Sent: Sunday, July 26, 1998

TITLE: Pursuit
AUTHOR: Joyce McKibben
DATE: July 1998

RATING: PG-13 (some profanity)
CLASSIFICATION: V
SUMMARY: Mulder's thoughts during the trip across
Antarctic to rescue Scully.
DISCLAIMER: Scully, Mulder, and anyone else whose
name you recognize belongs to CC and Fox
Broadcasting. I am only borrowing them for a
moment and will return them. No money is
changing hands nor is any profit sought after
or expected.
SPOILERS: Very definite movie spoilers

FEEDBACK: Always welcome. Send to: griffin100@juno.com

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thanks to Deb and Miki for being not
only great editors, but for writing stories
that give me ideas.

========================

Pursuit

Too damn much time to think. Nothing to look at but an
endless white on white landscape, broken occasionally by
larger lumps of white with bits of gray rock peeking
through the snow and ice. I fucking hate the color
white. I feel like I'm trapped in one of those frigging
snow globes.

In the last forty-eight hours, I have been on four
planes, crossed three continents, and, for the last ten
hours, I have been driving headlong into a wasteland
with no one to dig me out if I get lost. This wild
journey is based entirely on the unsupported word of a
man sent to kill me and the devout hope that he was
giving me a chance to save Scully.

About every three minutes I've been carefully unfolding
the slip of paper the Englishman gave me and peering at
the coordinates, just to reassure myself that I have
some reason behind this insane trek into the snowfields
of the Antarctic. I think I must have the coordinates
tattooed across the inside of my eyelids. I could
probably recite them in my sleep, if I ever sleep again.

I haven't slept since I woke up in the hospital with a
new hole in my head and a single-minded compulsion to
find Scully. How could I sleep when every beat of my
heart was urging the endless succession of airplanes I
was in to move faster? Skinner could have booked me on
the Concorde and it still would have been flying too
slow.

The little leather case holding Scully's life rests
against my heart. I feel it like an ember nestled
between my thermal shirt and the arctic coat I
requisitioned from the Marines. The hope it contains is
the only thing keeping me from giving up and turning
into a block of ice.

Scully will kill me if she ever finds out that I've been
keeping warm by imagining in vivid detail where our kiss
in the hallway would have gone if that bloody fucking
bee hadn't joined the party. I've got the heater on so
low an ice cube wouldn't work up a sweat. I'm still
steaming up the windshield. Vicariously making love to
Scully is about the only thing keeping me warm and
awake, but it's playing havoc with my concentration.

Less heat equals more fuel. I'll risk a few toes if it
means getting to Scully. What are a few toes when I'd
gladly rip out my heart? In a way I already have. What
I don't know, is whether she accepted the gift or was
simply caught completely off guard by my sudden lapse
into emotional honesty.

After endless hours of driving through a winter
wonderland and I'm beginning to forget there are any
other colors than white. The dark color of my clothes
actually hurts my eyes when I pry them away from peering
desperately through the windshield. I think of the hot
soup in the thermos plugged into the dashboard, but push
that thought away. I intend to toast Scully's return to
me with a cup of hot soup. After five years of being
with her, I am learning to combine practicality with
serendipity.

Hell is a frozen wasteland. Maybe I died from that shot
to the head and I'm actually lying in a cold morgue
somewhere and this is my hell - chasing after Scully
through ice and cold and the waking nightmare of never
getting to her in time. Why can't one of us be abducted
to someplace warm, like Bermuda? Everyone else
disappears into the Bermuda Triangle - warm sands,
blue-green sea and soft summer breezes. Scully and I
disappear into hell's icebox.

Nothing to do but think and I don't like the road my
thoughts are traveling. I'm so far past exhaustion
I am no longer sure what is real, if anything I remember
or feel is real. My memories are becoming confused,
twisted until I am unsure if they are mirages or simply
the confused ramblings of a man on the brink of despair.

I won't, I can't, give up. If this bloody cat dies on
me, I'll walk. Won't do Scully much good without a way
home, but I'll worry about that part after I get her
free. With luck, she'll slide that incredible mind of
hers into action and think of a way to get us home. I
just have to get to her and everything will be alright.
Those words are frozen onto the inside of my windshield.

At least for the first twelve hours of my frantic plunge
towards this frozen hell, I was too busy to think. The
guys and Skinner make a fearsome team. I'm not sure how
I feel about introducing them to each other. I would
hate to become superfluous to this quest for the truth.
They may decide they can do better without me. If this
trip goes wrong, they may have to.

Byers deserves a medal. After one brief goggle-eyed
gasp when I blurted out his part in my plan, he dove
into the action like a trooper. Never knew a guy could
blush that deep a magenta. Made a nice contrast to
Langley who was turning paler by the moment as he
realized exactly who Skinner was. Says a hell of a lot
about his courage that he didn't bolt. He looked as
wild-eyed as a spooked horse, however. Your worst
nightmare isn't supposed to come busting in on you while
you're checking up on a friend too dumb to duck when he
sees a gun pointed at him.

Frohike, on the other hand, worries me. I keep trying
to figure out what it was about Frohike's reaction to
Skinner that bothered me. He was too damn cool with the
idea that my FBI superior was now part of our little
anti-establishment group. After a muttered 'fucking
hell' which I don't suppose I was meant to hear, he
acted as if Skinner had been one of the guys for years.
They moved like a team - getting Byers striped down and
into bed and me into his clothes. I had to be buttoned
into his shirt. It wasn't my fault I was seeing double.
Two Frohikes standing next to two Skinners, and one of
each blending into the other, is a sight that would
normally have driven me to drink.

Frohike is a mystery wrapped up in scruffy clothing and
I'm not any closer to understanding him even after
nearly eight years of knowing him. I am also becoming
painfully aware that what I don't know about Skinner
would fill the Library of Congress.

Shit! Damn rocks. My insurance company won't be happy
if I wreck this thing. Neither will Skinner. It's his
ass on the line if I don't come back with this Sno-Cat.
That man has contacts everywhere. I am beginning to
think that half the fucking world served in the Marines
with him in Vietnam. The old school tie club has
nothing on the Marines.

Well, the sun is coming out. Damn. Nothing like being
out in plain sight in a bright yellow Sno-Cat crossing a
white icecap. Maybe I should blow a trumpet or
something. God, if you are up there, out there, or
whatever, I could really use a little less of the blue
skies and sunshine bit right now. Fog would be useful.
I've always had a fondness for fog.

A dark alley would be nice. I have spent so much of my
life in recent years hugging the shadows that I feel
naked here at the bottom of the world moving around in
broad daylight. I'm used to secret meetings in dark
corners in murky hallways or half-lit underground
parking lots; dark men with dark secrets scurrying
around in the night following a beacon to my place. I
can't even take a leak without somebody popping up out
of the shadows with a secret truth they want to tell me.

Poor Kurtzweil. The man was pathetic, but he scared me
shitless. Not so much by what he said, but by the
simple fact of what he was. I saw myself. That wizened
old man skulking in alleys, writing paranoid treatises
that sounded like something out of the Star, was my
future.

My origins are a confused mass of programmed memories,
wisps of disjointed conversations, and a frustrating
lack of familial communication, but if someone suggested
that Kurtzweil was my father, I think I'd be ready to
half believe it. Shit, we even sounded alike - two
paranoid conspiracy nuts utterly convinced that we alone
hold a fragment of the truth that no one else can see.

He knew my father. Is there anyone in hell or on the
fast track there that didn't know my father? I am
beginning to think that our house was a pit stop on the
scenic route to hell - all the nasty guys stopped there
to say hi and pat me on the head. No wonder I'm not
anywhere near normal. I was probably dandled on the
knees of some of the worst scum of the earth during my
impressionable years. Maybe I should be glad I can't
remember for sure what my childhood was really like.
Maybe I should thank whoever was responsible for turning
my memories into scrambled eggs for whatever little
sanity I do have.

Fellow travelers, Kurtzweil said. Did he think I
wouldn't catch that reference? Dad may not have said
much about his past work, but I had a history teacher in
high school who made very sure we innocents knew what
kind of home-grown monsters our country was capable of
spawning. I am beginning to realize now that McCarthy
was merely a stupid dupe used by the conspiracy to cover
their activities. How many men foolish enough to
believe in the Constitution were destroyed by that
simple label at the hands of a megalomaniac puppet? How
much blood was on my father's hands? How much did I
drink in with my mother's milk?

Fuck! If I do manage to rescue Scully, I swear I'll
send her away. I'll commend her good sense in deciding
to leave me and help her pack her bags. She was right
to want to leave. I should have done the honorable
thing and let her walk out of my life. Selfish bastard
that I am, I just had to pick that moment to realize how
empty my life would be and just how much I needed to
tell her what she meant to me.

I don't regret that kiss. If I die out here in the
middle of nowhere, that kiss will be the last thing that
dies inside of me. What I regret is that I left it so
long. What was I so afraid of? It is fucking obvious
that our enemies know exactly how much she means to me a
hell of a lot sooner than I did. I don't suppose there
was a shred of doubt in that English bastard's mind that
all he had to do was dangle Scully's salvation in front
of me and I'd dash off into the wilderness without a
second thought.

I'm trying not to dwell on the past - it would seem too
much like a eulogy. All those moments with Scully that
are now a permanent part of my memory, but I'm greedy
for more. I don't want her to live in my memory. I
want her beside me, living and breathing and taking my
theories apart. I want her to go, to leave me behind
and find a life. I need her to stay. I guess in the
end, she'll make up her own mind - she always does.

I'm trying to be an optimist without any training
whatsoever. Blind faith is not optimism - it's simply a
refusal to accept what any sane person would realize is
hopeless pursuit. I can't stop. All my life I have
believed in extreme possibilities. Now I'm betting my
life and Scully's life on the most extreme possibility
of all - that against all odds, I can somehow find her
and stop the virus before it kills her.

I've got to breathe less, I'm fogging up the damn
windshield. It would be just my luck to get this far
and drive straight into a crevice. I can't fuck this up
- Scully is depending on me. Her unshakable trust that
I will always be there for her scares the hell out of
me. I'm a bad person to depend on. I keep losing
people like other people lose keys. My grip on the
important things in life - guns, cell-phones, people,
just falls apart. Right now I'm holding on to the
belief that I can find Scully and save her with the
strength of a desperate man. She has saved me so many
times I've lost count. Please, whoever is running the
universe, let me save her, just this once. Let me be
her knight in shining armor and I'll gladly fumble my
gun for the rest of my fucking life.

Engines don't cough. That is not a good sound. Come
on! Damn it, the gauge says half-full. Shit! Bloody
hell! Ouch! Damn fucking mechanical gizmos. Empty.
I'm sitting in the middle of nowhere on an empty gas
tank.

OK, so I have a spare tank, but that tank is for getting
Scully back home. I should have dropped the heat
altogether. I could have made it. What's a little
cold? I haven't felt my feet in a couple of hours, but
they're still down there. Calm down. Breathe slowly.
Concentrate. The coordinates on the GPS look awfully
familiar.

My hands are numb as I fumble for the note. I can see
the numbers in my head, but I don't trust myself
anymore. I'm drifting in and out of reality. I can't
chance that a snafu in my memory will lead me off into
the snow in the wrong direction to die.

The numbers match. I'm here. Now, if I just knew where
in hell 'here' was in relation to Scully.

Time for a little hike. If the Englishman was right,
she should be just beyond that ridge. Remembering the
lecture Skinner's Marine buddy gave me, I switch over to
the reserve fuel tank and shift the engine into neutral
and leave it running. Turning off an engine up here
without a heat source means a slow death.

I clamber up the ridge faster than I thought possible
for my aching body to move. My head feels like someone
is bouncing a ping-pong ball off the inside of my skull.
I have forgotten what sleep feels like. I feel like
that engine. If I turn off for an instant, I'll freeze
solid and never move again.

Perched on the ridge, I look down at the base. Three
large igloos full of men who will probably take extreme
exception to my intrusion into their secrets. Plunging,
down the ridge, I can only hope that the guards are
sensible men - inside where it is warm.

I should have borrowed a white jacket. My dark jacket
stands out against the white snow like a beacon. Maybe
no one will think that anyone would be dumb enough to
try to sneak into a base located in the back of forever.
Nobody but me, of course.

I've pushed my luck beyond all reason, but I have to
trust that luck will stay with me just a little longer.
Scully's out there somewhere. What was it she once
said about me? If they set me down in the desert and
told me the truth was there, I'd ask for a backhoe?
Something like that. Well, my truth is out here and
someone forgot to order the backhoe.

If I were the bad guys, where would I hide the back
door?

"Shiiiitttt........!"

THE END

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