxing a bit. “You’ll stay here and keep working with Ben and Isabelle to figure out what he’s doing?”

She rubbed her temples with thumb and forefinger, feeling the fingers of a headache starting to squeeze her skull. “Yeah. Okay.”

He started to turn away, apparently satisfied, but then stopped, turned back to her. “I don’t mind you arguing,” he repeated. “It was just the tone.”

She didn’t feel like defending herself. If he wanted the last word, fine. So she nodded, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, just acknowledging him.

He reached out awkwardly with his left hand, hesitated a moment before closing it around her upper arm, which he squeezed briefly. Without another word, he turned and started back toward the laboratory.

Expecting her to follow. Knowing she’d follow. For a reason far larger than their angry exchange, a certain quiet rage lodged in her breast. Fox Mulder, profiler extraordinaire, manipulator extraordinaire, had won again. And she was sure he’d won unfairly, though she wasn’t quite sure what rule he’d broken.

Well, someday he’ll walk away like that and I won’t be following, she thought with an immature satisfaction for which she was immediately ashamed. The alternate (and perhaps more true) interpretation of her secret thought did not occur to her until she entered the lab.

She dismissed it quickly. This was neither the time nor place.

Never and nowhere were the time and place.

Mulder was already explaining their conclusions to Anna, who was nodding in agreement, satisfied with the compromise and probably relieved that she wouldn’t have to go to a judge alleging that Ledbetter killed using “magic” based on the testimony of a single man who had witnessed nothing. The two of them quickly departed to obtain the court order, after Ben promised to drive Scully back to their hotel later that night.

—————————————————

11:33 p.m.

He answered the phone on the second ring. “Scully?”

“That’s how I answer my phone,” she told him. It was a poor joke, and he didn’t respond. So she continued. “We’ve identified several of the chemical sources, Mulder.”

“Shoot.”

“Well, one is from Atropa belladonna, commonly called nightshade.”

“Isn’t nightshade deadly?”

“Not all nightshade, but this one, yes.”

Mulder nodded thoughtfully.

“Don’t get too excited yet. Another is isolated from the root of Marrubium vulgare, or horehound, which has no known toxicity. It looks like he is reacting them together, though we’re still not sure about the products or the intent.”

“He’s a modern potion-maker, Scully. No black cauldron, but–”

“Double, double, toil and trouble?” she sighed.

“By the pricking of my thumbs….” Mulder answered wryly, letting the remainder of the poem dangle between them. He paused a second, then: “Well, unfortunately our investigations weren’t quite so fruitful. Ledbetter wasn’t home, and no judge would see us at this hour without us being able to demonstrate that we needed the order immediately. We’ll have to go in the morning.”

“What about the twenty-four hours?” Scully prompted. “That should be urgent enough.”

“The justice office did not find my reasoning ‘compelling,’” Mulder answered shortly. “They’re willing to issue a search warrant at 8 a.m., though.”

“Oh,” was all Scully could think of to say. There was an awkward pause. “Well. I guess we’ll go in the morning.”

“Yeah.”

Scully glanced behind her. “I’m gonna stay here a little while longer, if you don’t need me for anything.”

“I don’t know if it’s necessary. We’ll have the court order tomorrow, so we can have our labs review the journals as well. I think we’ve got enough from your end, if you want to get some sleep.”

“It’s okay,” she told him, shifting awkwardly. “Just a little longer.”

“Okay. I’ll see you in the morning, then.” The line disconnected and Scully punched the ‘end’ button on her phone, set it down on the blue sofa cushion beside her. Behind her, Ben entered carrying two half-filled wine glasses.

“So, Dana,” he said. “I’m really glad we have some time to catch up.”

INTERLUDE

*****************************************************************

2. CONTAINMENT

*

Containment should be the ongoing objective of every official involved in a hostage situation. Above all else, the negotiators and hostages _must_ be made safer at every opportunity. Agents are trained to remove them from danger and to find alternative targets for the emotions of their captors whenever possible. These targets may include inanimate objects, ideals or systems the responsibility for which cannot be attributed to any person, or even people from the terrorist’s past, such as a distant family member. Every opportunity for release of _any_ hostage without concurrent risk of the life of an Agent must be exploited. Contrary to popular belief, Agents are not called upon to risk their lives unnecessarily for those of the hostages; heroic antics are not encouraged. Instead, stealth tactics by properly armored Agents are to be employed, with direct conflict avoided at all costs.

*

The drink was warm and sour, and it licked at his esophagus with tongues of welcome fire. He made a face before he could stop himself, and his companion laughed softly.

“Not much of a drinker, are you?”

Her voice was sticky-sweet, dripping like honey, and Mulder was hungry.

He shook his head. “Not much,” he agreed.

He raised his cup in a parody of a toast–to what, those who watched could only guess. Before the cup reached his lips, she blocked its journey with a hand on his arm.

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” she suggested gently.

“Why not? Nowhere to drive.”

This was correct. His room was a few stories above them. His room. The one with a bed. Not like his home. Hotel rooms were one of just two rooms, really, either the one with a door adjoining Scully’s room or the one without such a door. He suspected at times that everywhere he went, a quantum doorway let him sleep in one of the two, suspended somewhere independent of space-time.

“You’ve had a couple yourself,” he noted.

“Yes,” his companion answered soberly. The silence that followed was warm and hazy, foggy with an unspoken but shared understanding.

“I’m sorry we’re having such a rough time with the case,” she offered.

He received her gift gracefully. It really was a lovely present. “There’ll be time in the morning. I’ve had things go worse, and still work out in the end.”

He wasn’t planning. He wasn’t plotting. And they were not drunk, neither of them, he knew that.

He was just doing what he had to do. It didn’t really make much sense to him, but really, it made all the sense in the world–not much.

*

Deja vu is a stubborn offender, continuing to tickle even when its victim cries stop! Sitting on the couch across from her companion, sipping from a glass of red wine, Scully had been screaming stop! in between the gales of cheerful laughter for almost an hour now. Luckily, he already knew the prom story–he’d heard it years ago.

The words were superfluous; the reacquaintance a choreographed pas de deux in which each knew the final position.

Long past were the questions about who was seeing who, about his divorce. When he’d asked “Is there anyone in your life now, Dana?” she’d only hesitated a second before saying “No,” and she soothed the pangs of guilt by telling herself it wasn’t what he meant. She’d answered what he meant to ask truthfully.

“It took me years to get over you, you know,” he’d told her, and he seemed to see she didn’t want that, so he quickly added: “But my divorce has made me unfortunately cynical. I don’t look for the same things anymore. Maybe that’s not unfortunate.”

Dana didn’t know whether it was or not.

She was relieved when he stood, took her empty glass from her hand and vanished into the recesses of his home which she had not seen. She slumped forward, elbows on knees, exhaled deeply. Would the curtain fall early? Did she want it to?

His return caught her by surprise, his hands landing on her shoulders like sandbags. She stiffened, and felt his hesitation, but then his hands clenched tightly onto her shoulders and began kneading them as if she were made of dough, unrisen.

“Hey,” he said, mistaking her reaction for suspicion. “It just looks like you could use it.”

So she closed her eyes and let him circle around to perch on the sofa arm behind her, fingers pressing into her back and neck in patterns which (thankfully) her partner never followed.

With a sudden resolve, she leaned back, angling her head into his shoulder, and his mouth closed over hers without question.

It had to be done, she told herself. It wasn’t quite rational, but it seemed to her perfectly sensible. Now.

*

It was scathingly surreal. When he closed his eyes, the images he saw were bizarre, sad and erotic all at once. When he opened them, the visions were reduced to the purely primitive. So he kept his eyes open, the better to avoid contemplation of the aesthetics of his dark imagination.

Besides, the primitive was appealingly aesthetic. Beads of sweat on the sweet curve that connected hip to breast stood out in bas relief on sculpted honey skin. The narrow furrows of flesh which graced the landscape of an inner thigh invited his tiny nipping kisses like fertile soil begs the farmer for seed, steering him inevitably toward the musky flower at their apex. The concentric circles of a breast, darkest at their center, drew him in like an explosion in reverse, contracting into the swelling peak of a nipple.

If he kept his eyes open, he couldn’t hear the insistently niggling voice behind his ear which told him what a terrible idea this was.

If Scully came by when she returned, he’d have to answer the door. She’d know. She’d tell him exactly how unprofessional and irresponsible this was.

She’d be right.

She’d give words to her anger, but not to her hurt, which he would see nonetheless. He was uncertain what right she’d have to be hurt, but that hardly mattered. He didn’t want to hurt her.

It was a risk, but the odds for the alternative strategy–sending Anna home–were worse.

She drew him inside her, and even through the latex he could feel the warm moisture, strong muscles clasping him solidly along his length. His eyes slipped closed for an accidental second, and even as he groaned with animal appreciation, he saw a twisted, naked form, a vestige of a video, writhing before him. Beyond that body lay a misty darkness in which a dark figure stood watching. Abruptly a glaring white light from overhead illuminated the backdrop, but the figure was still dark, a shadow, until it turned to face him. Then he could see its eyes–familiar blue, her eyes–shining with fear.

All this he saw in half a second, and he snapped his eyes open again, lost himself again in this woman, this act, this now.

He would never forgive himself for failing to protect Scully years ago. But he could try to protect her now, although he wasn’t exactly sure who he was protecting–himself or her–or from whom–her or himself.

It was an odd choice of defenses, but it was a highly effective one.

*

Her eyes were closed and the room was dark. The scent of him had changed little over the years, and a part of her could almost believe she was thirteen years younger, no longer a child but not quite an adult, a first-time lover heady and nervous with uncertain expectations. With her eyes closed, she could imagine them into a Baltimore studio apartment, when the largest real concerns were the diff e-q exam next week even though they could pretend that 2000 nuclear warheads pointed at the Soviets were actually the largest concerns in their lives.

Those had been good, easy days, full of the fresh challenge of coursework and the comfortable arrogance of a definable, crystal-clear ideology. Ben had made love to her in the midst of those days; she’d finally laid down her schoolgirlish crucifix and stepped past it in a bold statement of independence. She, Dana Katherine Scully, had controlled her own destiny.

As she did tonight.

With her eyes closed, the only clue that betrayed the time for what it was lay, ironically, in the considerably better sex. Like any skill, sex improves with practice, and despite her not-quite-willing chastity of late, she discovered that it really is like riding a proverbial bicycle.

“Dana….” he murmured as her small fingers glided teasingly along his shaft. She was Dana here. It helped the illusion.

The woman Ben was speaking to was not dying of cancer, had not lost three months of her life or had a sister shot fatally in her home. This woman was not trapped between the threatening spectres of her partner’s need for her and, worse, her need for her partner.

At the first touch of his tongue on the folds of her sex she shivered with exquisite pleasure. When he parted her with his fingers, nipped with precision at her clitoris, she gasped, exhaling in slow shuddering breaths.

God.

She opened her eyes, just for a moment, and was violently jerked back to the present by the vision of her own dimly-lit, oh-so-thin naked body, interrupted by Ben’s dark head between her thighs. For a moment, she remembered she was not twenty, not in Baltimore, not healthy. That one she loved dearly would in all likelihood ask where she had been and she would have to lie to him.

The arousal drained swiftly out of her.

But since the only currently apparent alternative to having to lie to him was to strangle him, it was a budgeted loss.

She closed her eyes again and let herself be coaxed back to Baltimore, where the promise of golden waves of fantastic, mind-numbing heat was whispered insistently.

She was an excellent capacitor, but lately the current was running too high. If she didn’t touch something, connect with something, discharge, the build-up might destroy her. Better this way than via the most likely contact; the closed circuit she and her partner shared couldn’t sustain this high a voltage potential.

Let it go.

Defuse the crisis…as much as you can.

*****************************************************************

CHAPTER FIVE

—————————————————

1:13 a.m.

Dr. Carol Thrush, Anticorps’ premiere microbiologist, hunched low in her car when the man came out of the building. She’d worn a grey windbreaker that, when hooded, covered most of her features, and she prayed he wouldn’t see her.

What would he do if he did?

Once, she would not have feared him, but now, she was completely uncertain. He had said she was not his enemy, but she wasn’t sure if that mattered now. If he knew she was following him, he might change his mind.

She peered over the dashboard until she saw his shadow enter a car. She waited until his engine had roared to life and the car had pulled out of the parking lot before starting her own car.

This late in the city, it was easy to follow him, but hard to make it look unintentional. He seemed quite directed, though, and she prayed he was too focused on where he was going to notice her.

I need to talk to him, she thought, not for the first time. Tell him I agree with him but this just isn’t right.

She followed him up the fourth street ramp onto 80. Why was he getting on the bridge? Had he noticed her? Was he trying to lose her?

The bridge had more traffic on it–this city slept more deeply than New York, but only barely. They skimmed across the water on the lower deck, over Treasure Island without a second thought (she’d never stopped there, how odd, after all these years), and then they were on the long span, heading into Oakland.

He took the 880 turnoff, heading south, and Carol followed. They sped through the brightly-lit city on the raised highway, and she tried to keep a car or two between them, always nervous that he’d exit.

When he did, though, she had plenty of warning. It was easy to follow him up the street, though harder now to keep her presence secret. When he stopped, she had to drive on by to keep him from getting suspicious, but she knew why he’d stopped there already, knew that she’d been wasting her time.

Of course. The cemetery.

She sighed.

Well, she couldn’t be sure. But she should make the call anyway.

Carol pulled over at a darkened gas station and headed for the payphone, put in a quarter and dialed.

A sleepy man’s voice answered. “Hello?”

She made a quick decision and spoke in a low, harsh voice so as not to be recognized. “You’re in danger,” she said curtly. “Be careful.”

“What?” The voice was fully awake now.

She hung up. Bit her lip and looked at the ground, then at the sky.

She’d only wanted to do science. How had this become her life?

—————————————————

South San Francisco

1:32 a.m.

Anna sighed contentedly, then rolled over to prop her head up on one hand, her breasts settling against Mulder’s naked side. The sheets lay loosely over their hips in some parody of modesty even though she’d turned the lights off some time ago.

His eyes were closed, his breathing even, but she could tell by the faint twitching of his eyelids that he was only feigning sleep.

Hoping she’d leave, probably. She smiled to herself. Typical.

But she wasn’t any twenty-year-old romantic. She wasn’t going to pressure him or cajole him or try to snuggle up against him. This night had been about sex, pure and simple, and she had no objection to that. Hell, she’d more or less initiated it.

She’d suspected he was a good lover, and she hadn’t been disappointed, but she hadn’t expected the ferocity, the intensity, with which he went about his task. He’d kissed her with the desperation of a drowning man, and even as it inflamed her at the time, she was now beginning to feel unnerved.

He was a good guy, of that she was certain. But something dark and hungry was chasing him, and when it caught up with him, she was equally certain that she didn’t want to be swallowed up with him.

So it was with the intention of saying goodbye that she leaned over, began to kiss him softly. No hard feelings.

But when her lips touched his, he jerked away involuntarily, turning his head. He still didn’t open his eyes, but after a moment, he spoke. Apologetic. “Anna. This…wasn’t a good idea. I–”

Anna silenced him with a hand pressed flat against his sternum. “You love her, don’t you,” she stated, not unkindly.

Mulder’s eyes snapped open. “What do you mean by that?” he asked, turning his head to meet her eyes, so near his own.

She tried to let her expression convey only a gentle teasing. “What part was unclear?”

He frowned and stretched, putting one arm behind his head. “We’re not–we’ve never been lovers, if that’s what you mean.”

“I can see that,” Anna answered, gesturing vaguely at their intertwined bodies. “I’m pretty good with people, and though I can see you both definitely have…issues, I don’t think you’re a jerk.”

“Sleeping with you would make me a jerk only if Scully and I were lovers?” Mulder countered.

“You’re evading my original point,” Anna noted slyly, tapping her fingers against his chest. “That you love her.”

“I’m not afraid to admit that,” he answered, immediately defensive.

Anna sighed softly, but it was a sigh of sympathy, not regret, and he reached up to run his fingers through his hair as if exasperated. Once again, Anna thought about simply leaving, but there was something endearing about his gesture, something that compelled her to gently ask: “Then why are you here with me?”

She could see his features change as he decided to put on an act, willfully misunderstanding. He turned to cup her cheek in his palm in a gesture which was almost sincere. “Hey. Look,” he murmured. “I’m really sorry if I misled you. This has been a very good–”

But she cut him short with a grin. “Cut the crap, Mulder, I know why I’m here and I got what I wanted. I’m just trying to help you figure out what you want. I like you. I like Dana, too. I’d like to help you.”

She realized it was true as she said it, and so settled into the bed, resolving to stick around for the long haul.

Mulder dropped his hand and turned away again. “You’re in an odd position to be playing matchmaker, Anna.”

She laughed lightly. For a psychologist famous for getting inside the heads of serial killers, this man was amazingly dense about ordinary emotions. “I’m not trying to tell you anything chincy like, ‘if you’re lookin’ for love, it’s right in front of you.’” She enunciated those words with a sarcastic, lilting shoulder-swagger. “You’re both adults, and you’ve obviously made decisions about the nature of your relationship. I wouldn’t presume to question them. But still, you came to me for a reason, and somehow it seems more like you’re running from something than looking for a quick–albeit really good–fuck.”

The words might have been harsh but there was no sting in her voice. Mulder wasn’t quite sure what to say. Very rarely did he find himself out-maneuvered. Of course, he rarely had to maneuver in such personal territory as this. It was dangerous, but somehow compelling, attractive.

So he found himself telling her the truth.

“It’s just…so hard to watch her stumble,” he heard himself whisper harshly. “She tries to hide it but I see her every day, I know. And when I put out a hand to help her, she slaps me away. I know how much she values her pride, her independence. But I have made myself”–he hesitated–”so vulnerable to her….” He trailed off, unwilling to continue.

“Vulnerability is a gift,” Anna said softly. Her hand had finally stopped moving on his chest; it lay still and flat there now. “She accepts it from you because it lets her be strong for you, but she won’t give you the same satisfaction, right?”

“I don’t like how you phrased that, but yes,” Mulder answered thoughtfully. “It wasn’t always this way. Though I guess it almost always was. We came…so close…to discussing it, just a few weeks ago. We were on a case and she went so far as to withhold evidence from me to preserve her position of strength. No, that’s not fair, I’m overstating it. It wasn’t really evidence, just sort of…. Anyway, I confronted her but I couldn’t take it to its logical end. She ran away from me and I didn’t have the heart to follow her.

“But you know what got me the most about that?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “When I came into work the next day I found out she’d been talking with the Bureau shrink. Which is…fine, I guess…at least she’s talking to _someone,_ but why a stranger and not me?”

He sought Anna’s eyes briefly. “Don’t answer that,” he warned. “I know the answer.”

She didn’t. Instead, she only raised her eyebrows and ducked her head toward him. “Who are you talking to, Agent Mulder?” she reminded him.

He snorted, looked away. “Point taken.” He was silent for a long moment. “Look, I’m sorry to have drawn you into this. It’s not fair to you.”

“It’s okay,” she answered honestly. “I’m using you too. No one ever does anything truly unselfish.”

He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “I wouldn’t have done this, not before. It’s just never been quite this bad because the consequences have never been quite so concrete.”

Her eyes invited him to elaborate, but he pretended not to notice.

“I wasn’t quite telling the truth before,” he confessed. “I wasn’t being fair to her. I know that she needs her strength–hell, I need her strength–and I don’t want to break her. I say that only because it is a believable excuse for my actions.”

“What actions?”

Mulder considered how his creativity had lately improved to provide him with more excuses (which she surely saw through) to be near her. How strained once-easy dialogues had become, and how simply once-guarded topics could be broached. It would be comforting and mostly welcome, this closeness, were it not for the shadow which loomed over the motives. So much easier to say he wanted her to share her pain than attempt to coalesce his myriad irrational emotions into rational communication.

But though he would willingly (no, gladly) bear any part of her burden, he didn’t actually need her to share it.

“What actions?” Anna repeated softly, her hand splayed firmly in the center of his chest.

He shook his head. “I’d rather not go into that.”

She paused, studying his face. Her scrutiny unnerved him, and he turned suddenly away from her, onto his side. She let him go. After a long moment, she spoke. “Listen, I know it’s none of my business, and if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. But it really seems to me like you’ve got something on your mind and saying it might do you some good.”

“I have a degree in psychology, you know,” he muttered into the pillow.

“So what do you think is motivating your actions? As a psychologist?”

He sighed. He’d asked himself that question a dozen times, and each time avoided the answer. But he spoke it now, quietly. “Anger. Guilt. Resentment.” Desperation.

“Why?”

He hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “I’m angry that she may…leave. I feel guilty because the price of her loyalty to me and the X-Files is very high, higher even than my price. And I resent her for being able to make me feel these things.”

It felt like betrayal, speaking such uncharitable words. But it was a broken truth he’d needed to confront, to examine, if he wanted to repair it.

“Leave?” Anna was saying. “Has she said something to you like that? From the day I spent with her, and she told me some about the X-Files, I believed she was very committed to the work. I’m surprised.”

Mulder closed his eyes at the word ‘committed.’ There was nothing he could say to her.

Perhaps sixty seconds passed before he felt Anna shift slightly, heard the soft indrawn breath as if she was about to speak, then reconsidered.

Then spoke anyway.

“Mulder? Was the nosebleed really…just a nosebleed?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, furious with himself for having allowed her to guess, for not being able to lie quickly enough.

“I know,” she continued after a moment. “It’s none of my business. Well.” Another long pause. He could tell she hadn’t been expecting this when she’d so generously offered an ear, and he remembered there were good reasons for not talking to others.

She continued after a slight pause, obviously disconcerted. “I think it’s time for me to go. Just…um…this was really nice, but I don’t think we ought to do it again.”

Mulder exhaled deeply. “I think you’re right on both counts,” he said softly, relieved.

He heard the sheets rustle and deliberately did not turn to look–though he’d seen every inch of her naked flesh only an hour before it seemed somehow indecent now. He listened to her dress, lying defeated and wishing her gone.

He heard her footsteps, shoe-clad and heading for the door. “Anna?” he called, suddenly deciding to at least resolve one source of guilt.

She stopped and turned; he sat up to look at her. Her hair was disheveled, her clothes wrinkled and untucked, and the afterglow of sex still hovered about her cheeks. She was rumpled and beautiful, and despite himself he felt a stirring in his groin. But he pushed that aside, said simply, “I do appreciate it. You get the next interrogation, ok?”

She snorted, smirked. “You’re welcome.”

And then she slipped out.

Mulder fell back in bed with a thoughtful sigh.

Scully.

He should talk to her. Explain.

Thus resolved, and hoping she hadn’t seen Anna leave, he tossed back the covers and threw on sweatpants and a T-shirt, pocketed his key and crossed the hallway.

Of course, Scully wasn’t there.

—————————————————

3:13 a.m.

She was lingering on the verge of sleep in a completely unfamiliar bed, beside a man who was only slightly more well-known.

She didn’t think he was asleep either. But neither would admit that, because then they might have to talk. He might have to admit to her that he was lonely, that his wife had left him because his work had taken too much of his time, and that in fact, he didn’t really regret that it did. She might have had to admit to him….what?

It didn’t matter. There would be no admissions of anything. Soon, he’d drive her back to the hotel and neither would speak of it, because they both knew there were no words worth speaking.

Which, quite honestly, was fine with Dana Scully.

“Dana?”

His voice startled her, and she looked over at him quickly, but his eyes were closed.

“Yeah, Ben?” she sighed.

“If you’re going to be in town much longer, I don’t suppose you’d have time to have dinner sometime?”

She smiled despite herself. Maybe she’d misjudged his motives. “I’d like to, Ben, but the truth is, there probably won’t be much time. This case….”

There was an answering smile in his voice. “Sure, I understand. You seem as married to your work as I am. I’m glad you’ve found something that makes you happy. I never saw you as a doctor anyway.”

She snorted softly. “I always knew you’d end up in science, though. How was your path always so clear?”

“It’s not what I expected,” he answered softly. “I said I was married to my work, but…it’s not exactly a blissful marriage.”

Scully nodded into her pillow, forgetting that he couldn’t see her.

He rolled over to loop an arm around her stomach. “This was nice,” he said, close to her ear. “We should do it again sometime.”

She smiled, a melancholy smile. “Yeah. Maybe next time I’m in the neighborhood.”

For a moment, she was able to forget how unlikely it was that she’d be back.

—————————————————

3:42 a.m.

“I know who the fuck you are,” Reba Gregor snapped. “Do you know who the fuck I am? I am the president of a company. A company who has done you and your stupid-fucking black ops commandos a big favor.”

Her husband lowered his head into his hands. She was crazy. The woman was going to get them both thrown in jail. Or killed.

“No, you listen to me, you stupid sonofabitch!” She stood up, carrying the phone around the bedroom. “This is out of hand. You know what’s happening, and I swear to God if you’re behind it I’ll come after you, hunt you down, and cut your balls off, stuff them in your mouth. But you’d know more about that than I would, wouldn’t you? You’ve probably done it to people. Viet Nam? Or just organized crime?”

Her husband cringed. He’d long ago given up trying to talk her down.

“You’ve ruined my company! People are dying, do you get that?”

Heavy pause.

“Well, I don’t know whose fault it would be. Certainly, it’s none of my people. And you’re the only assholes who–”

Silence.

Mr. Gregor curled his fingers into a fist, praying that a deal was being made.

“No, I want action! Protection! Not these fucking feds. They couldn’t find their way out of a wet paper bag, especially with you breathing down the necks of everyone they talk to who knows anything. They’ll never guess the truth.”

Another long pause.

“Is that a threat?”

Silence.

“Yes. Yes, I know. I don’t think we have anything more to say to each other….Fine.”

She slammed the phone down and he heard her exasperated, frightened release of breath behind him.

Then her footsteps, as she approached him, put her arms around him from behind.

She kissed his hair. “We’re gonna be fine, honey. I don’t want you to worry. We’re gonna work this out.”

He leaned back into her, praying she was right.

—————————————————

INTERLUDE

*****************************************************************

3. CONCILIATION

*

Any attempt at negotiations must be founded on trust. Each party must be consider the other’s goals, that a satisfactory compromise may be achieved. This compromise is ultimately what will permit resolution of the situation. Participants should not expect miracles; indeed, a guarded agreement is a significant victory.

*

4:58 a.m.

The soft snick of her keycard sliding through the handle of her door should not have been loud enough for him to hear, even through the paper-thin hotel walls. Later, she would wonder whether he had been peering through the tiny telescope, waiting.

Because the next sound was that of his door yanked violently open. She turned, mouth open in surprise, to find her partner staring at her. He was fully dressed, Armani grey crisp on his shoulders.

“Where the hell have you been?” His voice was harsh and hissing.

Outside, a police siren began to wail plaintively.

Scully met his eyes with an emotionless stare. “Is something wrong? I had my phone, why didn’t you call me?”

Mulder looked away. “There’s nothing wrong,” he admitted, then hastily amended: “With the case.”

Good intentions are all very well, but you know what they say about the road to hell.

She lifted her chin. “Then I’m going to get an hour’s sleep.”

His voice was thin but rapier-strong. “We need to talk.”

That, at least, was the truth. Outside, the police siren faded away.

She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “So talk.”

“In here,” he said firmly, opening his door wide.

Scully locked his eyes and a brief, silent war ensued. Have you considered my needs, for sleep, respect, privacy?

His answer seemed to be that he had, yet judged this more important. It had always been unspoken between them that this prerogative was afforded them both.

So she brushed past him into his room, her footfalls scuffing against the rough carpet. He closed the door and she faced him, arms crossed, coat closed. Offering nothing. The room felt hot and sticky, also oddly rich and tangled, like a swamp.

He seemed uncertain what to say. “Where were you?” he repeated finally.

She blinked. “If you were concerned, why didn’t you just call?” she countered.

“I didn’t want to interrupt anything,” he answered snidely.

Her expression did not change but he felt as if a dense thicket had suddenly sprung up between them and absently regretted his choice of words.

She didn’t bother with trying to lie. “Then what’s the problem, Mulder?”

He wished she’d sit down. He wished the cool mask which made her such an excellent investigator would crack. He wished the ceiling would retract and the walls would fold down into the floor to reveal a sunlit paradise where pain held no power.

South San Francisco didn’t quite cut it.

Hours earlier, he had intended to tell her the irrational truth. But the words which tumbled from his mouth were anything but.

“I’ve never had reason to question your professional behavior, Scully. But this crosses the line. How can you expect to be effective in the day when you’ve stayed out all night? And personal involvement with someone who we need for a case?”

Oh, that was weak. Would she let him slide by?

No. “Stayed up all night like the countless times I have with you?”

She did not add “after your nightmares:” she was not that cruel and left her intended meaning–personal or professional–unspoken. But he was nonetheless reminded of the dark nights of which they never spoke, which had found him curled in her arms like a child.

But her next reply was not so kind, and the professional coolness of her voice suddenly heated a few degrees. “And personal involvement, Mulder? This from _you?_ Particularly after you spent the night with our local authority contact?”

His jaw dropped involuntarily, and he cocked his head. How had she known? Was the scent of sex was not so certain in the room?

At his look, she rolled her eyes disdainfully, as if loathe to explain. The mask finally cracked, and she looked away with what might have been embarrassment, muttered: “There’re condom wrappers in your wastebasket. I’m assuming it wouldn’t have been anyone else.”

Shit. He looked down and to his right–she’d passed it on the way in without visible reaction.

She continued, still not meeting his eyes. “I wouldn’t have said anything, but as long as you….” Her voice trailed off.

He ran one hand over his face, hearing the rough scratch of day-old growth. “It’s not what you think,” he said softly.

“It’s none of my business,” she answered tonelessly.

He looked askance. “But it is, in a way.”

“Yes,” she agreed, her voice a hushed whisper.

He felt as though there was a murky fog between them and though they stood in the sucking grasp of the same mire, and that they could escape if only they could reach one another.

There was really nothing he could say now.

Her voice came to him as if from a great distance, but it was only her quiet tone. “We do need to talk, Mulder. I’m not really sure what you want me to say, though. If it makes any difference, I didn’t exactly talk to Ben, either.”

“That’s not–” he began, but stopped. The words were buried in mud.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” she said. “Let’s get through this case, focus on the job now. We’ll take some time when we get home, talk about this.”

He swallowed, accepting. “Okay, Scully.”

“I’m going to go get a little rest, then,” she said, and for a moment Mulder thought he heard a hint of sadness in her otherwise flat voice.

She passed him without looking at him, and he wanted to touch her somehow as she did so, but he couldn’t quite seem to move.

*****************************************************************

CHAPTER SIX

—————————————————

April 22, 1997

6:53 a.m.

Anna strode purposefully down the carpeted hallway, her ivory trenchcoat swinging, mantilla envelope tucked under one arm. She hesitated briefly at Mulder’s door, but in an abrupt decision crossed the hall and went first to Scully’s door. Knocked.

The door was opened almost immediately, revealing Dana Scully, neatly dressed in a navy suit though Anna had called only fifteen minutes earlier. Though her manner instantly struck Anna as professional and efficient, the woman was obviously in the process of disguising the bags under her eyes. She held a powder case in one hand.

Anna started to apologize, but Scully spoke first. “I’ll be ready in two minutes,” she said, her voice even but not cold, as Anna had secretly feared it would be. Would he have told her?

“Okay,” Anna answered. “I’ll get your partner.” A deliberate choice of words, just in case.

Scully nodded shortly and stepped back inside while Anna went to Mulder’s door.

He opened it before she got there. He already had his coat on. “Heard you talking,” he said in answer to her look of surprise. He held out his hand. “Can I see?”

She handed him the envelope wordlessly, and he worked the papers out of it, glanced over them quickly. Warrant to search the residence of Neil Ledbetter, 546 Casio Way, Apt. 4B. Anna had obtained it less than thirty minutes earlier. He nodded his satisfaction. “Good work.”

She shrugged. “It’s not an arrest warrant.”

“Yeah, but there was no way we were going to get that. Don’t worry. We’ll take him into custody for questioning anyway.”

“You think he’ll talk?”

“I think he’ll trip up. He didn’t strike me as a very sly or clever guy, despite the creepy show he puts on.”

Anna nodded her agreement as Mulder returned the papers to the envelope and handed it back to her. “I couldn’t get the chief to assign me back-up for this,” she told him. “He doesn’t buy it. We’re going to have to do the search on our own.”

“Your chief has problems with arrogance,” Mulder observed, and Anna gave a tight smile.

They were interrupted by the sound of a door, and Agent Scully quickly joined them. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

—————————————————

Ledbetter Residence

South San Francisco

7:12 a.m.

Mulder knocked, the two women standing a foot or so behind him to either side. There was no answer.

“Mr. Ledbetter?” he called. “This is the FBI. We have a warrant. Open your door immediately please.”

No response.

Mulder shrugged and glanced at his companions, who each drew their weapons and nodded. He produced a lockpick gun from his pocket. A few seconds later they were all inside the small apartment.

It appeared essentially as Anna and Mulder had left it two days earlier. Black curtains were drawn, and dusty books and statuettes were scattered among the pizza and Chinese take-out boxes. Scully wrinkled her nose disdainfully, then, with a glance at Mulder, started down the hallway to the bedroom. She could hear Mulder less than a pace behind her, knew his gun was ready.

The bedroom door was open, though, and after a quick check from the doorjamb, Scully stepped calmly inside.

The sheets were rumpled, and clothes lay in piles all over the floor. The closet door was wide-open, and piled high with cardboard boxes, as if the man hadn’t yet bothered to unpack. There was little room for someone to hide, but Scully moved forward and checked under the bed anyway.

“He wouldn’t fit, Scully,” Mulder told her. “Trust me.”

She snorted and straightened as Anna entered the room.

“I searched the bathroom,” Vasquez announced. “He’s not here.”

Scully frowned. “Where would he be this early in the morning?”

No one answered her.

“I’ll start in the living room,” Mulder announced.

“Guess I’ll stay here,” Scully sighed, looking without relish at the disastrous bedroom.

Anna followed Mulder back into the main room. He stopped by the bookshelves, and so she crossed to the opposite corner, hearing the snap of latex as he pulled on a pair of gloves.

After forty-five minutes, they had found a small, slightly withered herbal garden, a mortar and pestle containing an unidentifiable brown grist, a small pie tin blackened by fire and still sporting grey ashes, and, in the refrigerator, two thermoses of a cloying, thick, whitish liquid. The final (and perhaps most hopeful) pieces of evidence were a few photographs Mulder had found tucked, oddly enough, into a cookbook. They showed several robe-clad figures, Ledbetter among them, standing in a semi-circle around a nighttime fire. The men appeared to be holding beer bottles and just talking in one picture, though in another the bottles were gone and all stood, arms raised in eerie ritual. The location was difficult to discern, but it was definitely outdoors. No journals–personal or scientific–had been found, and there was no computer. They piled these items onto the kitchen table and stood around them, looking at one another.

“Well, what now?” Vasquez said finally. “None of this means much of anything.”

“What about the pictures?” Mulder asked her. “Do you have any idea where they could have been taken?”

Anna leaned down and studied them again. “Honestly, I don’t. They used a flash at night, so basically everything outside of the flash range is obscured. There’s this weird whitish glow off to the left, but I can’t tell what it is. This–here–is the edge of a eucalyptus tree, so they’re probably somewhere not far from the coast. But ‘not far’ just means, ‘not in the Central Valley.’ Eucalyptus are everywhere around here.”

Mulder pursed his lips.

“It looks like grown men playing dress-up,” Scully said skeptically. “Look, they’re standing around drinking beers and taking pictures of each other. Not very sinister.”

“Well, it _does_ tell us he’s practicing something ritualistic with others,” Mulder said with a shrug. “And this other stuff…” He gestured at the herbs and powders.

“None of it means anything,” said Scully.

“We don’t know that,” Mulder said carefully. “We need to get it analyzed and see if any of it corresponds to the journals from Ledbetter’s lab.”

“It’s not really all that suspicious,” Anna said doubtfully. “I was hoping for something more along the lines of a book open to a page on melting people.”

Scully snorted. “She’s right, Mulder. This is a very long shot, even by your standards.”

“There’s got to be something here,” Mulder insisted.

“Okay, so we’ll send it back to the D.C. labs, get it analyzed. But it’s not going to reflect well on our report when this stuff turns out to be basil and burnt incense and Carnation Instant Breakfast.”

Mulder ignored the jibe, shaking his head. “If we send it back to D.C. it won’t get to the labs ’til tomorrow. There will be another murder tonight if we don’t arrest this guy. Tomorrow’s too late.” He glanced at Scully, appraising her mood.

She took a step back, shook her head and raised her hands in a gesture of protest. “Oh, no. Don’t even think about it.”

“What?” asked Anna.

“Is there anyplace that could do it around here?” Mulder asked his partner.

“There are chromatographers, I’m sure, but no labs with forensic expertise,” she admitted reluctantly. “But if it has to get there today, we can go put it on a plane right now, have Danny pick it up, make a few calls to get it done fast.”

“Danny’s on vacation,” Mulder replied. “No one would pick it up or deliver it until tomorrow. And besides, I don’t trust the lab to treat this with the seriousness it deserves, not if it’s coming through on our E07.”

Anna was frowning in confusion but she did not interrupt.

“I’ll write them a note. They listen to me.”

Mulder blinked. “Pendrell listened to you,” he reminded her gently. “Now….”

Scully pursed her lips, her brow furrowed. After a brief hesitation, she said: “Mulder, your entire theory that any of this ‘evidence’ is meaningful and that someone else will die tonight is built on a very fragile foundation. Do you honestly think that playing that hunch is worth losing me on the investigation for a few days?”

“What?” Anna said again.

Mulder stepped closer to Scully, locking her eyes. “I’m not losing you on the investigation,” he said carefully, deliberately. “We’ll be in touch by phone. I have no reason for suggesting this other than that I don’t trust anyone else to handle this correctly.”

Scully stared back at him, trying to discern whether he was in any way trying to coddle her.

Smelling the tension like a wreath of smoke around them all and more than a little concerned that it was partly her fault, Anna decided it was time to end this. “You want Agent Scully to take the materials to D.C. personally,” she said.

They both looked startled, as if they’d forgotten she was in the room. There was a long, awkward pause, finally interrupted by Scully.

“Fine,” she said. There was no detectable emotion in her voice. She produced several evidence bags from her pocket and began collecting samples of the items on the table.

Mulder retrieved his cell phone, dialed a quick number. “Domestic reservations, please,” he said after a second. “Yes, I’ll hold.”

—————————————————

1:45 p.m. PST

Neil Ledbetter wiped the sweat from his forehead, looking back longingly at his car, parked up at the top of the embankment. This stretch of field, leading down to the roaring ocean, was the only place he’d ever been able to find mullein, and he’d never succeeded at culturing it at home.

But he wasn’t having much luck today. Forty minutes walking up and down, stooping in this itchy grass, and he’d only found two plants.

He was hot, tired and frustrated.

He wondered briefly if it was really worth the effort, but that was beside the point.

There was nothing else he knew to do.

—————————————————

Quantico, Virginia

5:11 p.m. EST

Redmond glanced mournfully at his watch. Scully caught him. “I’m really sorry, Steve,” she repeated. “It really is important. We need the results as fast as is humanly possible.”

“I understand, Dana, it’s just that Candy and I had plans tonight. Have a sitter and everything.”

The man was sitting on a stool in front of the large gas chromatographer, a monstrosity of tightly coiled pipes and plastic tubing that culminated in a small graphic readout that looked more like that of a lie detector than an expensive piece of analytical equipment.

“I’ll make it up to you,” she said earnestly, thinking of Mulder’s season tickets to every sports team in a seventy-mile radius. She didn’t want to promise anything specific, not knowing even what teams they were. “This is really a life-or-death matter.”

Of course, she didn’t know whether that was true or false. Worse, she didn’t know which she was pulling for.

Redmond sighed. “Okay. But the overtime goes on your account.”

“I know. I appreciate it. How long do you think it’ll take?”

He eyed the samples she’d laid out critically. “Not too long, I guess. I’ll do a GC, maybe TLC for the white stuff–you say that was in a fridge? What you really need is a spectrum, but that takes longer. I’ll do NMR on whatever looks interesting off the GC.”

“That sounds fine,” Scully replied. “Thanks, Steve.”

“You gonna hang around?”

Scully made an abrupt decision about the thing that had been nagging the back of her mind ever since she stepped on the plane that morning. “No, I’m going to run a quick errand, if you don’t mind. Should be back in a couple hours. You have my cell number if you need to reach me.”

Redmond produced a long needle from a stryofoam package, began rinsing it with a plastic spray bottle. “Sure,” he sighed. He didn’t watch her leave.

—————————————————

Green Library

Stanford University

2:12 p.m. PST

Anna dropped another pile of books on the shelf above the cubicle Mulder had claimed as his own. “No one ever told me when I took this job I’d be playing research assistant again,” she remarked.

His answering smile was a mere tightening of the lips. He didn’t look up from the text he was skimming.

Anna sighed, becoming less enchanted with this case every passing moment. “I guess I’m gonna start going through _Mongolian Herbal Medicine,_” she announced.

“Fine,” Mulder answered, distracted. His finger was skipping down the page more quickly than any human could possibly read.

“Are you finding anything?” she asked, leaning on the cubicle wall.

He finally looked up at her, and his face was haggard, intense and vaguely desperate. She wondered if he’d slept at all the previous night, and resisted the urge to reach out and smooth his tousled hair. That was not her role, they had agreed.

“Not really,” he said, answering the question she’d almost forgot she asked. “Horehound and the sponge–Ircinia–don’t seem to be implicated in any herbal lore, although nightshade figures prominently in a lot. I did find one story about someone witnessing a man ‘melting,’ a reference to a fourteenth century manuscript which I couldn’t read even if I could find.”

Anna nodded. She hesitated for only a moment. Then: “Mulder, I’m afraid I just don’t have the background for this. From what you’ve told me about your past cases, and what Dana’s told me about your hunches, I’m willing to believe we’re on the right track. But I don’t think I’m helping you here.”

Mulder rocked back in his chair and sighed. “Okay,” he said. “Why don’t you go and see if you can hustle up Ledbetter now. If anyone’s seen or heard from him at work, or if he’s home yet.”

“Sounds good,” she replied, secretly relieved at the promise of something more familiar. She’d been planning to do that anyway, but it was good that he’d suggested it. “I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah.”

Before she walked too far away, he called back to her. “Anna?”

She turned, eyebrows raised.

“Be careful.”

She gave him a rueful, understanding smile, then left.

—————————————————

Georgetown Medical Center

Washington, D.C.

5:59 p.m. EST

Although the staff pathologists had gone home some time earlier, a few technicians were scattered about the lab, probably waiting on samples from surgery. One was processing a lump of tissue, and Scully watched him for a long moment, unwilling to admit to herself that she was judging the quality of his work.

He was fixing thin wafers of parafin-embedded tissue to microscope slides. After this, she knew, would come the purple DAPI stain, which would fix itself to DNA, shadowing the nuclei of the cells with a bluish cast. Cancer cells divided frequently, and hence often had four copies of their chromosomes instead of the normal two. This, combined with their propensity for chromosomal anomaly, would unmask the cancer cells for the malignant threat they were by painting them a dark, brooding purple.

The technician noticed her watching and turned. “Can I help you?” he asked.

Scully flipped out her badge officiously. “Dr. Fourier, FBI. I was sent over to consult on some samples.”

She closed her badge before he could get too close.

“Okay,” the technician said with a shrug. “What’s the name?”

“I can get it myself,” she answered. “I’ve done this before.”

Well, she told herself defensively, it’s true. She had been asked to consult for Georgetown path before, just never on her own samples.

She strode efficiently past the man to the oddly-shaped file drawer, opened it and began skimming through the names. The other technicians blithely ignored her.

When she found the file marked Scully, Dana, she removed and opened it. Inside was a plastic sleeve containing a dozen microscope slides, each with barely visible reddish streaks of tissue pressed onto them and covered with a thin piece of glass. She glanced at the accompanying paper, a form for the resident to fill out, containing notes of where each slice had been removed from. It hadn’t been filled out yet.

She was proud that her hands were steady as she placed the first slide (superficial inguinal lymph node) on the microscope, peered through the eyepiece. Turned the focus dial and watched the blurry red dissolve and reappear.

Cells. A thin, folded-over line of epithelia, representative of an accidental scraping of the node’s lining. Then thousands of white blood cells, large, pinkish, both round and amorphous. The tell-tale rough nuclei and granules of basophils, the dark red of stained eosinophils. Amoeboid macrophages.

And here and there, clusters of stuck-together cells that didn’t belong. Purplish, large, de-differentiated.

Metastasis.

Scully had a sudden vision of the cancerous cells sprouting fingers which thrust and clutched at the surrounding endothelial tissue, punching and probing until they caught a hold, maybe pulling two valiantly defending cells of the blood vessel wall apart. The angry warriors moved across the barrier and then were free, tumbling throughout her body and coming to rest wherever they willed.

Metastasis.

Stage four neoplasia. Expected survival: a few months at most.

She swallowed, placed the glass slide neatly back in the plastic sleeve and tucked the folder away without looking at any of the other slides. She knew what she would see, now.

She held her head high, fists clenched inside her sleeves, as she walked out of the small laboratory. Dimly, she heard a technician ask if she’d gotten everything she needed.

“Yes,” she answered automatically. “Thank you.”

If he replied, she didn’t hear him.

She strode as if on auto-pilot through the hospital hallways, some mechanistic part of her searching out an acceptable place to sit down. For a minute.

Just one minute.

Not long.

Because there wasn’t much time.

She saw an unmarked door and tried the handle, found herself in a dark broom closet where the smell of bleach was so strong that it nearly overwhelmed even her desensitized nose.

Of course, the stinging bleach was why her eyes clouded with tears.

She sank slowly onto a low step-stool and bent over her knees, letting the tears come and trying to breathe slowly.

There could be a mistake. She should’ve checked the other slides. And she was no expert in histopathology. Better to let someone who did this every day tell her what it meant. She should never have looked.

These thoughts were no comfort.

No time.

No time for a miracle, even.

Dana Scully was not ready to die.

Especially not this way. Not in a bed.

—————————————————

6:02 p.m. PST

Mulder expertly activated his phone and pressed the speed-dial one-handed, keeping his eyes on the road.

She answered on the first ring. “Scully.”

“Hey, it’s me,” he said. “I hadn’t heard from you yet.”

“We got the analysis finished an hour ago. I tried to call you but I only got your voicemail. Did you check it?”

“Oh. No. Not yet. Sorry, I was probably on with Hsu’s lab.”

“Hsu’s lab? Why?”

“I’ve got something I need them to do. But first, what about the substances?”

Her voice was careful and cool. “It’s a dead end, Mulder. The ashes in the pie tin were sandalwood and ordinary paper. The white goop in the refrigerator is a lot of things, but mainly sugar, echinacea and extract of legumes and yeast. Some new-age drink or something, that’s all. Redmond even tasted it, but he had to spit it out.”

Mulder tried not to let the disappointment creep into his voice. “What about the plants?”

“Toothwort and nasturtium were the only ones we identified. Odd, but edible. I checked for nightshade and horehound but they definitely were not that.”

“Are you sure, Scully?”

“What do you mean, ‘am I sure?’” She sounded very tired, and he regretted his tone.

“I’m not questioning your judgment,” he said quickly. “I’m just saying, do you think they did a good job? Are you sure every avenue–”

“Yes, Mulder, I’m sure.” She took a breath, then asked, somewhat apologetically: “So what do you want the Hsu lab to do?”

He turned onto Seventh Avenue and revved the engine to climb the hill. “Run a protocol for me.”

“Protocol? Like a lab protocol?”

“Yeah. I’ve spent the day at the library. Found a couple of references from the middle ages that describe people melting, attributed to witchcraft.”

“Mulder, medieval fairy tales are hardly justification for–”

“–I know, Scully. I had the same objection. I didn’t even think anything of it until Anna brought me the notes she’d subpoenaed from Ledbetter’s desk. He’s still missing, by the way.”

Mulder swung into a parking spot and killed the engine. “Anyway, most of it looked like chemistry. You know, nothing out of the ordinary. But there was an older lab notebook, dated back a couple of years, that had a few out-of-place pages near the end. They were headed with a word I recognized: concetamentum.”

“Concetamentum?”

“Right. The spoken word is very important to practitioners of Black Magic. The word has power, and, more importantly, words can be negated by other words of power. The word used to describe the ‘melting’ stories I mentioned in the medieval stories was purgativis, which, in Latin, could be interpreted the antithesis of concetamentum.”

He waited for Scully to play her part, to ask him if he was suggesting that he perform a spell of his own, and then chastise him for his utter ridiculousness. He waited for her to point out that the root of purgativis was purg, to purge or cleanse, closely related to “purgatory,” making it a likely coincidence.

But she didn’t. She was silent.

“So,” he continued, a little awkwardly. “That word, concetamentum, was at the top of the page. Underneath were the numbered steps of a protocol. I think that Ledbetter has discovered the chemical properties of what, for centuries, has been considered magic. The words may or may not be necessary. But I’ve asked Isabelle and Ben to run through this protocol. If we can’t arrest him before another murder occurs, maybe we can prevent the murder from occurring altogether.”

Silence again.

“Scully?”

She sighed. “Mulder, this is way out there, even for you. You’ve extrapolated an extremely small and somewhat inconsistent body of evidence into a complicated theory complete with predictions, and I think you’ve taken it too far. But I know I’m not going to be able to talk you out of it, so go ahead.”

He wasn’t sure whether to be angry or concerned. “Scully….” He didn’t know what else to say. He chewed briefly at his lip, finally settled on: “Are you coming back here, then?”

“I’m at the airport now, Mulder. My plane’s boarding, in fact. I’ll be back just after midnight.”

“Good. Could you…take a look at this protocol on the plane?” he asked uncertainly. “I’d appreciate your opinion.”

“Sure.” He didn’t think she believed him. “Hang on, let me get a pen.”

He repeated the protocol verbatim for her. It read like a recipe: mix this much of this with that much of that. Boil, extract, rinse. He dimly remembered chemistry lab in college, was somewhat familiar with most of the terms. She asked no questions, though, merely scribbled down everything he told her.

After she’d hung up, Mulder sat still in the car for a few minutes more. Maybe she was right. Maybe this was a bigger hunch than usual. Insecurity was an unfamiliar emotion for Fox Mulder, and though he’d been secretly plagued by it on this case, he’d chalked it up to his concern for Scully and his apparent inability to express it acceptably. It was frustrating, distracting. The most wonderful part of his professional and personal relationship with her was that it was a pillar he could put his back up against, so that he never had to look behind him and could always stand at ready, facing the world. He wasn’t supposed to have to turn around and examine the pillar for cracks.

Scully’s disease wasn’t a crack. It was a fissure.

He rubbed his eyes with the palm of his hand. He knew his theory was ‘out there.’ He didn’t know whether he hoped it was right or not.

—————————————————

9:18 p.m., PST

Mulder leaned against the lab bench, watching Isabelle, hair wound up and secured by a pencil, go through the motions of science. Ben Hsu was working in the ventilated chemical hood to his right. They had agreed to help him easily, eager and excited to be part of a real investigation.

The eagerness had been somewhat grating, in fact. He was honestly trying, really, he was, to feel charitable toward this young professor. But he found himself more irritated with Hsu’s helpful but naive attitude than the man deserved. After all, the man was helping them for free, and on as little sleep as Mulder himself.

Probably.

Don’t go there.

Had there ever been someone to ask him, he would have sworn emphatically that he wanted nothing but happiness for his partner, and God knew she deserved a decent date for once in four years. Perhaps what bothered him was the knowledge that it hadn’t been a date in any usual sense.

Or perhaps he just found Hsu ingratiating and uninteresting, and secretly disliked the absolute lack of nervousness or tension he’d exhibited with respect to Mulder.

Knowing exactly where Scully would tell him he could stick his alpha-male complex, he forcefully schooled his mind back to the case, where it belonged.

He hadn’t told them what they were making, not exactly. Just that he suspected it might have something to do with the melting. Isabelle had studied the protocol for several minutes, then announced she wasn’t quite sure what the final product would be. But her eyes were already glowing; he could see she wanted to know.

Despite his willingness to help, Ben hadn’t seemed quite as interested intellectually–he was, Mulder presumed, not quite as publication-hungry as his student, just beginning her career. When the young student had asked, he’d shrugged and promised her they could be on the paper, if there was one. Sure, whatever.

Isabelle decanted the yellowish liquid in her beaker into a second beaker, leaving behind a dark red precipitate, to which she added a series of clear solutions Mulder couldn’t have identified had his life depended on it.

Ben had insisted on taking every precaution, more than a little nervous that Mulder did not know the intent of their procedure. He and Isabelle stopped occasionally and argued over an organic chemistry textbook, trying to theoretically predict what compound was in their flasks at any given time, but they couldn’t always agree.

“Ideally,” Ben told Mulder, “we’d have days to do this. We’d identify the product at each step by spectrometry, and compare it to known chemicals to guess at it’s physiological effects. I’m not sure that hurrying like this is wise.”

“What’s the worse you can imagine happening?” Mulder had asked.

Ben shrugged. “Maybe an explosion, but I’m pretty confident we’d be able to predict that coming. Volatility at low temperatures is a rare thing, and nothing in this protocol indicates excess heat that might be suspect. But we may end up creating a toxic gas.”

“That’s what the hood’s for, though, right?” Mulder said, gesturing at the device.

It was a large cabinet which occupied space from floor to ceiling. One stood outside of it and handled materials inside through a glass window. Vents at the opening of the glass and at the top of the hood created an airlock with only one exit–up through a chimney which led to a powerful filtering device buried somewhere deep in the building. Gasses would not be able to escape.

“It’ll be fine,” Isabelle had agreed, firmly.

So they’d continued.

Anna, meanwhile, had called Mulder every hour to announce that she had spoken with yet another Anticorps employee, but Ledbetter was still missing. She’d shown the pictures to everyone to whom she spoke, hoping someone might be able to hazard a guess as to the location, but they’d had no luck so far. And they couldn’t even predict his next target.

Mulder glanced at the clock and rubbed a hand over his eyes, feeling the exhaustion borne of poor sleep. If he struck, it would be at midnight. Less than three hours.

—————————————————

10:21 p.m., PST

Scully rubbed a hand wearily over her eyes and returned her attention to the paper on the airline tray table in front of her. She was absently grateful for something to do, knowing that sleep would have evaded her despite her exhaustion. She didn’t want to have to think about those purple cells. Not now.

The paper was filled with her own scribblings, ball-and-stick models of hydrocarbons dotted with arrows and electron-representing dots.

She’d been very good at organic chemistry, once. She was fairly confident of most of her structures.

Still, without a textbook, she couldn’t identify most of the compounds or even predict their effects. She could write the reactions, do the stoichiometry, predict what additives were catalysts and calculate whether the added heat was sufficient to break a double bond here or there. But when it came down to it, her chemistry would be pointless if she didn’t know what the damn molecules did.

Her neighbor in the tiny cramped airline seating shifted and she leaned away from him. Ten hours on a plane in one day was not a good thing.

Even in the ridiculous eventuality that Mulder was right, what was he supposed to do with the result? Cram it down Ledbetter’s throat? Or mix it with whatever glop Ledbetter had stirred up? Or did Mulder actually believe the simple fact of its production would negate whatever Ledbetter was doing?

She knew he realized it was a long shot. He counted on flying by the seat of his pants, and she had to admit, it usually worked.

It could be worse, she decided. At least he wasn’t chasing after Krycek or a shape-shifting creature, benign or otherwise, without the faintest idea what to do when he caught up with them. At least he was safely ensconced in the four walls of a laboratory.

It must be driving him crazy, to be able to do nothing more than watch others work. Knowing this made her smile fondly. Too bad he wasn’t using up more of his opportunities to go running off without her while she was still around to follow.

There was no bitterness to the thought, just a shapeless nostalgia.

She forcibly shook off such thoughts and returned to the protocol Mulder had given her. The next step instructed: “sonicate product for one minute at 600 Hz.”

Now that was odd, she’d thought so when he read it to her. Sonication–the application of high frequency sound waves–was used frequently to break open bacterial cells to permit extraction of their DNA, but she’d never seen it used in a chemical context.

She frowned, staring fixedly at the structure she’d drawn as the most recent product, wondering what sound waves would do to it. Would it just increase the Gibbs? Break weak interactions? Was there a macromolecular superstructure she wasn’t seeing here?

Suddenly she blinked and whipped out her cell phone, pretending not to notice the horrified look of her neighbor who undoubtedly dreaded listening to her conversation. She dialed a number and waited. “Hi, it’s Dana Scully. I’m on a plane, but I need to talk to someone with a Handbook of Chemistry and Physics…Thanks.”

—————————————————

11:34 p.m.

Mulder glanced nervously at his watch again. “How much longer?” he asked, trying not to let his voice betray his anxiousness. He hated feeling out of control like this.

Hsu was in his office, having turned the work over exclusively to Isabelle while he tried to discern the nature of the product they were making.

Isabelle glanced back at him over her shoulder. “I don’t know. Twenty, thirty minutes. I got to heat this for five minutes, then the sonication for three, then chill and precipitate what’s left, which will probably take fifteen minutes or so. What’s the rush?”

Mulder shook his head, unwilling to confess his suspicions lest she think he was crazy.

She gave him a disdainful look and turned back to her work while Mulder fidgeted absently with a length of green tape, periodically sticking and then unsticking the ends together.

She put the beaker in a larger, water-containing beaker on a hotplate, leaned in to read the thermometer in the water.

Mulder waited. Anna had called twenty minutes earlier, said she was going to join him at the lab, having exhausted the avenues of investigation possible at this hour. He could hear the doubt in her voice as he’d explained to her how far things had gotten.

But his own doubt had been somewhat dampened. He could feel something about this–he was certain they were close to something. A palpable wind, loaded with anticipation, which no one but he seemed to sense. His gut was clenching, he was breathing a little faster than usual.

Something was going to happen. He was almost sure of it. This instinct had rarely misled him.

He was startled by the ringing of his cell phone.

“Mulder,” he answered automatically, still playing with the length of tape.

“It’s me,” Scully’s voice said with an unexpected urgency.

“Scully! Hi. I didn’t expect you to be on the ground yet.”

“I’m not. But we’re descending, and there’s already a stewardess coming toward me.”

“You know they made the Prime Minister hang up on the queen because his plane was taking off, don’t you?”

“Mulder, are you at UCSF? How far have you gotten?”

“Yeah. Isabelle’s right here. She’s heating the sample, then she’s gonna…sonicate?..it. We’re almost done, and I really think–”

“Mulder, tell her to stop right now.”

Mulder frowned. “Why?”

He heard a woman’s voice speaking angrily in the background. The stewardess, he guessed.

“Just do it, Mulder, trust me.” Her voice was intense, fierce. “The sonication–I can’t predict exactly what will happen but I’m certain you could be in danger. It’s a set-up, Mulder.”

The woman’s voice in the background was getting louder, more insistent. He could make out her words: “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I have to insist–”

“Scully, we only have a few minutes left. I’m sure–”

“Stop her, Mulder, you have to–”

Her voice faded on the last few words, as if someone had pulled the phone away from her face. The line abruptly went dead.

Mulder frowned, hit his speed-dial for her number. It rang three times, then her voicemail answered.

Mulder silently cursed the inadequacies of modern communication. He looked up at Isabelle, who was looking at him with curiosity. “What was that about?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. “Where are you in the protocol?”

She shrugged. “Almost done, like I said. I was just going to pour this into a tube for the sonicator.”

Mulder crumpled the piece of tape, still in his hand, uncertain what to do. He’d spent most of the day getting to this point, and he was almost positive someone else would die tonight. Unless.

Unless his instinct and his Latin were right.

But Scully had told him to stop.

She had never believed him, throughout this case. Not that he expected her to, but she was usually more generous than she had been these past few days. He’d chalked that up, like so much else, to the apparent rift between them, to the ever-encroaching disease of which they did not speak but which he knew she thought about.

What had she learned on an airplane that the impeccably helpful Professor Ben Hsu hadn’t yet uncovered in his office?

He worried at his lower lip, aware of Isabelle staring at him, waiting.

She’d called it a set-up. Who could’ve set it up? Ledbetter? Had he created some kind of decoy to trap anyone who caught onto him?

“Uh, Agent Mulder?” Isabelle prompted, holding the beaker up in front of her face questioningly. “What’s the problem?”

He aimed the crumpled piece of tape at the garbage can across the room. It bounced off the rim and landed on the floor. “Stop,” he told her.

“What?”

“I said, ’stop,’” Mulder repeated. “Don’t finish the protocol.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“We’re almost done.”

“I know.”

She looked supremely irritated. “Well, what do you want me to do?”

“Just wait a bit.” He retrieved his wallet, pulled out a twenty. “Here, why don’t you go down to the hospital cafeteria and get something to eat.”

She gave him a funny look, but set down the beaker and the clear liquid it contained, took the twenty. “Ooookay. You want anything?”

“Coffee,” he told her, stroking his chin. “Large and black.”

She gave a puzzled “whatever” shrug and headed out of the room. Mulder stared at the beaker and its small volume of liquid. He swallowed, hoping Scully was right.

—————————————————

12:14 a.m.

Vasquez was turning onto Seventh Avenue when her phone rang. She pulled it out and flipped it open. “Did you finish?” she said into the phone, expecting Mulder.

“Anna, it’s Mark, at the station,” the voice answered.

She frowned. “What?”

“We’ve got another one.”

“Another what?”

“Another body. Reba Gregor’s husband just called 911. Reba Gregor is a puddle in her living room.”

“Reba Gregor? That’s the President of Anticorps! I talked to her just this afternoon!”

“That’s her. She’s dead. Call came in less than ten minutes ago.”

Anna stopped the car, scrambled around for a pen. “What’s the address?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

—————————————————

Gregor Residence

Pacific Heights District

San Francisco

1:26 a.m.

Mulder covered his nose with a handkerchief to mask the horrible smell that pervaded the tasteful living room. A pinkish puddle lay in an around a bathrobe, dripping obscenely off the couch even as the San Francisco crime scene team tried to contain it.

“Mulder.”

He turned at the sound of his name, watched Anna approach. She tried not to look at the body, but her face was faintly ill nonetheless.

“You finished talking to Mr. Gregor?” he asked her, stepping back into a corner. She followed.

“Yeah,” she answered, looking at the floor. “He wasn’t very coherent, though.”

She looked as sick, tired and disappointed as he felt. Mulder put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. “You couldn’t have prevented this,” he told her.

“I saw her just today. I should have guessed. It was in the pattern–anyone in a position of authority at Anticorps was in danger.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” he told her. “There wasn’t enough of a pattern to predict the next victim.”

Anna bit her lip and looked away. “Mr. Gregor said that his wife had gotten out of the bath just a few minutes before. She’d been reading down here. He heard a noise outside, went to check it out, and when he came back–this.”

“So we know the time of death?”

“Right around midnight is the best he can give us.”

It was Mulder’s turn to bite his lip. It had happened exactly as he’d predicted. That doesn’t necessarily mean Scully was wrong, he reminded himself.

But it did strongly suggest it.

He shook his head. “What did he hear? The noise, I mean.”

“Just some banging around garbage cans. There was nothing there, he said.”

“Maybe someone wanted him out of the house,” Mulder said thoughtfully.

Just then he heard a familiar voice coming from the foyer.

“Agent Scully, FBI. I’m looking for Agent Mulder.”

“Scully!” he called, brushing past Anna and making his way toward the front door.

She entered the room, dodging a photographer. She had changed since this morning, was now clad in a simple black pantsuit and flat-soled black shoes. She glanced peripherally and with little interest at the remains on the couch, then strode straight toward Mulder.

He closed the distance between them and put a hand on her arm, leaned down to speak quietly. “She was killed at midnight. Her husband was out of the house just for a minute, after he heard a noise outside.”

She tilted her head up at him and he could see the lines under her eyes. She looked exhausted. “You didn’t finish the protocol, then?”

“No,” he answered. “You told me not to.”

She let out a breath of relief.

“But you didn’t tell me why, Scully,” he continued quickly. “I’m a little concerned that we could have saved this woman’s life.”

He tried to make the words gentle, but he’d been expecting her to be a little more doubtful. Instead, her eyes were bright despite her obvious exhaustion.

“You wouldn’t have saved anyone’s life, Mulder,” she said confidently, and as she spoke her hand came to rest briefly over his on his arm, softening the cool tone of her next words. “You’re being played.”

He frowned. “How?”

“I can’t be sure yet. We need to go back to the lab. Why weren’t you answering your phone?”

He dropped his hand, breaking the contact, felt the front pocket of his coat. “Oh. I must’ve left it at UCSF. I left in a hurry when Anna called about this death.”

They both looked over at Vasquez, who had engaged herself in a conversation with another officer.

“Yeah, I found out where you were through the PD,” Scully answered. “Is she coming with us?”

“You mean back to the lab? I’m not sure that’s where we should–”

She cut him off. “I’m sure of this, Mulder,” she told him seriously.

He studied her eyes for a long moment, then nodded slowly. “Okay.”

He turned away from her, crossed the room to speak briefly to Vasquez, then returned to Scully, who was waiting impatiently. “She’s going to finish up here,” he said.

Scully nodded once and headed for the door. Mulder followed.

—————————————————

UCSF

1:52 a.m.

“We didn’t know where you’d gone,” Ben was saying, walking quickly to keep pace with the two agents, who strode purposefully down the hall toward the lab. “Isabelle had started to clean up.”

“Sorry about that,” Mulder muttered, feeling Scully’s brief glare. They turned into the laboratory, where Isabelle was wiping the counters.

“Your coffee’s cold,” she said to Mulder, who smirked in response.

“Did you throw out what you’d made?” he asked.

“Not yet,” she said, holding up the beaker. “You ready to continue now?” Her voice was just short of sarcastic, and Mulder decided finally that he didn’t like this girl.

“They need a mouse,” Ben said. “Can you go get one? One we can sacrifice?”

“That’s an unfortunate term,” Mulder observed.

“It’s the commonly used one,” Scully told him.

Isabelle was frowning. “What for?”

“A test,” Scully replied. “Do you have one?”

Isabelle shrugged. “Sure. Whatever.” She strode past them, out of the room.

Ben was unplugging a piece of equipment at one of the lab benches, carrying it toward the chemical hood. It was a simple design, a few metal rods shaped like an upside-down L, terminating in a long metal probe. Attached was a digital control panel. He set it in the hood and rummaged around for a free outlet, plugged it in.

“No,” Scully told him. “We need a timer. You know, like one of those…those things you put on your lights or your coffee maker so that they come on at certain times.”

Ben turned to look at her. “Why?”

“We can’t be in the room when we do this,” she replied. “Do you have one of those things?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “We used to, back when Laura was around. I wonder what happened to it….”

A look of inspiration crossed his face and he headed for a drawer, began rummaging through it.

Mulder watched the proceedings with growing anticipation. The feeling was back. Something was going to happen.

Isabelle returned with a cage in her hands. Inside was a small black mouse. “This okay?” she asked, holding it up for Scully, who peered at it.

“It’s great.”

“What do you want me to do with it?”

“Just set it on the bench there.”

“Ah ha!” Ben cried, producing a small outlet timer from the drawer. He held it up triumphantly. “So, what, should I set it to come on in five minutes?”

“Fine,” Scully told him.

He moved back to the hood and began fiddling with the sonicator.

Scully turned to Isabelle. “Can you pour a little of the solution into a tube for the machine?” she asked.

Isabelle did as directed, then took the tube over to Ben, who carefully aligned it so that the metal probe was embraced by the test tube, just barely dipping into the solution.

Everyone turned to look at Scully. “Go ahead and start the timer,” she said to Ben, who reached into the hood and did so. “Now,” she continued. “We go wait in Ben’s office.”

She turned and left the room, waited until they had all filed out to shut the door behind them.

“This isn’t going to hurt anything in my lab, is it?” Ben asked, trying to sound like he was joking but without success.

She smiled briefly at him. “I don’t think so,” she answered honestly.

Mulder opened the door to Ben’s office, which was around the corner, and they entered silently.

And waited.

The minutes ticked by in silence. No one tried to make awkward conversation, all at least peripherally aware that something critical was about to happen. Mulder broke the silence only once, to ask if anyone else was on the floor.

“Not that I know of,” Ben answered slowly. He glanced at Scully. “Do you really think this is unsafe, Dana?”

“Not at a distance,” she answered.

“I don’t think anyone’s here this late,” Isabelle affirmed.

Another silence. Mulder glanced at his watch.

Scully leaned her hip against Ben’s desk, arms folded over her chest, looking fixedly at the floor.

Ben drummed his fingers impatiently against a filing cabinet, then sheepishly stopped after an irritated glance from his irreverent student.

She didn’t look tired at all. Mulder wondered absently what kind of hours she kept.

They waited.

Finally, Mulder glanced at his watch again. “Time’s up,” he said.

Scully pushed away from the desk and headed back down the hallway, toward the closed laboratory. The others followed.

She hesitated briefly at the door, then with an air of decision turned the handle and pushed it open.

The room was exactly as they’d left it, except for the mouse, which had dissolved into a pinkish-white puddle.

—————————————————

3:33 a.m.

The night was still but for the voice of a single man, chanting softly. A small fire burned in front of him, small enough that it wouldn’t be visible from the air. The brightly-lit, statuesque white cross several yards behind him would also help to mask the light of the fire. Not that many aircraft flew low over this hill anyway.

He was nervous, and he didn’t really believe what he was doing would work. But it was the only thing he could think of to do.

He was being hunted. He knew that now.

Surely no one would find him here.

He stopped speaking when he stumbled over the memorized, bastardized Latin, and shrugged his shoulders, giving up. He should just leave the country. Lord knows he had enough money. They’d made him promise not to spend it, not for a decade, but would they find him if he ran to, say, Chile?

Yes.

Caught between a rock and a hard place.

He was a chemist, not a spy. How the hell had this become his life?

He folded his legs beneath him and sat down on the cool grass, staring glumly into the fire. An owl hooted overhead.

When the high-pitched screeching noise began, his first, completely irrational though was that the owl had attacked him. He clapped his hands over his ears and cried out in pain, but then all pain was gone, because his nerves were suddenly quite dead.

As was the rest of him.

The fire crackled on, oblivious to the pinkish gooey puddle at its side. The owl did not cry out again.

—————————————————

3:41 a.m.

“It’s sort of like a laser for sound,” Scully explained to the shocked observers. “The most important part of the laser is its resonator, which lets light pass back and forth through the active material, providing a feedback loop which results in stimulated emission, a tightly focused, very intense beam of light.”

“Except in this case it’s a beam of sound,” Ben said slowly, as the idea became clear to him.

“A SASER?” Mulder quipped, ignoring Scully’s rolling eyes. “So the compound produced by this protocol acts as a resonator to focus the sound waves?”

“I don’t think it’s quite like that,” Scully replied. “Sound needs to travel through a medium, so ‘focus’ has no real meaning for it, whereas light is composed of photons which need no medium. But it _is_ similar to a laser in that it contains a substance which modifies the wavelength and amplifies the incoming sound through positive feedback. The molecular structure of the substance is designed to somehow both modify and amplify incoming sound waves, so that they leave the compound as an amplified sound at a different frequency.”

“A frequency that causes dissolution of eukaryotic cell membranes,” Ben continued, nodding. “Humans, mice, yeast, anything like that. It must excite the lipid bilayer or something in the extracellular matrix and cause those molecules to break apart. The result would look something like melting.”

“Of course,” Scully continued, “I can’t exactly explain how it degrades bone and hair as well–”

“It could be multiple frequencies,” Ben interjected, “or maybe one can do it all. I’ve never heard of that, but I suppose if you knew enough about the physical properties of the chemical groups, you could design modifiers for any combination of incoming or outgoing waves, somewhat like light filters for emission and excitation.”

“So you’re saying these people were turned into puddles by sound waves?” Isabelle asked, clearly excited.

Mulder frowned. “Ledbetter may have been working on the chemistry of magic, but they didn’t have sonicators in the middle ages.”

“What the hell is he talking about?” Isabelle asked, jerking her thumb at Mulder and looking at Scully.

Mulder ignored her. “Ledbetter didn’t think of this. You’re right, Scully, it was a set-up. Someone planted that protocol on his desk, someone who knew I’d follow the clues in that notebook. They made it just difficult enough to make it seem like it couldn’t be coincidence, but easy enough that I’d follow it reliably. The whole notebook may have been planted, since Ledbetter didn’t have anything mentioned in it anywhere in his house.”

Scully was nodding, her face glowing with excitement. “It would have to be someone who did his homework on you and me, Mulder.”

Mulder frowned, looked askance. His face was clouded, mind turned inward, racing. There was a long pause, as they all watched him, then: “The military, Scully. They’d love to have this, wouldn’t they?”

She shrugged. “Sure. So you think Packard–?”

He turned to their two companions. “Is there a way you can find any scientific articles published on sound waves like this? And can you get me a list of publications by Warren Gegenmir?”

They nodded, both moving to a computer in the corner of the lab.

“Gegenmir?” Scully asked. “Why him?”

“He’s been leading me,” Mulder replied. Scully raised her eyebrows at the ease with which he stated this admission, but Mulder didn’t notice. “He led me right to Ledbetter, that notebook….I believed him because he told me a sob story about his wife and kid….a story which may still be true, actually…”

Scully took a step toward him. “How would Gegenmir know about the X-Files?”

“He saw us come in the first day,” Mulder answered. “He probably did some background research right then. He probably had Ledbetter lined up as a possible fall guy–hell, he probably had lots of people lined up as fall guys, and just picked the one we’d believe. The lab notebook might’ve been mostly bullshit, you know, the nightshade, all of that. And he probably chose those dates deliberately, but if I’d been a by-the-book profiler, they probably would have coincided with significant local events that could have precipitated action by an UNSUB. This guy has thought this through.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know yet. But I bet Ledbetter’s on his target list.”

“So you think we can’t find him because he’s dead? But if Gegenmir was trying to point the finger at him–”

“Exactly. No, I think Ledbetter’s nervous. Ledbetter knows he’s on the list, and he’s hiding.”

Isabelle approached them, a printout in her hand. “Here’s Gegenmir’s publications according to Medline,” she said. “Nothing to do with sound, though.”

Mulder bit his lip and his brow furrowed as he gazed at the list. Scully crossed to join him, looking over his arm. Twelve citations were listed, all in microbiology and biochemistry journals.

“I don’t–” she began.

Ben’s voice interrupted her. “Here!” he cried from the computer. The other three moved quickly to join him, peering over his shoulder at the screen.

A Medline output of a scientific abstract was displayed. Scully scanned the paragraph intently, reading important fragments aloud. “…a modulator substance to modify and focus the sound waves…destroy glycopeptide bonds…sterilization…I get it. The cell walls of bacteria are different from the cell membranes of eukaryotes like us. Someone made one of these devices to kill microbes by breaking down their cell walls! Good work, Ben. Who published this?”

“Your friends at Anticorps,” Ben answered, pointing to the top of the page, where three authors were listed. “But they never did a follow-up, and the technique is pretty imperfect here. This is a pretty backwater journal, I’m sort of surprised. If they’ve advanced this far”–he gestured vaguely at the mouse’s remains–”it should be big news.”

“Unless someone bought the technology,” Mulder murmured, glancing significantly at his partner. “How do they make it microbe-specific here, and human–excuse me–eukaryotic-specific there?” He pointed at the mouse.

“Different modulator substances,” Isabelle said unexpectedly. “They were designing an antimicrobial agent that would be both specific and to which bacteria could never evolve resistance. Oh,this is really cool. You could modify it for anything–cellular material, plants, concrete….”

Mulder snorted. “Yeah. Cool,” he muttered.

“I didn’t mean–” the young woman began, but he cut her off.

“Carol Thrush, Tracy Ferrill, Charles Jorgensen,” he read, pointing at the author on the list. “Gegenmir’s wife was named Tracy.”

Scully turned to Mulder, her mouth open. “Dr. Thrush,” she repeated. “And Tracy–Mulder, you don’t think–”

He stopped her with a sober glance. “I think Tracy was a little too successful,” he said slowly.

Scully stepped backward, away from the computer, and Mulder followed her. “It makes sense, Scully,” he told her. “We’ve seen what these people can do. The military picked up her work. They paid off Anticorps but she couldn’t stomach it. They threatened her son. Gegenmir didn’t lie–they probably killed the boy. And she probably killed herself.”

“So Gegenmir’s out for revenge against anyone who took or gave the hush money,” Scully breathed. “Colonel Packard must’ve been paying. The dead scientists were in on it, and Reba Gregor probably signed the deal.”

Mulder started to reply but was interrupted by the ringing of his phone. He clapped his hand to his jacket, but it wasn’t there. He looked briefly around the room, tracing the source of the sound, then found it on the countertop from which he’d watched Isabelle carry out the protocol hours before. He ran to answer it.

Anna’s voice, quick and breathless. “Mulder, how fast can you meet me at Mt. Davidson?” she asked.

“Where?”

“Mt. Davidson. You’re at UCSF? It’s not far. Fifteen minutes. I figured out where those pictures are from. That white light on the side of the picture–it’s from the big cross on top of Mt. Davidson. It’s lit up at night. I knew it was familiar, and there have been rumors of rituals being carried out up there–candles and fires and stuff. We thought it was just harmless,but…. Anyway, I’ve got a hunch Ledbetter is there.”

“Anna, listen to me,” Mulder said clearly. “Ledbetter didn’t do it. He’s not the guy. Don’t go up there alone.”

“I’m in the parking lot just below the trailhead right now. There’re a couple of cars here.” she answered. “But of course I’m not going up alone. I was going to wait on you–”

“Ledbetter is _not_ the guy, but our killer may be looking for him,” Mulder repeated. “Anna, get back in the car and wait for us at the bottom–”

“I see someone!” she interrupted. “Hang on–”

“Anna–”

Her voice was slightly distant, as if she were speaking to someone else. “Dr. Thrush?”

A sudden crash followed, and Mulder pulled the phone quickly away from his ear. The phone had been knocked to the ground. He heard footsteps and a strangled scream, then the line went dead.

“Fuck!” he cried.

He whirled to find Scully beside him, her eyes wide with concern. He grabbed her arm, started heading for the door. Stopped and turned to the watching scientists, who were watching him, puzzled.

“What’s the fastest way to Mt. Davidson?”

CHAPTER EIGHT

—————————————————

Mt. Davidson Park

4:01 a.m.

“Dammit, Carol,” the man whispered harshly.

Anna stood stock still, heart beating against the arm that encircled her throat. The cold barrel of the gun pressed hard into her temple and her back pressed into the long body that held her.

She couldn’t see him. Hadn’t seen him. Damn, damn, shit, fuck!

Thrush, her greying hair hanging loose and dirty around her shoulders, stood across the hood of the car, gun aimed at Anna.

No. Not at Anna. At the man who held her.

“She’s a cop, Warren,” Thrush said. Her voice and hands were shaking. “A cop. You can’t kill a cop. They’ve figured you out.”

“You told them!” he cried, anguish tearing at his voice. “You told them!”

The gun at Anna’s temple trembled and some calmly sarcastic part of her thought, Great, taken hostage by people who’ve probably never shot guns in their lives.

It was not a good thing.

“I didn’t,” Carol Thrush said evenly. She was a smallish woman, dressed in jeans and a grey windbreaker. The gun seemed horribly incongruous. “I didn’t tell them.”

“I don’t wanna kill you, Carol,” Warren said brokenly. It sounded to Anna as if he were crying.

Oh God, please let him not be crazy.

“You don’t have to kill me, Warren. But you have to stop killing the others. I won’t let you do it anymore.”

Warren. Warren Gegenmir. It finally registered in Anna’s brain. “Dr. Gegenmir–” she began.

“Shut up!” he screamed, jamming the pistol into her head and pulling back on her throat. “Just shut up!” To Thrush, he continued in a whining voice, “You won’t kill me, will you, Carol?”

“Only if I have to,” she assured him. “Please don’t make me have to. You can’t keep killing people. It won’t bring Tracy back.”

“They killed my son!” he cried.

Police sirens. There was recognition of betrayal in his voice. “You called the police! You promised you weren’t going to say anything!”

“I didn’t call the police,” Thrush told him, her voice wavering. “That cop was on the phone when you grabbed her. They’ll be here any minute. It’s over, Warren.”

“No!”

“I’ll tell them the truth, Warren. I’ll tell them everything. But you know they won’t believe me. The military’s rigged everything. It’s over.”

Despite the decreased air supply, Anna was beginning to understand.

“Warren,” she said softly, carefully.

“I said to shut up!” he cried, near her ear.

She took a breath and continued, “Warren, you’re doing their work for them. They want you to kill the others, they want you to clean up their mess.”

“SHUT UP!” He jerked her roughly against him, choking her. She gagged, and for a second believed he would pull the trigger, but then a police bullhorn interrupted.

“Put down the gun.”

He jerked her roughly, looking around. They were standing in a small parking lot in front of a wooded hill, the twinkling lights of the south bay spread out before them–the voice had come from the road below, where red and blue lights flashed.

She heard the blades of a helicopter.

“Oh, shit….” Gegenmir whispered. It sounded like a sob.

“She’s right,” Thrush said, her voice growing louder and more even. “You’re doing exactly what they want you to do. Killing everyone who knows. There’ll be no one to back up your story.”

“They wouldn’t have backed me up anyway,” he said roughly. “They let my son die! They sold out! You sold out too!”

“I didn’t, Warren. I signed their papers because you made me but you know I didn’t take the blood money. I’m on your side. But I can’t condone the killing. When I found out what you were doing…I’ve been trying to stop you. I didn’t want it to end this way.”

Anna willed her breathing to slow, wishing desperately that she could wipe away the sweat that had begun to trickle into her eyes. Strange, how it could seem worse than the stranglehold around her neck.

The white light of the helicopter blinded them.

“Mr. Gegenmir,” said the bullhorn, “you can’t win. It’s best to just put the gun down. Let the detective go.”

Despite herself, Anna felt a twinge of embarrassment at being so identified after having been caught so unawares.

“Back off!” Gegenmir screamed at the helicopter. “Back off or I’ll shoot her!”

The helicopter backed up, but the light still shone on them. The noise combined with Gegenmir’s screaming was almost deafening.

The bullhorn on the road below them sprung to life again, but the voice had changed.

“Dr. Gegenmir? This is Fox Mulder. You’re in a pretty tough situation there, aren’t you?”

She could hear Gegenmir’s breathing, ragged and harsh in her ear. But he was listening.

“Dr. Gegenmir, I can ask the helicopter to back off, but I want to come up there and talk to you, okay? No one has to get hurt here.”

Gegenmir was trembling against Anna’s back. She swallowed against his arm.

“Listen to him,” Thrush whispered, her finger still on the trigger of her own gun.

“I know you think you’re doing the right thing, Warren,” Mulder’s voice continued. “They did some real fucked-up shit to you, didn’t they? But this is not the way out. Please. I’m unarmed. Let me come up and talk to you.”

His voice was reasonable and matter-of-fact, concerned but not panicked. Even Anna found it oddly soothing. Good, Mulder, she thought. Earn his trust with honesty.

She could almost hear Gegenmir’s frantic thoughts. “I want a deal!” he screamed, and she resisted the urge to reach up and cover her ear.

“Okay, we can talk,” Mulder said. “I’m telling the chopper to back off, okay? I’m coming up the road.”

Gegenmir breathed quickly and harshly, unconsciously pressing the gun more tightly into Anna’s temple.

A moment later, the helicopter backed away, hovering a few hundred yards off the face of the hillside. The light was turned off.

Anna was struck suddenly by the beauty of the night-time bay spread out before her. The city was over the hill and behind them from here, but South Bay glittered with yellowish lights. The San Mateo and Dumbarton bridges sparkled off to the left, and to the far right, all light was swallowed by the black mountains that descended to the ocean.

She dearly loved her home.

Gegenmir’s grip on her tightened, and she saw what he had seen–a dark figure climbing the asphalt hill to their right. His hands were raised in the universal gesture of peace. Mulder.

She wondered what he planned to do.

She heard Thrush take a step closer, and Gegenmir whirled, nervous. “Stay right there, Carol!” he warned her.

The woman trembled but didn’t lower the gun.

Mulder was about twenty yards away now, his hands still raised.

“Stop!” Gegenmir shouted abruptly. “Now, talk.”

Mulder stopped. “Are you okay, Anna?” he called.

“At the moment,” she managed to answer. This time, Gegenmir didn’t choke her, and for that she was relieved.

“Dr. Thrush,” Mulder said slowly. “I know you’re only trying to be helpful, but I think everyone would feel a little better if you put the gun down. Go ahead. Put it down on the ground. Can she come down here, Warren? You don’t want to kill her, do you?”

Gegenmir’s response was slightly strangled, and Anna was quite sure now that he was crying, though she still hadn’t seen his face. “No,” he admitted. “Okay. She can go.”

“Okay,” Mulder said, his voice even and cool. “Come on down here, Dr. Thrush.”

Anna heard footsteps as Carol Thrush slowly approached from behind them and five yards to the left. Then the woman came into view, walking slowly, hands raised. She passed Mulder, who told her something inaudible, then continued down the hill, toward the police cars below.

Anna wet her lips nervously. He was doing everything right–containing the situation so that the fewest possible people were in danger. She knew what came next, though, and surely even Gegenmir knew that the FBI did not deal.

“Now it’s just the three of us,” Mulder continued calmly. “That’s good, Warren. You’re doing the right thing. I know that’s what you want to do.”

“What I want,” Gegenmir cried roughly, “is justice!”

“I know,” Mulder said soothingly. “Can I come a little closer? It’s a little hard to shout. I’ll keep my hands up.”

Pause. “Okay,” he said finally.

Mulder closed the distance between them by half. His raised arms parted his trenchcoat and revealed the empty holster at his waist. Anna devoutly hoped he knew what he was doing.

“Okay, Warren,” Mulder continued. “I know you faked those notes. You even tried to kill me, didn’t you?”

Anna felt Gegenmir tense against her.

“But killing me wasn’t the point, was it?” Mulder continued calmly. “You wanted people to know the protocol, know how you were doing it, so we’d know this weapon existed. Killing me was a side benefit. It’s okay–I don’t take it personally. You just wanted to finish your work. I can appreciate that.”

Anna resisted the completely irrational urge to giggle at how Mulder’s conversational, conciliatory tone contradicted his serious words. Gegenmir was breathing more quickly.

“Well, I know now, Warren,” Mulder said quietly. “I know what they did to you. You could have told me and I’d have believed you, but I guess there was no way you could know that, right? I worked for the government too, didn’t I? It’s okay.”

“You would’ve stopped me,” Gegenmir said weakly. “You wouldn’t've let me finish!”

“Are you finished, Dr. Gegenmir?”

His grip around Anna’s neck tightened spastically and she almost–but not quite–screamed. “No!”

“So what do you want, Dr. Gegenmir?” Mulder continued gently. “What is it that we can give you?”

“Justice!” the man screamed again.

“I promise you,” Mulder said solemnly. “I promise you that I will do everything in my power to see these men prosecuted. I know they killed your son. I know they stole a terrible technology. I will not let that go. I’m on your side here. But taking a police officer hostage is not going to help you. You have to let her go. She wants justice too.”

Gegenmir made a soft keening of indecision in his throat.

“I know you don’t want to hurt Anna Vasquez,” Mulder said. “You only want to hurt the bad guys. She’s one of the good guys. I promise you. These same men who’ve hurt you–they’ve hurt me too. I know you’re telling the truth, and I will not let this rest. But you need to put…the…gun…down.”

Anna wondered distantly what her fellow officers thought of this exchange and how Mulder had talked them into allowing a negotiator to get so close, to play along this way. This wasn’t a by-the-book resolution. Surely they thought Mulder was crazy.

She wasn’t quite sure if they were wrong. He’d chosen a dangerous path in agreeing to so frankly negotiate a reconciliation.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” Gegenmir demanded. The gun at her temple trembled and she willed her breathing to slow again.

“I can only give you my word,” Mulder replied earnestly. “I told you, these men have done things to me as well. I’ve seen their work many times. They are experts at hiding the truth. You want the truth brought to light, and I can help you.”

Gegenmir’s next words were almost inaudible. “Will I go to jail?”

Mulder sighed. “Probably,” he admitted. “You can’t kill people, Warren. But the guilty ones will go there too. We need you to testify. Now please, just put the gun–”

Gegenmir tensed abruptly, and Mulder saw it. The helicopter was approaching again.

Mulder turned, irritated. “Back off!” he yelled, waving both hands at the chopper. But it didn’t back off.

Anna saw the red beam of a laser on the ground out of the corner of her eye. Oh God. They were going to try to shoot him. She squeezed her eyes shut.

Gegenmir saw it too. She heard the safety of the gun at her temple, heard Mulder shout, “No!”

The pistol shot was deafening, and she was thrown to the ground.

Then feet, running. The warm gushing of blood.

First, she realized that she was alive.

Second, she realized that the blood wasn’t hers.

She lifted herself on her elbows with a groan, found herself looking into the face of–Dana Scully?

Scully’s hands were on her arms, firm and strong, helping her to sit. A second later, Mulder was beside her as well, and she could hear the running footsteps approaching them while the helicopter still whirred overhead.

“What happened?” she gasped.

Mulder produced a handkerchief and wiped the blood from her face. Gegenmir’s blood. “Scully was behind you,” he told her, his voice agitated. He glanced over his shoulder at the helicopter, then looked back at Anna. “She came through the woods. Just in case. When Gegenmir panicked, she grabbed the gun, pulled his arm back enough so that he shot himself.”

Anna turned. Gegenmir’s body was indeed twitching on the ground behind them, leaking out a quickly growing pool of blood. The left side of his face was obliterated, and brain and bone fragments were scattered throughout the pool.

“They spooked him,” Anna whispered, looking back up at the helicopter. “He was going to give up.”

“Yeah,” Mulder agreed roughly, and there was a bitterness in his voice deeper than Anna could quite fathom. “I think he was. This is not the resolution I was looking for. I’d like to know who that cop with the laser aim was taking orders from.”

“You think he wanted Gegenmir dead?” she asked, incredulous. She felt Scully’s hands at her neck, gingerly probing the bruises, and winced.

“Sorry,” Scully said. “He really got you here. There’s an EMT at the bottom of the hill. Let’s get you up, okay?”

“Yes,” Mulder said, answering Anna’s question. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted Gegenmir dead. These cover-ups can run deep.”

“I don’t believe it,” Anna whispered. But a part of her did.

—————————————————

5:23 a.m.

Mulder took a long sip of the coffee someone had given him. It tasted like motor oil but after two sleepless nights, it was better than nothing. He watched the scene around him with growing disinterest.

They were working on the hilltop now, below the giant white cross. Glaring spotlights had been set up around the scene, but Mulder stood outside of them, in the shadows. Brooding.

The crime team had been photographing Ledbetter’s remains for some time now. It was the same as the others–a puddle of pinkish white goo. Thrush had tearfully told her story, and was now at the police station being formally questioned. But Mulder already knew what had happened.

She’d figured Gegenmir out, followed him until he came here. Tried to stop him and when she’d pulled the gun he’d run to grab Anna. He wasn’t stupid, but he wasn’t a cool-minded criminal, either. He hadn’t been prepared to deal with the ensuing scene.

Hostage-takers rarely were prepared. Mulder recalled the story of the Libyan terrorist who’d taken a passenger plane hostage and, when the airport refused to let the plane land, had panicked and instructed the pilot to land on water and “drive” up onto the beach. Frantically pointing to the seat-pocket safety brochure, which depicted evacuation procedures from a plane that had crashed in water, he didn’t believe the pilot when told that planes couldn’t do perform this feat.

No, Gegenmir was no seasoned criminal, and his actions had been carefully planned, but he’d obviously panicked in the end. Ledbetter must have done work for the final product, Mulder guessed. Hence the payments from Col. Packard’s office to Ledbetter. Gegenmir had probably made up the blackmail story knowing it would provide an explanation for those checks. Probably the first dead bioinformaticist had been receiving the hush money as well. But Gegenmir had said he wasn’t finished. Mulder suspected Ledbetter was supposed to have been saved for the last target, but Gegenmir must have learned that someone was onto him (how?) and abandoned his plans to kill as many as he could, as quickly as possible. Mulder wondered how deep the cover-up went.

He saw Scully and Anna approaching him in the dim light of the hilltop. Anna had gotten new clothes from the EMT and was no longer covered in splotches of Gegenmir’s blood and brain. Most of the spatter had missed Scully, thankfully.

“Where’d you get the coffee?” Scully asked. Even in the predawn dark, he could see how drawn and tired her face was.

He handed her his cup. “It’s all yours. Terrible, but caffienated.”

She clasped her hand around it and drank, grimacing.

“No one could find a sonicator,” Anna reported. “We’ve combed the whole area, and we won’t stop now. But I don’t think we’re gonna find it.”

“I’m not surprised,” Mulder answered grimly. “I’m sure it was here. But somebody got to it first. Look around. Several police departments, fire department, SWAT team…all kinds of convenient confusion.”

Anna shook her head slowly. “Man, you guys have some job here. You act like you’re used to this.”

“Happens to us all the time,” Mulder replied. “There’s a transient black hole following us around when it comes to evidence. Sorry to have dragged it along.”

Anna smiled. “That’s okay. I don’t think we ever would’ve figured this one out without your paranoia, so at least we got something. And Thrush’s testimony might be enough to prosecute. I’m not sure she’ll be willing, though. She has a family and she’s scared.”

“She should be,” Mulder answered darkly.

Anna was about to reply when they were both startled by Scully.

“Oh shit,” the woman said, handing the cup quickly back to Mulder. Anna turned curiously.

Blood was dripping quickly from Scully’s nose, despite her attempt to stem the flow with her fingers.

Mulder fished in his pockets for a handkerchief, then remembered he’d used it on Anna earlier.

“In my pocket,” Scully said, both hands cupped around her face.

Mulder straightened her trenchcoat and probed her pocket quickly, produced another handkerchief. As she took it, leaning forward so the blood fell on the ground and not her blouse, he gently pulled her hair back in his fingers, holding it at the back of her neck. She wiped her face, then tipped her head back, holding the cloth to her nose.

Anna bit her lip, watching the scene. Momentarily, she considered calling for a medic, but decided this was not her role.

A minute passed in silence, no one moving. Finally, Scully drew away the cloth, now soaked with blood. “I think it’s stopped,” she said. Her nose was still red, though there was no blood on her face.

Mulder released her hair and gently took the cloth from her hand, watching her with concern.

Finally, Anna spoke. “Listen,” she said. “You two need to get some rest. Why don’t you go back to the hotel and sleep. Come down to the station anytime and we’ll figure out the reports. We don’t need to do that now.”

Mulder glanced at her, then back to Scully, who gave a small, tired nod. “Okay,” he said. “I think we’ll do that, if you don’t need us here now. Thanks.”

There was a deeper significance to his tone, and Anna knew he was thanking her for more than just putting off the report. She smiled slightly. “Sure,” she said firmly.

“See you tomorrow–actually, later today–then,” he said, and turned away. Scully smiled her thanks to Anna, then followed him.

As she watched them round the bend of the path, she saw Mulder slip his arm through Scully’s. She closed her eyes against the unexpected sadness the gesture produced in her.

It absorbed her only for a moment, though, and after a pause she turned back to the investigative crew. She was pretty tired herself.

But her work was not done. If what Gegenmir said was true–if what Mulder said was true–there was much more to be done than she had ever imagined.

INTERLUDE

*****************************************************************

4. RESOLUTION

*

When resolving a hostage situation, experts will refer to the Hanafi model, developed by the FBI during a 1977 Washington hostage crisis. The militant Hanafi, led by Khaali, their mentally unstable leader, had threatened to kill all foreign Muslims in order to avenge the killings of his family. His followers took 134 hostages in several buildings, killed one man, and shot or beat 19 others. The model identifies the objectives of all involved actors, and considers those objectives in resolving the situation. It outlines four alternative resolutions:

1) Implied Violence–move in with heavily armed forces highly visible to terrorists and begin making demands for immediate surrender.

2) Armed Assault–attack the terrorists in an attempt to kill or capture them.

3) Procrastination–use police and negotiators to weaken and disperse the terrorists via presentation of inconveniences which they may not have foreseen.

4) Active Negotiation–negotiators permit terrorists to fulfill their needs with as much procrastination as possible, without allowing the terrorists to forget that they may not harm the hostages.

It is impossible to predict which mode of resolution will be used in a given situation; however, an expert tactician will carefully review all possible outcomes before making a decision.

*

The scent of the April dawn trickled tauntingly into his nostrils, and he wondered if she, walking beside him, could smell it. They walked the path between one crime scene–Ledbetter’s remains by the great white cross–and another–Gegenmir’s body in the parking lot–slowly and in silence. Briefly, he could almost imagine they were simply on a companionable stroll through a low forest.

He liked that vision.

She stopped.

He turned to look at her, the outline of her face grey in the dim predawn light. Her face held so many things, so much knowledge, so much memory, so much danascully, so much him. All that was important, she was or knew.

When the blood ran down her face, splitting her open, he was terrified that some of that essence, that knowledge, would leak out with it. Leaving him alone.

Selfish bastard, he chastised himself. She’s the one who’s dying.

No.

But her face was not bleeding now. She was looking off into the woods at a narrow, slightly overgrown trail. Abruptly, she shrugged out of his gentle grip and glided quickly off in that direction.

So quickly that she was gone before he knew what had happened.

He glanced around as if uncertain whether anyone had seen them, but no one was near. He could hear voices from the parking lot below, distant as if from another world. Thankfully.

So he did the only thing he knew to do. He followed her.

Greenish-yellow grasses licked against his trousers, twiggy branches scratched at his face if he didn’t push them away quickly enough. A spiderweb broke across his lips and he wiped it away with disgust.

Where was she going?

He could hear her just ahead of him, knew he should call out to her, but knew also, in that way we sometimes know irrational things, that he should not.

He kept his distance.

Scully, for her part, did not notice the cobwebs, most of which broke across her slender body. She welcomed the abrasive caresses of the branches slapping against her arms and cheeks, reminding her that she lived. Here. Now.

She had killed a man scant hours before. Indirectly but still.

Dead.

She ducked under a low-hanging thick branch, relishing the way it caught her hair and gently tugged.

Even she could smell the fresh morning air.

Had she been asked, she could not have said where she was going. A tiny, insistent voice spoke to her from deep in her abdomen, whispering for her to move forward. Quickly. Turn here. Climb that embankment. Now.

She dug her fists into the soil when her feet were insufficient, mindless of the earthy moisture. Her pace was hurried but smooth. Climbing.

At the top, she crawled under a low-lying log too densely mired in brambles from above. She had left the trail now.

But she knew with certainty where she was going.

Her breaths were ragged, her path had become steeper now. She did not know how long she had been moving–time was irrelevant, wasn’t that the point?

What was the point?

The light was getting lighter, the forest thinner. She could see the clearing now, unmarked and perhaps, unremarkable, but she knew it for her destination.

Atop a mountain. An outcropping of whitish rock which may have sunk miles below the earth and was far, far older than she (geologic time is vast) lay before her. She scaled it nimbly, soon standing at its peak, ten or twelve feet above the ground.

San Francisco and its bay stretched out before her.

The Twin Peaks ahead and to her right. The TransAmerica pyramid ahead and to her left, beyond the still-sparkling Bay Bridge. The Bay and it’s millions of sleepy inhabitants, all below her.

It was going to be a clear morning.

She turned east, where the sky was purpling and reddening just over the low-lying mountains. The herald flags of the sun’s mighty entrance.

Atop a mountain between a bay and an ocean, standing alone on the almost-edge of America, was Dana Scully. Watching, not the rising of the sun, but the turning of the earth.

She was newly struck with wonder at what most men forget, pinned as they are to the gears of analog clocks and the electrons counting digital time. She remembered what she had always known–that we mark the passage of time in solar terms, that the cosmos to which most of us give no thought but which could swallow us whole in the proverbial blink of an eye, numbers our days.

It always has.

Mulder kept an even distance, concern warring with curiosity. So many Scullys. Should he not also know this one, even if she terrified him?

He wiped his dirty hands on his coat after climbing the embankment. Had she been here before? Where was she going?

He wondered if she knew.

Then he came out of the trees and he saw her, standing tall above the rocky hilltop. Arms slightly held out at her sides as if preparing to fly–

she wouldn’t, would she?

–and dark coat flapping gently around her like the cloak of a fairytale hero. The breeze lifted her copper hair and he was struck by the incredible power and strength which emanated from her–strength he always knew was there but had never been quite as visible.

He could make out the tops of buildings beyond her, could see the bay and its sparkling bridges below the rising sun to their right.

He knew not to speak, feeling oddly privileged that he could even watch.

They stood in silence, separated by a dozen vertical feet, ten horizontal yards and a painful gulf of unspoken truths.

They watched the sun rise.

Purple and red and yellow clouds on the horizon, visible rays stabbing out at the center of the sky, a literal illumination.

He knew, in that light, that they would not end this here. Not really.

Still.

He did not know how much time had passed. It may have been a second, or it may have been a day. Probably, judging by how far the sun had come, it had been twenty minutes, but this was irrelevant to them both.

Her voice, clear and warm in the chill morning air, was unexpected, startling him out of his reverie. More startling was that it spoke his name.

“Mulder.”

He swallowed, answered the only way he could. “I’m here.”

“Come here,” she said clearly.

There was a tingling in the pit of his stomach which felt like nervousness, fear. But it was a welcome fear, the anticipation of something significant and sure.

He approached the outcropping and followed the same path up its surface which she had climbed, ages and minutes before. The peak on which she perched was too narrow for him to join her, so his feet came to rest on her left, some eighteen inches below hers. For once, she stood taller than he.

He gazed out over the scene below and before them, waiting for her to speak. The lights of the San Mateo bridge twinkled balefully at him, off to the south.

When she did speak, her voice was tender with memory.

“I came here when I was seventeen years old. When high school felt like a steel ball around my ankle, chaining me back to an insignificant and meaningless past, while the future, so close I could taste it, promised action and reason…meaning.”

He did not look at her, letting her words wash over him as he gazed out to the west, where the ocean lay, white and grey-blue. Eternity in an ocean. How many of those water molecules had been part of primitive man? Dinosaurs? Single-celled primitive creatures? Himself?

“For so long,” she continued, “I marked my time by achievements–honors and degrees, the encouraging words of those who’d gone before me, who I respected. I was determined to build…something…a list, maybe, that I could see and my father could see and it took me longer than it should have, perhaps, to realize that these achievements too were meaningless. That I had done nothing which was truly significant to anyone, including myself, except, ironically, my father.”

Mulder snuck a quick glance at her face, but she was not watching him. She was looking straight into the half-sphere of the sun. It was odd, her being suddenly taller than him. His eyes were level with her shoulders.

“He was so proud of me. The degrees and the awards were something he could understand. He could never understand why I joined the FBI.”

Mulder knew that. He wanted to touch her somehow, but he was afraid she would realize he was standing there and stop talking. He didn’t want her to stop.

“But even that didn’t satisfy my craving for something real, something meaningful. As cliche as it sounds, I wanted to feel like I was making a difference, and despite all the standard justifications–you know, that you act vicariously through your students–it felt false and unsatisfying.”

A soft breeze ushered the scent of the sea to them both. Lack of sleep is like a drug–sometimes a person will say things without sleep that they would never speak aloud otherwise.

“I was lost, then, Mulder. For the first time in my life. In my newfound adult ‘wisdom,’ I began to believe my goals had been naive, or worse, dishonest. I worried that I wanted to do something significant for exactly the same reasons that I had wanted to pursue degrees. I worried that my ego had allowed me wrongly to believe I was one of the rare individuals who could make a difference.

“But I never stopped believing, Mulder. I doubted, but I didn’t stop believing. I found our work, and you, just in time. Now I know to mark my time by the lives I’ve touched, that this is where meaning lies.”

He physically felt his heart constrict in his chest.

“It’s ironic how much of our time we spend wishing it were tomorrow,” she continued sadly. “Watching this sunrise, I’m having trouble wishing that.”

She paused. A bird chirped somewhere behind them.

“I want to tell you something,” she said slowly, the words difficult. “Something I should’ve said a thousand times.”

No. This wasn’t right. “Scully–”

“No,” she insisted, emphasizing the gesture with a flattening of her palm against the air between them. “I want you to know how much you mean to me. How much I–”

“Scully.” More firmly. He reached out to take her hand in his own, now meeting her gaze. “Don’t. We will not say our goodbyes now.”

“It’s not ‘goodbye,’” she protested, hurt.

The sun shone through the stray strands of hair, making it seem to him like fire. He choose his next words carefully, spoke them gently, caressing her fingers with his thumb.

“It’s making sure there will be no regrets. That’s the same thing.” He paused. This wasn’t easy for him either, and he let himself resort, just a little, to his usual defense against seriousness. “You know me better than anyone, Scully, so you know what a terribly selfish asshole I am. You know I’m perfectly serious when I say I won’t let you have that peace. I know you, as well, and I know that if anything will keep you here it’s your honor and integrity.” He was completely serious now, and it wasn’t quite as hard as he’d feared. “You won’t leave a hole like that, so I won’t let you fill it.”

She frowned. “That’s ridiculous, Mulder, not to mention patronizing.” But she did not withdraw her hand. “I don’t even have to be talking about my cancer–either one of us could leave this world anytime, with the lives we lead. And why the hell does this have to be about death anyway?”

“It doesn’t,” he replied, falling as easily she into their comfortingly familiar pattern, “but the ultimate connection is inevitable.”

Scully’s brow furrowed and she looked away. A long, consterned silence followed, broken by the increasingly loud birds behind them, who seemed determined to fill every silence with chatter.

“Are you giving up that easily?” he asked finally.

“It’s not exactly like arguing one of your theories, Mulder,” she answered, and he knew it was true. “It’s kind of hard to say such personal things to someone when they’ve already said they don’t want to hear.”

Immediately, he answered: “I didn’t say I don’t want to hear.”

“Will you stop it with the fucking games?” Her voice was irritated, severe. “Literal precision is not the object here.”

She paused, gazing up the bluish-purple sky.

“It’s just so frustrating,” she said finally, but her voice was tired and sad, not frustrated. “Why is it that we can communicate so well in our work and in debates, but so poorly about what we are to each other?”

He squeezed her hand, glad he still had it. “I don’t think we communicate poorly at all,” he told her gently. “I just don’t think there are words for what needs to be communicated.”

“Then why do you seem to agree I have something to say?”

Familiar patterns, again.

He sighed, looked back out to the distant ocean, over the thousands of unlit row houses. There was no clear path to navigate from here.

“Actually, I can think of something worth saying,” he said finally, hesitantly. It was time to say this, at least. He just wasn’t sure how. “I’m just curious, you understand. I never asked you about it, and that should tell you whatever the answer, it doesn’t really matter, not to us. But if–” He stopped. Thought. Continued. The words tumbled out hastily. “Did Van Blundht really have the right idea? Do you really wish things were different?”

He thought he heard her chuckle, and he was relieved. “Sometimes,” she admitted, and he could feel her amused eyes on him. “And sometimes not.”

He smiled himself. “Me too.”

Society has an odd expression: ‘more than just friends.’ As Mulder and Scully knew, ‘just’ is a poor choice of words. But when people use that phrase, they usually mean that the pair in question are lovers. And Mulder and Scully knew they were in fact more than _that._ Perhaps this made the confusion, the question of who was hostage to whom, more terrible.

But these were words which had no meaning and therefore should not be spoken. They both understood this.

“Okay, my turn,” Scully said wryly, not-so-deftly changing the subject. “Do you really want me to back off from work?”

“No.” His answer was immediate and severe.

Humans are by nature inconsistent, in contrast to almost everything else in nature. The rising sun demonstrated that.

She licked her lips, hearing the words behind his monotonic reply. “Mulder, I’m dying,” she told him. “We both have to come to terms with that.”

His voice was husky; his eyes pleading as he looked up at her. “You’re not gonna die, Scully.”

Her reply, like her face, was tender. “Everyone dies, Mulder.”

Slowly, painfully, Mulder released her fingers and reached up to cup her cheek with his palm. “Not you,” he whispered, eyes bright.

She leaned briefly into the caress, brought her own hand up to cover his. “Mulder, please tell me you don’t believe that.” Unexpectedly, she pulled his hand away, dragging it down to her throat, pressing it almost viciously into her carotid artery.

“You feel that, Mulder? It means two things: I am alive now, but I am human. Please don’t treat me like I’m neither.”

She knew that was harsh, and what she would say next was harsher, so she ever-so-carefully drew his hand away from her throat, keeping his intense and slightly fearful gaze locked with her own. She did not quite know what she was about to do, but her hand had done it before her mind could completely consider it.

She drew his hand inside her coat, beneath her jacket, and pressed it into the silk that covered the side of her breast, over her heart. She felt his hand stiffen, and feared for an instant that he’d misunderstood, but his eyes told her otherwise. Slowly, she felt his fingers relax against the curve of her breast, stretching up toward her collarbone, warm and heavy and firm.

He felt the powerful drum of her heart beneath his hand. He found it a beautiful and compelling rhythm.

He was almost surprised when she spoke again, though the intensity of her voice would not be ignored. “I would do anything in my power to save you, Mulder, but I am not, and I don’t want to be, your salvation. I don’t want you to believe I will not die.”

He swallowed. “I believe a lot of things,” he said slowly, carefully. “But I believe in you more than anything else. If anyone can get through this, it is you. And I swear to you, Scully, if you let go because your science tells you you must, I will never forgive you. Never. You are going to beat this. Promise me.”

He thought there were tears in her eyes, but with the sun behind her like that, he couldn’t tell. When she spoke, he felt the vibration against his palm. Her words were quick. “I can’t promise that.”

“Promise me you will never give in,” he insisted steadily.

He thought she trembled, or perhaps it was just her indrawn breath. Finally, she whispered the words he needed to hear.

“I promise.”

That was a promise she could make, although, as she’d pointed out herself, literal precision was not the objective. She knew then that she could not tell him of what she’d seen in the pathology laboratory, the cells more purple than the sky around them. Didn’t he know he didn’t need to make her promise, that already the thing she’d most regret (if one can regret things once one has died) was leaving him alone?

He was leaning up toward her now, and the child’s rule came back to her quite suddenly: a promise sealed with a kiss.

When his cool lips touched hers she did not feel the same fear she had felt when he’d kissed her before. This was not, as he’d gone to great lengths to point out, goodbye.

It was a warm and lingering kiss, though a chaste one. His lips were soft and smooth, his breath warm and the scent of him welcome. When he drew back, she almost leaned forward, almost did not permit the contact to be severed, but he was only bending forward, and she felt his breath on her neck, then the soft touch of his lips at her throat, just above her necklace. She held her breath, aware of her pounding heart, as he gently pulled his hand away from her breast and tugged aside her coat.

She should not permit this, she knew. But she felt fixed, unable to move. Over his head, she could see the distant ocean, rolling repeatedly against the shores, and this somehow held her entranced.

Softly, reverently, he kissed the fabric over her heart, where his hand had lain a second earlier. “I know you’re alive, Scully,” he told her softly, not looking up. “I’m sorry if it’s ever seemed otherwise, but I do know it.”

He kissed her again, then turned his cheek and rested his head against her breast, listening to the comforting and constant–though quick–rhythm of her heart.

Scully swallowed, then wrapped her arms about him and bent her head over his, laying her cheek in his hair.

She was absolutely determined to keep her promise.

Neither knew how long they stood there together–it might have been a second, it might have been a day. Probably, judging by how far the sun had come, it had been five minutes, but this was irrelevant to them both.

Finally, Scully broke the spell. “Mulder?” she said to his hair.

“Mmmmm.” His voice was muffled against her blouse.

“I’m really tired,” she confessed.

He pulled away, keeping his hands on her arms, and looked up at her. Her hair was disheveled and her face worn.

He smiled ruefully. “Me too. Ready to go back?”

Back to the hotel, to the reports, to the world, to the ticking clock of the purple cells.

“Yes,” she answered. Her voice was certain.

*****************************************************************

CHAPTER NINE

—————————————————

April 22, 1997

South San Francisco Police Headquarters

11:22 a.m.

“Well, I think that about wraps it up,” the chief said. “I can’t say I’m entirely happy with the outcome, and since Thrush won’t testify I’m not sure what to think of your stories about the military, but I don’t think we’ll be needing you around anymore. No offense.”

“None taken,” Mulder said blandly. He still didn’t like this man.

The chief pumped his hand once, nodded to Scully, and left the three investigators alone in the small interrogation room.

“It was good to work with you both,” Anna said after a moment. “Really.”

Mulder shrugged. “It’s too bad, though. You really didn’t see us at our best.” He glanced sideways at Scully, a glance that might have been an apology.

“You know,” Anna said, leaning back in her chair and looking at Mulder. “Well, your off-the-cuff profile was still right. Gegenmir was lonely, paranoid and the worst kind of nerd.”

“Yeah, and just because you’re paranoid…” Scully began wryly, glancing back at Mulder with a smile.

There was a brief silence, but it was a friendly silence.

Anna stood up from her chair. “Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you,” she said, extending her hand to Mulder. “If you’re ever out in the bay area…”

He took it, shook it firmly, but instead of releasing it, continued to hold it in his grasp. “The investigation’s not closed, as far as I’m concerned,” he told her. “We’ll be in touch.”

“Maybe not with me, though. Or something. I don’t know.”

At their confused looks, she smiled with chagrin. “I’m thinking of leaving the force.”

“Why?” Scully asked, surprised.

“I’ve never been impressed with how I’m treated, but that’s not the point,” Anna answered. “After this case, after seeing what passes for justice–this just isn’t something I can believe in.”

Mulder released her hand as Scully stepped forward, gripped the other woman’s shoulder. “Anna, I’ve had the same thoughts,” she said firmly. “I’ve seen more miscarriage of justice than you can imagine. There are men out there who would as soon burn innocent men and women as they would the constitution or a log of wood–it makes no difference to them. And they have a lot of power, but they’re not unstoppable. Ideology isn’t achievable, but it’s still a standard you can approach. You can still make a difference.”

“Oh, I know,” Anna answered. “At least, I believe that. I think I do. I’m just not sure that this is the right place for me to be doing it.”

“What would be the right place?” Mulder asked.

She pursed her lips and gave a small shrug. “I’m not sure yet. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, though. Maybe law.”

She looked away momentarily, quite suddenly uncomfortable with her admission. Others’ opinions of her were rarely of any consequence to her, but for some reason she didn’t want these two to think she was backing out.

But her thoughts were too unformed to be explained right now. Maybe later. “Listen,” she said dismissively, “you two have a flight to catch. It was good to work with you.”

“And with you,” Scully told her. “We usually don’t get so lucky when we’re teamed up with others.”

Anna smiled gratefully at her, hearing the genuine friendliness in the words. “You take care,” she said to Scully.

Scully sniffed and smirked, hearing the reciprocal sincerity and knowing the caution had been less about politeness than bloody noses. “Yeah,” she answered. “You too.”

Anna watched them leave, then closed the door and looked at the mess of papers on the table. She’d seen the evidence with her own eyes, and yet it didn’t quite come together here. This wasn’t how justice was supposed to happen.

In theory, anyway.

—————————————————

I want to tell you that she does not get eaten by the shrieking eels at this point.

What???!?

It’s just that you looked concerned.

—————————————————

REFERENCES

Information on terrorist situations came mostly from The Texas Association for Hostage Negotiation (http://www.tahn.org/), which receives support from the FBI. “Confronting the Terrorist Hostage Taker” by G. Dwayne Fuselier, Special Agent, Special Operations and Research Unit, FBI Academy and Gary W. Noesner, Special Agent, FBI, Washington Metropolitan Field Office (http://www.halofax.com/yakuza/documents/hostaker.txt) was also helpful. I learned about the Hanafi Model from http://ahp.net/hierarchon/htmfiles/han.htm, the abstract of a journal article. I never saw the four steps listed in the Duane Barry ep, but I used them as guidelines anyway–in the real world there are many possible models which negotiators choose from.

For the botanists, horehound is used in treating sore throats. Nightshade really is deadly, and mullein is used in making gold dyes and treating coughs. The compounds listed are really products of plants and sponges, but not necessarily those mentioned.

For the biologists, I made up the sonication thing, but everything else is pretty much true. I don’t have references, but if you’re curious, drop me a line and I’ll recommend something.

For the chemists, I took some liberties with the natural products, as I’m sure you can tell. Everything I mention is really a natural product with medicinal use; however, it’s not necessarily linked to the proper source. Sorry. If you’re curious about this, contact me.

Also, I realize NMR takes longer than I allowed for here. But if Scully can do a Southern Blot in five hours, I can do NMR in 20 minutes. So there. =)

For the physicists, I’m just sorry. I am fully aware that what I’ve suggested isn’t remotely plausible. Deal with it. =)

Information on black magic was gleaned from the Temple of Set (http://www.xeper.org/pub/tos/index.html). Although it exists within black magic, the specifics of the herbal stuff and astrology were entirely made up by me, so if you’re an offended Knight of the Trapezoid, go ahead and curse me or something. Go ahead! I dare you! I’ll just call the FBI and I’m sure they’ll protect me. =)

Latin dictionary: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/lexindex. I also got the “Macbeth” text off a website for the complete works of Shakespeare with commentary, but I don’t remember the URL.

Brief song in the teaser: “Blue,” a little mixed with “Lovely You,” by Eve’s Plum (from the album “Envy” c. 1993 Sony Music).