Title: Rongbuk(1/3)
Author: Ravenscion
E-mail: ravenscion@hotmail.com
Rating: R (language, violence, sex)
Category: XR
Keywords: Mulder/Scully romance, some angst
Spoilers: possible for seasons 1-5 and the movie.
Date of First Posting: 29 August 1998
Author's website: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dunes/6767/
Archiving: Please archive at Gossamer. Others, please email for
permission.

Summary: As Mulder and Scully enter a new phase in their relationship
in the wake of the Blackwood virus case, a man who disappeared decades
earlier returns from a remote region of Tibet. This event prompts a new
investigation that has implications both for the X-Files and for Mulder
and Scully personally.

Disclaimer: Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, and all of the other characters
and situations related to the X-Files, belong to Chris Carter, 1013
Productions, and the FOX network. I am using them without permission
but intend no copyright infringement.

Notes: Encouraged by the kind responses to my first attempts at fan
fiction (both vignettes), I am now posting a somewhat longer story.
Naturally, I am very interested in the opinions of readers, so please
send feedback, positive or negative. I would greatly appreciate it.

I have included references to extant literature throughout this story,
references which merit explanation, but due to their number, I think it
would be inconvenient to attempt to list them here. Therefore, I am
adding a short "endnotes" section to the last chapter of this story,
where these references, along with certain points of Tibetan culture and
geography, are discussed.

This story attempts to address certain issues that were brought up as
early as the "Gethsemane-Redux II" story arc, along with aspects of
season five and the X-Files movie. For timeline purposes, I have
assumed that the events of the movie ended sometime around 7 September
1998 (despite the 1997 date-time stamp on the telegram in the film),
and "Rongbuk", from Mulder and Scully's perspective, picks up shortly
after the film ends. All times given are local to the time zone in
which the action is taking place.

I hope you enjoy it.

[begin part 1 of 11]
***********************************************************************

Rongbuk -- an X-Files Novella

by Ravenscion

Book I -- Asymptotes

Rongbuk Monastery, Tsang Province, Tibet
Friday, 31 July 1998, 3:23 a.m.

A distant crash startled Jamyang Dorje from a troubled sleep.

He sat up on his cot, listening, but the noise was not repeated. The
only sounds were the wind moaning about the monastery's eaves, and the
quiet clank of the bronze chimes that hung beneath them. Within the
monastery walls, the silence was undisturbed, a heavy blanket over the
sleeping community of monks.

Jamyang Dorje remained upright, allowing full wakefulness to catch up
with him. Most likely the sound had been nothing of consequence.
Perhaps a rat had overturned an offering vase. He climbed out of his
cot. Best to check anyway, he thought, lighting a butter lamp as he
pulled his robes of heavy maroon cloth about himself. He slipped out of
his room and made his way through the darkened halls. The flickering of
the lamp, and the fresh, chill night-scent that had insinuated itself
amid the ancient sandalwood atmosphere of the monastery, indicated that
something had disturbed a window somewhere, breaking the careful seals
that kept out the nighttime wind and cold.

No one else had risen. The sound that had disturbed him had apparently
not interrupted the sleep of his fellow monks. Of course, night duty
was his tonight, and thus he had slept in a designated room in the front
part of the building, away from the main dormitory. He moved toward a
window at the end of the corridor, finding broken glass and a small
stone on the floor beneath it. He squinted a bit as he peered out into
the night, searching for the source of the mischief.

Before him lay Rongbuk's southern vista, an expansive grassy plain that
abutted a distant range of high, jagged peaks, unseen now in the night.
Bright moonlight spilled over the scene, reflecting off wavelets in the
river that flowed past the monastery and illuminating the nearby village
and fields of barley.

Moonlight?

Strange, he thought. The moon should have set hours ago.

He felt a sudden, peculiar chill climb his back. Moving more quickly,
the stone-thrower temporarily forgotten, he retraced his steps a short
distance and ascended a ladder to a door that opened onto the
monastery's flat roof, nearly slipping once on the slick, rounded rungs
as he climbed. He left his lamp on a small table and raised the bar-
lock, pushing the door open and stepping out onto the roof.

He did not feel the bite of wind; the sight that greeted him banished
all such mundane thoughts from his mind.

To the north, an intense white light floated low in the sky, growing
slowly larger as whatever it was approached. The light illuminated the
land below in with an eldritch glow that licked the low hills at the
valley's edge, sending shadows writhing along the landscape. Jamyang
Dorje stared long at this apparition, watching as it neared the
monastery, one hand clutching his robes tightly about him, the other
fingering the sacred mala-rosary that he had unconsciously drawn out.
He recited a protective mantra under his breath.

He had an idea where the origin of this thing might be, a place he had
heard about but never seen. The monks of Rongbuk and the people of the
local villages and nomad camps alike spoke in hushed tones of a place in
the wilderness north of the monastery, a place of the most profound
inauspiciousness, -- a place people did not go.

He hoped he was wrong.

Several interminable minutes later, the source of light drew near,
drifting silently above the rooftop where Jamyang Dorje stood. The
illumination was too bright, and the monk was forced to shield his eyes
with his robes. He waited without moving for something to happen.

Without warning, the light disappeared, and for a few moments he could
not see at all. When his vision at last adjusted for the return of
moonless dark, he saw nothing above him but the jewel-stars of the
Tibetan night sky.

The thing that had passed over the monastery had vanished.

"Hello, up there! Hey!" A voice broke the silence, and he lowered his
gaze from the sky above, stepping over to the edge of the roof. Below
him, a figure stood in the half-light, waving and shouting in accented
Tibetan.

"Hey! Let me inside!" The figure gestured toward the monastery gate,
waving his arm in animated jerks.

Jamyang Dorje called down to him. "Go to the gate. I will open it for
you." He watched the figure move south along the wall, then made his
own way back through the rooftop doorway, pausing to cast one last
troubled glance northward. He then descended past the sleeping level,
pausing there to wake one of the novices, and stepped out into the
monastery's courtyard, hurrying to the massive wooden doors that opened
onto the southward road to the village. The novice trailed him. As he
approached the gate, he could already hear the stranger's muffled
pounding on the other side. He pulled open the doors to find a
foreigner, a westerner, standing outside. "Be patient, friend. You are
welcome here," he said.

The man darted within, pushing the gate closed behind him. He spoke in
rapid, clipped tones. "Thank you, Lama. Sorry about the window, but no
one was answering. I am in desperate haste."

Jamyang Dorje considered him. "There is trouble?"

The man nodded toward the northern sky. "Trouble? Yes, perhaps.
Something astonishing. I have to get to Lhasa. I have to get word to
the Regent."

Jamyang Dorje said nothing for a moment. Regent, he thought. That is
a strange word to use. He scrutinized the man before him, holding up
the butter lamp, which he had retrieved on his way down. The foreigner
appeared fairly young, and wore travel-stained khaki trousers, boots,
and a jacket of heavy leather. He carried a rucksack, also of leather,
which he had slid off his shoulders and lowered to the paving stones of
the courtyard.

"I'll need a horse," the man said. "I have to get back to Lhasa as soon
as possible." He seemed calmer now, within Rongbuk's protective walls,
and his Tibetan had settled down as well, becoming more understandable.

Jamyang Dorje spoke carefully, not sure what to make of the stranger.
"You must hasten to Lhasa, you say. To meet with the Governor? Do you
work for the Chinese?"

The man looked startled. "No, no," he said. "The Chinese? Of course
not. I work for the Regent's government. I'm John Leslie. I'm a
surveyor."

Jamyang Dorje frowned, said nothing.

"Les-lie."

"My friend," said the monk, "there is no Regent in Lhasa for you to
meet with. The Chinese rule there now."

Leslie blinked, uncomprehending. "How can this be?" His voice was
quiet now, muffled by troubling implications. He started then, as if
remembering something. "And where is my partner?" he asked. "I
couldn't find our campsite."

Something was very wrong here, Jamyang Dorje thought. The monk searched
the face of his interlocutor. He appeared tired, and confused, yet no
gleam of madness burned in his eyes. Puzzled, the monk spoke again.
"My friend, I do not know you. If you came from Lhasa, you would have
come this way, and you would have stopped here." He paused. "I do not
know you," he said again.

A strange look clouded Leslie's features. "Lama," he began. His words
were cut off as he staggered suddenly, reaching out to brace himself
against the wall, and then falling forward into the arms of a surprised
Jamyang Dorje, who nearly dropped his lamp as he lowered Leslie to the
pavings.

He knelt next to him, then turned to the bewildered novice.

"Get help. This man will need care." The novice hurried for the inner
door to Rongbuk's main hall.

"And send word to the Rinpoche," he called after him.

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

Wilderness of Central Siberia
Sunday, 6 September, 5:45 p.m.

Alex Krycek raised a hand, halting the men behind him, and listened.
For a few long moments, he heard nothing but the natural sounds of the
taiga evening and then, satisfied, he relaxed and drew out his canteen,
indicating to his men that they could take a break from their trek
through the forest.

Krycek signaled to one of them. "Radu," he said, indicating the
direction in which they had been heading, "keep watch forward." Krycek
gestured again and a man broke away from the other side of the group to
act as their rear guard.

Radu Florescu, second in command of the Team in spite of his relatively
recent enlistment, nodded without replying and slipped through the woods
ahead, disappearing from sight. No sound betrayed his movements, and
Krycek found himself impressed once again with the man's skill.

Florescu was working out well, he thought. He had joined with the
Organization only a year before, but his professional abilities, honed
during his career with some of the more obscure departments of the
Romanian government, had led to his rapid rise to Krycek's right hand.
He tended to drink a bit while off duty, but on the job his wits were
inevitably razor-sharp. This suited Krycek just fine -- he couldn't
care less what a man did on his own time, so long as he kept his head
during an operation.

Krycek genuinely liked the somewhat taciturn Romanian, and it was
unusual for him to like, or trust, anyone. His paranoia had kept him
alive this long, and now, in his late 30's, he was not inclined to start
getting cozy with people. But Florescu's temperament suited him. He
made a good partner, Krycek decided.

He raised his canteen and took a long drink, replenishing the fluids he
had sweated out in the warm afternoon and evening. He and his team had
hiked through eight miles of swampy woodlands so far, plagued by bugs
and weighed down by their packs and weapons, but they had nearly reached
their destination now. Soon, the fireworks would begin.

Replacing the canteen, Krycek adjusted the weapon he carried in a
special mount attached to his prosthetic left hand. Though the pack
in which the tanks were mounted was heavy, the flame-thrower would be
essential. He and his men carried pistols as well, of course, but the
weapon of choice for the fight to come would be a jet of inflammable
jelly, sprayed in the direction of their enemies.

Enemies upon whom a bullet would likely be wasted.

Krycek smiled grimly. For years, he and others like him had been
obsessed with an icepick applied forcefully to the back of an enemy's
neck, an effective technique, but one that was both difficult and
dangerous to attempt. Florescu had proven very skilled at it, but most
of Krycek's men could not match his quickness, and for them the icepick
had been a problematic weapon.

Until one day, almost a year earlier in Kazakhstan, as he stood amid
dozens of charred victims of alien malevolence, Krycek had had a
grotesque epiphany.

Flame-throwers -- it wouldn't matter whether you hit the base of the
neck if you didn't leave anything behind that could get up again. And
with luck, the cauterizing affects of the weapon would alleviate some
of the chemical dangers associated with the enemies they faced.

At the first opportunity, he had tested his hypothesis, with results
that were delightfully spectacular. One good dose of napalm and presto!
'Visitor flambe.'

If tonight's mission went according to plan, he would roast a few more
of the motherfuckers within the hour.

He signaled to his team to prepare to march again, and as packs were
being re-shouldered, he moved through the trees and up to the spot where
Florescu had halted.

"Anything?"

"Nyet." The Romanian's Russian was fluent, if accented. He spoke
English as well, but when operating in Russia, Krycek made a point of
using the language of his parents, and so that was the language that
he used with Florescu.

"Good," said Krycek. "I'd like to surprise them."

Florescu nodded. "This is, what, the fifth this year?"

"Yes. But there will be more."

The team had assembled behind them, and Krycek led them forward once
again. As they walked the final distance to their target, he felt the
tension in him begin to crest, the spur of adrenaline in his legs and a
dryness in his mouth. Time seemed to stretch out and then grind to a
halt.

Twenty minute's walk brought them to a large open area in the midst of
the woods. In the center of the clearing, barely lit by the fading
light, stood a low metallic structure. The building was nearly
featureless, but one section, slightly different from the wall around
it, Krycek knew to be a gate. He signaled with his good hand, and one
of his men, carrying an RPG, moved up next to him.

"Clear," ordered Krycek. His team scattered laterally, vacating the
area behind the rocket launcher.

"Fire!" The rocket streaked toward the building, exploding with a
deafening boom that echoed through the previously silent forest. And
then Krycek and his men were running, running toward the breach in the
gateway. They rushed into the passages within the structure, bursting
through doorways and rounding corners, bathing the surprised and
terrified occupants with a fiery gel that clung to their skins, slowly
reducing them to smoking corpses.

The screams of the victims made no impression on their killers. The
Visitors looked like men, they burned like men, but they were not.

* * *

Much later, Krycek radioed for the helicopter that had dropped his team
off earlier that afternoon. Now that the alien facility had been
cleared, it could come in directly without worrying about alerting the
occupants, a fact for which the exhausted team was profoundly grateful.
Another hike through the woods after the stress of the assault, in the
inky dark of the taiga night, would have been a bit much, even for an
elite unit such as theirs.

The operation had gone fairly well; only one man had been wounded, and
the Visitors had all been exterminated. On the down side, most of the
equipment within the facility, as well as its records, had been
destroyed, either by the heat of the flames or due to the last-minute
efforts of the Visitors themselves. Though not unexpected, the
destruction frustrated Krycek to no end.

He had long hoped to capture a facility intact, to plunder its secrets,
but after five tries, he had still had no success.

Florescu joined him. "Not bad, but not good either," he said, gesturing
toward the ruined building nearby.

Krycek spat. "This site was unimportant anyway." He waved his arm,
indicating the vast wilderness around them. "There has to be a master
facility somewhere. When we find that one, we will have to come up with
a way to take it in one piece."

Florescu indicated the southern horizon. "Some would say that we're
looking in the wrong place. You would, yourself, I think."

Krycek stared south as well. "That's a long way to go," he said.

"Yes, it is."

At that moment, Krycek heard the distant throb of the approaching
helicopter's rotors. He turned to his team.

"Prepare to mount up!" he ordered. One of the men activated a signal
strobe.

His men readied their gear and assembled as the helicopter, a large
black relic of the Soviet Spetznatz units, descended toward them, a dark
insect barely visible against the evening sky. It slowed and hovered
for a moment, then touched down in the field adjacent to the building.
Krycek went aboard last, giving the area one last look, though he could
see little in the advancing darkness.

He settled into the belly of the machine, relaxing as it lifted off and
began its flight back to their base. The radio operator stepped out
of the cockpit and made his way into the cargo area, stepping carefully
over Krycek's men until he stood next to him. He held a scrap of paper
in his hand.

"Be ready to travel," he yelled over the roar or the engines.

"Why?" Krycek yelled back at him.

"Orders. You are to return to St. Petersburg. Tonight." He gave the
paper to Krycek, who read it with growing annoyance.

He turned and handed it to Florescu as the radio operator returned to
the cockpit. "Look at this," he yelled.

Florescu glanced over the Cyrillic letters, handed the note back to
Krycek. "What do you think it means?" he asked.

"Who the fuck knows? Better try and get some sleep, though."

Disgusted, Krycek settled back, letting himself drift off. He would
not be getting much sleep for the next couple of days, he surmised.

The helicopter sped over the vast forest, leaving the scene of the
destruction far in its wake.

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

FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Monday, 14 September, 7:00 a.m.

Fox Mulder stood in the basement hallway and shook the rain from his
trenchcoat, then entered the dark office that had been his lair for the
past five years. Despite the length of time he had worked there, the
place seemed strange now. The new furnishings and paint, necessitated
by the fire that had destroyed most of the X-Files, made the room an
unfamiliar place. He felt yet another surge of frustration. Much of
the information in the X-Files had never been backed up, in any medium,
and thus had been lost forever at the hands of an unknown arsonist.

An officially unknown arsonist -- Mulder had a good idea who had been
responsible for starting the blaze.

He slung his coat nonchalantly onto the rack by the door, set the coffee
brewing, and slumped in his chair. He ran his fingers through his hair
and felt water begin to trickle down the back of his neck. He flicked
droplets from his hand in irritation.

The morning had blown in damp and warm, the long, sultry Washington
summer, with its hazy, dead heat and red sunsets giving way to dark,
heavy rainclouds and high winds, as a tropical gale made its way up
America's eastern seaboard. In the still-dim light of morning, flags
whipped urgently in the wind, and commuters hugged their trenchcoats to
themselves, warding off the stray bursts of rain but ensuring the
clammy misery of too much clothing.

Amid the rain and bluster, a tired and preoccupied Mulder had made his
way to his office earlier than usual. Though the start of the work week
usually found him alert and full of energy, on this particular Monday he
was in less than top form. He had slept poorly the night before,
tossing about in a tangle of sheets, alternately too warm and too cold,
and wholly unable to relax. Eventually, he had slipped out to his sofa,
retreating to an old, abandoned habit in the hope that with the familiar
would at last come relaxation, but he had given that up as well --
nights on the couch had known demons of their own, and he found no
comfort there.

Returning to his bed, he had finally lost the staring contest with the
ceiling and dropped off, only to be woken moments later by the shriek of
his alarm clock. He had given up, then, on getting any sleep and headed
for the office, hoping to lose himself in his work instead. Now,
however, he found himself utterly unable to focus, as unquiet shadows
pursued each other through his mind. The cause of his unrest was no
mystery; indeed, its intensity derived in part from its stark
simplicity.

Dana Scully had an appointment with her oncologist that morning.

To the extent possible, given the randomness inherent in work on the
X-Files project, Mulder's life had evolved into a pattern centered on
Scully's periodic check-ups. Most of the time, he could allow her
remarkable return to health to reassure him, coping with lingering
specters by ignoring them. But her appointments, scheduled now at six-
month intervals, inevitably brought his unease over her health back in
full measure. Often blithe about his own safety, Mulder compensated
with a surfeit of concern for the handful of people in his life who were
truly important to him.

Especially Scully -- he knew he sometimes drove her to distraction with
his protectiveness, but he couldn't stop himself. She meant too much to
him.

Mulder told himself he shouldn't worry. Scully's cancer, artifact that
it had been, remained safely barred from her body by the alien implant
still ensconced in her neck. Intellectually, he was confident that this
was so. But here, now, in an office left cold and lifeless by her
absence, Mulder found that reasoning to be a cold comfort.

Alone, he contemplated the restoration of a condition he had been glad
to leave behind.

He forced himself to log into his email account, seeking distraction
from what promised to be an interminable morning. Glancing over a
message -- reports of crop circles and blisters on leaves -- he snorted
to himself -- Gulf Breeze all over again. People never learn.

File that one in "Miscellaneous," along with the rest of the foolishness
that frequently found its way into his public email account.

Nonetheless, he was glad for the diversion.

He glanced at the clock -- 7:15 -- and sighed, removing his reading
glasses for a moment and rubbing his eyes. Scully's appointment had
been scheduled for 8:00 a.m., which meant he could not reasonably expect
her for at least another hour and a half. Another 90 minutes of tension
before he would know the results of last week's tests.

Although with luck it would be less than that. If the news were good,
she would call. She would know that he would be concerned.

Mulder stared at the phone, willing it to ring.

She would be okay.

She had to be, because there was no way he could go back to being alone.

Early in his career, working in the VCS, Mulder had relished solitude,
the inherent challenge of the psyche of the serial killer fascinating
him, drawing him into a heady vortex of concentration and exhaustion and
exhilaration. Amid that tumult, he had had no time for real
companionship, and even then his relations with his colleagues had
carried undertones of alienation, as his profiling gift inspired envy
and even a vague, awed loathing in those around him.

'Weave a circle round him thrice, and close your eyes with holy
dread....'

For a young bachelor, submerged in his work, spending a few hours on the
weekend unwinding and then filling his Sundays with televised sports and
the minimal concessions to laundry and housekeeping, being alone had
become a familiar sensation.

And later in his career, when he had begun work on the X-Files, Mulder's
personal stake in his investigations had only deepened his life of
solitude. He had come to resent even the necessary down time of
Sundays, and Saturday had simply dissolved into the rest of the work
week. Cycle upon cycle, he had gone from lurking amid dusty and
mildewed files in his dark office to remote field sites and then back
again, losing touch with sometime not-quite friends and rivals alike.
The odd evening with the boys at 'The Lone Gunman,' accounts of alien
technology or shadowy assassinations washed down with a few beers in an
office overflowing with high-tech clutter, became his only avenue for
relaxation.

Relationships had foundered or were stillborn, and sex, once an
occasional diversion with women who, like him, merely sought a few hours
of diversion, had been translated into the solo dissipation of video
tapes.

And then Dana Scully had walked into his office, his caseload, and his
life.

Mulder shook his head, opened another email, and began to read something
about a sighting in Alaska of a dire wolf, of all things. He gave it up
in mid-message, though, his momentary enthusiasm at the prospect of such
a species still roaming some far corner of the wild quickly eclipsed by
the thought of his partner.

On a fundamental level, everything had changed when she had come to him,
though his day-to-day existence had in outward respects remained much
the same. Scarcely a year into their partnership -- a calamitous year
of initial distrust that became a wary harmony, and harmony that grew
into deeper affection -- he realized that he was lost completely.
Mulder could not say precisely when he had fallen in love with Scully,
when his sense of friendship and casual attraction had become something
more profound, but with some uncertain, critical day or event, she had
caught him in her embrace of spirit, and he had never even wanted to
escape.

Mulder sat back from his computer, idly tapping a pencil eraser on his
desk, his eyes beginning a three-stop tour of the room, cycling from the
door to the clock, from the clock to the phone, and then back to the
door again.

Door...clock...phone -- her absence ate at him.

He could not say when he had fallen in love, but he remembered his
moment of realization. Understanding had come as he stood in the
wreckage of her motel room, shattered glass and her drying blood bearing
witness to the violence that had been done there. And later her phone
call had interrupted his anguished, ineffectual rage, provoking an
initial upsurge of relief that was instantly replaced by a desperate
need to rescue her, whatever the cost.

In the privacy of his heart, he had been ashamed at how willingly he had
traded his sister for Dana Scully's safety.

Of course, it hadn't really been Samantha -- an irony of fate had spared
him that particular burden -- but he had not known that at the time.
As he stood on a lonely bridge in Maryland, staring at the shape-
shifter's relentless grip around Scully's throat, he only knew that he
had to save her.

Get her clear first, Mulder, then play it from there. Thus he had
dictated his course to himself.

His guilt at the relief he had felt made his grief over Samantha that
much harder to bear, until the next half-truth had been unveiled before
him. That knowledge, however, had paled in comparison to the greater
truth revealed to him that day, a truth he had then been forced to find
a way to live with for the next few years.

In retrospect, he'd been surprised it had taken him so long to
recognize it. Others had known his heart long before he did, and had
even told him so, but he had been too absorbed in his quest, and too
full of wrath, to listen. That had almost cost him more than he could
ever have imagined at the time.

Mulder gave the dire wolves one last try and then sent that message
after its predecessor, into the black hole of his miscellaneous email
folder. He realized he was not going to get a lot done until his
current concern was alleviated.

His eyes locked on the phone again. Ring, damn it.

The device sat inert on his desk, unmoved by his agitation.

Trying a new tactic, he began scanning a case file, yet another murder-
with-occult-overtones that had been routed to his attention, and
actually managed to concentrate for some time, looking over the crime
scene photographs of grisly eviscerations and mysterious painted
symbols, skimming through reports filed by horrified policemen.
Eventually, though, he gave that up as well, his eyes abandoning the
text in mid-paragraph, slipping into an unfocused stare as his thoughts
returned to Scully once more.

She had caused Mulder's isolation to undergo a profound transformation.
He still endured long hours of solitude, but drank deep of every moment
he spent with her, relentless in his investigations in part due to his
desire for answers, in part due to his need for the balm of her company.

And thus had passed the years of their quasi-courtship, in which he and
Scully had circled each other in a tentative dance, close, but not
touching, neither daring to close the gap, neither willing to walk away.
For Mulder, it had been a long, lonely love affair, with moments of
intimacy -- the stroke of his hand on her cheek, or in a madman's house,
where she had wept, soul bared, in his arms -- often coming with a
price.

He had not once found it within himself to act decisively, to break the
familiar, incomplete pattern they had created. He had been tempted, at
times, by brief intimate moments, but he had never taken the last,
fateful step. He had valued what he had too much to risk its loss in an
attempt to make it something more.

And despite the fears and regrets her cancer had raised in him, he had
felt unable to burden her with his attentions during her illness. As
much as he had wanted to comfort her, he feared that overt expressions
of love would have been too sorrowful, too ironic an intrusion into her
suffering. His own preoccupations, a mounting frustration with his
efforts to unmask the conspiracy whose destruction he had claimed as
his purpose in life, had come between them as well.

Mulder rubbed his forehead. Just as well he had kept silent then, he
thought. She had hardly needed a suitor who, literally, had a hole in
his skull. He remembered her brother's contempt. You don't know the
half of it, Billy-boy.

Scully, for reasons of her own, had frozen him out of her ordeal,
donning a mask of denial and brittle independence to insulate him from
her pain, and herself from, perhaps, the regrets that he represented.
Only at the moment of her final crisis had they at last been able to
truly reach out to one another.

He couldn't face that again, and now, after the still crueler ordeal of
the death of a daughter she had never had a chance to know, from which
she at last seemed to be recovering, he feared the return of the cancer
would be a blow too heavy even for Scully to endure. That was a
possibility that did not bear contemplating. The emptiness of his life
without her would consume him utterly, he knew from bitter experience.

She'll be fine, he told himself again. Any moment now, she'll call and
I'll have wasted the morning fretting about nothing. Mulder was
beginning to become annoyed with himself. It wasn't as though they
lacked real troubles to be concerned about. The X-Files had wrought
ruin enough in both of their lives.

But at least they truly had each other now. Given just a modicum of
good fortune, they could walk out of the ashes together.

In the middle of the recent nightmare of a case that had begun with a
bombing in Dallas and ended in the hellish cold of Antarctica, Mulder
had realized just how close he had come to losing Scully forever.
Between the machinations of those who wanted them separated and her own
sense of futility over the X-Files, Scully had been on the verge of
walking out of his life for good. The fear and desperation that had
welled up in him had caused him to cast aside his doubts and, standing
in the corridor outside of his apartment, declare himself to her.

'You make me a whole person,' he had said. And that, more than anything
he could have said about the importance of her science to his life's
quest, had been the essence of his heart's message to her.

I need you.

I can't go on without you.

Her response, the gentle touch of her lips on his forehead, had jolted
every fiber of his being, bringing the nerves throughout his body to
their highest sensitivity. He had embraced her, losing himself in the
deep blue of her eyes, and suddenly realized that he was going to kiss
her, to cross a line that he had never dared approach before. And he
had realized, as her lips parted in anticipation, that she had been
waiting for him all along.

He could almost enjoy the irony of it.

One some level, perhaps, he had known how it would be. Scully had
proven her devotion to him time and again, and he had known that, in
some way, she loved him. Even so, he had been relieved as well as
delighted that, after their return from Antarctica, she had accepted
him, that she had wanted him to be her lover.

The thought tightened in his chest, an upwelling of joy that outshone
for a moment his present worry.

You are more fortunate than you deserve, Mulder.

The ringing of the telephone cut through his thoughts, spurring his arm
into a violent reach that upset a coffee cup full of pencils and almost
sent the phone itself tumbling off the desk. "Mulder," he said, just
managing to control the receiver. A couple of pencils rolled off the
edge of his desk and clattered on the floor.

"Mulder, John Byers here."

Mulder exhaled in disappointment. "Hey, man," he said. "What is it?"

"Any chance you two could come by the 'Gunman' later today? I think
I've got something for you." Byers spoke as though holding himself
down, an undercurrent of nervous excitement in his voice.

Mulder merely felt impatient. "Sure, later. Gotta run, I'm waiting for
a call."

"She can call your cell phone, Mulder. Listen, I think this could be
important." He paused, then continued rapidly: "Have you ever heard of
Randolph Sales?"

"Rings a bell." Mulder let his mind shift into free-flow, waiting for
the name to connect with something. "An explorer, or something, right?
Central Asia?"

"Close," said Byers. "He worked as a surveyor in Tibet in the 1930s.
He came back from a field survey in '34 without his partner and was sent
home to upstate New York in mysterious circumstances. Spent the rest of
his life in seclusion -- some of it in mental hospitals."

"Okay," said Mulder, "what about him?"

"Well, you know that a lot of UFO activity has been reported in Tibet."

Mulder made a non-committal sound. He had indeed read of such reports,
but little serious work had been done in that particular area of UFO
studies, mainly because most of the reports pre-dated Roswell and the
upsurge of awareness that followed that event.

"I know, I know," said Byers, "but you of all people should be open to
the possibilities."

Byers paused, evidently taking a breath, then plunged onward.

"Mulder, someone just brought me Sales' original journals, some written
after his breakdown." He sounded progressively more excited. "It's
dynamite stuff, Mulder. If this is genuine, it might be the key to the
location of an extraterrestrial facility in Central Asia."

Byers paused, waiting for a reaction.

Conflicting emotions swirled in Mulder. He didn't really want to think
about the implications of what Byers was saying. Between the matter of
the alien virus, which he and Scully had spent the last week or so
attempting to come to terms with, and his current concern over Scully's
appointment, he just wasn't ready to take this on.

Still, Byers was not one to get worked up over nothing, which meant
that whatever he had gotten his hands on could be important....

"Alright, Byers, alright." Mulder decided to cut the conversation
short. "Look, I said we'd be there, but really, I can't talk now...I'm
sorry. After work, okay?"

"Very well, that'll do." Byers sounded resigned. "How soon can you get
out here?"

"I'm not sure, probably late. How about eight o'clock?"

"Alright, eight it is. I'll see you then."

"We'll be there." Mulder hung up, resumed staring at the phone. Byers'
news teased at his brain for a while, but he thrust the matter aside and
returned to the case file he had looked at earlier, seeking to distract
himself from his vigil and from the issues that Byers had raised. He
met with some success, managing to read the file through once in the
five passes his eyes made across its contents, his concentration not
aided by its utter irrelevance to recent developments in the X-Files.

Closing the folder for the last time, Mulder sat back and began staring
at the clock, which had described just over one full circuit and now
read 8:21. By the bottom of the hour, he was certain that the second
hand had come to a complete stop.

The office door opened, then, and she was there. Mulder stared at her,
struck anew by the classic elegance of her beauty. He waited, unable to
ask.

Scully gave him a slight smile, uncomplicated joy for a moment lifting
years from her visage. "Clear," she said.

"Clear?" His voice caught a bit.

She nodded. "Everything's fine. There's no sign of the cancer."

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

Ned Kelley's Last Stand, Hong Kong
14 September, 7:30 p.m.

Alex Krycek ordered another beer from an attractive young waitress and
sat back, at last able to relax after what had been a hellish week.

After the raid in Siberia, he and Florescu had flown back to St.
Petersburg the same night, arriving before dawn and reporting to the
headquarters of the Organization at exactly 7:00 a.m. There, they had
been received by one of the highest-ranking members and presented with a
rather unexpected, but critical assignment.

Krycek had ended up boarding a plane for Hong Kong that same morning,
having barely enough time to pack a bag before he had been due at the
airport. He would have resented the orders, had he not been so
intrigued by their implications.

Few would have been very excited by the news that one John Edward Leslie
had returned from a surveying expedition in Tibet, but to those in the
know, it had been news indeed. After all, Leslie had begun his journey
in 1934.

And even the rumor of the man who disappeared at Rongbuk had been enough
to banish thoughts of protest from Krycek's mind and send him hurrying
to Hong Kong, hoping to get to Lhasa in time to catch up with him.

That had been a week ago, though, and here he was, still stuck in Hong
Kong, drinking in an Aussie pub in the evening and fighting the
bureaucracy by day. Historically, Tibet had been a difficult place to
enter, and in that regard at least, nothing had changed.

The waitress brought Krycek's beer and he took a long swig, watching her
ass with appreciation as she walked away from his table. She had been
making eyes at him all evening, and he had begun to think she might be
willing to do a lot more than that once her shift ended. Krycek smiled
to himself, considering all of the creative ways he could debauch her.

He enjoyed the image for a moment and then returned his mind to the
problem at hand. He had not been idle during his week in Hong Kong, and
if most of his efforts had been thwarted, he nonetheless had managed to
make progress. Unfortunately, with every day that passed, his initial
goal had become more difficult to attain, and he knew that it was
probably too late by now.

Krycek had managed to find the reporter, an employee of the South China
Morning Post, who had filed a story on Leslie 10 days earlier while in
Lhasa -- the story that had alerted the Organization to the affair in
the first place. From him he learned that Leslie had probably already
left the Tibetan capital, though no one could be sure where he had been
headed.

Krycek had a guess, though. Leslie was an American after all. Missing
64 years or not, he would likely head for home.

Which meant he would be almost impossible to find, without resources.

There had not been much that Krycek could do, so he had decided to roll
the dice. His plan, hasty, improvised, and, some might say, desperate
though it was, *could* work, with the right personnel to implement it,
and a little luck.

He had the right personnel, and as for luck, well, he was due.

Krycek had contacted Florescu, who had remained in St. Petersburg, and
emailed him detailed instructions. By now, the Romanian would be in
Washington D.C., putting his part of the plan in motion.

And Krycek had already done his part. One small act, completed earlier
that day, should have set events in motion. Now, all he could do was
prepare to travel into Tibet and wait for Florescu's report.

He raised his glass to his partner. We'll soon know whether you are as
good as you say you are, Radu.

Krycek looked around, finding the waitress in the smoky room. If he had
to kill time, he might as well find an entertaining way to do it.

***********************************************************************
[end part 1 of 11]

[begin part 2 of 11]
************************************************************************

FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Monday, 14 September, 8:30 a.m.

Scully watched the tension pour out of her partner. His shoulders
slumped momentarily as relief took its place, and then he was before
her, reaching over her shoulder to shut the door and crushing her in an
embrace that told of the unquiet hours he had passed since last seeing
her.

"Mmmmm, Mulder," she smiled into his chest. Scully tightened her arms
around him, enjoying his presence and his scent, allowing herself a
brief violation of the discipline they had set for themselves at the
office. She had not seen him since early Sunday morning, after all, and
no one was likely to intrude upon them at this early hour.

"I was worried about you," he said into her hair.

She eased back in his embrace and looked up at him, seeing the doubts
etched in his features. "I'm fine," she said, "really."

He held her gaze for a moment, then nodded. "Good," he said, pulling
her close again and kissing her lightly atop her head.

He released her after a few seconds, giving her space to remove her
coat and hang it with his on the ancient coat tree by the door. As
Mulder stepped back to his desk, she recovered her soft leather
briefcase, dropped in the midst of their embrace, and set it by her
chair, then stepped over to the coffee maker. She poured herself a cup,
pleased that he had remembered to start it brewing, and unconsciously
cleaned up the debris from a minor, Mulder-triggered explosion of non-
dairy creamer. Behind her, she heard the staccato of his fingers on his
keyboard.

Scully returned to her desk then, leaning against it and sipping from
her cup, secretly enjoying the vaguely professorial look that Mulder's
glasses lent him. Fatigue showed around his eyes, and he had forgotten
to shave, but her news seemed to have re-energized him. "So," she
offered, gesturing at the file in front of him, "what have you got
there?"

Mulder lifted the file, shrugged, and passed it to her. "Nothing," he
said. "I've been through it half a dozen times already, and I even
managed to pay attention once, but I don't see anything significant.
The case is closed -- they just routed it to us FYI, because it had
occult overtones, but I'm not sure why they bothered."

Scully took the folder but did not open it. If the file had contained
anything even remotely related to the X-Files, Mulder would have already
switched on the slide projector by now. Most likely it had been sent by
an over-zealous or overly careful clerk in the records division. She
set the file down. "Any messages?"

"Not much so far. Byers called about something. I told him we'd come
by this evening. Otherwise, I've just got an inbox full of routines and
a few crank emails -- say, want to go search for dire wolves in Alaska?"
He turned back to his computer.

Alaska...that actually sounded kind of nice, Scully thought, though she
honestly couldn't imagine a trip with Mulder that wouldn't end with them
on a glacier somewhere, him enthusiastically chipping what might or
might not be alien artifacts from the ice while her feet froze. After
their recent misadventures in Antarctica, she could imagine that all too
clearly. She sat down, not really disappointed that, for once, Monday
did not signify the start of a new chase.

She relaxed for a moment, waiting for the coffee to take effect,
indulging in a bit of Mulder-watching.

Despite the frustrating end to their investigation of the Blackwood
virus, Mulder had settled into a sort of equilibrium, seeming to abandon
dueling with himself over the fundamental validity of his quest, content
for the time being to focus his energy on her and let the Truth take
care of itself. Their love affair remained an unknown territory, for
both of them, and she and Mulder together had begun to cautiously
explore this new stage in their lives, spending most nights either at
her place or his, while maintaining the outward appearance of separate
residence.

Scully was not sure how long their charade could be maintained. She
smiled inwardly, thinking that, if nothing else, the passion they shared
must be written all over her. Some mornings found her positively giddy
with the afterglow.

It was a welcome change from waking in an empty bed, in an empty
apartment, with only a few family pictures on dressers and tables, and
a faded snapshot of the daughter she had known so briefly tucked in the
drawer of her bedside table. She slept soundly in Mulder's comforting
embrace, not having to keep watch on the ramparts of her emotions. The
ghosts remained, but she had shelter from the worst of their haunting.
For the first time in years of suffering and loss, interrupted only by a
brief respite in the wake of her remission, she found her outlook
guardedly optimistic.

And so she relished her new closeness with Mulder, reveling in their
time together. The hours they had spent apart, since early on Sunday,
seemed inordinately long.

She resisted the urge to touch him. "Dire wolves?" she asked instead.

He called up the message again. "Big, dumb, and presumably extinct, but
not so, according to one..." his voice took on an incredulous tone
"...Melrose Platz -- and I thought I had a stupid name -- of Fairbanks,
who claims he saw a pair while on a camping trip." He affected a
serious look. "This is a job for...the Park Service!"

Scully gave him her best quizzical look.

He shrugged. "Still, you never know. Extinct species have turned up
deep in the wilderness before." He turned back to his computer, re-
reading the message.

You'd love it if it were true, she thought, hiding a smile behind her
coffee cup.

I missed you, yesterday.

They had been separate because Mulder had left Sunday and Sunday night
to her, for Mass, for family, or just for solitude. He gave her
that much space, unwilling to over-burden her with himself, sensitive to
her need to maintain a small part of the life alone that she had lived
before they had brought their lives together.

She loved him for that too, along with everything else that he was,
though she was beginning to consider the Sunday night aspect overdoing
it. His absence had affected her sleep, and from the look of him,
Mulder had been similarly restless.

It had been years since Scully had enjoyed the wholly contented
slumber that nights in Mulder's arms brought her.

She sipped her coffee again, steam from the hot liquid bathing her face,
relaxing and bringing her into focus simultaneously.

The peace that she and Mulder had would not last. Scully knew that
beyond any doubt. In love with her or not, and she now knew how truly
he was, he would eventually pour his energy into rebuilding the X-Files.
The project remained his life's work, and no matter how hopeless it
became, he would never give it up. And she would not have wanted him
to, not for anything. It had become her quest as well.

So it was only a matter of time until the wheel turned and a new and
most likely difficult stage began. Scully had already prepared herself
for it, as best she could, and she believed that she and Mulder would
weather it together, but she certainly felt no urgency for it to begin.

All in its own time, she thought. I'll enjoy what respite we have. Her
cancer, and the unlikely and uncertain stay of execution under which she
lived, had taught her to do that.

And to have faith.

She removed her gaze from her partner, turning to the clutter on her
desk. "Well, Mulder, it's not as though we aren't faced with weeks of
paper-work." Scully reached for a stack of forms, contemplating the
monumental task of putting their recent investigation into some sort of
order, then looked back at her partner when he failed to respond.

"Mulder?"

"That's odd," he said.

She waited.

"Scully, does the name 'John Leslie' mean anything to you?"

Something in his voice warned her. Spoke too soon, she thought. "No,
not really," she said, keeping her voice neutral.

Mulder turned, beckoning her to him. "Look at this," he said.

Scully rose, making her way to his desk, leaning over his shoulder to
read his computer screen. The email displayed there, addressed to
Mulder's work account, was short and cryptic:

'John Leslie has returned from Rongbuk. Thought you would want to
know.'

There was no signature, but attached to the message was the scanned
image of a newspaper article, detailing the mysterious arrival in Lhasa
of a man rumored to be a missing explorer.

Scully placed one hand lightly on her partner's shoulder. "There's not
really all that much there, Mulder. What does it mean?"

He looked up at her. "I'm not sure, but I think I'd better get back in
touch with Byers."

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

North of Rongbuk Monastery, Tibet
14 September, 7:30 p.m.

The light had begun to fade, and though most nomads of the Tibetan
plateau were settling down for an evening's supper of stew and butter
tea, or perhaps even a cup of beer, Kunga had no prospect of doing
either for some time. He had a stray yak to round up, and in the vast
emptiness of stone, sky, and ocher moss north of the monastery, that
would likely take a while.

Kunga was not a happy man.

For one thing, there were a thousand things he would rather be doing
than searching alone for a lost animal, but more important, there were
a thousand places he would rather be doing it.

He had ranged far beyond the limit that most Tibetans would travel. The
unknown place, the place of demons, lay somewhere beyond the low hills
and escarpments on the northern horizon. He did not have more than the
vaguest of notions as to its location, but like all his kindred, he knew
and avoided the general area.

The place was creepy enough in the best of times, but lately, with the
intermittent lightnings that were seen for miles around, lightnings that
the people of his generation had never seen before, though they had oft
heard their grandparents speak of them, it had become positively
terrifying. If the yak had not been so valuable an animal, Kunga would
never have ventured within miles of where he now stood.

He would have to find the yak soon, or it would have to wait for
morning. Already, the afternoon sun had sunk beneath the mountain range
to the southwest, and the shadows had deepened.

Something caught his eye.

He turned, looking to his right, down into a small gully in which a
stream flowed back toward Rongbuk Monastery. Something was there, in
the grey sand of the stream bed -- tracks.

He scrambled down the slope, for a better look. Perhaps his yak had
stopped here for a drink. Nearing the marks, he leaned down for a
closer look, and then recoiled in horror at what he saw.

The tracks were large, vaguely man-like, but with heavy, clawed toes.

Yeti.

Kunga felt sick with fear. He glanced about, the yak forgotten,
searching the nearby slopes for some sign of the monster. He had never
actually seen one, but he had heard all of the stories, and his uncle
and brother had both seen such tracks before, and heard the yeti's eerie
ululations as they sat huddled near their campfire.

And of course everyone had heard the stories of what happened to those
who were unfortunate enough to actually get close enough to see a yeti.
The torn and broken bodies of such people had been a mainstay of nomad
storytelling for generations.

Kunga had no interest in that sort of notoriety.

Slowly, as though noise would summon the creature from nowhere, Kunga
climbed back up the slope. Under his breath, he murmured "om mani peme
hum" over and over, the mantra of the Bodhisattva of Compassion that
Tibetans recited to keep the demons of their land at bay. His eyes
flitted from one shadow to another, and every boulder suddenly seemed
animate, when viewed at the edge of his vision. He cleared the edge
of the slope and began a rapid walk southward, back the way he had come.

As he left the site of the tracks further in his wake, his pace
quickened until his frightened, fast walk had become a trot. He felt
a bit better, now that he had turned back in the direction of his
family's camp, but he was nonetheless very anxious to get home.

Around the warm campfire, the yeti would be scary but amusing. Out
here, as the darkness grew and the chill wind rose, the terror was all
too real.

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

Arlington, Virginia
14 September, 5:22 p.m.

It was considerably earlier than 8:00 p.m when Mulder drove across the
Roosevelt Bridge from the District of Columbia into Northern Virginia,
heading for a run-down section of Arlington that was home to the
offices of "The Lone Gunman." Rain pelted the outside of the car,
driven by a warm, gusting wind that had strengthened since the morning.
From the passenger seat, Scully watched her partner drive, waiting for
him to fill her in on just what it had been about the singularly
uninformative, and unsigned, email he had received that struck him as
significant.

Back in the office, shortly after he had received the unsigned message,
he had told her about Byers' excited phone call, and then hastily called
the guys at 'The Lone Gunman' to arrange an earlier meeting time. But
then he had fallen silent, brooding, his fingers steepled below his chin
as he leaned back in his chair. Scully had let him be, returning to
their paperwork while she waited for him to explain his mind to her.

She knew he would get around to it in his own time. In their more than
five years of companionship, she had learned to be patient with Mulder's
idiosyncracies, of which his occasional tendency to be mysterious about
leads was one of the least. She left him to his thoughts, knowing that
his mind, insulated by quiet, would be flowing freely, without any fixed
direction, allowing the fragments and indications within it to seek
their own patterns and connections. In time, when the kaleidoscope
array of ideas and images fell into some sort of order, he would turn to
her to test the integrity of his thinking.

Then their ongoing intellectual dance would begin anew, his dark and
fluid intuition paired with her clarity, each blending into the other,
not without friction but flowing, with time, into a complex harmony.

Mulder had spent most of the day in silence, eventually taking on his
share of the paperwork, but with an air of distraction. At last, just
after 5:00, he had abruptly tucked away his glasses and turned off his
computer, barely giving her time to get her own desk in order before he
seized his trenchcoat and headed for the exit. She had not tried to
keep up with his pace on the way to the car they were sharing, instead
letting him walk ahead, burning off nervous energy with long strides.
When she reached the garage, he had already started the car's engine and
air conditioner. Scully had been grateful to slip into the comfort of
the vehicle's cooling interior.

They had completed just over half of the trip when the Washington rush
hour, made worse by the weather, brought them to a complete halt.
Scully scanned the traffic ahead and concluded that they would have time
to kill before reaching their destination. She reached out with her
left hand, setting it delicately on Mulder's thigh.

"Hey," she said.

His right hand drifted from the steering wheel and took hers, giving it
a brief squeeze. "Hmmm?" was his wordless response. He looked over at
her, questioningly.

Scully loosened her seatbelt and settled against the car door, facing
her partner. "Do you want to tell me about John Leslie?"

Mulder looked ahead, where a bit of space had formed, and inched the car
forward. "Leslie was an American surveyor who disappeared in Tibet
under mysterious circumstances. He and his partner, Randolph Sales --
that's the guy that Byers called about earlier -- anyway, they had
been sent out to investigate various UFO-like phenomena and..."

Here we go, Scully thought. "Wait a minute, Mulder, back up. Leslie and
Sales were sent by whom?"

"The government of Tibet, I suppose. That's who they worked for." He
shrugged.

"Why was the government of Tibet interested in UFOs?" If she failed to
insist that he explain the matter systematically, she would be left
behind from the outset. "And when did all this happen?"

"Sorry," said Mulder, smiling. "I'm getting ahead of myself." He
paused a moment, then continued. "UFO sightings are commonly understood
to have begun with the Roswell incident in 1947, right?"

Scully nodded, waited for him to go on.

"But in fact, there have been a lot of reports of UFO-like phenomena
all around the world, for decades, even centuries before then. It's
just that people didn't refer to these incidents as UFO encounters in
those times."

"And Tibet?" prompted Scully.

"Well, it would be an ideal place to conceal a -- hold it..." Mulder
broke off, spying an opportunity in the traffic ahead, and made a quick
shift into a moving lane, gaining several car lengths in the process.
Scully re-tightened her seatbelt.

"Almost there," Mulder said. "Just have to get past that light and
we're rolling."

Scully ignored the traffic and instead wondered at the sheer volume of
paranormal lore that was stored in Mulder's head. Even taking his
eidetic memory into account, the amount of trivia he could keep track of
never ceased to amaze her, despite the amount of time she had spent with
him.

"Tibet, Mulder?"

"Oh, right. Over the years of foreign exploration into Tibet -- the
Tibetans kept the country sealed against outsiders for decades --
explorers reported all sorts of strange happenings in their accounts of
their travels. Nain Singh, Nikolai Prejevalski, William Rockhill, Sven
Hedin -- they all wrote about mysterious lights, strange noises, even
the sort of disorientation that could be attributed to lost time."

Or oxygen deprivation, Scully thought. But in light of what she had
seen after Mulder had pulled her from the grotesque mausoleum in Wilkes
Land, she was not inclined to fence with him over this point.

He continued, warming to the story.

"There evidently was one area in particular, in west-central Tibet, in
which these phenomena seemed to occur more often than anywhere else, at
least as far as can be told from the journals of the outsiders who
witnessed them." Mulder gave her a significant look: "Near Rongbuk
Monastery."

Ah ha, Scully thought. "Alright, that's one connection. And Leslie?"

"Leslie. Well, as I said, he was an American surveyor who got a job
with the Tibetan government in the 1930s...." Mulder paused, reading
the skepticism in Scully's countenance.

"Mulder..."

He anticipated her. "I know, I know, he'd be pretty old by now."

"Very old, Mulder. In his eighties, at least."

"Right. But hear me out, okay?"

Scully narrowed her eyes. "Mulder, this isn't just an elaborate scheme
to justify a trip in search of the Abominable Snowman, is it?"

That earned her a wry grin. "Don't you want to see a yeti, Scully?"

She fished unsuccessfully for a clever rejoinder, but a shift in the
traffic bailed her out. Mulder cleared the light, with a restrained
'yes!', and accelerated down one of Arlington's less congested streets,
entering a somewhat run-down section of the county. "Not much further,"
he said.

"So, why was Leslie working for the Tibetans?" Back to business --
Scully wanted to get as much of the story out of Mulder as possible
before the foolishness that inevitably accompanied a visit to his
paranoid buddies began.

Mulder shrugged. "I have no idea why he went to Tibet to get a job, if
that's what you mean. But at any rate, his survey work proceeded
uneventfully until he and a partner were sent to..."

"Let me guess: Rongbuk," Scully finished for him.

"Full marks, Red." Mulder grinned at her. "It gets better."

"How is it that you know all this, Mulder?" Scully changed course for a
minute. She knew how he remembered it -- he remembered almost
everything -- but Tibetan history seemed sufficiently obscure that even
the Bureau's basement-dwelling Master of Trivia had no obvious reason to
have made a study of it.

"No special reason, really." Mulder shrugged again. "When I started
work on the X-Files, I read everything on UFO studies I could get my
hands on. I hadn't thought about this in years, though. There hasn't
been much serious research into the accounts of foreign explorers in
Tibet, or the Leslie affair, but they're in the literature."

Scully was reminded of a day, long ago, when she had first learned of
Mulder's own notoriety in 'the literature,' when they had caught a
genial, slightly scruffy intruder in Mulder's motel room in Wisconsin.
She felt a twinge of regret -- Max Fennig had been one more innocent who
had died for an agenda he had never even known, much less supported.

So many dead, now, she thought.

"So, what gets better?"

"Leslie never came back from Rongbuk."

"That's better?"

"More interesting," Mulder corrected himself. "His partner -- Sales --
did come back, but he left his post shortly thereafter and returned to
the United States."

"What happened to him?"

"That's what Byers is so eager to tell us," said Mulder. "He returned
to his hometown, and was later institutionalized. As far as I know, he
never wrote about his experiences. His story died with him."

Scully felt a chill creep up her spine. There had been far too many
coincidences this day. "But Byers has found something," she said.

"He says he has Sales' journals, written after he left Tibet."

"And?"

"And Byers thinks that they could be the key to locating an actual alien
ground site in Tibet."

"And you believe all this?"

Mulder frowned. "I want to know the truth of it." He paused. "You
don't believe it?"

Scully could see that he was close to hooked. "Mulder, after what we've
seen, we can't discount the possibilities. But doesn't all this seem a
little too...."

"Convenient? Contrived?"

"Yes, and yes."

"Yes." He parked the car in front of the dilapidated building that
housed the offices of 'The Lone Gunman,' unfastening his seatbelt and
turning to face her.

"But consider this, Scully." Mulder leaned in close, intensity etched
on his features. "For years, all I knew was that extraterrestrials were
real, and that the government had been hiding that fact for decades."

Scully held his gaze, but did not speak.

"Then I found out that it had all been a hoax, and that I had been a
tool of my enemies all along." His voice caught, then he continued.
"Everything I did, every move I made, had just served the purposes of
the conspiracy I sought to expose. And brought suffering to the people
I care the most about...."

Scully was silent. She knew the hurt behind that statement, and ached
for him. Once, overwhelmed by despair and bitterness, she herself had
laid the blame for her cancer at his feet, as if his own tendency toward
self-loathing were not enough. She knew he had forgiven her that, if
ever he had held it against her, but she had never forgiven herself.

'They gave me this disease to make you believe.' God, Dana, what were
you thinking?

But she knew what she had been thinking. The cancer had metastasized,
tainting her once-healthy body with deadly growth, killing her last hope
of repairing the life of grief she had fallen into. And Mulder, fleeing
into his crusade to shelter from his own guilt had, unwittingly, left
her to shoulder the oppressive burden of his obsessions. She had worked
on, despite the costs, saving him from himself, her life trickling away
into bits of tissue paper and restroom sinks.

Finally, in exasperation and despair, she had lashed out at him. Give
it up, Mulder. Give it up and find a real life somewhere. Leave me.
Let me alone to swallow the last bitter drafts of love too long
unrequited and then, when you don't need me any more, I can die.

She had sunk low indeed.

Somehow, he had redeemed them both. As she had lain in the hospital,
waiting for the darkness, the purity of the love he bled for her had
given her something, some kernel of will and hope that brought her back
from the edge, that returned to her the desire for life and gave her
strength to ask God to let her live a while longer.

Mulder would scoff at the idea, but she believed now that he been the
instrument of her redemption just as he had been an aspect of the trial.
He had brought her back from the brink of a dark well, despite the wound
she had dealt him. Though they had never discussed it, she knew
intuitively that his phony suicide could easily have been real, that he
himself had stood on the edge of the Abyss, contemplating the
anaesthetic offered by the handgun.

Scully banished the scene from her mind, unwilling to taste again the
rust of despair, the flavor of her own blood on her lips and in her
mouth.

She started to speak. "Mulder..."

He took her hand, pressed it between his. "John Leslie went to Rongbuk
to investigate something that no one could explain. I don't know what
that was, but there are, or were, at least two people who do."

"Sales, and Leslie himself," said Scully.

Mulder nodded. "I know this could be a hoax, a set-up. But if it's
not, and if there is any way to find out what it was that Leslie and
Sales found in Tibet, it could provide a starting point..."

"Mulder," Scully began again.

"Scully, Leslie's journey to Rongbuk predates Roswell by 13 years." His
voice had become urgent. "Some of the accounts I mentioned are 19th
century. They pre-date the conspiracy..."

"I understand," she said, keeping her tone even, noncommittal. Scully
understood his passion. Part of her, as always, longed to just drop her
careful habits of thought and abandon herself to Mulder's wild dance.
But she also knew that, consciously or not, he relied on her not to do
so. "I agree that it's intriguing. I just think we should be careful."

"We have to investigate this. If there really is something here, it
could be that the conspiracy is not aware of it yet. They can't cover
up something they don't know about." His grip on her hand tightened.
"I have to know," he said, "and I think you do too."

"Mulder, I'm as committed to this as you are. You know that." Scully
watched Mulder carefully, trying to read his expression, needing to know
she was reaching him. "But you know we've been set up before. More
than once." Don't get drawn in so easily, she did not say.

He returned her gaze a moment longer, then nodded. "Alright. Let's go
see what Byers has for us."

Together, they climbed out of the car and hurried through the downpour,
up the metal staircase to the overhang, where they pressed the buzzer at
the door and stood dripping, wet despite the umbrella they had shared.

* * *

Some distance away, from the third-floor window of an old apartment
building noteworthy only for peeling paint and the fact that it stood
within line of sight of the doorway at which Mulder and Scully waited, a
figure trained a pair of binoculars on the scene. He watched as, after
a delay, a tall man and his diminutive, red-headed companion were shown
in by a youngish fellow with long, blonde hair and absurdly thick-framed
glasses. The watcher stood well back from the window through which he
looked, his caution not to expose himself instinctive, and when the
doorway to the office closed, he set his lenses aside and remotely
activated a device that would transmit the conversation within the
closed room to a remote recorder.

The transmitter had been extraordinarily difficult to place. He had
thought that once he had gained admittance to the inner sanctum of 'The
Lone Gunman,' placing the bug would have been relatively easy. But
despite their evident affability the night before, Byers, Langly, and --
what was his name? Frohike -- had proved watchful and alert. It had
taken all of his skill, the most subtle sleight of hand, to place the
device.

He would soon learn whether it had been detected since then.

Radu Florescu adjusted the speaker volume and noted with satisfaction
that the instrument had begun recording.

Later, he would listen to the tapes carefully, taking detailed notes and
replaying sections where necessary, before he made his report. For now,
he simply relaxed and listened to the conversation, his skill in English
not sufficient to catch everything, but good enough to get the overall
thrust of the discussion.

He had doubts as to whether this ruse would work. Krycek had felt
confident about it, but he wondered. Although the documents that he had
given to Byers seemed genuine -- if they were forgeries, they were well
done -- the story he had been instructed to give seemed fairly flimsy.
What was more, he had been forced to throw the entire operation together
far too quickly, having had mere days to get to the United States and
set up a base of operations. It had been nothing more than good fortune
that a suitable apartment had been available on short notice, and had
the target been in a better section of town, he would likely have not
even had a place from which to observe it.

Florescu did not care to operate by the seat of his pants, and he wasn't
entirely sure what Krycek ultimately hoped to gain from all of these
machinations, though he had a few theories.

Still, he had his orders: pass the documents, place the bug, watch, and
report. And that he would do. In time, he would be given further
instructions. He could afford to be patient until then.

* * *

As Langly opened the door, almost tripping himself in his haste to let
them in out of the wet, Mulder placed his palm over the small of
Scully's back and guided her across the threshold, indulging in a long-
standing intimacy, but one he never tired of. He watched with amusement
as a range of emotion flitted briefly across her face in response to the
sight of the room they had entered. The trio at 'The Lone Gunman' never
failed to have some new high-tech device, often partially disassembled,
prominently displayed in the midst of the office's perennial clutter,
and today was no exception. Something that appeared to be a cross
between an oil derrick and an Erector Set loomed in the center of the
room, gleaming metal bars tangled with wires and dangling circuit
boards. A slight arch in Scully's brows revealed surprise, quickly
replaced by a mix of amusement and mild chagrin.

A Cheshire cat grin spread across Langly's face. "Pretty cool, huh?"
Then another thought struck him. "Say, Agent Scully, I hear you saw the
inside of a UFO."

Scully's expression became serious. "More of it than I wanted to, to be
honest."

"Yeah, but still...." Langly could not wipe the enthusiasm off his
face.

Scully glanced over at Mulder, indicated the tower in the center of the
room. "Do you think we should even ask?"

He shook his head. "No need..." He would have said more, but Langly
had already shifted gears again, plunging into an enthusiastic monologue
about the merits of what would, in due course, become the definitive
advancement in anti-surveillance technology. Listening to Langly's
slightly nasal accent, Mulder had a brief vision of him, clad in a
bathing suit and his glasses, riding some sort of high-tech, laser-
guided surf board toward a southern California beach. The image was
both ludicrous and, somehow, utterly convincing.

Scully, better equipped than he to follow Langly's oration, was asking
a question.

Langly looked slightly uncomfortable. "Well, I actually haven't worked
that out yet," he said.

"No?" The merest hint of teasing colored her tone.

"Well, not exactly."

Scully kept a straight face. "So it's not actually working yet?"

"Er, no."

"It's just sitting there, taking up space?"

Langly squirmed a bit, then recovered. "Yes, but we'll have it going
soon, for sure. I'd better get the guys." He turned and escaped across
the room, leaning through a doorway to summon his partners.

Mulder cast a wondering look at Scully. She returned just the ghost of
a smile, raising one hand to prod a nearby tangle of wiring and other...
hardware...that hung from Langly's contraption. Weighted at one end, it
swung, pendulum-like, in response to her touch.

Mulder stared at the device. Rising nearly to the ceiling, whatever
else it may have been, it was hardly a triumph in miniaturization.

He chuckled. "Scully, did I ever tell you that I'm not related to these
guys?"

She did not have a chance to respond, as Byers chose that moment to
hurry into the room. "There you two are. Glad you could make it." He
led them to a desk in a corner. "Have a look at these."

Mulder leaned forward, Scully close to him. On the desk, illuminated by
an antique lamp that seemed strangely out of place amid the room's
electronic decor, lay three leather-bound journals, pages yellowed with
age and stained from hard use. The text was in a neat, confident hand,
obviously written with care, though in places smeared due to exposure to
moisture.

Scully spoke first. "Well, they look old. Are they authentic?"

"You bet," said Frohike, behind them. They turned to face him. Langly
was there too.

"We've already run several tests on them," he continued. "They're real,
all right."

Mulder picked up one of the volumes, thumbed through it. The pages felt
crisp and coarse under his fingers. The cover gave off an antique,
musty odor. These books are real, he thought, no fakery here. He
struggled to contain his excitement. If the books themselves were
genuine.... "Okay," he said, affecting a nonchalant air. "What about
these has all your drawers in knots, anyway?"

Byers laughed at that. "Come sit down, and I'll tell you all about it."

Mulder set the book back on the desk and looked around the room, found
chairs for himself and Scully. Byers and Frohike sat as well, while
Langly perched, buzzard-like, atop a desk, his back to a large, reel-to-
reel tape recorder.

Byers spoke again. "This all started on Saturday night. Frohike and I
were here," he indicated Langly, "he was out."

"All-night gaming," Langly interjected, pantomiming an axe-blow.

"I'm glad you're getting out and around, these days," said Mulder.

"Anyway," said Byers, "we got a call from someone named 'Radu Florescu.'
He said he was a subscriber to 'The Gunman.'"

"Is he?" asked Scully.

"Yes," said Frohike. "Our only subscriber in Romania, as it turns out.
He lives in Bucharest."

"He brought you the books?" Mulder broke in.

"Yes," said Byers. He looked at Scully. "Has Mulder told you about
Sales and Leslie?"

She nodded.

Byers went on. "Evidently, when Leslie and Sales went to Rongbuk, they
were attempting to locate and investigate a particular area north of the
monastery -- a locus of UFO-like phenomena."

"What sort of phenomena, precisely?" asked Scully.

"The usual," said Byers. "Mysterious lights, lost time, abductions --
things that the local people attributed to the activities of malevolent
spirits."

"It could be nothing more than that. I mean, it sounds like a story
superstitious people would tell around campfires to scare children."

Byers nodded. "It does, but the descriptions detail events that also
fit the profile of UFO activity. Both Tibetan government records and
the journals of explorers describe them."

Frohike broke in: "But not as UFOs, of course. The acronym hadn't even
been invented at that time."

"So, all that Leslie and Sales knew was that they had been sent to
Rongbuk to investigate something unexplained," said Mulder. "What
happened next?"

"According to Sales' journal," said Byers, "their trip was uneventful
until they actually reached the monastery. They spent some time there,
observing various atmospheric phenomena visible to the north, and then
they journeyed on in search of a source of those phenomena."

Langly shifted on his desk. "Sales wrote about 'orbs of light aloft in
the northern sky.' Pretty weird stuff."

Mulder glanced at Scully, who clearly wanted to say something, but she
held her peace and let Byers finish.

"At this point, Sales' journal becomes confused. He mentions a cave
through which he and Leslie penetrated a low cliff that blocked their
route, but his account is sketchy on the geographic details."

"So you don't know where the cave is," said Scully.

Byers shook his head. "Unfortunately, no, though it must be somewhere
north of Rongbuk. Anyway, beyond the cave he writes about some sort of
fortress -- a metallic fortress -- that produced 'lightnings and divers
strange sounds.'"

"He actually wrote that?" asked Mulder, somewhat astonished.

"A little over-the-top, eh?" Byers shrugged, continued. "According to
the book, Leslie went into the structure and never came out. Sales, it
seems, experienced hallucinations from which he never fully recovered."

Scully gave Byers a look, the one that silently demanded further
explanation. Mulder smiled inwardly, amused at Byers' look of
discomfort, despite a basic sympathy with the story he was telling.

"Well, his writing becomes rather confused at this point."

Scully turned to Mulder, waiting for him to speak.

"Fair enough," he said, looking back at Byers. "What do you guys have
on your source, this Florescu fellow?"

Byers, Langly, and Frohike exchanged glances, mentally conferring, and
then Langly spoke up. "The truth is, Mulder, we don't know much about
him at all. He's been a subscriber since the Wall came down, but there
isn't much in the way of hackable databases in Eastern Europe."

"Did he leave an address?"

"No, he said he would contact us again if he could," said Frohike.

"A-mazing," said Scully, looking more annoyed than amazed. "Here I am,
sitting with what I thought were the four most paranoid men in the free
world, and...."

"Wait a minute," interrupted Langly. "We didn't say we trusted this
dude."

"You have to understand," added Byers, "in this business, most of our
sources don't want to be located. This guy may have taken some chances
to get us this material."

Scully was unimpressed. "He just walks in here and hands you a bunch of
old-looking books, and you just jump at the contents."

"We tested the books," Frohike reminded her. "They're the real deal."

"This is obviously a set-up. Mulder, tell them about the email you
got this morning."

Mulder briefly related the contents of the message to his friends. What
Scully was saying made sense, of course. The whole scenario stank of a
deception scheme. But for some reason, Mulder didn't think that it was,
at least, not entirely. He seldom could explain how he knew to play a
hunch, but he had one now, and he trusted his instincts. "She's right,"
he said to Byers, "there have been too many coincidences for this to be
taken at face value, but that said, I think it's more than just a set-
up."

Scully's face shifted from brief, surprised satisfaction back to
impatience. "Mulder...," she began.

"Hear me out, Scully. Who would set us up in this way, and why?"

"I don't know," Scully said deliberately. Where do I begin? asked the
look on her face.

Mulder made a placating gesture. "Alright, I guess that was a dumb
question. Put it another way: if we're being set up, there has to be a
reason. Someone wants something from us." He searched his partner's
expression.

She's beautiful when she's irked, an impish part of him mused.

"Most likely," she said.

"So someone wants us to investigate this. Someone wants to use us to
get to something that he cannot."

"Or someone wants to discredit us once and for all," she shot back.

"I think there's more to it than that," said Mulder. "I think we're on
to something important, and if it's a deception, there may be a core of
truth in the middle of it."

Scully did not speak, just gave him her 'you-have-no-evidence-to-
warrant-that-conclusion' look. He knew it well.

He held her gaze. Trust me Scully, I have a feeling about this one.

She accepted his silent communication, agreeing to a temporary truce.
Thank you, Mulder thought. He turned back to Byers, knowing that he and
Scully would revisit the discussion again, soon.

"How did Florescu come to be in possession of Sales' journals?" he
asked.

Byers sent a wary glance in Scully's direction, but her expression
remained neutral. "Sales traveled home from Tibet overland. In
Kazakhstan, he was forced to leave some of his possessions in the hands
of Soviet officials. But now, the Russians have opened up a whole lot
of old archives. Sales' journals are just one more thing that's turned
up."

"So Florescu has been rummaging around archives in Moscow," said Mulder.

"He said St. Petersburg," Frohike put in.

Mulder turned to Scully again. "We know the Russians have been studying
UFOs for some time. Remember the Tunguska business." The thought
chilled him. His time in the gulag had been short but extremely
unpleasant.

"That may be true," she said, "but the evidence in this affair is beyond
tenuous. Look at what we have: a Romanian 'Lone Gunman' subscriber
about whom almost nothing is known walks in unannounced and hands over
Randolph Sales' journals, which themselves were not known to exist until
he did so."

"Authentic journals," repeated Frohike.

"Even so, on practically the same day, we receive email to the effect
that Sales' partner has returned after being missing for 64 years. And
we know that Leslie and Sales were investigating *something,* but that
something could easily have been some sort of natural atmospheric
phenomenon. We don't have any conclusive evidence that their mission
had anything to do with extraterrestrials."

Langly stood up from where he was seated. "Actually, guys, she has a
point. This Florescu could be an agent provocateur." That earned him
a 'where-did-you-learn-that-expression?' look from Byers and Frohike,
but he seemed unfazed.

"If that were true, why would he have brought Sales' actual journals?"
Byers frowned, doubtful, but unable to deny the validity of Scully's
argument. "Why not just forge something to catch our interest?"

"That's why I think that something underlies all of this," said Mulder.
"The journals are a smoke-screen -- they whet our appetites, but if
Sales was too screwed up to leave a coherent account, his writings don't
really give us any hard information."

"So you think Leslie is the key to this," said Scully.

"Maybe. If he has returned from Rongbuk, where is he now?"

"Mulder, if he did go missing in Rongbuk, and if he did somehow spend 64
years living in the Tibetan countryside, why would he come back now?"
Her eyes locked with his, at once persistent and distracting.

Not now, Mulder, he thought.

"I don't know. I'd like to find out."

A brief silence fell over the room, then Mulder spoke again. "Any
chance we could borrow these journals?"

Frohike produced a folder stuffed with papers. "I thought you'd want to
read over them, so I photocopied the interesting parts."

"How about finding out where the email on Leslie came from?"

"Child's play," said Frohicke, handing over the folder. "We'll get on
it tonight."

Mulder took the package from him, then turned to Scully. "Ready to go?"

She nodded.

He turned back to Byers. "Give us time to go over this, and I'll get
back to you."

Byers led them to the door. "Thanks. Let's discuss it soon."

"By the way, Mulder," Frohike called from behind them, "thanks for
the...you know."

From the corner of his eye, Mulder saw Scully's eyebrow arch, as she
realized what he was referring to, and then the merest hint of a smile.
He nodded at Frohike. "You bet," he said.

Outside, the sky had darkened into night, but the rain had slowed to a
warm drizzle. Mulder and Scully accomplished the walk to the car in
silence.

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

Arlington, Virginia
Tuesday, 15 September, 8:00 a.m.

Radu Florescu's laptop chirped, indicating that a message had come down.
He opened it, scanning its contents, and then began composing a
response. He chose his words with care, keeping them as non-specific as
possible. Even with a strong encryption program protecting their
communications, Krycek prefered not to take any risks.

After a few minutes of typing, Florescu sat back and reread his message,
checking for typos:

Subject: Current project

Have successfully set-up equipment and am monitoring the situation.

Secondary target group has contacted primary and passed on documents.
primary1 has identified the traveler as critical element, but primary2
has expressed serious suspicions.

It is unclear whether primary will investigate. No information on
location of traveler available at this time.

He sent the message. Krycek would likely not have further instructions
for him right away, given that he had so little to report. But as long
as the listening device went undetected, the operation still could
succeed.

A reply came sooner than expected, less than an hour later:

Subject: Current project

Continue monitoring. Pay particular attention to primary2. Report any
developments.

Florescu nodded to himself. He had expected these orders. He settled
in for a long wait. It would probably be some time before he could
report on the "traveler's" whereabouts.

He sighed. He had never liked stakeouts.

************************************************************************
[end part 2 of 11]

[begin part 3 of 11]
************************************************************************

FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, 15 September, 9:00 a.m.

Dana Scully tapped Frohike's bundle of copies on her desk and slid them
neatly back into the folder they had come in, glancing around the
refurbished office that she and Mulder shared. She noticed that he had
replaced the small candid photo of the two of them that had been on his
bulletin board before the fire, and she herself had gone out and found
another "I Want To Believe" poster, which she had hung over her
partner's desk after they had been reassigned to the X-Files from the
counter-terrorism unit to which they had been exiled. Though Mulder had
not commented on the poster directly, Scully had seen the subtle look of
pleasure that had crossed his features when he had seen it, and that had
been all the reward she had needed.

She had spent the morning reading over the copied pages of Randolph
Sales' journal -- difficult going, given the shaky hand in which the
post-Rongbuk sections had been written -- while Mulder had made phone
call after phone call, attempting to turn up any indication that John
Leslie had returned to the United States. So far, he had met with no
success, and frankly, Scully did not foresee any likelihood of that
situation changing, despite Mulder's already fixed determination.

The previous night, after they had left the offices of 'The Lone
Gunman,' she and Mulder had headed for her apartment, by silent, mutual
consent. Upon arrival, Mulder had plunged into the papers provided by
Frohike, seating himself at her kitchen table with the folder and a
glass of ice water. He had remained there for hours, surfacing just
long enough to share a light dinner with her, while she had gone through
her after-work routine. She had eventually settled on her sofa with a
book, reflecting on the fact that, although she had spent her evening in
much the same way that she would have before entering this deeper
relationship with Mulder, just his presence in her apartment had given
her a sense of contentment, making every small moment somehow richer,
more complete.

Just before midnight, she had coaxed him to bed, and he had come without
argument, falling asleep moments after his head had hit the pillow.
Lying next to him, she had remained wakeful a bit longer, listening to
the steady rhythm of his breathing, and then dropped off herself, her
last coherent thought a resolution to get to the bottom of this
mysterious affair they were suddenly faced with.

Tomorrow, she had thought, settling deeper into the sheets. We'll deal
with it tomorrow.

The next day had dawned all to soon, and it had been with some
reluctance that Scully had untangled herself from Mulder's embrace and
begun the process of preparing for work. Their relationship had not
affected their work so far, she mused, but there was no denying that it
had an affect on her willingness to start her morning routine.

Scully put aside this line of thinking and looked over at her partner,
who, having at last abandoned his telephone campaign, had read through
the morning message traffic and then settled into a posture of deep
concentration. He had been that way for some time, stirring only once
in a while as though to begin searching for an X-File, and then sitting
back once more as he remembered that virtually all of his files were
gone. Of course, some of the data had been backed up on microfiche or
diskette, but much also had been lost forever, to Mulder's endless
frustration.

He sensed her gaze on him and returned it. "Well?" he asked, gesturing
toward the file.

"There's not much to go on, here," Scully said. "Judging from the
degradation in Sales' handwriting subsequent to his explorations near
Rongbuk, I'd guess he suffered a mild stroke, or something."

Mulder nodded. "I'd wondered about that. We know his mental health was
affected by that trip. Maybe there was a physical cause." He paused
for a moment. "What about his account? What do you think it means?"

"Well, it's terse, even a little incoherent. It doesn't provide much
information at all about where and when certain critical events took
place, but..." she trailed off.

"But what?"

"But the aerial phenomena he describes do seem to resemble some of what
we've seen over the years."

"So you think it's worth investigating?" Mulder asked.

Scully chose her words carefully. "It's worth looking into -- with
caution. I still think we can't overlook the possibility that we're
being manipulated."

"Agreed. But if we know a trap may be present, we have the key to
avoiding it, right?"

"I suppose so," she said doubtfully. "I'd like to know more about this
Florescu person, though."

"So would I," said Mulder. "He's probably legitimate, though. The
'Gunmen' have plenty of odd acquaintances, but most of them are harmless
enough."

"Mulder, I can't understand why a man who wears a bullet-proof vest to
bed...."

"Scully! How do you know what Frohike wears to bed?" Mulder affected
an astonished look.

"How did you know I meant Frohike?" She smiled back at him.

"Hey, I've know those guys for seven years. I think I know most of
their habits by now. You didn't answer my question."

"I took the tests I ran on the boy, Gibson, over to them." Scully felt
her mood become somber at the memory, despite the inherent humor in
Frohike's choice of night-wear. "It was late, and Frohike met me at the
door dressed in PJ's and body armor. Anyway, why do they accept this
Florescu at face value?"

"I don't think they do, necessarily. They tested the books, and Langly
did mention that they tried to check up on Florescu as well. But
remember, for all their caution, they're in the publishing business.
When they get a lead, they go with it." He made a dismissive gesture.
"Anyway, Leslie is the real key to this."

Scully considered that, not replying. She was not sure that Florescu
wouldn't prove a factor.

Mulder studied her, reading her concerns. "Look, we won't take any
chances on this one."

"Is that a promise?" she asked.

"Promise. Shall we go see Skinner?"

Scully cocked an eyebrow his way. "Have you filed paperwork for this
already?"

"This morning. I sent him a preliminary write-up of what we know while
you were going over Frohike's papers."

"Mulder, we hardly know anything. Do you think he's going to accept
that?"

"I just made 25 phone calls to see if I could informally turn up any
information on Leslie, and since I didn't get so much as a nibble, I
think we have to put Bureau resources into this. As for Skinner?" His
shoulders twitched. "Only one way to find out."

* * *

Walter Skinner raised his eyes from the paperwork on his desk and
surveyed the two agents seated in front of him. Mulder slouched in
his chair, somehow managing to look serious and insouciant all at once,
a trick that only he could pull off, as far as Skinner had seen, at
least.

Scully's expression remained guarded, neutral, but was not the hard,
bleak mask that had subdued her beauty for so long. Something had
changed in her life, something that had returned a hint of softness to
her features and smoothed away some of the worry writ on her face.

Skinner had an idea what that something might be. A long-awaited
development had finally come to pass. He looked carefully at Mulder,
searching for evidence to support his hypothesis, but Mulder's
demeanor betrayed nothing -- well, perhaps just a hint could be
detected, enough to satisfy Skinner that his conclusions were correct.

Good for the both of you, he thought, not letting his approval show.
Just be discrete about it, and we can all look the other way
indefinitely.

When he spoke, Skinner employed his most severe conversational tone,
one that had served to intimidate underlings and colleagues alike since
his service in the Marine Corps, but which had never had quite the
desired effect on Mulder, his most difficult subordinate. Skinner for
the most part liked Mulder, but he would have preferred that he toe the
line just a bit more carefully than was his wont.

"Agent Mulder, I've reviewed your proposal for an investigation and I
have to say I find it awfully thin."

Mulder opened his mouth to respond, but Skinner cut him off. "I'm not
finished. Not only do you lack hard evidence to warrant the opening of
an investigation, but frankly, in my view this entire scenario shows
every characteristic of a set-up."

"Sir, I understand that," said Mulder, "but if you'll just consider the
implications of the evidence that we do have, and for that matter the
possibility of a set-up itself...."

Skinner silenced him with an abrupt gesture. "I read what you
submitted, Agent Mulder." He turned to Scully, who had not spoken.
"Agent Scully, do you want to give me your view on this matter?"

She lowered her gaze, revealing her discomfort with the situation,
then raised her eyes to meet his once more. When she spoke, her words
were deliberate, carefully phrased. "Sir, I agree that the physical
evidence is lacking, and that there exists the possibility of deliberate
deception...." She trailed off, glancing at her partner, then resumed.
"But Agent Mulder's instincts have proven correct in the past, quite
often, and while I have some reservations...given the facts of our
recent investigation of the Blackwood...."

Skinner cut her off as well. "Understood, Agent Scully." He could
tell from the precision of her enunciation that she in fact had serious
reservations, but loyalty to her partner, and faith in his intuition,
led her to support him.

He had faith in Mulder's intuition as well, but it was not without
limits. "Agent Mulder, Agent Scully, I'm afraid I have serious doubts
about the wisdom of opening a casefile."

Mulder looked as though he would speak again, but Skinner did not let
him begin. "Your report on the Blackwood case was not appreciated by
the powers that be, in the Bureau, in the Justice Department, and in...
other places. It may have forced the re-opening of the X-Files, for
now...." Skinner leaned forward for emphasis: "But believe me, there
are plenty of people who would take any excuse to force me to close
you down again." He indicated the file on his desk. "You're going to
need more to go on."

This time it was Scully who began to speak. "Sir, with an
investigation, we can acquire more evidence, and then we'll be better
positioned to...."

He cut her off once again. "I'm sorry, Agent Scully, but I am
officially denying Agent Mulder's request to open an investigation." He
spoke the word 'officially' with only the slightest trace of emphasis.

Anger and resentment flared on Mulder's face, then vanished as Scully
reached out and laid her hand lightly on his forearm. That was new,
Skinner thought. Scully and Mulder had long shared the silent
communication that often developed between partners, though theirs was
more intimate than most, but Mulder was not usually so compliant. Yes,
the signs were there, he thought.

Scully turned her attention back to Skinner. "Sir, we may need some
time off in the near future."

He nodded. "Not a problem, Agent Scully. You both have it coming."
He turned to Mulder, pinning him with a glare. "Give me something to
stand on, and then we can discuss this."

He dismissed the two of them with a curt nod.

* * *

Outside of Skinner's office, the door shut behind them, Scully turned to
her partner. "Now what?"

Mulder looked annoyed. "Now we start digging again -- informally." He
sighed. "We never get to do things the easy way, do we?"

Scully studied him. "Did you expect anything else?"

"Just once," he said, "I'd like a case to go by the numbers. Really.
It could happen."

Scully did not answer. She placed a hand on his elbow and steered him
toward the elevators, back to their basement refuge. She was certain
of one thing: Mulder put off would be more determined than ever to pry
this affair wide open. She hid a sigh of her own. It promised to be a
long week.

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

Near Rongbuk Monastery, Tibet
Wednesday, 16 September, 10:00 a.m.

Nawang Tsering slouched in the back of an oxcart and watched as Rongbuk,
his uncle's monastery, dwindled in the distance. He stretched, relaxing
in the hot sunlight and enjoying the slow sway of the vehicle, now and
then answering the idle remarks of the drover with whom he had caught a
ride. Around him, fields of barley and stony, moss-covered slopes rose
gradually away from the road at the valley floor, extending to the
distant mountain ranges that marched along the horizon, grey and black
rock giving way in turn to permanent ice and snow at the highest
elevations.

The hard, bright light of the Tibetan sun baked everything not in the
shade, and cast sharp, dark shadows behind boulders or the squat, square
houses in the valley's scattered villages.

Nawang hoped to catch a bit of sleep, because the trip to Lhasa would
take all of a week, with many stops and transfers once he made it to the
first bus station, and he was dead tired, having made the journey three
times already in the past couple of months. If anyone other than his
uncle had asked him to do so much traveling, he would likely have found
some excuse not to.

But Jamyang Dorje had been insistent, and Nawang, 25 years old and a
dutiful nephew, had done as he had asked.

Nawang was eager to return to Lhasa, though the city did not feel much
like home any more. It had become more Chinese than Tibetan, and like
many Tibetans of the educated class living there, Nawang had a sort of
love-hate relationship with his country's foreign overlords. From them,
he had his education, in Chinese and English, and a job with a private
tour company, but like most Tibetans, he would have just as soon seen
them leave and never come back.

He did not tend to waste time worrying about the matter, though. There
was really nothing he could do. Besides, he had plenty of other matters
that required his attention, these days. His life had taken a definite
turn toward the bizarre.

First had been getting the foreigner, Leslie, back to Lhasa. The trip
itself had been uneventful, but his traveling companion, whom the
Rinpoche at Rongbuk had insisted be protected from the authorities, had
been grim and silent, offering nothing though it had been clear that his
Tibetan was excellent, if a little old-fashioned. When they had reached
Shigatse, one of Tibet's few modern cities, Leslie had finally shown
emotion, clearly upset by something he would not explain.

The Rinpoche and his uncle had not explained it either. Nawang was not
normally impatient, but after days on the road between Lhasa and
Rongbuk, his nerves had become a bit frayed, in spite of himself.

Still, he had no inclination to defy the highest Lama of Rongbuk
Monastery, or to disappoint his uncle, and so he had swallowed his
complaints and finished the task given to him.

In Lhasa, Nawang had entrusted an increasingly disturbed Leslie to the
care of one of his colleagues, who was leading a tour bus to Kathmandu,
Nepal, the nearest city with an American embassy that one could get to
without flying. Since Leslie had possessed no papers, it had seemed
best to avoid the airport at Gonggar, where no one escaped Chinese
official scrutiny. The Nepal border was also a concern, of course, but
officials there were known for being infinitely corruptible.

Once he had seen Leslie off, Nawang had returned to Rongbuk, in accord
with his uncle's instructions. There he had been received by the
Rinpoche, who explained the matter of John Leslie to him and, having had
time to consider the affair, gave him further instructions. Nawang had
been by turns astonished and dismayed at what the Rinpoche had told him.

He did not understand how a man could go missing in the wilderness in
1934 and return, still young, in 1998, but that was what had happened,
the Rinpoche had assured him. And by the time Nawang had arrived with
Leslie, Lhasa itself had heard the news, as the presence of the
foreigner, not to mention the intermittent light-shows north of the
monastery, had attracted the attention of the local villagers and nomads
in the vicinity of Rongbuk. Tibet, for all its size, had ever proved a
fluid conduit for news, and the rumors had spread from village to town
and from town to city. Even Nawang's name had come up in discussions in
the capital, though not too often, fortunately.

He had to keep a reasonably low profile if he were to accomplish the
latest task the Rinpoche had levied on him.

And of course there had been the matter of the nomad Kunga and his wild
tales of the yeti, which Nawang was not entirely sure what to make of.
He did not really give too much credence to that legend, and surely the
nomad's story had arisen from the general air of mystery and nervousness
prevalent in the area of Rongbuk. Not that it mattered, though. The
stories and rumors all melted together, until no one really knew the
truth behind them, and the yeti story dovetailed nicely with the tales
about Leslie in the mind of the average Tibetan.

On the other hand, Kunga had eventually found his yak, or what remained
of it, not far from the where he had seen the tracks the night before.
Whatever had attacked the animal, it had been vicious and strong. Of
course, that did not make it a yeti -- the odd snow leopard also roamed
the remote fastness north of Rongbuk.

Nawang decided not to worry about the yeti. It could presumably take
care of itself, if it existed. The Rinpoche's instructions had not made
any mention of it anyway.

Nawang was to return to Lhasa and wait. There would have to be a
reaction to an event with the karmic magnitude of Leslie's reappearance.
The Rinpoche had been very clear about that. In Lhasa, Nawang would be
able to deal with that reaction, whatever form it took, and later he
would report what he had learned and done to Rongbuk. The Rinpoche and
his uncle had both been confident that Nawang would know what to do when
the time came.

Nawang sighed quietly to himself. Lamas were forever giving advice like
that. Long on requirements, short on information. Never mind, though,
he would do his best. He just hoped that whatever was going to happen
would happen soon.

In the meantime, he had tourists to deal with. His job also awaited him
back in Lhasa, and life went on.

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

Kathmandu, Nepal
16 September, 5:30 p.m.

By late afternoon, most of the employees of Apogee Transport had gone
home for the evening, but Jill Whittaker, nominally an office manager
but in fact the local representative of a far more shadowy organization,
made it her habit to work well into the evening. At 29 years of age,
she had her share of ambitions, and the people she worked for, a group
without so much as a formal name, so far as she knew, expected a lot of
overtime. Jill wanted to get out of Kathmandu, one of the least
important postings that existed within the Consortium's operations, and
get herself stationed somewhere important -- someplace like London, or
Washington, or Tunis.

She lit a cigarette and considered the man in front of her, who had just
wandered into her office, having hopped off a truck that had driven in
from the Tibetan border. He looked as though he had seen better days,
but that was no surprise. A trip by road over the Himalayas, along the
so-called 'Friendship Highway' and through the terrifyingly high and
steep Bhote Kosi pass, remained an adventure, even at the end of the
20th century.

Jill dragged on the cigarette and blew smoke across her desk at the man
seated there. John Leslie looked bad, but he sounded worse. His story
made no sense whatsoever, and the way he told it suggested that he had
come unglued somewhere before reaching her office in Kathmandu.
However, his name was on The List, so that made him important, to
somebody.

Leslie wanted help getting back to the United States. Jill thought she
could arrange that, though perhaps not entirely to his satisfaction.
She picked up her phone and waited while the Nepalese operators opened
an international line. After a few minutes, a phone rang in a small
apartment somewhere in Washington. The voice that answered sounded
smooth, almost devoid of emotion. "Yes?"

Jill had only met the owner of the voice once, but she had no trouble
imagining him on the other end of the line. He had made an impression
on her, and she had worked hard to cultivate a connection with him, a
connection that would ultimately lead to her own advancement, she hoped.

"This is Kathmandu. I have a situation here," she said.

"Ms...Whittaker," there was a pause, in which she imagined a cigarette
being lit. "What sort of situation?"

"Someone calling himself 'John Leslie' is here in my office. He says he
wants to come home."

Another pause, then "wait there. I will have instructions for you
within the hour." The line clicked dead.

Jill looked across at Leslie. "Don't go away. He'll be right back."
She smiled mirthlessly, pushing a stray lock of raven hair from her
brow. "We'll just have to wait a bit."

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

Washington, D.C.
16 September, 9:05 a.m.

A man set down a telephone and drew deeply on his cigarette, pondering
the call he had just received.

Leslie's name he had not expected to hear, though he had sensed for some
days that something was brewing in Asia. One of his agents in Hong Kong
had reported Alex Krycek's arrival there a few days earlier, and that he
had attempted to arrange to travel into Tibet. The fool obviously
thought he was on to something, as he had taken some pains to be
discrete in his movements, but he would have been unpleasantly surprised
to learn just how thoroughly the Consortium's agents had reported on his
activities.

Krycek fancied himself quite the freelancer, the man thought, but in
fact the correct word was 'amateur.' He drew on his cigarette again,
then exhaled smoke in a contemptuous puff.

The other element in this puzzle had turned up in Washington just a few
days before as well. The Romanian, one of Alex's associates, had
actually contacted 'The Lone Gunman,' though what possible business he
had with the paranoid triumvirate responsible for that absurd rag the
smoking man could scarcely imagine.

He would find out, though. Ms. Whittaker's call had certainly put a new
spin on the matter.

He slipped into his suit jacket and headed for the door. He needed a
secure telephone to arrange matters, as well as time to think. If
Leslie had really turned up -- and while the Consortium had considered
that scenario, they had never thought it likely -- that meant that some
of the more outlandish conjectures about Rongbuk might be accurate after
all. And that meant the Consortium would have to investigate the
matter, with or without the approval of the Chinese.

It might be difficult, since Mao's Communist Party had been a less
cooperative player in the Project even than the Russians, but if it had
to be done, he would find a way.

He always had before.

Well, most of the time. There had been occasions when treason within
the Consortium itself had led to set-backs, most recently the Wilkes
Land debacle brought on by his now-deceased colleague and Agent Mulder.

Mulder -- the name triggered a surge of anger in him. Something would
have to be done about the troublesome FBI agent.

He briefly considered simply ordering him killed, but discarded the idea
almost at once. He gave no credence to his late colleague's concern
about 'turning one man's quest into a crusade.' That was palpable
nonsense. The only person on the planet who cared enough about Mulder
to take up his quest was his partner, and she was no more bullet-proof
than he was. However, taking out Mulder presented certain...
disadvantages. For one thing, the FBI agent still had a few powerful
friends who could make life difficult for the Consortium if he were to
die under suspicious circumstances, and in any event, the smoking man
had reached a level of frustration that had brought his conflict with
Mulder to a unique level.

He knew that allowing personal concerns to influence his thinking was
not a good idea, but he nonetheless wanted to see Mulder completely
destroyed -- humiliated, discredited, and broken -- and alive to endure
every minute of the agony that would bring.

He had considered having Scully killed as well, but decided that it
wouldn't be worth the risk. Mulder would never achieve his aims without
her, to be sure, but if she were killed...well, Mulder had already
demonstrated the lengths to which he would go to save her. To avenge
her, he might at last become ruthless enough to accomplish something.

The smoking man cursed the ill luck that had turned his perfect little
spy into Mulder's best ally. He had seen Scully as an ambitious young
woman in a man's agency, one who would most likely leap at a chance to
further her career by taking down one of the Bureau's one-time 'golden
boys.' Mulder had been set up perfectly; who would have guessed that
Scully would have fallen in love with him, or made him twice as
effective as he otherwise would have been?

Mulder would have to be eliminated, somehow, and subtly. But not now.
The current situation was not conducive to success.

And anyway, Jeffery did not have what it would take to become a player,
not yet. Until he did, Mulder could serve a purpose for the Consortium,
in spite of himself. He could always be dealt with later.

At the moment, the smoking man's pressing problem remained Leslie. If
nothing else, he had to be evacuated from Asia, before Krycek managed to
figure out that he had left Lhasa. After all, leaving Lhasa meant
arriving in one of a small number of places, and the last thing anyone
needed would be for Alex to track Leslie down and learn the location of
the site he had been sent to.

Better to let Mulder find him instead.

The smoking man paused before exiting the room, a sudden inspiration
lighting up in his mind. Let Mulder find him -- that idea had real
potential. It could solve a lot of problems all in one fell swoop.
Mulder's unerring instinct for self-destruction could be counted upon
in a situation like this.

Of course, he would have to accelerate Jeffery's education, but that
did not represent a major difficultly, and he would have to put certain
safeguards in place as well, just in case Mulder's recent streak of good
luck continued.

The corners of his mouth twitched as he left his apartment. In about
15 minutes, he would set the next round in motion. There was great
potential, here, he decided.

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

Kathmandu, Nepal
16 September, 5:59 p.m.

The phone in Jill Whittaker's office rang. She raised the receiver
expectantly.

"Whittaker."

The same voice from the earlier call gave her her instructions in a
smooth, modulated tone. "Ms. Whittaker, see that Mr. Leslie has a seat
on tomorrow's Royal Nepal flight to Dubay. He will be met there."

"He doesn't have any papers," she protested.

"You will take care of that tonight, Ms. Whittaker."

Jill squelched her annoyance. Getting papers for Leslie on such short
notice would be a lot more difficult than her interlocutor seemed to
realize, but she knew he had no interest in anything from her that
wasn't a solution. "Yes, sir," she said. "Any other instructions?"

"Not at this time, but be available. And be ready to travel." He
paused significantly. "There may be an opportunity for you."

The ambitious core of her heart responded to that. "Yes, sir. I'll be
ready."

"Good." The phone clicked off once more. Jill looked over at Leslie,
still waiting in her office, and sighed. She had a lot of work to do
tonight, but she had her instructions. Leslie would be on that plane,
and that was that.

"Let's go, John," she said.

"Where?" It was the first thing he'd said in almost 45 minutes.

"Come on, you'll see," she said.

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

Washington, D.C.
16 September, 9:38 a.m.

Thirty minutes after leaving his apartment, the smoking man lifted yet
another telephone -- a secure line, this time -- and dialed a number
that connected to an office within a US military installation at Diego
Garcia, in the Indian Ocean.

"Yes?" The voice that answered was crisp and business-like, but came
after an odd delay, induced by the half-second time-lag inherent in the
satellite relay.

The smoking man recited an authentication code, then gave his orders.
"I have a person who needs an...escort. He will be arriving via Royal
Nepal Airlines in Dubay tomorrow afternoon. Have one of your teams in
the Gulf at the airport to collect him."

"Name?"

"Leslie. Jonathan Leslie. US passport."

"Alright. What do you want us to do with him?"

"Put him on a transport to Andrews Air Force Base, as soon as possible.
Better make it the same day."

"That could present a problem," said the officer at Diego Garcia.

"Then solve it." The smoking man did not raise his voice, but anyone
hearing it would have felt the steel in it at his core.

"Uh, roger that. Shall I call with the arrangements?"

"Of course." The smoking man hung up.

One more item taken care of, he thought. He turned to an assistant.
"When Diego Garcia calls, take down their arrangements and have the
transport met at Andrews. Have Leslie admitted to..." he thought for a
moment, then smiled slightly. "...Arkham. That should do nicely."

Now, he thought, we have to make sure that Krycek is left in the dark
about this, which means pulling Florescu's fangs.

He lifted the receiver and began dialing once more.

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

Inter-Asian Trade Center, Hong Kong
Thursday, 17 September, 8:10 a.m.

Thursday morning found Alex Krycek in a vile mood.

A week and a half before, when he had first received word of the Rongbuk
affair, he had been ecstatic. Long a student of UFO phenomena, Krycek
had known of the stories surrounding Leslie and Sales, and unlike some,
he had always taken them seriously. In fact, during his time with the
Consortium, he had even proposed an expedition to the region, but the
plan had never received any support. His employers in the Russian
government had never taken his ideas seriously either, until now.

Krycek strode into the skyscraper in which Wu Tseng-Li, a relatively
small-time gangster and narcotics trafficker whom Krycek had met during
an earlier sojourn in Hong Kong, maintained his offices. He really did
not want to meet with the man, but he saw no way to avoid doing so.
Krycek's efforts to gain entry to Tibet had thus far been thwarted, and
now a little corruption seemed to be called for.

Besides, for a price, Wu might be able to supply a little strong-arm
support as well. As competent as Krycek knew himself and Florescu to
be, he also knew it never hurt to have back-up, especially in foreign
territory.

It's time to have a tete-a-tete with a few bad elements, Krycek thought.

He nodded to the burly security guard at the desk, a body-builder in a
grey suit. The guard's expression did not change; he just indicated the
elevator that would carry Krycek to Wu's private suite, 35 floors up.

Krycek pushed the button to summon a car and waited.

His operation had gone sour in a hurry, and he would have to be clever
if he wanted to salvage it. Having lost Leslie, Krycek had attempted to
manipulate Mulder into finding him for him -- something of a desperate
measure, but Krycek had no interest in entering the United States to
look for him on his own. Though he had made his way back into the good
graces of the Consortium -- to an extent -- Krycek knew he did not enjoy
their trust. Without help, finding Leslie in America would be next to
impossible.

Florescu had reported that Mulder had taken the bait, but that had been
days ago, and since then, he had had no new information. So Leslie
either had not gone to America, or Mulder's investigative prowess had
atrophied somewhat.

Krycek decided he would have to be patient. He despised Mulder for a
spineless coward, but he had to admit, the man had a way of digging up
hidden information. Too bad he didn't have the balls to do anything
with it, though in this case, that suited Krycek just fine.

Just find my guy, he thought. Then if Florescu is worth his pay, I'll
have what I need.

The door to the elevator opened, revealing two more well-dressed thugs.
They beckoned Krycek into the car, patted him down, and then sent the
elevator on its way upward. Krycek leaned casually against the wall,
affecting a subtly disrespectful pose calculated to annoy the triad men
in the car with him. If it had an effect, though, the thugs did not let
it show.

Krycek's thoughts went back to Washington. Florescu's reports about
Scully had been fairly terse as well, though Krycek had given him
explicit instructions to pay attention to her. He was not entirely sure
why he had done so. He knew he should not let himself think about
Scully, let her distract him from his real aims, but he could not help
himself. Ever since he had first laid eyes on her luxuriant red hair
and give-me-head-'til-I'm-dead mouth, he had wanted nothing more than to
just push her down over a desk, thrust his cock into her, and fuck her
until she begged for mercy.

He enjoyed imagining that. It was even more fun than screwing that
bitch Marita, and that was pretty damn fun.

Krycek shook his head, trying to chase the rather appealing but also
very distracting thought of Scully from his mind. He wondered if Mulder
had ever worked up the guts to screw his partner. Probably not, he
decided. The man was too much of a pussy to try anything that bold.
Anyway, he sure as hell didn't deserve the pleasure.

One never knew -- if Mulder and Scully pursued the Rongbuk matter, he
might cross paths with them once more, and who knows what could happen
if he were able to acquire the upper hand....

Enough! he thought. The meeting with Wu would require all of his
concentration.

The elevator doors opened then, and the triad men ushered him into the
presence of their leader.

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

FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
17 September, 9:00 a.m.

"Mulder, we're spinning our wheels."

Dana Scully set down her telephone and looked over at her partner, who
had almost disappeared amid the piles of books, papers, and files on his
desk. Mulder had spent much of the last two days collecting every scrap
of paper, every book ever published, and every archived file that had
any reference to Leslie and Sales or Rongbuk Monastery. And when he had
not been gathering and ploughing through his documents, he been on the
phone with every law enforcement officer in eastern North America who
might possibly owe him a favor, hoping to turn up some rumor, some hint
of Leslie's whereabouts.

Scully had done much the same, calling contacts in the medical and
scientific professions. The results had been less that spectacular.

Mulder looked up, removing his reading glasses and rubbing his eyes,
weariness etched in his features. His particularly handsome features,
mused Scully's less business-like side. She resisted the temptation to
just stare at him and wonder how the whole of his visage could be so
much more than the sum of its parts.

Instead, she said "looking for this guy is a search for a needle in the
proverbial haystack."

For once, Mulder had no ready quip. He just nodded and said "I know,
but I don't know what else to do. Leslie is the key to this affair.
If only Skinner weren't being so...." He did not finish. Scully knew
full well that with an official investigation, they would have had
access to crucial resources that they could not employ now.

"I know, but I've been thinking," she said.

"About?"

"We could spend the rest of our lives making informal inquiries into
Leslie's whereabouts. It's getting us nowhere."

"Do you want to give up?" Mulder look surprised.

"No, of course not," Scully said. "I just think we have to change our
approach."

"Florescu." It was not a question.

Scully nodded. "Our involvement in this case has been entirely due to
outside influences, right?"

"True."

"And we don't have any incontrovertible evidence that Leslie is even
real."

"Scully, he certainly is real," Mulder protested. "He was a...."

"No, no," she cut him off. "What I mean is, the only thing we have to
go on where Leslie is concerned is an anonymous email and a news
clipping."

Mulder nodded, conceding the point.

"The 'Gunmen' -- did they ever find out where that email came from?"

Mulder raised his eyebrows at her sudden digression. "Yeah, Frohike
said it originated in Hong Kong, but at some sort of publicly
available computer. Web-based email accessed through a cyber-cafe, or
something. And he also said they identified the paper."

"How?"

"I didn't ask him to explain how, but it was the 'South China Morning
Post' -- a newspaper in Hong Kong."

Scully mouthed a silent 'oh,' then refocused on her original point.

"But the email -- you're saying there's no way of finding out who sent
it."

"Not really. Not any easy way, at least."

"So Florescu is our only link to whoever wants us on this case."

"Maybe so, but how would he know anything about where Leslie has gone?"
Mulder frowned, clearly impatient with the idea of giving up the search
for the missing surveyor.

Scully felt frustration rising in her. For all his intelligence, there
were times when Mulder became fixated on something to the exclusion of
everything else. He had long since put Florescu, the one person about
whom they had solid, if limited, information, completely out of his
mind.

Scully shot a glance at their office door, making sure it was closed.
Satisfied, she turned her attention back to her partner.

She lowered her voice. "Mulder, I love you, but you can be just so...
dense...sometimes."

"Scully, you wound me." He gave her a disarming grin.

She felt her exasperation ease a bit, but didn't allow herself to be
diverted. "Don't you see it? Skinner wouldn't let us open a case
because we had nothing to go on, and here we are, two days of searching
later, and what do we have?"

"Nothing," Mulder admitted.

"So let's get something. It doesn't have to be about Leslie. If we can
open a case...."

"We'll have a better chance of finding him." Mulder nodded. "You're
right, Scully, I've been too close to this. I got so wrapped up in
finding Leslie that I've been ignoring the obvious."

An imp took hold of Scully's tongue. "Mulder, are you feeling well?"

He stood up, flashed her a grin, and headed for the door. "Never
better," he said over his shoulder.

"Wait a minute. Where are you going?"

"To the 'Gunman.' Where else?"

Scully arched an eyebrow at him.

Mulder paused in the doorway. "Think about it. 'Florescu' can't be his
real name, can it?"

She shook her head. "Probably not."

"So it's not like we can look this guy up in the phone book."

"No, we can't. What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to try and get a print."

"Mulder, you can't be serious." Scully was truly astonished.

"Sure I can. It's a long shot, but he was there...." He shrugged.
"What else do we have to go on?"

"Mulder, we've been all over that place," she said, meaning the offices
of the 'Gunman.' You'll never get a print of this guy."

"Scully, finding the print is going to be the easy part."

Scully was afraid to ask. She waited for him to go on, encouraging him
with a look.

"The hard part will be getting the guys to let me take control prints
from them." He grabbed his jacket from the rack, winked, and
disappeared into the hallway.

Scully shook her head. I'm in love with Don Quixote, she thought, not
for the first time. She rose as well and headed for the FBI's records
center. Just in case Florescu had been using his real name, or an alias
he had used before, she would have his name put into the central
database. If she were lucky, she would have something before Mulder
wasted the entire day.

Actually, that was not entirely fair. Mulder had demonstrated an
uncanny ability to find prints in the past. It was just one more of his
many talents that defied explanation.

Talents that included an aptitude in the bedroom that might not be
expected from one who had lived the quasi-monastic life that had been
his until recently. A progression of warm, delightful images eased
through Scully's mind as she made her way through the corridors, images
of Mulder's hands on her, gently stroking her....

Stop it, Dana -- Scully brought herself up short -- you have work to do.

With some effort, she focused her mind on the problem at hand. There
would be plenty of time for...other things...later on.

************************************************************************
[end part 3 of 11]

[begin part 4 of 11]
************************************************************************

Kowloon District, Hong Kong
Friday, 18 September, 8:00 p.m.

Alex Krycek sat in a room full of blue smoke and nursed a black mood.
Yesterday, he had been annoyed. Now he was coldly furious.

He could feel the opportunity of a lifetime slipping away from him.

He sipped from a cup of tea and idly nudged a bit of Ch'ao-Chou roast
goose, a specialty of the restaurant in Kowloon that he had settled into
for the evening. His appetite had declined to join him, seemingly, and
so he had nothing to do but chase his worries in circles through his
mind.

He pushed the tea away. Fuck this, I need a beer, he thought.

Florescu had reported that Mulder had come to the 'Lone Gunman' looking
for fingerprints, but that he had made no mention of finding John
Leslie. And Radu had had nothing to report about Scully, either.

Meanwhile, Wu Tseng-Li had, in his ever-so-polite and inscrutable Asian
way, lowered the boom on him. Krycek cursed himself for underestimating
the triad leader. He had assumed that he could purchase his services
and get the help he needed to get to Rongbuk. He hadn't counted on Wu
taking an interest in what might be up there.

But Wu had done just that, realizing that if Krycek wanted to get into
Tibet, then there must be a profit in it somewhere. He had insisted on
knowing the objective and reserving for himself a share of any potential
acquisitions.

Wu had also noted that arranging the necessary 'accommodations' would
most likely require at least a week's time. Krycek would understand
that, naturally.

Arrogant fucker -- Krycek gestured angrily for a waitress, ordered the
beer, and sat staring after her until she brought it to him. He did not
give her time to pour it, snatching it from her and swigging from the
bottle. He ignored her expression of distaste.

He had had two choices: get out of Hong Kong, or bring Wu Tseng-Li in on
the deal. He hadn't liked it, but he had chosen the latter. Of course,
Krycek had not told Wu anything even approximating the truth. Instead,
he had spun an impromptu yarn about lost gold.

Krycek had not been able to tell whether Wu had believed him.

Well, he hadn't shot him, at least.

Once he got to Rongbuk, he would still have a chance to retake control
of the operation. And if the expedition proved as profitable as he
hoped, he would have control of information that would significantly
enhance his status in the Organization -- maybe high enough that he
could begin satisfying a few long-standing urges.

The smoking bastard -- he would be the first Krycek would take care of.

And then Mulder would be next. He had a few scores to settle with him,
and he planned to take his time and enjoy the process.

And then there was Scully. Krycek sighed to himself, an array of dark,
erotic images forming in his mind. He swigged his beer again, indulging
himself in a long drink. At the moment, he had nothing to do but kill
time. The operation could not go forward until Florescu came up with
something, and he would not be reporting for a day or so. Krycek had
time to kick back with a fantasy or two and then head down to Wanchai
and hire a woman for the evening.

He pulled again on his beer, then began peeling away the corner of the
label on the bottle. It's always like this, he thought. Hurry up and
wait.

Maybe he would hire two women. That was an idea.

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

Kathmandu, Nepal
18 September, 11:30 p.m.

Jill Whittaker closed the last file and sighed to herself. It had been
a long day.

That morning, when she had arrived at the office after the usual chaotic
ride through Kathmandu's insanely crowded streets, a stack of materials
had been waiting on her desk. An innocuous label, just an address and
authentication code, had alerted her to the identity of the sender, and
she had known she would have to spend her day getting through the
numerous files and papers.

It had not been her preferred way to begin her day. Usually, after
driving to work, she liked to spend a few minutes on something simple,
giving herself a chance to recover from the stress that resulted from
Kathmandu's traffic. That morning had been typical, and as she had
driven, she had been forced to dodge the usual assortment of cars,
trucks, motorcycles, and other vehicles, along with the dogs, ducks,
chickens, pigs, goats, cows, macaques, and people that turned the city's
streets into raw mayhem, arriving at the office with her nerves
stretched taut.

She had been hoping for a cup of coffee and a few minutes of quiet.

No such luck -- the smoking man would expect her to master the files he
had sent at once. He had that sort of reputation.

And so she had plunged in, familiarizing herself with everything that
the Consortium knew about Rongbuk, Leslie, Sales, and also Fox Mulder
and his partner, and, Jill had noted with interest, lover, Dana Scully.

Now, after finishing the last of the documents -- a file on the re-
opening and current status of the X-Files -- Jill lit a cigarette and
prepared to leave her office, pondering Mulder's relationship with his
partner. He had made himself something of a player, but he had acquired
a dangerous weakness in the process.

And if she couldn't exploit it, she wasn't half the woman she thought
she was.

Jill headed for home, knowing she needed to sleep before the next
morning. She had been instructed to prepare to travel to Lhasa. That
would mean some fancy paperwork and more than a few bribes, as the
Chinese could be touchy about westerners traveling in Tibet.

She was not worried, though; the Consortium had resources.

She had to be ready to go to Lhasa, because Mulder would be going there.
The smoking man had been clear about that.

September was shaping up to be an interesting month.

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

Arlington, Virginia
18 September, 12:14 p.m.

Radu Florescu paused in the middle of his mid-day walk, the few minutes
of outdoor exercise he had been allowing himself to keep his mind sharp,
and then began striding again as though nothing were amiss.

He had noticed something, though, a vehicle that had not been in the
neighborhood the previous week. The van seemed innocuous enough, but
that was precisely what disturbed him about it. It seemed just a little
too innocuous, and he did not care for new elements in any situation he
wanted to control.

It might be nothing of course, but he knew better than to take chances.
Until convinced otherwise, he would assume that he had come under
surveillance.

Half-consciously, he touched the place where he had his pistol
concealed. He did not know who would be watching him, but he sensed
that it was not any legitimate law enforcement effort. He had done
nothing to attract the attention of the local authorities, and though
his targets had become suspicious of him and the books he had given
them, as far as he knew, they were wholly unaware of his current
proximity. It was fortunate that Byers and his cohorts were such
recluses. Otherwise, Florescu would not have dared to leave his
observation post just to take a stroll.

And if he had not been out and about, he would likely have not picked up
on the surveillance.

His hand stroked his weapon once again. Chances were that he would
need it. His walk was not interrupted, but it was with a renewed sense
of caution that he mounted the stairs to return to his temporary
quarters.

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

FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
1:00 p.m.

"Certainly, Agent Mulder. Anything you need, come to me and I'll take
care of you." The data analyst in records division, a young and, Scully
admitted to herself, very attractive blonde, gave Mulder what could only
be described as a blatantly 'come-hither' look.

To his credit, Mulder gave her nothing back, nothing more than a polite
smile, and of course Scully knew she had no reason to feel threatened.
But a small part of her, the part that looked in the mirror each morning
and, seeing the reflection of a woman well on her way to 40, layered on
just a bit more make-up than she would have done five years earlier, the
part of her that had at last accepted the fact that, no matter how far
fertility treatments progressed, she would never bear a man's --
Mulder's? -- children, that part hurt, deep within the core of her
being.

It was just as well that children did not seem to be one of Mulder's
priorities. The image of a nice house in the suburbs, with kids running
around a well-manicured lawn, just didn't fit into their lives. Even
now, though they were not even officially investigating a case, the
X-Files remained Mulder's first concern, and by extension, hers as well.
The small part within her resented that as well.

Scully shook her head slightly. She really wasn't being fair; Mulder
could not be faulted for his treatment of her. It was just that at
times the perennial absence of...normalcy...became wearing.

Mulder had not returned to the office the day before, and she had not
even heard from him until he had called, jubilant, at 11:45 that night,
to tell her he had found a print.

Not hers, not his, and not Byers', Langly's, or Frohike's -- that did
not make it Florescu's of course, but it gave them a place to start,
which was fortunate, as her name-search that afternoon had drawn a
blank. If Radu Florescu had visited the United States before, he had
not used that name.

To her disappointment, Mulder had decided not to drive in to her
apartment after his long day at 'The Gunman.' He had told her not to
wait up for him, that he would just crash in his own place and meet her
at the office the next day.

That was it. She was just cranky from not having slept well.

And now she was leaning in a doorway, arms folded across her chest,
while some bimbo who had managed to unbutton her blouse into a workplace
variation on a decolletage made eyes at her partner, who thankfully had
just concluded the business of registering the print and made his way to
her side.

"Ready to get some lunch?" Mulder asked.

"Sure, I'm starving. Clyde's?"

"You bet."

Scully enjoyed the light touch of his fingers on her elbow as he guided
her into the hallway.

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

Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland
5:00 p.m.

The smoking man took a long pull on his cigarette as the C-141
Starlifter, one of the US military's fleet of jet transport aircraft,
taxied in from the runway where it had landed minutes before.

The plane had made a long flight, all the way from the Persian Gulf,
with very little cargo, but the waste of fuel and man-hours did not
concern the smoker. The passenger the plane brought was sufficiently
important to warrant the expenditure.

He waited while the plane came to a halt and a team of heavily armed
troopers, dressed in unadorned black battle-dress utilities, escorted
a forlorn, tired looking figure in his direction. That figure was the
reason he had decided to meet the transport plane personally.

The soldiers half-dragged the man close. "Mr. Leslie," the smoking man
said, "is it really you, after all these years?"

The man did not respond, just looked at him crazily.

"He's been like this the whole way over, sir," said one of the soldiers,
the team leader, a square-jawed youth with peach-fuzz blonde hair.
"Practically drooling."

"Very well," said the smoking man. "Did you get his gear?"

"Yes sir."

"Good. Have all written materials copied, then send it on with him.
Put him on the road for Arkham today, or tomorrow at the latest."

The troopers nodded in unison.

"Dismissed."

"Yes sir." The team leader did not salute -- the Consortium did not
bother with such formalities -- but simply nodded and hurried off, his
men hustling Leslie along after him.

The smoking man watched them hurry away with satisfaction. Most of the
pieces were in place now, with one to be removed. Tonight he would
give Mulder a push, send him diving into the snare that awaited him.

He tossed the cigarette butt to the tarmac and lit another. He really
should cut down a bit, but not today. He owed himself the pleasure.

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

Annapolis, MD
10:30 p.m.

The pub was quiet and dimly lit, a forgotten below-street oasis of
hardwood floors and old, smallish tables below a more frequented
restaurant at the edge of the town's historic district. Mulder settled
into his chair, enjoying the atmosphere, and let his eyes drift across
the elegant contours of Scully's visage. In the half-light and smoke,
she reminded him of a siren from an old black-and-white film, the
dangerous beauty, met over whiskey and jazz piano, who snares you in a
seductive web and then puts a bullet in your partner.

Just as well that *she* was his partner. He certainly would not have
wanted someone so deadly with a pistol for an adversary.

His shoulder ached momentarily, the ghost of an old injury. He did not
quite indulge in a rueful head shake. The ways we find to show our
affection, Scully....

Since their encounter that afternoon with the blonde in the records
division -- Mulder had made a point of not learning her name -- Scully
had been acting territorial. Little touches that came more often than
usual, that lasted just a bit longer than expected, intimated that she
would later be staking her claim to him in a most fundamental, and
welcome, of ways.

He grinned inwardly. In the years that he and Scully had been
together, they had grown to know each other better than many a married
couple. Nearly every aspect of their lives, from professional methods
to restaurant preferences to the smallest of gestures, had become a
shared habit. But Scully -- Dana -- as his lover was someone new,
someone who, he had discovered to his surprised delight, revealed
herself in intriguing stages, at times passionate, at times playful.
Mulder had thoroughly enjoyed the process.

That afternoon, though, her mood had been subdued as well as possessive,
and when evening had come, when another day's futile investigation into
the fate of John Leslie had wound down, she had called a halt to the
work to allow an evening of normalcy. Mulder had been impatient, at
first, preferring to work on into the evening, but Scully had insisted,
and after a half-hearted protest, he had given in. Deep down, he had
been glad for the interruption. The case had not progressed smoothly,
to date.

So what else is new? he thought. He sipped at his beer, savoring the
heavy, dark red brew, the unaccustomed intake of alcohol easing into
his system, relaxing the week's accumulated tension in his muscles.

Screw it, he thought. We're off tonight.

They had left the office fairly late and thus were spared the worst of
the capital's evening traffic. An hours' drive had seen them in
Annapolis, where they had parked and walked along the old town's tree-
lined, brick-paved sidewalks, enjoying the architecture and the warm
evening air. They spoke little, content to walk close together, with
just the outer fingers of their adjacent hands woven together. Dinner
had been in a small restaurant near the harbor, crab soup laced with
sherry for her, a deep-fried, clam-laden monstrosity of a sandwich for
him. Afterwards, they had walked again, their way lit with the light of
street lamps, through the cooling night air, eventually settling into
the pub's tranquility.

They had passed the time there, fingertips touching across the table,
speaking of ordinary things and enjoying the respite from their lives.
Scully sipped a glass of wine, burgundy moistening lips already full and
blood rose red, giving a silent promise of intimacy.

Mulder had known Scully to be a passionate woman beneath her controlled
exterior, but he had still been pleasantly surprised at the torrid
intensity of her lovemaking.

He took her hand fully into his, no longer giving a damn who might be
watching, letting the contact replace their quieting conversation. He
felt a sense of security in the connection, a reassurance that she would
always be with him.

In the midst of the Blackwood case, he had come dangerously close to
losing her, not once but twice. He had been shocked at the revelation,
by the knowledge that Scully had seen herself as an impediment to his
investigations, a hindrance to his quest.

And then she had been taken from him again. Unconsciously, his hand
tightened on hers as he recalled the hellish flight to Antarctica, the
long drive across the wastes of Wilkes Land, the gnawing fear that he
would be too late, or that there would be nothing there when he reached
the coordinates given to him.

When he had at last found her, injecting the vaccine and watching the
alien release its grip on her, his heart had almost burst under the
combined pressure of fear and hope. At the moment Scully had begun to
breath, coughing phlegm and God-knows-what alien fluid into his face,
he had known himself to be the happiest man alive.

He could not remember much before the flight back to North America.
Exhausted by his efforts, he had collapsed on the rim of the crater left
by the UFO. Somehow, Scully had found the strength to get him moving,
back to the snow crawler where they could radio for help. He remembered
the plane ride, though. They had huddled together for the duration of
the flight, neither willing to let go of the other. They had spoken
little. Though much between them remained to be discussed, somehow,
there had been no need for speech.

And much later, after days of hearings and testimony, they had at last
had time alone with each other. They dined together, and then mutual,
unspoken agreement had led them to his apartment, where he had ridden
the whirlwind of his emotions and considered his partner, his best
friend. 'I want to be more than that for you,' he had told her. Will
you have me, after all that has been?

Yes, her eyes had replied.

And she had kissed him again, an almost chaste, butterfly caress of
mouth on mouth, yet a solar flare within him, that left pale and empty
his memories of wild nights with the Phoebe Greens and other strangers
in his life, shadows of ghosts.

He had slept, then, exhausted by days of stress, not waking until well
after midnight. He had found Scully nearby, dozing in a chair from
which she had watched over his sleep. Rubbing the fog from his eyes,
Mulder had considered her then, her slumber having lifted the protective
mask she normally wore.

He had been shocked at how fragile she looked.

Mulder had long viewed Scully as the stronger half of their partnership,
but time and illness and loss had worn her down, leaving her once robust
figure slim and delicate. Beneath her make-up, hints of lines at the
corners of her eyes and around her mouth traced patterns of grief on a
once flawless visage. She bore the years well, but they weighed heavily
on her all the same. Her outer form reflected the wounded spirit
within.

And her most recent ordeal had taken its toll as well.

Mulder had realized, then, that when he had declared himself to her, he
had made certain promises as well.

I will be there for you, Scully. I will let you lean on me as I have
leaned on you for so long.

I won't see you die. I won't let you be crucified on the truth I have
sought.

I will love you as you deserve to be loved.

"You've gotten awfully quiet, Mulder." Scully's voice eased into his
awareness, a delicate aural caress.

He smiled at her, shrugged. "Just thinking," he said.

She gave him a familiar, questioning look.

"I'm thinking about us," he admitted.

"About...?"

He shrugged again. "About how...what we have now changes things, what
it means for our work."

A hint of a frown crinkled her brow. "Mulder, do you think that our
work...the way we work...has to change?"

"I hope not. I don't want to lose what we've had." But it will change,
in some ways, he added silently. I have to adapt. "I guess I just
sense that things are fundamentally different, somehow. I mean, we put
this off for so long...we became accustomed...." He trailed off, not
sure precisely what he wanted to say.

Scully looked thoughtful. "I think things have changed," she said, "but
not for the worse. Is something bothering you? Something specific?"
Her look asked him, have I let you down in some way?

Do you think this was a mistake?

"No, Scully," he said hastily. "Nothing like that." He locked his eyes
on hers, willing her to understand, not to doubt herself. "I meant
everything I told you. No one means more to me. No one."

Her expression eased as she recognized the sincerity of his words.

"Scully, I just mean that I have to make some adjustments. I have to
learn to separate how I feel about you on the job and how I feel about
you...in real life." Scully laughed gently at that, and he joined her
in it, enjoying the irony.

"Mulder, it'll be okay," she said. "I'm still me. I'm still the same
partner you've had all along."

You're so much more than that, he thought. "I know," he said. "I just
have to get used to...us."

She accepted that, not probing further, content merely with his
companionship. How well she knows me, he thought. Other women, less
certain of themselves, would have pushed at him, seeking reassurance, or
just a certain sign of connection. Phoebe would have perceived a
challenge, begun poking about in his brain with verbal icepicks until
satisfied, unconcerned with the collateral damage she might have done.
He shuddered inwardly, then discarded the thought of her.

Mulder turned his chair and leaned against the wall, pleased with the
peaceful ambience of the pub, the absence of the frantic weekend mating
rituals of the young. Well past the midpoint of his fourth decade, he
had begun to feel his age creeping up on him, as the years mounted and
doors closed, opportunities slipping away. Scully had changed that for
him as well, making the world around him more vital, more tangible,
somehow. Even so, maturity had brought to him a preference for a
measure of tranquility. He closed his eyes, letting himself slip into
reverie, his mind supplying the memory of their first night together in
perfect detail.

She had stirred as he watched her sleep, sensing his gaze upon her, and
as she came to full wakefulness, meeting his eyes, the commitment he had
accepted had collapsed on him, as though gravity had been somehow turned
up a few notches.

The feeling froze him for a moment, old, defensive habits too long
established to yield their place all at once rising up in a last bid to
maintain their hold on him. He had a vague urge to leave, to flee her
presence, then realized the absurdity of running out of his own
apartment, of running out on her once more.

Irresolute, he compromised and retreated toward the kitchen, beginning
to offer her water, likely the only refreshment he had, in an old juice
bottle in the refrigerator, but his words trailed off half-spoken.
Don't be an ass, urged a braver voice in his head.

"Mulder..." Scully's mellifluent alto stopped him in his tracks.

He turned, the intense blue of her gaze arresting him. He felt his
chest tighten, adrenalin coursing through his limbs as she crossed the
room to stand before him, alabaster beauty in the half-light of the
room. His breath caught as she set her left hand on his chest, then
stood on tip-toe and gently placed her right hand on his cheek, sliding
it slowly upward and behind his neck. Mulder let his gaze drift
downward along the perfect contours of her face, settling on her lush,
full lips, roses wet with dew. He found his voice at last.

"Scully?"

"Dana," she corrected, raising her mouth to his. Mulder felt the
tension in him crest, and then relaxed slightly, returning her kiss and
sliding his hands around her waist, pressing into the softness of her
breasts and abdomen. Holding her close, he leaned back against the
wall, narrowing the difference in their heights and allowing her to
settle down into a more comfortable posture. He felt her hands drift
lightly to his shoulders, then down along his upper arms. At last, she
broke the kiss and spoke again. "Call me Dana," she breathed.

"Dana," he said, tasting the name. He had almost forgotten how it
sounded, so long had it been since he had last spoken it himself, when
he had used it to explored the limits of their intimacy. It had a
secret, exciting quality that enticed him.

She eased back from their embrace and took his hand, stepping away and
drawing him after her. He surrendered to her will, letting her lead him
to the bedroom, then stood apart, passive, as she shed her clothes.
Enthralled, his eyes followed the graceful cascade of fabric.

Long moments later, nude, she settled backward on the bed, her eyes
never leaving his. Mulder felt the quiescence rise from him like a
curtain being raised and clawed his way out of his shirt and trousers,
flinging aside his boxers without thought. Then, as his knee touched
the edge of the mattress, he mastered himself again, settling slowly
next to her and touching her gently, kissing her once more. His hands
explored her body, tracing her curves and gliding to secret places. She
returned his caresses, her breathing thick and heavy, small sounds of
passion forming an intimate discourse. His heart pounded, as though it
would burst from emotion long pent up and now demanding to be released.

Months before, as she had lain with death looming over her, he had
rushed to her bedside, with no thought but that she might leave him
before he could get there. 'I'm only half dead,' he had said, referring
to her, but only now, his life welling in him in response to her desire,
did he know the full truth of his words.

He luxuriated in vitality, content with the unhurried rhythm of their
loving. For a time, she returned his caresses in a leisurely tempo.

"Mulder...." Her voice caressed his name.

Her hands moved on him with sudden urgency, impatiently guiding him into
position between her legs, unwilling to delay the moment any longer.
Their joining jolted through him, nearly overcame him. He held still,
staring into the limpid wells of her eyes, then began to move again.
She waited, then moved with him, hot and liquid, his match in this as in
all things.

The tide lifted them together.

He felt her climax, joined her in it. He stared into her radiance,
melting in it, as the passion coursed through them and then flowed away
into stillness. He kissed her once more and tasted salt. Unbidden,
half-forgotten words formed in his mind.

She sheds tears. She gives water to the dead.

And for the first time in years, Mulder felt whole and alive.

Later, he had stared at the ceiling, absently stroking Scully's hair as
she dozed, head pillowed on his chest. Though his body had relaxed into
a rich languor, Mulder's mind hummed with an intense awareness of his
partner, the delicate touch of her hair on his chest, the slight
dampness where their skin touched, the dew at her apex. Her breathing
massaged him in a contented largo. Outside, a warm, moist breeze had
risen, making sails of the bedroom drapes and bringing a gentle rain
that hissed on the streets below the window.

He inhaled her scent, spice and smoke and something uniquely her,
liberated by passion and the warm night air. He pondered the gift she
had given him, her love and her trust in his. Self-reproach, an old
comrade, nagged at him. She deserves better than you, Mulder, someone
she can rely on for more than heartache.

He felt her stir against him, coming awake. "Hmmmm, Mulder," she
sighed, not raising her head.

"Dana," he said, his voice ghost-like. The name was an unfamiliar, yet
intimate flavor. My Dana, he thought, and desire coursed through him
once more, briefly quieting his self-recrimination.

"I love you, Mulder," there was a slight catch in her voice. "I have
for so long."

His heart leapt at that. "I love you too," he said, tightening his arms
around her. She settled into him, already drifting towards sleep once
more. He realized, then, how completely she had let down her guard, the
armor of emotional distance that had shielded her, at least in part,
from so much pain.

For him, she had cast aside the last of her defenses.

Amid his happiness, he felt like a leper.

Mulder knew that, for her sake, he had to be more than he had once been.
He had no idea whether he had it in him.

Scully's touch on his palm brought him back into the present. "Get the
bill," she said. "I want to show you something."

A few moments later, they left the bar and returned to their car.
Mulder acquiesced to her demand to drive, and sat without questioning as
she had followed the roads out of town and across the westernmost of the
two bridges spanning the Severn River, turning east on the far side and
heading back toward the town. Just prior to the turn-off for the other
bridge, she spoke, something indefinable in her voice.

"Almost there. It's just ahead."

They traveled a bit further and then Scully turned the car into a small
parking area between the lanes of the highway. A sign informed visitors
that the memorial overlook, a short walk from where Scully had stopped
their vehicle, had closed for the evening.

"Say, Scully," he said, "you aren't going to get us busted, are you?"

She ignored his teasing. "Close your eyes," she instructed him.

He complied, following her lead toward the overlook. She giggled
slightly as he stumbled over an irregularity in the pavement, falling
into her. Soon, though, she stopped him and, quietly, said "okay,
look."

The sight before him surprised him with its loveliness. Before him, the
bridge arched over the river, bathed in red-gold light from its lamps,
light that danced and shimmered on the wavelets below, and beyond that
stood the graceful domes and steeples of the town's skyline. The wind
from the bay, vaguely scented by the brackish marshes of the Eastern
Shore, wafted in over the river's mouth, teasing their hair.

"It's lovely," he said, easing her in front of him and slipping his arms
about her waist.

"I come here, sometimes." Scully leaned back against him. "My father
taught at the Academy for a couple of years. We didn't live here long,
but it feels like home, somehow."

He waited in silence.

"When I was ill, if there was time, I would drive out here and just
think. Not many people come here, so I could be alone, and just be in
the past, before..." her voice trailed off.

"Before...everything?" Mulder prompted.

She nodded slightly. "I was afraid of the future...I thought I had no
future. It felt good to remember my life before I got sick, before
Melissa...." She paused again, then continued, the hint of tears in
her tone. "And after Emily died, I would come here then, too."

Mulder felt a dark shadow of unease stir at the edge of his awareness.
As difficult as Emily's death had been, he knew she would get through
it. What bothered him more was the thought that it could all happen
again.

It probably already had, perhaps more than once.

He had never discussed that possibility with Scully, and in truth, he
hoped he would never have to. He feared that it would prove the final
burden, the one that could break her.

He told himself that some truths really were best left hidden.

Mulder held her, vexed by wrongs he could never right, no matter how
much he loved her. She felt small and delicate in his arms. "Scully,"
he began, "why...?" He did not complete the question.

She did not respond at first. He felt her inhale deeply, not allowing
herself to weep, but neither did she raise the brittle walls behind
which she once would have retreated. "This isn't an unhappy place,
Mulder. I found comfort here. I wanted you to see it, that's all."

There was a silence. "Thank you," he said, after a moment.

She was quiet a while, then spoke once more. "You must have such a
place...."

All of the empty houses that had never been home ghosted past him.
"Not really," he said. "I just sit with the fish."

Her response was a melancholy laugh.

"No, really," he said. "They're great listeners."

"I'm sure." She placed her hands over his, pressing them into her
abdomen. So soft -- he could hardly believe she was barren.

My beautiful, broken love, he thought.

Mulder stood, bearing her weight, watching the languid movement of the
water below. We know so much about each other, he thought, but it is
these little things that we have left to discover, to reveal about
ourselves. One more leftover gap had been closed -- not many left now.
An amalgam of love and remorse burned in him.

"I don't deserve you," he said.

She understood him at once. "No, Mulder, that's not true."

"I've cost you so much." His words were rust in his mouth. Scully's
ghosts had joined his in tormenting him.

She turned in his arms, facing him, placing her palms on his chest.
"I've walked after you of my own free will." She shook her head. "What
has happened to us hasn't been your choice. You don't own the blame for
it."

He stared down at her. Lost time, lost sister, lost child, and yet she
did not accuse him. But he did not hesitate to blame himself, for these
and for the bondage imposed by the implant, cybernetic chains made
necessary by the specter of her cancer. The thought made him ill. "I
used to feel sorry for myself," he said.

"It was my choice too." Scully passed a hand across his cheek. "Years
ago, your informant -- they killed him right in front of me. I knew the
stakes."

Deep Throat, Mulder thought -- Scully had seldom been able to bring
herself to use that sobriquet -- he had been one of the first to die.
"There's a lot I would change."

Scully hugged him tighter, laying her head against his chest. "Mulder,
I once told you I wouldn't change a day. And then, for a while, I
wanted to change everything. I wanted to break loose and start over."
She was quiet a moment, then went on. "But I've realized that you can't
just choose the good and not the bad. Maybe I had to lose something to
gain something else."

Mulder shook his head. "No, Scully, no. It's not like that."

"I don't know, Mulder. I think sometimes it has to be."

He shook his head again, in wordless denial.

Her voice fell to a near whisper. "Mulder, I'm in this as deep as you
are, now. I have to believe that it's for the best...in the end."

He did not answer, just held her as she clung to him. Renewed faith had
indeed proven a source of strength for her, but he realized as he held
her just how much she needed it, how little of her own reserves were
left.

She needs you, Mulder, he told himself. She needs you in a way that
she's never let herself need anyone. You have to be there.

He was worried. He knew himself too well.

For a while, they remained locked in their embrace, not speaking, and
then at last, chilled by the rising breeze, he led her to the car. The
drive back to Mulder's apartment in Alexandria was made in silence, the
light touch of her small hand on his all the discourse they needed.

Their lovemaking that night was gentle and profound, the tranquil caress
of souls expressed through the physical form, and afterwards they lay
long awake, in a contented, healing embrace, a soft breeze cooling them
as the city grew quiet in the deepening night.

* * *

In a car on the street outside, the smoking man lit up once again and
started his car. His push would have to wait. Agent Mulder would
likely not be receptive to a knock on the door at this hour.

Never mind, it could wait a day.

As he drove homeward through Washington's emptying streets, another
thought struck him, an idea for a new angle, one more manipulation. He
considered, decided it wouldn't hurt to try it. He opened his cell
phone and dialed.

************************************************************************
[end part 4 of 11]