Chapter 6 x-x-x The following takes place between 4:00pm and 5:00pm Pacific Time. x-x-x Conference room two CTU Los Angeles, CA 4:00pm PT Positioned between Chappelle and William, Scully was sorry Mulder had tossed the cell phone at the McDonalds in Cortez. The only phone in the room was too close to Chappelle, who sat and did his paper work as Scully kept calling for someone from CTU to stop this. "No one's coming, Miss Scully. I have authority to do this." Scully saw the conference room door jiggle before it went flying off its hinges. Mulder looked right at her. "He's trying to take William," she told him, as she returned to the couch where the boy slept. Ryan made the mistake of standing up and turning to Mulder. Well, not to Mulder, more to his fist. The first punch sent Ryan reeling onto the conference room table. Mulder grabbed Chappelle's hair, slamming his head into the table. Tony and Jack got through the door in time to see Mulder hammering Chappelle's head to the conference room table as Dr. Scully picked up her child and covered his head with the leather jacket. Jack tried to grab Mulder around his waist while Tony tried to pull Chappelle away. It wasn't working until Chappelle's hair finally separated from his head. Well, not *his* hair. "Break it up." Tony tried to regain control of the situation. "Sit down." Jack tried to push Mulder into a chair but Mulder remained standing, just staring at the hair in his hand. Suddenly, and inappropriately, Scully started to laugh. "Look, honey." Mulder tossed the toupee on the couch near Scully. "A new plush toy for William." "Tony, get him out of here." Jack pointed to Ryan, whose face was beginning to swell. "Have a doctor see him and then lock him in interrogation room 2." "Mr. Bauer, we're done." Mulder sat at the far end of the table - close to Scully and William, far away from the departing Tony and Chappelle. "I want my lawyer and I want my family released." "What happened here?" Jack asked Scully. "Mr. Chappelle said Mulder was in custody and Child Protective Services was coming for William." She tossed the toupee back to Mulder. "He was taking William." "What?" Jack looked at Michelle but she was engrossed in Ryan's paperwork. "Susan Morgan - 202-KL5-1785, that's my lawyer. Nothing until I talk to her." "Jack, I need to see you about something." Michelle picked up the folder Ryan originally brought into the conference room. "Now." Jack picked up the conference room phone and dialed security. "I need a guard and a repair crew sent to conference room two immediately." Hanging up, he turned his attention to Mulder and Scully. She had the boy back on the couch again, Mulder sat at the far end of the conference room table, just staring at the toupee. "I'll find out what happened here, but this wasn't sanctioned by me." Mulder's reply was simple. "Susan Morgan. 202-KL5-1785." x-x-x CTU Helipad 4:10pm "Mr. Scully, my name is Milo Pressman." Milo took Charles Scully's duffle bag after shaking his hand. "Mr. Pressman, is my sister alright?" "She's fine." Milo waved off the helicopter. It was going back to Van Nuys to wait for the FBI to arrive. "The boy?" "He got a little airsick on the helicopter ride from the airport. They have him resting." Milo still hoped that was true. "My boss wants you to wait in his office before he debriefs you. Then he wants you to see your sister." "What is this about?" Milo signed Charles in through security, giving him an ID badge- one he didn't notice on either Dr. Scully or Mr. Mulder. "I'm really not at liberty to discuss that with you. My boss, Jack Bauer, he'll explain everything." "Is my sister in trouble?" "No, but again, Jack Bauer can explain this all to you." x-x-x Michelle Dressler's cubicle 4:15pm "What was so important that we had to leave the conference room?" Jack was furious that she pulled him away from the Mulder family. The last thing those two needed was time alone to build a defense. "Ryan has the non-redacted files." She started handing Jack the same files they had on the plane, just with all the data on the page. "Where did he get these?" Jack started flipping through the files. He found Fox Mulder's official FBI record, including his dismissal notice, his death certificate dated five months earlier than his dismissal from the FBI. Dana Scully's career files were eclipsed by her medical records, which included cancer, a gun shot wound and fertility treatments. "Oh my God, who sent these to him?" Michelle noticed Milo walking a visitor into Jack's office. "I think Charles Scully is here." Jack turned around and saw Milo wave to him. "Go through these files, see if you can find out where Ryan got them." "What about Ryan?" "I'm going to send Mr. Scully into see his sister and his nephew. Then I'll talk to Ryan." x-x-x Jack Bauer's office CTU 4:20pm "Mr. Scully, my name is Jack Bauer." Jack shook Charles Scully's hand as the man stood up. "Is my sister alright?" "Your sister is fine, so is her husband and little William." "Why are they here?" Jack sat down behind his desk and pointed for Charles to sit at the guest chair nearest to him. "I believe your sister and her husband can help us with a situation. As a man with your military background, I'm sure you'll understand that for reasons of national security, I can't go into specifics." "What, an alien spaceship landed?" Charles joked. Jack just stared at him. "Holy shit, Mulder's right." "Mr. Scully?" "My brother-in-law is a nice enough guy if you bother to get to know him but I thought some of his ideas were, well, weird. All his garbage about aliens and colonization, well I just thought he was off his nut. Now you're telling me maybe not." "I'm not telling you anything, Mr. Scully." "Then why are they here? My sister is a doctor in the middle of nowhere, my brother-in-law watches their kid. The only reason you'd have them here is because there is something out there." "We need your sister's help. I don't think she'll leave the boy in anyone's care but a family member. Mr. Mulder has no family outside of his wife and the boy. You're the closest relative." "So you want me to stay here with William until when?" "You can work that out with your sister. There was an incident earlier with William." "What kind of incident?" "Someone tried to take him away from your sister." "Again? Mr. Bauer, I won't have any part of hurting my sister. She has been through enough." "It was a mistake and that's why a family member was brought here. I want your sister and her husband to feel that the child is with a trusted family member. Someone who won't allow anything to happen to the boy." x-x-x Conference room two CTU Los Angeles, CA 4:25pm PT Scully hung up the phone. Mulder was sitting with William on the couch, the boy sound asleep. "If we were home, we'd be cleaning up so you thought I was a useful member of the family." Mulder pushed the hair from his little boy's face. "He's out like a light." "He didn't get his afternoon nap." "Hey little man, you slept through the fun stuff." Mulder turned his attention to Scully. "What can Susan do?" "She's got the L.A. office of Hoffman-Miller working on an order to get us released immediately. She thinks the paperwork will be here soon. She is trying to shop a judge who doesn't like the government picking up families and taking them into custody without any real reason." "9th Circuit here we come." Scully stood and started walking to her family. "I was afraid he was going to take William." "No one is taking him from you." "Mr. Chappelle was right about my legal status." She bent down to look at her son as he slept. "Which we're in the process of changing. You're his mother, my wife and while I may have custody right now, it's only a few more meetings with the social worker before things are cleared up." "I made such a terrible. . . " "No, don't go there. You did the best you could." Mulder kissed his wife on the forehead before pulling her into a hug. "We get out of here, get the luggage back and hit the road. Instead of going cold, what do you think of Marrakech?" "I'll burn." "We'll dip into the funds for some sun screen." Mulder pulled away from his wife. "I have an idea." He walked to the phone. x-x-x FBI Jet 4:25pm PT All three FBI agents reached for their phones when they heard the ring. "Mine." Skinner told Doggett and Reyes. "Walter Skinner." "Fox Mulder." "Mulder, where are you?" "In custody somewhere in downtown L.A. Where are you?" "On our way out to see a CTU agent named Bauer about a craft down in Palm Springs." "Bauer's a busy man. He was the agent who brought us in." "What do you need for us to do?" Reyes mouthed "Dana and William" to Skinner. "And are William and Dana with you?" "We're together right now. Some officious asshole tried to take William away but I think its been made clear that that's not happening." "What are you going to do?" "Working on that. Where are you?" "We're about an hour outside of L.A. I've got John Doggett and Monica Reyes with me, we really wanted to do this without you being brought in." "I have an idea, but I need you here to make it work. I'll see you when you get here." x-x-x Michelle Dressler's cubicle CTU 4:30pm Jack pointed the men's room out to Charles Scully before going to Michelle's desk. The bathroom break gave him a chance to see where Michelle was with the files. She had both Tony and Milo working with her. "What have we got?" "These two are quite a pair." Tony told Jack. "I'm working Dr. Scully's file, Milo has William's, Michelle is working on Mr. Mulder's." "The little boy has an FBI file? What do I need to know?" "Mr. Mulder is the legal parent of William Mulder right now. Dr. Scully signed away her rights in what looks like a bad few months where the child was kidnaped on one occasion and poisoned on another. That's why he has a file." Michelle said. "Whatever Chappelle was doing, if Mr. Mulder was in custody, it is possible the boy would be going to Child Social Services tonight." Tony said. "But Mr. Mulder isn't in custody. And I think after we all saw Mr. Mulder's reaction, the child is going nowhere without a fight." Jack thought this was getting more and more complicated. "Dr. Scully's health records are something else. She was hurt in the line of duty, left in a coma and taken off life support, she rallied back. About two years later, she was diagnosed with cancer. I guess the cancer treatments left her with some fertility issues because she went through a program to have William. In the middle of all that, she was shot in the stomach and nearly died." Michelle told Jack. Tony jumped in. "Mr. Mulder's health issues are no better. He nearly lost a leg in a shooting, nearly froze to death in the Arctic." "The doctors Dr. Scully recommended for the injured corpsmen, they were from that injury - I want more on that." Jack told Tony. He saw Charles Scully leave the men's room. "Tony, I want you to match any sort of hospital visits with what's going out at TwentyNine Palms. That may be the way to figure this all out." x-x-x Conference room two CTU 4:35pm PT "You told Skinner you have an idea." "You're not going to like it." "Mulder." "I'll agree to help Mr. Bauer out if they let you and William go. You two can get out of here, get out of the country and I'll meet up with you." "Absolutely not." "Scully, I don't see how . . . " "The last time you went off somewhere for our safety, it ended badly for everyone involved. The time before that, you didn't come back. We're in this together." "If the two of you can get out of here. . . " "Then we'll wait for you. If you want to help these people Mulder, do it, but not until William is safe and not until we get some promises that we'll be safe too." "I don't want to help them, I just want you two away from all this. If I can stall long enough to get you two out of the country." "Then what, they'll keep you in custody. And there won't be any bogus trial or help running away, they'll just kill you. You were just a little too high profile last time. This time, you're a private citizen with no real connection to the government. Car jacking gone bad, mugging in a highway restroom turned ugly." "An out of work loser, burden to his wife and child worth more dead than alive." "That's not true." "But that's what the papers would say." Mulder noticed Jack appear at the doorway with a familiar face. "Charles?" Scully turned and saw her brother where the conference room door use to be. "Charles!" She ran to her brother, giving him a big hug. Mulder stood but stayed near William. "Dana, it's good to see you." After kissing his sister hello, Charles walked over to Mulder and shook his brother-in-law's hand. "Good to see you too, Mulder. How's the little fellow?" "Out like a light." Mulder peered over Charles's shoulder to see Jack leaning on the broken door frame. "Mr. Bauer, why is Dana's brother here?" "We thought you might help if a family member was watching the child. This was before Chappelle's stunt." The phone started ringing in the conference room. "Bauer." Jack grabbed it before Mulder could. "OK, sign for the papers and bring them to conference room two." There was a pause. "Yes, the one with the broken door." "You did this?" Charles asked Mulder. "Someone was trying to hurt my family." "Good for you." Charles had a little more respect for his brother-in-law. "I see you contacted your lawyer, Mr. Mulder." "I did not contact my lawyer." Mulder said truthfully since Scully made the call. "Fine, your wife called." Jack was no fool. "Either way, it seems I'm under court order to produce a reason to keep you in custody. While I'm getting the paperwork, I'll leave you to talk." Jack shook his head as he exited the room. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully better be worth all this trouble. Pulling out his phone, he asked Tony to intercept the legal documents and meet him at Michelle's desk. x-x-x Interrogation room 2 CTU 4:40pm Ryan had two butterfly bandages on his forehead, an ice pack on his mouth and a towel turban style around his head. The nurse gave him a cursory check-up. No teeth were broken, the gash on his forehead probably didn't need stitches. She kept quiet about his hair. When Jack opened the door, he wanted to continue what Fox Mulder had started. Mr. Mulder was wisecracking his way through the interview, but he was talking. If Dr. Scully was treated with some degree of respect, Mulder could have been turned. Instead, he has two of the most paranoid people he's ever seen with good reason to be that way and a court order demanding their release. "Why'd you do it, Ryan?" "Do what? You had Mr. Mulder in custody, I was expediting the paper work." "Expediting the paper work? Is that what you call taking a child away from his mother?" "She's not his mother." "She gave birth to him. She's married to the child's father. If there is some legal technicality that says she's not the mother, that's not enough to rip the boy away from her." "I was following proper protocol." "Who sent you their files?" "What files?" "The non-redacted files. The things we couldn't get about Mr. Mulder and Dr. Scully. Work records, health records, case information - all things we were denied. You, however, had a full access to everything." "I don't report to you, Jack. I may be cleared to have this material and you may not." "Bullshit." "Excuse me?" "Bullshit, Ryan. You had someone send them to you and probably tell you that taking the boy would tank the case." "That's not the case. Even if it was, you have no proof." "Tony told me you didn't approve of bringing Mr. Mulder and Dr. Scully in." "With good reason, he's a lunatic." "You were taking his child away. The fact that you're still able to speak makes me think he's a man of great restraint." "He washed out of the FBI after making a joke of himself there for nearly ten years. She's no better than he is, flushing a medical degree and a fast track career down the toilet to chase vampires, monsters and aliens with him." "You see what landed out in the desert?" "I saw what could have been anything from a Chinese created predator drone to something a group of science students from Los Alamos built." "It was some sort of craft. Something that nearly killed two Navy corpsmen and something I think Mr. Mulder and Dr. Scully can help us with. You screwed this up badly Ryan and I will find out who sent you their files and we can discuss all of this down at division once this is over." "I'm going home." Ryan stood only to have Jack push him back into his seat. "No, you're not. You're staying here until I can secure the situation with William Mulder and have some sort of answer from the boy's parents about their cooperation. If they say no because of what you've done, I'll see you in court for attempted kidnaping." "You'll never get it to stick." "No, but I'll have crime scene photos of your hair for the office Christmas party." x-x-x Michelle's Dressler's desk 4:45pm. "What have you got?" Michelle asked Tony as he walked to her desk. "A court order demanding CTU produce Fox Mulder, adult, Dana Scully M.D., also known as Dana Mulder M.D., adult and William Mulder, child in federal court." "When?" "Time's on our side this time - 9:00am tomorrow morning." "What's tomorrow morning?" Jack asked. "When CTU has to show cause for having the Mulder family in custody." "Finally, a break for us." Jack took the legal documents and started looking through them. "What have you got Michelle?" "What we should have had this morning, Mr. Mulder and Dr. Scully's full records." "Milo, what do you have?" "Mr. Mulder went AWOL from the FBI in early February 1995. He was found suffering from extreme hypothermia in the Arctic. He was taken to Eielson Air Force Base where Dr. Scully seems to have hijacked his treatment." "Hijacked?" "According to the notes here, Dr. Scully charged into the emergency room and changed what the doctors at Eielson were doing. He coded on the table but she brought him back and had him up and healthy in six days. Seems she knew what she was doing." "Anything else?" "This record is connected to several FBI files that I've spent the last ten minutes trying to access but my security clearance isn't high enough." "I tried for Milo." Michelle added. "And was also denied access. Want to try, Jack?" Michelle began to type in the data request from the FBI database. When she was done, Jack tried his access code but was also denied. "Tony, get Chappelle's access code." "He won't give it to me. Especially to me." "Then tell him if he doesn't, you're under orders to cuff him and frogmarch him out to Milo's desk and you plan to do it just before the 5 o'clock shift change. Everyone will see what Mr. Mulder did." "What did Mr. Mulder do?" Milo asked. "Made his wife laugh." Jack answered cryptically. x-x-x Conference room two CTU 4:50pm PT "I'll be happy to take care of William if you two can help Mr. Bauer." Charles argued. "And if we don't want to help Mr. Bauer?" Mulder answered. "Why wouldn't you? This could be an opportunity to get back into the FBI." "Beside the fact that neither one of us has any interest in returning to the FBI, this was almost an opportunity to take William away from us." Scully replied "But I won't let that happen." "They argued I wasn't a fit temporary guardian, why would his uncle be any better if they don't keep up their end of the bargain?" "Dana, they'll keep up their end of the bargain. I don't understand why you won't help." "We made a deal when William was returned to us." "But the government needs you now, you could make a new deal, a better deal. You could negotiate something from your old career back." "It wasn't this end of the government we have the deal with." Scully looked at Mulder. "We live our nice quiet life, we get left alone. This wasn't part of the deal." "They already have you here, the government knows you're involved. They saw what happened if they tried to take William, what could they do to you?" "That's a question I'd like an answer to." Jack Bauer entered the room. "My lawyer, Mr. Bauer, I want to talk to my lawyer." Mulder said. "Your lawyer is good, Mr. Mulder. I have to produce you, Dr. Scully and your son at a hearing tomorrow morning at nine. I'm guessing if you called half an hour earlier, it would have been a 5pm hearing." "Damn. You have any good take out menus here? We're gonna need a couple of cots, too." x-x-x Michelle Dressler's Cubicle CTU 4:55pm PT "Ryan's access code." Tony handed it to Michelle written on a piece of paper. Michelle tried the code. It worked. "It's linked to several FBI case files. The murder of several family planning clinic doctors, a CIA agent, an FBI agent, a fire in a medical testing plant." Milo opened the file at his desk. "Michelle, take a look at the dead doctors." "Twins?" She opened more files "Triplets, Quadr..." "Clones." Tony speculated. "The technology doesn't exist for this." Michelle said. "Not on this planet." Milo then whistled the tones from "Close Encounters." x-x-x As always, Shari is the best! Feedback yes, pointy sticks no! Good, bad, my God, stop before you type again: maureen_b_ocks@yahoo.com