From: "jhumby" jhumby@ctv.es

Subject: Tears of Betrayal and Rebirth by Joann Humby
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997

Legally:
The characters you know in this story belong to Chris Carter,
1013 and Fox as brought to life by DD, GA and the X-Files
writers. I've borrowed them for fun not profit.

This story:
I'm happy for the story to be circulated uncommercially, intact
and with my name still attached.

==========

Title - Tears of Betrayal and Rebirth
Rating - R (language and violence)
Classification - XA

By Joann Humby (jhumby@iee.org)

Summary:
>From Gethsemane to the season premiere.

If you think you've seen part one of this before, you are
probably right. Part one was "Tears of Betrayal", it only went
out on its own to a couple of places and the rest of this story
follows immediately on behind it which is why I've stuck it all
together as a single story rather than as a sequel.

Episode spoilers for Gethsemane.

Thanks to Ann for her editing comments and encouragement. Thanks
to Pat for her many roles in my cyber life - manager; coach;
editor; publicity officer; supplier of superstar hats etc etc.

Joann

===========

<<
To: Dana(dkscully@fbi.gov): 'no subject'.

Hi Scully,

Never open a presentation with an apology, I learned that on a
training course. Guess I've never been good at learning
lessons.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I couldn't tell you this face to face
or even voice to voice, but it just couldn't be done. This is
the wrong way for you to hear about it. I'm not sorry about what
I've done. I've done the right thing.

I'll try and explain what happened. I don't ask you to agree
with my reasons, just accept them as being mine.

...... continues
>>
---------

Mulder stared at the computer screen. The sooner someone
developed a system that read your thoughts and put them
coherently into words the better. It's called a brain, he
mumbled uncomfortably to the keyboard. The keyboard just stared
dumbly back.

Something a little more mechanical would be preferable of
course. Something that didn't keep remembering things, didn't
keep making excuses, rationalizing. Something that didn't have
its own agenda.

He blocked the chain of thoughts. Try to think, explain. The
chronological approach was his only chance. How far back? Just
the facts. Just the essentials. Uncluttered. You're an FBI
Agent, years of practice at leaving out unnecessary things from
your reports.

OK. Start with coming back from the Yukon. He remembered trying,
trying so hard in the autopsy. Playing it cool, not getting
caught up in it. He'd been trying to do Dana's job as well as
his own. Mulder found himself watching the hands of the ME
like he was watching a stage magician and it was his job to
explain later to the audience how the trick was performed.
Disconnected, impersonal. Of course his mind had wandered from
that chore, quickly detoured, but he had tried.

It had been easier than he'd expected. Euphoric innocence had
long since gone, left behind on too many jobs where they'd got
close, only to find the evidence vanish before their eyes.
Enthusiasm was a strictly rationed quantity these days and
Scully's dismissal of his latest wild goose chase had been the
most damning yet. This could be the real thing, not a wild
goose in sight, but even if it was, then she still didn't want
to know.

She was right, of course. This could be the real thing. So what?
It wouldn't get Samantha back. It wouldn't cure Scully. It
wouldn't do anything. If it was real then it would be gone
before morning. That was the reality. The video tape copies
would be just another test case for plausible denial. It hardly
mattered anymore. Idle curiosity then. Idle curiosity that had
sent him away from his partner's side.

He looked at the keyboard and started to type again.

---------------------------

<<
....cont

That incident over the body in the Yukon, that was what told me
I needed to change things.

You always said we needed proof. Hard, factual, incontrovertible
evidence. I agreed. How could I disagree? Then you said that you
couldn't chase this ice entombed thing, that it wasn't worth it.
I could go off and chase EBE's or God, it really didn't matter.
You, the believer in proof, had admitted that proof wasn't
important.

That will read too harsh, I don't mean it to. I've just got to
get this down in words while it's clear to me.

You were right to pull me back to reality, to this world, to the
here and now. It's ironic, I think you believe in God, in an
after life. I believe in neither. Yet I'm the one acting as if
there are more important things in this life than the people who
are living it. Thanks for the reminder, I needed it.

cont ....
>>
---------------------------

Scully came to me and brought her apologist friend with her. Not
even that, her apologist stranger. Kritschgau, a DOD nobody
who'd introduced himself to her by pushing her down the stairs.
It's wild. She believes in me, trusts me. Yet she'd rather
believe in the words of strangers.

I recall a year or more ago, standing, looking through a window
in a closed compartment on a train, looking at a what? A human
made inhuman by experimentation; a genetic experiment; a thing
with a drop of alien DNA mixed in with the human; an EBE? I
stood with the proof, staring at the evidence, while you talked
to me down a crackly phone line. While you repeated whatever
story some guy in a suit told you. Why? Because he had armed
guards? Because he had a flashy black car to go with his flashy
black suit. Because he wasn't called Spooky by people who
didn't even know him?

This line of thought is doing me no good. I shake myself out of
the tantrum. I pretend I don't understand you, Scully. But I'm
lying to myself, I do understand.

I understand that it's less frightening to believe in mad men
with syringes who can be exposed, than in aliens with an agenda
of their own. The idea that the two groups might be working
together in some temporary common cause makes the idea of
fighting impossible, ludicrous. Less frightening to believe in a
conspiratorial minority of bad men protecting other bad men. At
least, that's a battle you can imagine winning, or at least
a battle you can imagine fighting.

Oddly, it's less frightening for me to believe that I was
powerless on the night that my sister was taken. I choose to
believe it, despite the fact that there are a hundred and one
alternative scenarios that my serial killer hunting brain will
offer on demand. So many ways to die, most would have worked on
Sam, I know this stuff. We all have our limits, our blinkers.
Different because we're different people.

Kritschgau. A good name for a crossword puzzle. It's probably an
anagram of something in some language. You presented him to me
as if another person telling me that I don't know what I'm
talking about would convince me. Who's being naive now?

Have I seen an EBE? Don't know. Have I seen things that could
only result from some government funded deal to obtain alien
technology? Sure. It's either that or believe in magic. I wonder
what Scully believes.

I know what Scully believes, she believes I've been manipulated.
I agree. Scully believes that my father was killed for me, that
her sister died in my personal war's crossfire and that she was
made to contract cancer to manipulate me more effectively.

Why do they bother? Pull any string, however flimsy, I jump.
They didn't need to try so hard. They did it to make me give up?
Bad psychology, I'm used to losing, I expect defeat. I've given
them so many excuses to throw me out of the Bureau, yet they
keep me in place. I'm a soft target for any killer, yet they
keep me alive. I mean something to them, I just don't know
what.

-----------

<<
....cont

There's nothing I can do to compensate for the damage I've done
to you and your family. In the years of working, there's nothing
I've achieved on my own or with you that can make up for what
it's cost you. Just believe me when I say, I always tried to do
the right thing.

We've always agreed on one issue. There are people who know more
than us, who have more power, who fight dirtier. There's a
conspiracy of silence protecting dirty secrets, a conspiracy
that plays with people like they are toys, pieces in a game.

I believe that those people have had the power of life and death
over us for a long time. I think you believe that too.

cont....
>>
------------

It was amazing how fast the factions moved when they knew I was
open to offers, for sale to the highest bidder. Gratifying I
suppose. I wonder why I'm worth it. They obviously had worked
out the terms of their offers beforehand, some of this couldn't
just be thrown together in a few hours. They always knew I'd
deal. They had the contracts drawn up in anticipation. Bastards.

How can I negotiate, when I don't know what I have to offer,
when I don't know why I'm worth bargaining with?

Scully's dying, she lies to me about it. No, not lies,
prevaricates. But I've seen her files. The bidders presented her
hospital records to me as proof of their abilities and of
course, as a threat. They wanted to remind me that I'm running
out of time. So I'm not going to waste any more time. No time
like the present.

Of course, I have the advantage of carrying the black cancer,
of feeling it eating away at me. It's easy to deal when you know
that soon, even if you don't deal, you die and so does your
partner. The selfish bits of the brain are easy to overrule when
you remind them of their irrelevance. And if I wasn't dying?
Don't know. Maybe I'd have looked harder for different
terms but in the end I would have dealt.

-------------

<<
....cont

I'm dying Scully. I'm sorry, I couldn't tell you. It was never
the right time to tell you, I never knew how. What could I say?
When would have been the right moment? After Penny died? When
your nose bled?

The info is in the file on Tunguska.

So don't think badly of me. I'm not on some martyrdom kick. I'm
not irrational. I had a last throw of the dice. I could try and
do something useful with my life or I could die and let you die.
I think I chose the best offer.

cont ....
>>
----------

I don't really feel like the ink is dry on the deal, it doesn't
really feel much more solid than a dream, it all took so little
time, but the deal's done. It'll only be a couple of hours
before they arrive to collect on their half of the bargain. A
couple of hours to explain it to Scully, to try and write an
explanation that'll stop her blaming herself, that'll stop her
blowing the deal.

I don't know the words that'll do the trick.

I can phone her. No. Stupid. Then, the chances would be that I'd
blow the deal myself.

Get it over with, finish the email. Set the PC to automatically
post it in two hours and just pray that the timing works. Pray
she gets it before someone else gives her the news. It should
work, I know her habits.

------------

<<
..... cont

I saw your journal at the hospital. I thank you for that. I know
that I wasn't supposed to see it, but I'm grateful. I've nothing
to give you of equal value. Just that you should know, that for
a while, you made me better than I am.

The deal's done. Please don't imagine that you could have said
or done something that would have made me behave differently.
Please don't blame yourself for my choices.

I'm sorry that I couldn't let you have a choice. Sometimes it
looks like you are presented with a choice but it's actually no
choice at all. My father died when he made his choice, his body
stayed around for years afterwards but he was dead inside. I
died a little on that bridge, years ago, when I swapped Samantha
for you. It doesn't matter that I found out later that she was a
clone. When I chose to deal, I accepted that I was trading in
human lives.

I had no choice tonight, Scully.

Trust the Doctor whose file I left in your apartment, he's the
right one.

Don't investigate. This time, just let me go. An investigation
will do no good. If you push too hard they may ditch their side
of the bargain. I promised them there would be no comeback, no
risk of publicity. Please, whatever you think of the deal I
struck, don't break the terms and conditions.

Don't regret living, don't feel guilty, don't feel bad about
feeling well again. Enjoy your life, do what you want to do.
Don't imagine you owe me something. You don't. Except maybe, you
owe it to both of us, to live and enjoy life. No vendettas, no
more tragedy, please.

You've given me everything. Let me give you this.

I don't know the goodbye words.

Be happy. You deserve it.
Mulder

>>
-------------

I'll be gone by the time she sees the email, the inadequate,
incomplete email.

Forgive me Dana.

I'm not supposed to be crying. The deal's a good one. I'm doing
the right thing.

I have to believe that I'm doing the right thing.

She won't forgive me, this last act of desertion, but maybe with
the desertion so complete this time, she'll let me go and will
get on with her life.

I'm terrified that she'll melt. But she's tougher than that.

I'm terrified that she'll investigate. Skinner will keep her
away, so will OPC. I hope it will be enough. Will she cry? I
don't want her to cry, I've torn too many tears from her. But if
she cries then maybe it's safer, she won't be able to look too
closely if she's crying.

What a mess.

There's a knock on the door. How polite. I wipe the damp from my
face with my shirt cuff.

The two men who are looking at me from the glare of the hall are
both about my height, maybe an inch or so taller. One of them
is just a little bigger than me, the other one looks like he's
got an extra fifty pounds and it's all muscle. They are
expecting me to go quietly, but just in case. I suppose I should
be honored that they rate my fighting ability so highly. Then
again, the third man is out cold. An easy burden for these two,
so maybe that's why they chose to send the heavies.

I look at the body they are delivering. I'm impressed. They've
obviously been planning this for a while. Either planning this
or something else. Did he volunteer?

Bad thought, I beat a retreat to the bathroom.

The two heavies grin as I come out. I've brightened their day. I
can hear them recount it to their mates. 'Yeah, so we get there
and he's crying, takes one look at the body and goes and throws
up.' A nice locker room story.

I bet they don't know why I'm worth saving.

I hear the computer make its phone call to send the email, such
good timing.

I stand very still and look hard at the man they carried in. I
turn and realize that the other two are staring at me, waiting
for something. I try to get them to repeat their question.
"Sorry, what do you want me to do?"

The bigger man looks at me, five percent pity, five percent
amusement, ninety percent contempt. "Your gun, your
fingerprints. We can't risk damaging the plastic prints on him."
He points at the unconscious man on the couch. "Let's get the
basics right."

Oh. Makes sense. It has to be my gun, it has to be my hand. Even
the most casual investigator will check the gun for wrong
prints, glovemarks, smudges. If only to ensure that he can
shrug apologetically if Agent Scully rattles his cage. It has to
be my hand on the trigger. It'll probably only get a cursory
exam but even so. And of course it ties me to their deal, binds
me in to their authority. As if they needed more strings to tie
me with.

But, I can't do it. Can't do this.

I remove my gun from its holster and shake my head. I try to
hand the gun to one of the goons. He laughs at my squeamishness.
He glares at me when he realizes that simple mockery isn't
enough to make me kill.

He digs in a pocket, pulls out a syringe and a vial of liquid.
He points at the body. "I'll make it easy for you. He's a
killer, four dead. Death penalty pronounced, all nice and proper
by the Judge. We've looked after him, luxurious accommodation
compared to death row and he didn't even know that he was dying
until tonight. He thought he'd copped the best deal of the lot."

He starts filling the syringe. He smiles as he works. "He wasn't
keen on the modifications. Coped ok with the plastic surgery,
not much impressed by the nose job. You should have heard him
scream when we matched your bullet wounds. This'll kill him.
Not noticeable unless you're looking for it and no one goes
looking for potassium chloride in a body with a hole in its
head. You understand what I'm saying? If I inject him, he's dead
and you've a couple of minutes to shoot him before the heart
stops. OK?"

How can I be OK. I'm shaking.

The syringe plunges into the man. The goon turns to me. "Now.
Hurry up."

I start to head to the bathroom again. Two sets of hands arrive
on my arms. A professionally neat punch to the kidneys to stop
me struggling, to remind me of the futility of resisting. The
blow is not intended to injure or even really hurt, just a
simple punctuation mark to emphasize their point.

"Pick up the gun and hurry up."

I pick up the gun. I'm crying again, I can't really see the man
on the couch, I guess it's better that way.

An indignant growl from the biggest of the two. "For fuck's
sake."

A hand wraps round mine. The gun's muzzle is repositioned on the
unconscious man's head, my unwilling likeness's head. The hand
crushes my fingers into the trigger. It's over.

I just stand and shake as they shift the gun into my, his hand.
So little blood for someone dead twice.

The goon is beyond angry with me now. Looks like he's under
strict orders not to injure me. So he has to get rid of his
irritation with words. He's not even allowed to shout for risk
of blowing the secrecy, attracting more attention before we get
away, before a 911 call by a neighbor brings the police. I know
we have to run fast, but I can't make my legs move. I only hear
half of what he's saying. "Great. A fucking virgin. I didn't
know you were a boy scout. From your service record, I wouldn't
have expected you to be the squeamish type."

They drag me out of the apartment and down the fire exit. No
wonder they sent heavies.

I'm nauseous, one of them spots it and puts his hand over my
mouth. Just in case there is an investigation. Wouldn't want
anyone to get the wrong idea about what happened at the
apartment that night, no one to go off trying to explain some
odd chain of events. They are safe of course, no one will
investigate, this is Spooky's suicide we're talking about here,
no one will be surprised. Scully. I have asked her not to try.

They let me go when we reach the alley way behind the parking
lot. I slip to my knees, head down against the cool asphalt.
They walk away laughing. I've definitely brightened up their
day.

Who are these people I sold myself to?

I feel a hand on my shoulder, tense my body in anticipation.
It's Skinner, he leads me to the car.

Don't grieve for me Scully. I'm not worth it.

END of Part 1/6

Part 2/6
---------

Another light blinks out.

Or maybe it's just that the darkness is spreading.

Borderline depressives shouldn't sit looking out of windows into
rainy nights. Especially not at the time of night when even the
insomniacs are going to sleep.

Important safety tip there, Doctor Mulder. I should switch on
the TV. Safety in numbers. Safety in the anonymous flicker of
its screen. Safety in listening to strangers' voices with
strangers' problems that don't belong to me.

I feel. I feel nothing. I feel fine.

It's strange to be here in this ordinary, anonymous apartment.
Maybe some bit of me was expecting to suddenly wake up to
visions of glass walls, steel instruments and gray skin on a
dazzling extraterrestrial starship. Maybe to the white walls of
an antiseptic hospital. Maybe to some dark, damp, musty dungeon.
This seems something of an anti climax.

Skinner led me from the parking lot at my apartment to the car
and everything I'd ever learned about self preservation clicked
in to place. Keep still. Keep your mouth shut. Don't challenge
anyone by looking at them directly. Not really much left in
there of my FBI training about assessing and taking control of a
situation, this was a much older technique. It worked. My mind
obligingly blanked over, switched itself to watching the grey
blur of the DC night moving past the window. Hypnotic repetition
as the car rocked towards its destination.

Three hours driving. Three hours and not a single thought in my
head. Anything that looked like it might take residence in
there, ruthlessly shaken out before it got chance to settle.
Pretty impressive performance.

Even Skinner was impressed. I'd looked at him after only an hour
and he was already sweating, his hands forming convulsively into
fists. He's good at the game. But, not so good at it as me.

It worked like clockwork, no emotion as we entered the grounds
of a private clinic that looks more like a country club. Not
just emotion disguised, emotion absent. When I got out of the
car I was ready for anything, even our arrival in what looked
like a staff member's apartment. One bedroom, living room,
bathroom, kitchen, balcony looking across the grounds and into
the night. Domestic bliss with video surveillance.

Apart from the security cameras monitoring the room, they have
left me alone. Skinner made approaches but gave up in the face
of my careful apathy. So, I sit and watch the flickering lights
in the distance.

I ignore the chicken sandwich, too big a danger of choking. I
sip the iced tea, how thoughtful of them. How'd they know? Same
way they knew the sizes and brands of clothing to hang in the
wardrobe.

Another light goes out.

I turn towards the noise of the door opening. Skinner hands me a
file.

Christopher Anthony Edmunds, age 33, six feet tall, 175 pounds.
Killed four people in two separate arson attacks. My body
double.

"A fair trial, Mulder. He had a fair trial."

I look at Skinner.

Suddenly I recognize his expression, I remember the first time
he used it to try and get through to me. Years ago. I was fresh
out of hospital, eyes still watering when faced with daylight.
Deep Throat was dead. The order to go to the AD's office was no
surprise. Skinner was prowling the carpets when I got there.

The review committee sat at his conference table. Skinner's
expression told me the verdict. The X-Files were being closed
down. I was on probation and might just keep my job, provided I
kept my mouth shut.

Even the abbreviated, headline only litany of my most recent
sins took five minutes to read. "Agent Mulder. Do you understand
our decision?"

"Understand it? I don't even think it's your decision." I
remember the looks on their faces. Amused, horrified. That was
probably what landed me the wiretap job.

Skinner's expression was different. Somewhere behind the
professional mask there was understanding and a look that said
people sometimes can only do, what they have to do. He looks at
me like that again now.

I don't know if reading the dead man's file will help, but I
appreciate the gesture. Just like I welcome Skinner's presence,
here tonight.

------------
DC

Dana Scully's appearance in front of the review board had
created quite a stir. In some ways, more of a stir than Fox
Mulder's death. Spooky killing himself was an upset rather than
a shock. Dana Scully turning up for work the following day and
accusing half the government of being involved in a conspiracy
to make him kill himself was more of a surprise.

The committee had listened politely. They didn't struggle with
the idea of fake extraterrestrial bodies left for Mulder to
find. But some bit of their brains kept suggesting the Fox
network rather than some shadow of the NSA as the most likely
suspect. But the rest of it? Mulder had trodden on quite a few
toes over the years, including some dangerous ones. Certainly,
individual acts of vengeance could have occurred. But to go from
there and suggest the whole thing was the work of a shadow force
with bigger secrets to hide?

Why make the effort over one lousy FBI Agent?

Blevins looked around the faces at the table, it appeared as if
no one had much to say. He pushed a note in front of a colleague
and got a brief nod of agreement. He thanked Dana Scully for her
attendance and assured her that her devotion to duty in making
the meeting, despite the stress she was under, had been noted.

He then told her to go home and get some rest.

Scully looked at Blevins and felt her throat go dry. She looked
at the other members of the committee and suddenly she just felt
like she wanted to cry. She looked around the room and realized
that Skinner was still nowhere to be seen. No allies,
predictable or unpredictable, at the table. No Skinner. No
Mulder. Not even a Pendrell. Suddenly, she felt very alone.

She could hear Blevins in her head long after she left the room.
"I'm afraid you've not given us enough evidence to justify an
investigation of the type you are suggesting. We will of course
assign Agents to look at the work you've done and to interview
Mr Kritschgau. We will ensure that Agent Mulder's death is
thoroughly examined for indications of physical coercion. You
need to get some rest." Then, despite her protests, he'd put her
on mandatory medical leave.

Blevins spoke softly and with a voice so calm and concerned that
Scully had found herself almost hypnotized by it. He carefully
pointed out to her that a FBI Agent recently bereaved and
suffering from terminal cancer couldn't be expected to think
rationally about her own best interests.

She returned in silence to her apartment, traveling in her own
car but accompanied by another Agent who had been asked by
Blevins to drive her home. Dana Scully didn't even bother to
argue, to do so would be to acknowledge the insult, so she just
stared grimly straight ahead.

The apartment lights stayed off, it was better that way. The
phone rang again, her mother wanting her to go to her house,
offering to come over and collect her, or just to come and sit
with her. Whatever, wherever. Scully explained that she was
fine.

She lay back on the couch and closed her eyes. She expected to
see her mom on the doorstep at any moment. It was only a matter
of time before she showed up, especially now the phone was off
the hook.

So the noise at the door was no surprise, that there was no one
there was only a temporary puzzle. The envelope that contained
her appointment card for a hospital visit had not been there
when she came home. There was also an instruction to bring an
overnight bag, treatment would begin tomorrow.

------------
OUT OF TOWN

They've given me the last two weeks to adjust. Two weeks
brooding time. No harassment, no badgering, no counselors. Just
left me to it, someone on their crew must be a pretty good
psychologist, must have read and understood my record.

The Doctor checks the scars on my face. Tells me I'm a quick
healer. Just as well really. A couple of people pass friendly
comments when I walk past them in the grounds, but they don't
insist I respond. Even if I wanted to reply I'm not sure my
throat could handle much talk. Just a couple of minor
adjustments they've made to the vocal chords, healing well
apparently.

They deliver Scully's medical bulletins each day and make sure
there's someone on hand to explain any complicated stuff.

Today they gave me the video tape of the funeral. No pressure,
just left me to it. I let it sit and ferment on the shelf by
the TV for a while and pretended that I didn't need to see it.
In the end, the gravitational pull was too strong. Morbid
fascination drew me to it. Like trying to turn your head away
from the car pile up. The right thing to do is to look away, but
my brain isn't wired up like that.

I understand the real message on the video tape. It's time to
move on. They haven't told me where to, or why.

I take grim refuge in the fact that all I agreed to do was stay
alive and work for them. I didn't promise them I wouldn't go
insane. It bothers me only a little that I don't care.

---------------------

I watch my latest visitor carefully. I feel a ripple of
anticipation and then a strange kind of cold contentment settle
over me. Things are about to change.

The autopilot in my brain profiles the man for me even though I
feel too tired and nervous to do it myself. It studies the tone
of voice, the stance, the appearance, the essence and tells me
the recipe for making a man like that.

Late forties. Ex military, but quickly moved from normal duties
to some branch of the intelligence services. High rank and has
been since he was a young man, he carries it well. Tall, in good
physical condition, he hasn't succumbed to the three hour lunch
circuit despite his now exalted position. Neatly rather than
strikingly dressed, the kind of garb a sober accountant rather
than a flashy politician would wear.

Strong hands, a dangerous man, armed or unarmed. A muscularity
that belies his conventional business suit and haircut. The
voice is soft with careful intonation, a voice that expects to
be obeyed and therefore doesn't put that much effort in. The
eyes are astute, he reads me as carefully as I read him. I
wonder how many people misread the calmness of his expression
for passivity. I wonder how long they live, if they cross him.

"You're looking good, Mr Mulder."

"How is Agent Scully?"

He looks vaguely puzzled for a moment as if suddenly concerned
that one of his operatives has failed in their duties and
forgotten to bring the day's bulletin. Then he relaxes. "Oh,
emotionally you mean? Physically, as you know, she's well on the
mend, just rebuilding her strength."

"But?"

"What's the problem? Do you want to know if she cries for you?"

Bastard. How dare he do that to me. Why shouldn't he do that to
me. I can almost see him marking up the score card with another
bonus point for him. I don't want to play.

He surveys my appearance, measures me up, looking at me and
through me at the same time. I catch a brief glimpse of his
reactions as he does the examination. It's an impersonal stare,
the kind of curiosity that affects an occasional gallery visitor
as their eye searches for meaning in some abstract piece of
modern
art.

"Our Doctor has done you proud, Mr Mulder."

I shrug. The person I saw in the mirror is similar to but
different from the person I expected to see. The black hair, the
brown contact lenses and of course the work of the good Doctor,
the neat well aligned nose. At first glance, not the same
person. At second glance, a lot of similarities. At third, the
match drifts away again. Only Scully would hang around for a
fourth glance and she won't get the chance. "I'll take your word
for it."

"You look good. Maybe you could start hooking up with some real
women now, though I doubt that it was the looks that put them
off before."

He's bored with waiting for a response from me so he's decided
to play games, push for a reaction, but I'm not in the mood. I
just smile.

He smiles back, acknowledges the unspoken 'fuck you' in my
expression, before continuing. "Maybe you should consider taking
up modeling."

Ah, he moves us obliquely to the nub of the matter. "That's an
interesting thought, I wondered what job you had in mind for
me."

He visibly relaxes, I hadn't realized that I had put him on
edge. Interesting. "That's the first time you've asked about the
work in two weeks. I know you must have been brooding over it
though, tormenting yourself with it. I had started to wonder if
you really were a masochist. I'm sure you've visualized some
pretty bad career moves in the last few days."

So, the games continue. But, I'm not feeling playful. "I believe
that it is your intention to have me work as a profiler,
analyzing who or what I don't know. As my normal specialization
is in identifying serial killers, I suspect the subjects will
not be nice people."

He claps his hands in front of him as if in delight. "How did
you determine that?"

"Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar
man, thief, criminal psychologist." I point at the leaves on the
spider plant for confirmation.

He smiles, cold, calculating, humorless. "More details." His
words are an order.

"You prefer to keep me alive for some longer term agenda. But,
you don't plan to keep me locked away."

"How do you know?"

"If you wanted me dead, I'd be dead. And, you wouldn't need to
do surgery on me unless you planned to let me loose on the
world."

"And why would we take a risk like that if we are interested in
keeping you for the longer term."

"It's a calculated risk, because if you kept me caged up, I'd
certainly be dead or useless within months, despite the terms of
the deal. I'm hyperactive. So you've found a use for me. Two
birds, one stone."

"Why as a profiler?"

"I won't make the grade as an assassin."

He chuckles softly, it's the 'damned straight' laugh. "You
really are an excellent analyst, Mr Miller. Oh, you don't mind
if I call you Paul do you? I know you prefer Marty but it's not
quite the right image."

He's enjoying the battle for control. He has an interesting,
though predictable way of playing the game. He's trying to tell
me that he knows everything about me, even while I know nothing
about him. "Paul Miller? Could be worse I suppose, could have
been Glenn. Sure, call me Paul." Fox Mulder's dead, the person
who looked most like him got cremated a few days ago.

"Did you enjoy the video of the funeral?"

I feel the hairs stand up on my hands. Damn. "I've watched it.
Must see TV. I doubt that it'll get picked up by the networks
though."

"Were you surprised by how many people were there? By how many
cried?"

Surprised? I was fucking flabbergasted.

He takes my silence as an acknowledgment. "Not such a good
profiler as you think you are." He smiles at me, waits for me to
stop fidgeting in the chair. "You affect people, Paul. Even
though you don't let them affect you. Of course, some couldn't
face going, they thought you'd let Dana down in her hour of
need. The others though. Ahh, the others. They knew Dana had
entered hospital for a course of treatment. I expect they think
you sold yourself to the devil to get her a cure."

"I did, didn't I?"

I'm grateful that he ignores my self indulgent outburst. "Of
course, Mrs Scully didn't attend."

"I noticed, is that why you wanted me to see the video, so I
would know who couldn't forgive me?"

He sighs, he knows I already understand the answer. "Funerals
help people mourn. Ready to move on."

"Move on to what?"

"We want you to find some missing persons for us."

What's that, another little dig? "My track record with missing
persons isn't very good. As I'm sure you are aware."

"You're a hunter. Your skill is in locking onto the behavior of
other predators. You couldn't be expected to find your sister or
your partner."

He waits. My body tenses up despite the strict instructions I
gave it not to do that. He looks pleased, he starts talking
again. "You were too close. Your empathy with them turned you
into a victim. You could smell their fear so strongly, you
couldn't get the scent of their persecutors."

I hold myself carefully, watch him. "So you are telling me that
you only want me to hunt predators? Sounds fine. So, why make me
die? Why make me leave the Bureau? Why stop me working with my
partner?"

"Because we have our own requirements. Right now, you need to
work and we need to use you. Like the marksman needs to use the
laser spotter's dot on the chest of his target. The people you
chase for us won't be slipping through any legal loopholes."

"My life as a vigilante?"

"You obviously didn't study the terms of our arrangement very
carefully. You're on full staff benefits right down to the
pension scheme

"A professional vigilante with a pension plan?"

He hands me a file, Paul Miller's life story. A surprisingly
thick file for someone only a few minutes old. No photos, they
will have to wait for the bruising from the surgery to fade.

We watch one another across the room. Paul Miller and the
dangerous man who looks like an accountant. Walter Skinner did
the eulogy at the funeral. Fox Mulder's dead.

END of Part 2/6

Part 3/6
---------

OUT OF TOWN

The dangerous accountant's visit marks the start of my new
life. A week of basic training, they hand me its timetable in
all its glorious mundanity. There's something incongruous
about seeing your death and rebirth reduced to the term,
"Reorientation Program for P.Miller". Looks like I really
still am on the Federal payroll, surely no one else can pull
off the bureaucrat-speak quite so confidently, with such un-
selfconscious humor.

The week arouses a strange mix of emotions. I find myself
laughing at incidents during the sessions then hastily giving
myself a psychological kick that hits me so hard I almost
start crying. I recognize it, some dispassionate bit of my
brain that knows this stuff recognizes it, tells me that I'm
in mourning. Appropriate or inappropriate as that response
might be, that's what I'm doing. Thinking about living then
immediately feeling guilty about doing so.

Life goes on.

Scully is pronounced "cured". I've seen her file. I don't
know if it's true. I don't know if she could be uncured at
the flick of a switch if I renege on the deal.

I'm undergoing treatment. They haven't got a cure for the
thing I picked up in Russia. Just things that keep it at bay.
'If we get a cure, you'll be up there at the front of the
queue.' The strange thing is, on that issue at least, I
actually believe them.

I passed the 'who is Paul Miller' test first time and gave
them a long list of questions about the anomalies and
loopholes in the character history. It did, at least, knock
the smarmy expression off the face of my interviewers, even
if it didn't cheer me up very much. They took it away as
their homework.

I don't like how normal everything seems. Weapons training,
physical fitness checks, training in interview techniques.
Ninety percent of it is straight out of the Quantico standard
manual for FBI Agents.

Of course, it's the ten percent that counts. They have a few
extra techniques to help interviewees loosen up and remember
things. The methods come in sterile tubes and you add extra
emphasis to your question with the help of a needle and a
syringe. The session about evidence rules and reading
suspects their rights is replaced by an explanation of how to
get backup for a clean up operation if you mess up a job and
the body is left in the wrong place.

So easy to slide into it. So easy to accept it.

I try to despise my colleagues, but that's not a very
comfortable place to be. After three weeks you need to talk
to someone. Even if only to debate last night's TV. I drift
into it, safe topics like the playoffs. Safe interactions.

The autopilot in my brain that has apparently decided to
profile everyone that I meet is giving me regularly updated
resumes of my new acquaintances. It's telling me things that
I don't want to hear. Hunters. Intelligent. Friendless.
Damaged. We could be family. I guess that's why they describe
this as my reorientation program. I'm gatecrashing these
guys' training but I'm here mostly for a different reason. It
really doesn't do, to despise your colleagues. I've got more
in common with these men (no women
so far) than with ninety five percent of the people I met in
the Bureau.

I didn't mean to run this far or this hard tonight. I'm not
ready for it. The surgery knocked it out of me. The insomnia
pushed me down. The training program includes the usual
obstacle courses and timed trials, enough exercise for
anyone. The mourning uses all my spare adrenaline. But I need
the endorphins to kick in, so I run until I drop. Then I stay
down after I drop.

I see a pair of feet by my side and look up. It's three weeks
since I last saw him, three weeks since he squeezed my hand
to pull the trigger on Fox Mulder. He hasn't got any smaller.

"You okay?"

"I've been worse."

He smiles down at me, reaches out a hand. Some bit of my
brain tells him to fuck off, tells me that if I reach out, I
will get a first hand demonstration of the big man's karate
skills.

Some other bit of my brain doesn't care, it's just curious
about what will happen next. The curious side wins. I reach
up to take his hand and he helps me to my feet.

He looks embarrassed and sounds it too. "Sorry about our
first meeting."

Sorry? He's a fucking goon, since when did fucking goons
apologize for hurting your feelings. "Sorry? About what?"

"Look. I read the headlines off your file, thought I was
about to meet fucking Arnie. You threw me, that's all,
expectations versus the actual reality." He pauses, sheepish,
guilty. "I've read some of the stuff under the headlines now.
I went to get the Terminator and come home with Sherlock
fucking Holmes.

I laugh a single cough of amusement, despite my instincts. I
laugh, despite the mourning. "I can see how I was a
disappointment."

He grins easily in reply. "Nah, just a surprise. I should
have realized something was odd when your old boss, what's he
called, Walter Skinner, insists I take the syringe in with
me." He pauses. "I'm Chris. Chris Duggan. Pleased to meet
you...?"

I mentally thank Skinner again. I shrug, we both know my
name. I wonder if Chris is Chris's name. "Paul. Paul Miller.
Pleased to meet you, Chris."

He recognizes my hesitation as I say the name, he shrugs
apologetically in reply.

We walk back to the building that houses my apartment. My
apartment? Get that. I'll have to start thinking about that
kind of thing again soon. I move to Los Angeles tomorrow.
Risk
reduction. Less chance of accidental meetings if I'm based
far from Washington.

My work could take me anywhere. Whatever my work is. One day
at a time.

I've promised myself and Scully that much, that I'll try, one
day at a time.

------

I'm due to move today, so I have a debriefing scheduled with
the dangerous accountant, Bill Allenby. No way is he called
Bill.
That's a game as well, linking him to my previous authority
figures. Bill Mulder. Bill Patterson. Bill Allenby. What a
team. I wonder if they did it as a joke? None of their other
psychological assessments have been so far off target.

Bill Allenby smiles at me. A knowing, evaluating smile. I
give him nothing to evaluate. If he's any good at the game
then he'll recognize the ease with which I can now maintain
my neutrality. It's probably the most important signal that I
can offer to tell him that he might as well send me to work.

"I need to introduce you to your new partner."

A curve ball, straight out of the gate. He points at the TV
screen, hits play on the remote.

Bastard. Fucking bastard. She walks in, small, red headed,
smiling, smelling sweet. Smelling sweet? How can I smell her,
if she's on the screen? She's saying hello and saying that
she's looking forward to seeing me again. She's smiling.
Smiling the wrong fucking smile. She would be smiling but
angry if she knew the video was for me. This one's just
smiling. How stupid do they think I am?

"Nice try, but it's not her." I wonder how my voice stays so
flat calm as I speak. Who the hell was that, a clone, a
prisoner who thought she'd got a good deal?

Allenby has the nerve to smile at me, gives that single clap
of the hands that he uses to indicate delight. "Well done.
Well done indeed. But it raises the question. We can give you
anyone you like as a partner. Maybe you should pick someone
who'll help you relax off duty."

What the fuck is he talking about?

No. No, they don't mean.

He waves his hand like a stage magician preparing to pull the
rabbit from the hat. "I won't make assumptions. If you'd
prefer to share your free time with someone more like Alex
Krycek? Pamela Anderson? Brad Pitt? I'm broad minded. No room
for prejudice in our line of work." The faces appear on the
screen, even the TV obeys his orders.

"Robbie the robot?"

He nods his head to one side. "I'll take that to mean that
you'll take what you're given."

"Do I actually have a choice?"

"Only about the appearance."

"Surprise me."

They want me to be a hunter? No. They want me as a bloodhound
for a bounty hunter who just happens to morph his way out of
awkward situations. One day at a time. I can get through
today. There will be some more mind games with Allenby and
then a flight to LA.
I
can cope with that. No big deal.

-------

The flight to Los Angeles takes longer than any journey I've
ever been on. Someone must have moved the west coast during
the night. I look at my traveling companion. Chris Duggan.
Chris fucking Duggan, the mighty morphing, friendly goon.

To his credit, Duggan looks almost as uncomfortable about the
situation as I do, but then with features so flexible he
should be a good actor. I can't believe that little show he
put on for me and Allenby. Chris Duggan appearing as Dana
Katherine Scully on a video screen somewhere near you.
Fucking hell.

He apologizes every fifteen minutes, I keep wondering if it's
an automated response, like the fax machine redialling if it
hits a busy signal. He assures me all that stuff about
freetime was just Allenby's way of winding me up. Just a
little bit of divide and conquer from a manager who thinks
rivalry is as strong a motivator as cooperation. He assures
me that if he'd known I was going to see the recording he
would never have tried looking like Dana Scully.

As to why he thought he had been asked to practice his Dana
Scully act, he won't say.

I know why. If I get hurt or get sick or get scared or flip
out and he needs to get me moving, I'll get a bedside visit
from Doctor Scully. Well, nice idea but Allenby's fucked up
that particular trump card.

One day at a time. One fucking, crap filled day at a time. I
close my eyes and feign sleep.

=======
DC

One week of treatment, intensive, aggressive, painful
treatment. One week of rest in the hospital bed. One week of
recuperation in her mother's house. A couple of days to
settle back into her apartment.

Dana Scully was going back to work. She dressed carefully, it
was important to make the right impression. If she was going
to claim to be fit for duty then she would look the part.

The clothes were easy enough, a little loose perhaps, but a
well cut suit with a good shoulder line could cover a
multitude of sins. She repolished her shoes, noting that her
action was perhaps a little obsessive but forgiving herself
for the nervous tension. There was little she could do about
her hair, except hope that the neat new cut would simply be
taken as her on the mend, rather than her still needing
treatment.

No magic wand had been waved. If Mulder had died for the deal
then it seemed something of a let down that the whole process
had such a solid scientific base and such a conventional,
albeit very gifted Doctor in control. An experimental
treatment certainly, but all bought and paid for by her FBI
medical insurance cover.

Mulder had died, just so she could jump to the front of the
treatment queue? It was all so prosaic, so un-heroic, so un-
Mulder. She bit down on her lip. No tears, not now she had
her make up on.

--------------

Skinner smiled reassuringly as she entered his office. She
started to greet him and then her eyes noticed the people sat
at Skinner's meeting table. She tried to disguise her brief
sigh of disappointment.

She had hoped to speak alone with Skinner before involving
other people. She was keen to talk to him about what had
happened to the enquiry into Kritschgau's background and his
evidence. She wanted to ask him for the latest opinions on
the suicide, whether it was possible that someone had killed
Mulder but staged it. She had wanted to talk about how the
work on the X-Files could move on without Mulder. She had
wanted to ...

She sat down. The group offered their words of welcome and
mentioned their pleasure at her recovery and gave her their
best wishes for a full return to health. She smiled and said
a careful thank you in reply.

It was a battle that Dana Scully almost immediately
recognized she was bound to lose. She would not be offered
anything other than light duties in the labs at Quantico
until she had been given an all clear by her Doctor at the
hospital. Such a verdict would take months. It was a Doctor's
responsibility to be cautious.

She would not be allowed back into the field until fully
emotionally and psychologically recovered from the course of
treatment she'd received and from her partner's death. At
that time, she could apply for a transfer to VCS but even if
that request was accepted, it was unlikely that she would be
assigned to work on the X-Files. As she herself had explained
much of the work handled by the X-Files Agents had suspect
and inconclusive results. The valid work done by the team
could be handled as a normal part of the VCS mainstream
workload.

She would be allowed back to work, next week. Assigned work,
done by the book.

She sat in silence again feeling that shiver of a memory as
Scully found herself identifying once more with her partner.
She remembered his anguish the first time the X-Files had
been closed. She remembered his frustration whenever they
were blocked and told to drop cases by their own management,
even by Skinner.

Identifying with her partner, her dead partner. She had to
keep reminding herself of that. Some bit of her wouldn't
accept that he was dead, not really dead. Ordinary people
died, not people like Mulder. She let herself have a secret
grin at that, 'people like Mulder'. Since when had she known
any people like Mulder.

Skinner made brief eye contact with her as he said goodbye.
She would have a new boss tomorrow. She'd even lost Skinner.

=============
END of Part 3/6

Part 4/6
---------
LA

I look around the neat apartment in the neat LA condo. As anemic
and impersonal as any motel room but OK. Part of the relocation
package. Chris the Morph is next door in his own place, so he can
be around when we are working, but not in my way. Whoever set this
up is keen for it to succeed, keen that I won't just roll over and
close my eyes and not bother to see anything again. It's hard to
fight the air of normality, the appearance of freedom of choice.

They gave me a video of Scully a couple of days after I arrived. A
real one from a security video at the Hoover Building. It will be
the last progress report they give me. Slow motion will wear the
tape out eventually. I'll make a copy before the quality degrades.

Irony after irony.

My first job as sniffer dog for Chris the Executioner is to find a
copy whose quality has degraded.

Chris's masters, my masters, apparently keep a look out for DNA
tests run by police crime labs with anomalous patterns in the
results. The tests that catch their eyes are the ones that give
such odd results that they are usually returned as 'excessively
degraded sample - no test possible' to some hapless investigator.
It can mean that one of their clones, someone's clones, has become
a killer. It's the runaways who are the biggest problem. They tell
me I don't need to know how many clones exist, how many are
missing, who makes them and why. I don't bother to argue. It's
their game, let them make whatever rules they like.

Errors during cloning are apparently common, some are technical
mistakes with misplaced genes but psychological errors are more
common still. The original for the thing we are chasing is,
according to my profile, a lean, mean fighting machine with a
strong respect for authority, an eye for a clean kill and a gift
for obeying orders.

I could have told them that it was not a good starting point, I've
profiled that particular variety of killer at least a hundred
times before.

The less than ideal upbringing of the clone gave him little chance
to avoid the road to psychopath. He would be killing for fun and
yet able psychologically to turn it easily into a moral crusade, a
duty to be performed. The outcome was inevitable, the uncontrolled
fury was unavoidable. He had been bred and brought up to be a mad
man.

Fucking great. Now I'm empathizing with genetically engineered
clones, genetically engineered psychopathic clones.

I switch on the TV and try to stop all the women from morphing
into Dana Scully. Not that it isn't enjoyable to look at, just
that it makes the stories a little difficult to follow. Scully.
Please be all right.

========
DC

Dana Scully was annoyed. Angry. With Mulder. With Skinner. With
the FBI. With the Loan Gunmen. With the conspirators who'd ruined
their lives. But most of all with Mulder.

He'd deserted her. Whatever noble badge he wanted to pin on it,
he'd deserted her. Whatever his intentions, whether or not it was
the only way to get her into treatment, he'd deserted her. And
he'd deserted her without giving her enough information to carry
on the fight.

How could she go and find his sister, fulfill Mulder's mission, if
she had no information on the leads he'd chased, on who had
helped, who had hindered. How could she chase the men who had
experimented on her, whose games had killed Melissa Scully, Penny
North, Betsy Hagopian and however many others?

Mulder had moved close enough to the guilty to annoy them, close
enough to be finally worth killing. Why did they treat her cancer
after Mulder was dead? Because they were men of their words? Fat
chance. Because Mulder had left behind some incriminating
information that could be revealed if she didn't get well? It made
sense. But if there was such data, who would he have primed to
expose it?

She racked her brain for the answer. The list was longer than
she'd expected but shorter than the phone book. It was a practical
shortlist. Byers, Langley, Frohike and Skinner were the prime
suspects. She laughed at what Skinner's reaction would be if he
saw his name bracketed with theirs. Marita was a possible. There
would be others though. People who he might entrust with some
portion of the puzzle, safe in the knowledge that the pieces
wouldn't make sense alone. She'd hunt down the pieces.

She sat now on the floor of his empty apartment. The ultimate
insult. He'd given Byers the instructions on how to handle the
apartment. The removal firm that Mulder had instructed had proven
themselves highly skilled at partitioning and packing the goods as
specified in Mulder's note. Byers had proved himself to be a
ruthlessly efficient executor. The videos and books went to the
Gunmen. The fish and tank were hers if she wanted them. The
furniture had been sold and the money from their sale given to
charity. The clothes had followed a similar route. Finally a
couple of crates of miscellaneous papers and other personal items
had gone into storage pending a review by his mother.

How could a man who had appeared so unworldly in life suddenly
become so pragmatically efficient in death?

Mulder, she noted grimly, had never been easy to predict.

=========
LA

It had already taken three weeks of Mulder's tracking efforts to
get this close to their prey. Three weeks trying to get inside the
head of a psychopathic clone and then predict his behavior. Mulder
smiled grimly at the realization, it was the clone thing that was
giving him trouble. He could read the psychopath, no trouble at
all.

Then it had drifted into his mind. If a purely human serial killer
could view his victims as less than human or himself as better
than human, as Mulder was absolutely sure that this one would, how
much easier to be a genetically enhanced clone. To see humans in
general as a herd of animals to cull to gratify whatever appetite
they might fulfill. To see particular humans as tastier morsels.

So easy. So guilt free. No different to picking out the juiciest
steak in the supermarket or squashing the most annoying fly.

As mad as the worst of the humans he'd hunted. Yet purer
somehow. Ethical and moral values not even hovering in the
peripheral vision as things to be overcome before killing or things
to deliberately rebel against. Truly amoral. Mulder let his
thoughts drift into it.

Chris watched and waited. He used Mulder's preliminary work to
narrow the field.

The shortlist shortened. Mulder had been genuinely grateful that
the clones had no magic tricks up their sleeves to provide them
with transport or food. They had to work for their living. They
were forced to interact with the unimproved humans, with the
herd. They had regular jobs. The ones who ran away from their
masters' protective web had to find new employers.

It was so easy to slip into it and so easy to use it to forget
unwelcome things. So Mulder just let it take over, just gave
himself to the case, immersed himself in the hunt. As surely as if
it had a Department of Justice - FBI logo on the front cover.

The target was emerging from the names. The evidence was becoming
overwhelming. It was time to go and collect the killer.

They would take him out at home, when he was alone. No innocent by
standers to see the event or to sniff the toxic fumes if the bust
went wrong and Chris got injured.

Mulder felt more nervous the closer they got. An icepick to the
back of the neck kills anyone, clone or not. "How will you know
that it's really him?"

"We're on pretty safe ground. We've got your profile. We know from
work records that he had the opportunity. We've got strong
circumstantial evidence. We'd win it in any court. The only check
you'd do extra would be DNA, but we don't need that, I know which
ones are clones, they glow differently."

"They glow differently?"

Chris shuffled nervously. "I've different optical responses to
you."

"That's probably why you don't like my ties."

"Yeah. You just keep telling yourself that."

They moved to the door of the clone's apartment. The two men
looked at one another, a silent nod of agreement to confirm that
they were both ready. They stood alert and intent in the hallway,
weapons close to hand, not that Mulder anticipated needing his.
Mulder tensed as he felt the surge of familiarity, he'd been in
this situation so often before. But not this situation. It just
felt like the job. But it wasn't. This was not his job. This
was...

The walls moved and Mulder realized that he was struggling to
breathe, that there was a weight crushing down on him permitting
only the tiniest gasps of air to enter his lungs. He let himself
fold into the ground. Chris crouched down beside him. Mulder
pulled sharply away, colliding with the other wall of the hallway
in his anxiety to get away from the morph.

The world swam in front of Mulder's eyes, he tried to close his
eyes but the dark was even more frightening. So he opened them
again and put his hands over his face. Fingers spasming and
shivering in front of his eyes as the muscles fought against
themselves.

Chris watched him carefully, hanging back, waiting for the panic
attack to fade before approaching again. He sat back on his heels as
the violent shivering started to subside. He spoke softly. "You, okay
now? You'd better get back to the car."

Mulder pushed himself nervously back against the wall and waited
for the room to stop moving. Eventually, he nodded slowly and let
Chris pull him back to his feet. He leant unsteadily forward, his
forehead resting against the wall until his breathing became
easier. Then he took the advice and headed to the parking lot.

When the morph joined him a matter of moments later, Mulder still
wasn't able to get into the car, his hands were still too unsteady
to open the car door. Chris opened the door and guided Mulder
inside, he got himself into the driver's seat and fastened first
his seat belt and then Mulder's.

"I'm sorry. I've never... That's never happened before." Mulder's
voice was uncomfortably close to a sob, offering only the barest
impression of a whisper.

"You've nothing to be sorry about. You're the tracker. I can
finish the jobs on my own. I shouldn't have let you come, you
didn't need to, but you seemed ok. I'm sorry. Are you going to be all
right now?"

"I'll be fine. It's..." Mulder became silent. As they drove, the
silence became painfully sharp, it was hurting both of them.
Mulder pushed his fingernails tightly against the palms of his
hands as if to counteract it.

Chris tried to help. "It's that you aren't an assassin?"

Mulder waved a hand slowly, jerkily in front of him. A request for
a few minutes more to regain his composure. Chris nodded his head;
a soothing, calming movement, the expression of someone who could
wait for as long as it took.

When Mulder spoke again it was with the lines of a speech spoken
to the soft even rhythm of a metronome. "It's kind of that, but
not that. I suddenly realized that I was like him. I'd bought his
values. I was ready for the kill, just like the clone I'd
characterized as a psychopath. I didn't think twice about wanting
him dead. I wasn't excited or anything, just indifferent. Just
like when he picked his victims."

"Because he was just a clone? Not properly human."

"Don't know. Don't think so, not just that. You're a lot more
human than most of the people I know."

Chris smiled. "I'm sure you intend that as a compliment, despite
the implicit homo sapien superiority agenda behind it. So I'll
take it as a compliment."

Mulder scanned the road while Chris talked to him, while Chris
talked about nothing, just a babble of words to keep Mulder's mind
off the world.

Chris carefully, discreetly, followed Mulder into his apartment
and it was Chris who went to the phone and placed the order for
the pizza and beer.

Chris had been keeping Mulder occupied with vague chatter ever
since they left the dead clone at his apartment block. As his
brain came out of the haze, it occurred to Mulder that Chris
seemed to have more than one chore listed in his job description.
Chris was not just an assassin, he was also apparently going to be
his babysitter. Mulder chose to ignore the implications of the
idea.

Mulder stuffed the last slice of pizza in his mouth before talking
again. "Chris. How does the morphing thing work?"

Chris looked up and Mulder waited. Those were the first words
Mulder had said in over an hour and from Chris's expression it was
obvious that they weren't the words that the morph had expected to
hear. "I kind of think about it and it happens, like talking or
walking. Why?"

Mulder looked back, mildly irritated. "Idle curiosity. They must
have warned you about that. I collect trivia. And you can get more
technical than that, I know Scully's the scientist but I'm not an
idiot."

"Oh sorry, I didn't think you meant it. You've not shown much
curiosity up to now." Chris hesitated, breathed out noisily, then
shrugged. "Basically hydraulics. I've a different skin set up to
you, muscles below the skin for shaping and to assist it with
bigger changes I can drain or send blood to any location to pump it
up." Chris paused, Mulder looked puzzled and a little impatient.
"You know, like human males do when they are aroused."

"Like human males do when they are aroused?" Mulder nodded, ok,
that made sense. "You have a shape you keep returning to though,
is that a psychological thing or is it because it's tiring?"

"Same as the male arousal thing, it's not tiring exactly, it's
more, that it's difficult to keep it up after a while."

Mulder acknowledged the bad pun with a grimace and a half smile.
"But how do you get the different shapes."

"It's a practice thing."

"A practice thing?"

Chris looked back at him, vaguely embarrassed. Like he didn't want
to be the odd one out, like he didn't want to be a show off. "A
practice thing. And before you ask, no I don't do Bugs Bunny
impressions."

"Shame. I guess that's something I'll have to try and practice on
my own then."

And they couldn't avoid laughing. Despite the differences. Despite
the work. Despite the mourning. A spark had connected them for a
moment. And they couldn't not laugh.

-----------

When we got back to my apartment last night the case folder for
the next job had already arrived. The devil makes work for idle
hands. It is obvious that someone plans on keeping me busy.

Last night was the warning shot, the sign that this whole thing,
this performance of mine is a house of cards. It all came tumbling
down, in that hallway, as I stood on that man's doorstep.

My only tie to reality, to other people, isn't even a person. He's
only got fifty percent human DNA. The one we executed last night was
only about ten percent alien.

I know so little about what's actually going on, just enough to do
the job. The clones we are tracking are basically humans with a
little something extra. A minor genetic manipulation that gives
them an advantage. A disease immunity, telepathy, extra strength,
whatever. Even that trick with the bodies melting down when killed
was added deliberately, no one wants an ME bumping into a body
with such a weird DNA pattern, so they included a genetically
engineered self destruct mechanism to remove the unwanted corpses.
It's tidy and saves on funerals.

I want to hate Chris, or at least distrust him, or at least not
care about him, but I can't. I don't even want to call him Chris,
but I do.

Last night, I feel so sick and ashamed about what happened. I have
never frozen on a job like that. Never. I could have got us both
killed.

A job. I keep sliding into that. It's my job. Just like a nazi
guard in a concentration camp. Just a job. I've closed my eyes to
the bigger story. They don't want to tell me, all information is
supplied on a strictly "need to know" basis. But it's not just
that, I don't want to know, I don't want to know more than I have
to.

They don't know where Sam is. So they say. Why would they say
anything different. They have reason to believe that she's alive.
So they say. Why would they say anything different.

I've kept the lid on my responses for six weeks and last night the
pressure relief valve blew. A warning. I feel a light touch on my
arm and look at my companion.

"You miss her all the time, don't you? You keep seeing her all the
time, don't you? That's where your mind is."

Chris's voice startles me back to the here and now. Well, I guess
that's good, he can't read my mind. "No. Not this time. I can
honestly say my thoughts were one hundred percent self centered
and focused faithfully on me."

"Sure. That's why your eyes have been tracking every woman that
walks past the window. That's why your pupils dilate in proportion
to how much like her they look."

"Normal human male response, nothing more."

"Sure. And when one of them turns to look at you and smiles and
you realize that it's not her, that's why all the life drops out
of your expression again."

Shit. He's good. How come he needs me to track people? Oh, I know
why.

"Chris. Before I got assigned. Did you do this on your own, track
them and kill them?"

He nods, a brief uncomfortable nod.

I'm fairly sure that I understand now. "So why am I working with
you now?"

He shakes his head. "You know why. I was on a job and I got to the
doorstep of this hybrid's house. And well, you know what happens
next. I had a panic attack, I just had to run. It was days before
I was able to try again."

No wonder he could be so understanding last night. Fucking hell.
He's the only person I've really spoken to for weeks. We've got a
lot in common. And he's an executioner, a shape changing alien
executioner. And we've got a lot in common. Great. Fucking great.

I've got to get away. My eyes are hurting, hot needles stinging
them. No. I'm not going to start crying, I've not let this happen
since that last night in my apartment. And I'm not going to break
down now in a nice, happy LA coffee bar with Chris desperately
trying to cover for me. I've got to go. "See you tomorrow."

I get out of the cafe and run quickly to the car before Chris gets
the chance even to say goodbye.

==========
DC

This was not the first time that Dana Scully had attempted to
speak to Assistant Director Walter Skinner. It was not even the
first time that Skinner had agreed to meet her. It was the first
time that Skinner hadn't hidden behind having someone else in the
meeting. A representative of the counseling team from employee
services had been invited to the first one, 'because it might
help'. Her manager from Quantico was at the second meeting because
it was 'important that her new boss understood the issues' that
were worrying her. This time Skinner actually met her alone, just
as she had asked.

They eyed one another carefully, each apparently concerned to
weigh up the other's mood and attitude before speaking.

Skinner stayed behind his desk. Not the position he would adopt
for a friendly chat, for a session of good advice, for an off the
record encounter between two allies. Skinner was definitely here
as her supervisor, the desk was a barrier to familiarity.

Scully watched him closely. Skinner had something to hide.

The opening pleasantries were soon concluded and there was a
moment's silence as Dana Scully paused to collect her thoughts.

Skinner moved in quickly to fill the void. "Agent Scully. I'm
hearing nothing but good things about your work from the Quantico
team, but I'll admit I'm concerned about some of the other reports
I'm hearing."

What? Scully sat up sharply in her seat as if she'd just been
slapped. She'd asked for the meeting and Skinner was going to use
it as a chance to give her some kind of pep talk. "Reports, Sir?"

"I'm not your supervisor, this is off the record, as a friend."

Scully frowned, took a deep breath, but remained silent.

Skinner continued, a soft intensity in his voice. "You're still
avoiding social contact with your colleagues. I can understand
that. Agent Mulder's death was a bitter blow to us all, but to you
more than anyone. Bereavement is always difficult, the
circumstances were particularly traumatic and when added to the
other stressors in your life over the last few months, I can only
admire how well you are coping."

"But?"

"You need to look after yourself. Take more time for yourself.
There's no point assigning you light duties if you then do extra
hours of unofficial overtime. There's no point insisting that you
have the stability of Quantico, if you aren't even eating
regularly."

"Sir?" Her voice for an instant betrayed her indignation. "I
rather think those are my concerns, not the Bureau's. You say
there are no complaints about my work."

"No complaints about your work. These are my concerns. I don't
like losing good people or seeing them hurt. And the Bureau will
not let you work yourself back in to the hospital. You've even
missed appointments with the counseling service."

"With due respect, Sir. I came here to discuss the issues that are
worrying me, to try and resolve some of those stressors." Skinner
looked back intently as if urging her to continue. "To try and get
the answers to questions left open by Agent Mulder's death." She
could tell from the change in expression on Skinner's face that
her last sentence had ended the discussion.

Skinner sighed and spoke softly. "And I won't let you throw
yourself on Mulder's funeral pyre."

Scully felt her heart give a shudder. Skinner's voice had changed.
Scully was struck by the horror in its tone. A friend, a
frightened friend was telling her she was killing herself. Was
that all he was telling her?

-----------

Whatever lay behind Skinner's words they had been enough to force
Dana Scully to take a step back and look at herself. It was almost
two months since Mulder's death, five weeks since she had left her
mother's house and moved back to her apartment and returned to
work.

It was still her mother who was making all the running. Dana had
returned to the family home only when her brother collected her
and insisted she spend a Sunday with them. It was her mother who
had taken the initiative each time in arriving on her doorstep and
taking her shopping. Dana Scully resolved that it was time for
change, she would visit her mom on Saturday evening. After she'd
been to the grave.

It would be her first visit to the grave. Maybe visiting the grave
would help. She'd been in hospital during the funeral of course.
It had been at the height of the reaction to the treatments, the
absolute low of her emotions. Her mother had spent the day pushing
a cold sponge across her forehead and holding her hand. Maybe
going to the cemetery would let her get a handle on her feelings.

Then she could start fighting through the fog again. Start getting
to grips with these people who'd ripped her life apart. Get
vengeance for Mulder, for Melissa, for Penny and the other MUFON
women. Get justice for those victims who it was not yet too late
to save.

Skinner knew more than he was saying. She could sense it. She knew
that he had a piece of the jigsaw puzzle.

She would use the weekend to make peace with herself, ready to
fight.

END of Part 4/6

Part 5/6
---------
LA

There was a certain efficiency about the partnership they had
formed.

Provided Mulder only thought of how to catch the particular
monster currently in his sights he had no problem with seeing the
work as valuable, as acceptable. They were chasing evil doers.
He'd spent years doing that as an FBI Agent.

The fact that the monsters he was chasing were man made was hardly
relevant because that was also true of those conventional humans
he had hunted before.

Performing as some kind of bizarre cross between a Federal Agent
and Bladerunner had its compensations. The faintly surreal air of
the work gave it a necessary touch of unreality so that he could
view the cases as both important in removing killers from the
streets and irrelevant in that they were merely the most instantly
visible evil tip of a mysterious iceberg. He was good at it. With
Chris, they were a stunning team.

Chris had his own job to do, Mulder shuddered when he thought of
it. Since that first time, the morph always went in alone, left
Mulder to wait outside in the car. Even so, one time Chris had
come out of the building looking like their target and Mulder had
almost thrown up in the passenger seat, he was better prepared
now.

Chris told him that it was a tactical thing. Leaving the apartment
looking like the man he had just executed looked good on security
videos if anyone went snooping.

Provided Mulder stayed away from the kill, he was ok. Provided he
was busy, he was ok. And when he wasn't ok, he hunted Dana Scully
and talked to Chris.

At first, there had been some novelty and adventure in tracking
her down, in finding his way around FBI databases. There was some
relief in finding that she was back at work and that all the
medical reports were good. She was at Quantico, that was obvious.
There were no expense claims trails to follow, so she wasn't
working as a field Agent. He recognized the name of her new
supervisor.

When he'd exhausted that track he switched to chasing her credit
card transactions and the movements in her bank account. Chris was
the ideal associate for such a game. He had friends who owed him.

Mulder was becoming more and more nervous. Scully wasn't spending
enough money.

No clothes shopping, no theater tickets, nothing that could
constitute a R and R break. Maybe that was inevitable, recovering
from the illness, maybe she wasn't feeling like treating herself.
But that wasn't all. She didn't even seem to be buying enough
food. Maybe she was eating at the cafeteria at Quantico, except
that she had always said she hated it.

Maybe she was staying with her mother. But that made no sense, if
she was at her mom's she'd be contributing to the costs. The
travel expenses and gas station receipts were wrong for her
mother's place too. She was definitely at home, he could see that
from the phone bill.

The further he dug, the less he liked it. Dana Scully was
operating at some kind of subsistence level. Existing, working,
but not living. It was not what he had wanted to discover. Now
that he had, it was impossible to stop chasing.

The meeting with Skinner was difficult to arrange. That Skinner
had played the role of reception committee on the first night had
been a risk made necessary by the danger of Mulder reacting first
and thinking later. Mulder had to fight hard with his bosses
before they accepted that the risk was just as great again now.

Now, finally, Skinner was sat across the table from him in the non
descript diner.

"I don't want platitudes. I want to know what's wrong with her,
what condition she's really in."

"She's fine. Rave reviews for her work. Recovering well from the
treatment."

Mulder studied his coffee. This was not a game and he had no
patience to draw Skinner out slowly. He would reveal some of what
he already knew and provoke a reaction. "Then why isn't she buying
food? Why doesn't she do anything apart from drive from her
apartment to work? Why does her mom have to call her every time.
In fact, why doesn't she phone anyone at all except to go on line
with her computer?"

The revelation worked. Skinner froze in position. Mulder hadn't
lost his touch. Skinner nodded before speaking. "I spoke to her
about it last week. I'm concerned as well. She's in mourning. It's
inevitable."

Mulder let his eyes drift shut. Noted with some disgust that he'd
deliberately ignored that possibility. Mourning. A good reason,
but not good enough. It could explain her lack of interest in
herself. It didn't explain why she was trying to get his old files
released by the FBI. He waited a few seconds to collect his
thoughts. "Not just that."

Skinner looked across the table and saw the ferocious intensity in
Mulder's eyes. There was little point in holding anything back.
"She wants to know why they would offer you a deal at this time,
what you had to offer. She wants to know why they needed you dead
now, when they've had chances before. She thinks you may have got
close to something."

Mulder smiled wryly. He had, hadn't he? Got closer than he ever
wanted to. Why would she be thinking about that. Why was she
trying to get access to the personal paperwork back at the Bureau
and to the other things that had been crated up. Then it struck
him.

"She's worried about why they actually stuck to their half of the
bargain once I was dead?"

Skinner hesitated, considered for a while, before replying.
"Probably."

"Shit. Does she have any theories?"

"I've not discussed it with her. I don't want her to get any ideas
from me about you being alive. And when she gets upset, it's hard
not to tell her."

Mulder nodded, understanding Skinner's reluctance. "Damn. She
probably thinks I've hidden some evidence somewhere, some sword of
Damocles that'll fall if she gets sick again."

Skinner stared back for a minute, then gave a kind of half chuckle
and nodded. "That would make sense. You know you've not seen her
for a couple of months yet you still know more about what she's
doing than the people who see her everyday. I even talked to her
mother before I came out here and she doesn't know as much as you
do."

Mulder looked away. "Spooky, huh."

---------

The way to control the future is by creating it. Someone had told
him that a while ago. Maybe the way to manipulate the present was
by rewriting the past. Mulder shivered as he tried to put out of
his mind how often that had probably been done to him. He sat down
to try and rewrite some history.

Putting the pieces retrospectively in place was not going to be
easy. Though, of course, Mulder had the right kind of professional
allies to help draw the picture. One advantage though, it wasn't
necessary to paint in the details, just put down a few markers,
Dana Scully was smart enough to fill in the gaps.

Mulder closed his eyes and proceeded to tell Dana Scully another
story.

===========
DC

Scully read the letter again. Even after reading it twenty times
she found she was still unable to decipher its hidden message. The
space between the lines still refused to give her anything to
read.

Skinner had handed her the letter unopened. He even gave her the
outer envelope, lest she wish to have some kind of forensics
analysis performed. The outer envelope being the one on which
Mulder had written a request to Skinner to give the contents of
the envelope to Dana Scully, if and only if, it was essential.
There was even a short definition of essential, it included the
statement that at least three months should have passed since the
funeral. So, one hundred days after she had identified Mulder's
body in his apartment, Dana Scully had Mulder's last letter to
her, here in her hands.

The letter explained a little more of the deal that had been
struck. It described the insurance policy that had by now already
checked that her treatment had been carried out. It explained how,
by now, both the evidence and the protection it had offered had
expired. She could still get the copies of the paper evidence of
the conspiracy but the specific locations and physical evidence
revealed would all have been closed down by now. The papers were
by now just that, just paper.

If Scully had not been working, using her FBI computer account out
of her FBI location within fifty days an email would have gone to
the office of the Lone Gunman. It would have supplied an account
name and password that would have set the wheels of revelation in
motion.

If the information was revealed "inappropriately", then the
sanctions against Dana Scully and others would be reactivated.
Mulder had italicized the phrase, so she would know that he was
quoting.

The only thing that was wrong with the scenario that Mulder
described was the fact that it wouldn't have worked. Scully had
long ago badgered, cajoled and persuaded Mulder's mother to give
her access to the papers that had been transferred to storage
pending Mrs Mulder's review.

Mulder would only have entrusted a tiny part of the puzzle to the
papers that were in his mother's keeping. He would only have
entrusted any of it to her, because of his safe knowledge that she
would not even bother to look at them. Unfortunately it had taken
only a matter of days for someone to unravel this step as the
first stage in the route to his evidence.

After only three days a woman identifying herself as Mrs Mulder
had visited the storage unit and had searched through the boxes.
>From there they would have started the paper trail that would have
led back the evidence. According to the Bureau's computer guys,
the hack into the automatic email to be sent to the office of the
Gunman had occurred a couple of days later. If there had been any
evidence, then it was destroyed soon after that. Whatever winding
trail to the documents Mulder had tried to set up, the key
signposts on it, were known to their enemies within days of his
death.

By the time her first week's treatment had finished they had
presumably removed not only the evidence but even the "so much
paper" that Mulder had talked about. Poor Mulder, even his safety
nets were full of holes.

Scully read the letter again.

She couldn't put her finger on it, but there was something wrong
with the letter.

She thought about the email that she had received on the night of
his death. That letter was tense and vague. Its phrasing betrayed
emotion suppressed. This letter contained no emotion, but was
relaxed, specific, detailed. When had the change occurred?

The letter was written after the email, she could tell that, it
contained incidental references to it. The old email contained no
reference to the wording of the letter. Neither message actually
mentioned explicitly his planned suicide or used the word, death.
Yet the letter appeared relaxed and open, so why did he still feel
the need for euphemisms?

The trap Mulder had created for any failure in the deal wouldn't
have worked if it had relied on the fifty day safety check. Maybe
it had worked up to a point though. After all, her treatment was
over by the time they'd recaptured the evidence. But even so, when
had he had the time to set up such an elaborate albeit ineffective
trap? If his decision to deal was all so sudden, made after the
body in the Yukon, then how did Mulder put even this in place so
quickly? Or had he been planning it for a while? And who had
helped him, because he couldn't have done it alone. The people in
the Bureau's computer room had confirmed that.

Plenty of questions and not much chance of getting the answers.
He'd taken whatever temporary advantage he had held, to the grave.

--------

Her anger didn't subside, couldn't subside. There was no outlet
for it. No Mulder to scream at. No UNSUB to nail. No route
revealed to pull the rug from under the conspirators.

There was no respite in her job. The work was important but
somehow mundane. She looked for inspiration, a challenge. She
needed to get back in the field. She needed to know the victims
she was called upon to autopsy. She needed to interview their
parents, their loved ones, to know the dead as real people. She
needed to chase their killers. She didn't want to just understand
the story of their deaths, she needed to be there herself to
avenge it.

She would ask for a move to VCS. But, she knew that before they
would let her move she would have to get fit again. She assessed
her daily nutritional needs, she ranked food items carefully for
dietary value and balance. She forced her jaw to chew its way
through the meal that the rules dictated would appear on her
plate. The fact that everything tasted of dust and bile was
irrelevant, food was like medicine. The best medicine might leave
the worst taste in the mouth.

She started a careful exercise program. Not excessive, just the
right amount.

Her return to peak fitness was now part of her job and Scully
could always find the time and energy to do her job.

After over three months performing routine Lab work and autopsies
at Quantico, Dana Scully finally got her medical all clear and
with it her transfer to the Violent Crimes team.

People were hesitant around her, as if scared to approach. The
Agents who had to work with her were tentative, careful in her
presence, nervous in their actions, as if dealing with a piece of
fine crystal glass.

She found herself constantly angry at the undercurrents. It was as
if the years she had spent on the X-Files counted for nothing. As
if she was still some sort of rookie fresh out of the Academy.

Even that was not enough to explain it. They were worried over
her, as if she was some fragile thing that might shatter at the
slightest provocation. She knew where that idea came from. Mulder.
He'd shattered hadn't he? And who was she? Nothing. Spooky's
sidekick.

She fought it. Fire with fire. They handled her like glass? Fine,
they were going to get cut. She controlled them with a look, a
shift in posture, a word. Made sure that they spoke only when
spoken to. Made sure that they understood that far from shattering
she was now tougher, stronger than ever. She'd been through the
fires of hell and come out the other side. How many of them could
claim that?

No tears. No laughter. No weakness.

When mention was made of the request to the Bureau for an
independent forensics expert to join a police Internal Affairs
review of a crime lab in Las Vegas she jumped at the chance. She
needed to get out of the stifling claustrophobia of the office,
out from the prying eyes of the other Agents. Ok, so maybe it
wasn't a real case but at least it was a way of getting back into
the field.

Her supervisor was happy to sign the forms. Let someone else try
and wear the rough edges off her for a while.

--------

Las Vegas had never been Dana Scully's kind of place. The tinsel
and glitter above the greed and vice. Like lipstick on a gorilla.

Yet right now it was working, she felt alive, truly arrive for the
first time in months. She had a real job to do. She would make the
most of it.

------------
END of Part 5/6

Part 6/6
---------

LA

Mulder let his mind roll across the profile again, frustrated by
how slowly the story was forming.

Slow? It felt like dead slow to stop from where was sitting. It
didn't seem to worry his new bosses. They assured him that he was
doing fine. He suspected that they would be still telling him that
on the morning they threw the lever to pull the floor out from
under his chair and drop him into the tank of piranhas.

Chris assured him that all was well, that they were making much
better progress together than he had ever made alone. Mulder found
Chris easier to believe. Besides there wasn't much that Mulder
could actually do about it, even if it was a lie.

It was as if he was forced to conduct the whole investigation
through robot arms, except he didn't even have control of the
arms. He could see any report, any interview, any evidence that
had been gathered. Just so long as it was on computer. But he
couldn't talk to the police investigators and pick up their ideas,
couldn't get to the niggles and the nuances that weren't in the
official reports.

He couldn't just walk up to the front door of a witness or a
suspect or an employer and wave his FBI badge to get an answer or
to watch an expression. It was a slow and frustrating way to work.

At least some things were improving. Dana Scully was buying a
reasonable amount of food, she'd bought new shoes. She was
regularly checking into the Bureau swimming pool and the gym. Her
scores on the firing range and on the fitness checks were back up
to normal.

Not ideal though. There was still no sign of any let up in her
work to home to work to home regimen.

Mulder recognized, that of course, he was in no position to be
critical. Sharing an occasional ballgame and a pizza with Chris
scarcely constituted an active social life. Still, this was Dana
Scully
he was looking at and Dana wasn't him. She was supposed to be
getting on with her life.

The shiver of discomfort he felt when he saw that she had
transferred to VCS was quickly suppressed. It was her life. Sure,
he'd have preferred it if she stayed out of the firing line. But,
it was her life. That had been the plan hadn't it? Let her have
her life back. Some of it.Whatever bits of it that hadn't been killed
or maimed beyond recognition.

He looked back at the casefile.

========
VEGAS

Dana Scully sat at the conference table and read the faces of the
men who comprised the investigative team. Many of them had worked
in the Internal Affairs area for years, investigating other police
officers, picking apart other people's careers and reputations.
She'd read their files. Now, she attempted to read their minds.

She felt some delight as the pieces came together. They were
truly, by all external appearances, one hundred percent sure of
themselves. Brimming with a brisk professionalism that would be
interpreted as arrogance by most people they met. Self defence.
They carried the scars of being routinely hated and reviled for
the work they did. It was a feeling that she could sympathize
with. Look professional, because everyone else already thinks
you're an asshole.

She sighed. Mulder was a master at it, when he wanted to be. But
usually that was only when he needed to be. Mostly though it was
like water off a duck's back, he noted it, but paid no attention
to it. She had envied him that, the drive and the focus that
allowed him not to care about anyone else.

She corrected herself. Mulder had been a master at it. And she
still envied him for not caring, he hadn't even cared about her.

She watched as they analyzed her in return. What did they see?
FBI, so there would be a mix of respect and cynicism in various
measures. Female, so they would see a woman with no ring and no
interest in them, they'd decide she was a lesbian or at any rate,
frigid. A hard edged professional with a history of tough cases in
Violent Crimes combined with the intellectual kudos of having
served as a member of the teaching staff at Quantico, so a figure
to be reckoned with. The youngest member of the group working on
this investigation, so what did she know about anything? In short,
she was a conundrum, but if that's what the Bureau was offering,
then that was what they were obliged to take.

The discussion turned to the case.

Six deaths in under a year. Sexual assault and mutilation ending
in brutal battery. A serial killer at large. The forensics had
taken them nowhere. Which was why it was strange. The killer
hadn't been "careful" about covering his tracks, the bodies had
been found soon after the assaults. Blood, semen, hair and even
skin samples had come up blank, despite the most experienced
homicide forensics experts having worked the most recent crime
scenes.

The question was, how could that have happened? The Nevada crime
lab was no worse statistically than any other. A correctly handled
sample didn't always mean a valid result. But "no meaningful
result", on six incidents out of six. That was coincidence and bad
fortune beyond the acceptable statistical limits.

So far no one had been accused of anything, but the fingers were
pointing. Incompetence? Corruption? Even the inevitable dread that
the killer himself was somewhere in the evidence chain. The press
hovered like so many vultures.

Dana Scully would review the science. Meanwhile the gentlemen of
Internal Affairs would accumulate more information on who had
access to the samples and throw their weight around to see if
anyone came scurrying out from under the covers.

-------------

It took very little time for Dana Scully's perspective on the case
to change. Within a day or so of her first meetings at the Lab she
was convinced that they were all on the wrong track. Today's team
meeting would be her first chance to set things moving in the
right direction again.

Dana Scully normally hated being kept waiting and she definitely
hated being forced to kick her heels through an obviously
redundant meeting. However, today she would make an exception. She
would relax into its pointlessness and then move in to provide the
killer punch.

She had already told the head of the team that she had critical
information and that they should hear her report first because it
might influence the subsequent discussions. The first two times
she'd raised the issue she had been bounced by his administrative
assistant. "I'm sorry Agent Scully, he has no time to see you
before the meeting." Followed by an explanation of why the team
meetings always had the same format and agenda. External
consultants reported specialist information after the general
review of progress was complete so as not to contaminate the
"people oriented" investigation.

She made one last shot at it, face to face with the team's chief,
before the start of the meeting and while the other people were
drifting into their seats. Somehow he had managed not to say
"don't worry your pretty little head about it", out loud.
Nonetheless, Dana Scully could have sworn she'd heard the words.

Fine. His game. His rules. She sat back with her bombshell safely
tucked into the file folder in front of her.

Only a few people, police or civilian had been involved with
handling evidence on all six cases. There were also a tiny number
of others who had sufficient access to the places where the
evidence was held that they could have handled it without anyone
else knowing.

Based on the behavioral profile supplied by the ISU at Quantico. A
crosscheck had been done. Three of those in contact with the
evidence could be considered as very good matches to the profile.
Those three had been shortlisted as prime suspects. The trio now
knew that they were under investigation and had been asked to
provide corroborated evidence of their locations for the nights on
which the murders had occurred. Their movements were being
monitored.

Things were moving forwards quickly. Not only were they going to
get their man, but they were going to be heroes. The Police
Department's Internal Affair officers were going to catch a
killer, a grade A psycho.

Which was probably why Dana Scully's presentation to her temporary
colleagues from Internal Affairs went down like a lead balloon.

The samples had not been mishandled or tampered with. The tests
had not been bungled, deliberately or otherwise. The results were
just unusual. The evidence revealed a DNA pattern that no police
Lab could expect to recognize. Because no police lab had yet
received information on the handling of samples containing
branched DNA.

Dana Scully was amused as well as annoyed to find that not only
were her colleagues unprepared for such information and baffled by
the words she was using, they didn't want to know. Literally. They
preferred blissful ignorance to being forced to look at the facts.

"I can assure you. This is a real phenomena. I've seen similar
test results during a previous Bureau investigation. The people
with that anomaly later developed cancer. It is my belief that
whatever caused their cancer, also left their blood changed and
contaminated with this unusual genetic material. This is not the
identical result to the ones that I saw then, but it is similar
enough for me to believe that the samples actually reflect the
real status of our UNSUB. And that they do not represent testing
errors nor deliberate tampering with the evidence."

The chief of the investigation spoke carefully, tightly. "So what
causes it and why is it only now that the FBI bothers to tell us
mere mortals about it?"

Scully hesitated, good question. "It is new knowledge and is still
under investigation." She lied unconvincingly. Actually, no one
was investigating it. At least no one in the FBI. Not now
Mulder... Not now she... She tried to get her thoughts back on
track. "It may result from attack by some kind of toxin or a
virus."

"Or little green men?" A voice from the other side of the table
piped up and drew a quick cough of laughter from the others.

Damn. All she needed. She was not going to let them get under her
skin. They were not going to dismiss her the way she'd watched
people dismiss Mulder for not telling them what they wanted to
hear. Damn it. Why, every time she was under stress, did it have
to come back to Mulder. Fuck it. She didn't need him. He was dead.
This was her own personal set of assholes she was fighting and she
would fight them on her own. She would have to.

The meeting dragged on inconclusively with no clear winners
acknowledged, but with rather less optimism for a triumph for
Internal Affairs on the part of the locals. Still, at least it was
the FBI screwing up the case, not them.

---------------

The walls of the motel room were a particularly unhealthy shade of
what? Burgundy, purple, violet, indigo, anyway, something like
nighttime going on black. Dana Scully wondered if the motel's
interior designer was a goth or if someone had asked for the
horror movie themed bedroom specifically for her. As the locals
appeared to be aware of her history of work on the X-Files she
started to get the bad feeling it might have been the latter.

Dana Scully kept trying to replay the meeting. What had gone
wrong? She'd told them the truth, that was all. She'd been brought
out here as a scientific specialist, yet that wasn't enough, they
still thought that they knew better. Where had she lost them? Why
hadn't they respected her opinion, her knowledge. How could she
have phrased it better to win them over.

She remembered, years ago, challenging Mulder outside a court room
on the day of the hearing that released Eugene Tooms from
psychiatric care. Did he know how wild he had sounded? He had told
her then that he didn't care how it sounded, that it was the
truth. For an instant, she'd wanted to slap him for his arrogance
and it was then that she realized that actually he'd hit her,
right where it hurt.

There were, she knew, times when even unpalatable truths had to be
told. It was just that up until now, Dana Scully had always found
better ways of phrasing it.

She considered herself dispassionately, uncomfortably. Great. Now
she'd turned into Mulder. Half the Bureau thought she'd flipped
out, the other half were scared of her. She'd become a pain in the
ass to deal with and now she'd pissed off the locals so bad that
they wouldn't even listen to her when she was right.

Fine. So if she'd turned into Mulder, she might as well at least
keep going. What would he do? Obvious, he'd forget the job he'd
been sent to perform and solve the case.

With that idea in mind she turned her thoughts back to the other
discussions that had taken place during the meeting today. She
looked through the names of the investigating team again. Alan
Hall. That was the one, she'd met him. An Inspector, bright,
friendly and concerned. She would go and talk to him.

------------

Scully stalled her superiors in DC with big scientific words.
They, for their parts, would not recall her if she felt that she
was making progress. Particularly if it had such wide reaching
implications for forensics labs around the country. They had no
desire to bring a resentful Dana Scully back to Washington while
she was still so convinced that the case needed her.

Most of the people from the Internal Affairs team just seemed
happy to avoid her. Which was ideal, because it gave her the
chance to work the case in peace.

Without explaining to Hall the specifics of what she believed was
the cause of the test failures, she quickly got him on her side.
It helped that he was one the three prime suspects identified by
the IA team. He had a vested interest in getting the case cleared
quickly. He also had reason to be grateful to Dana Scully for
throwing a spanner in the wheels of the IA investigation so that
he hadn't been immediately suspended pending its outcome.

He gave her access to everything about the case, including his own
pet theory.

He thought the UNSUB was not living in Vegas, that he was just an
occasional visitor. His choices of locations felt like a visitor's
choices. He'd suggested it to the FBI profiler who had accepted it
as a possibility, but who had said that it was highly unlikely.
Nothing quite matching these MO's had been reported elsewhere in
the country. It would take an exceptional amount of focus on the
killer's part to keep heading back to Vegas to kill. Possible
though.

Two of the murders had been at weekends, four mid week, random. An
out of towner would be more likely to strike at weekends.
Particularly an out of towner in a professional, people oriented
white collar job like the one the profiler had suggested for this
guy. The killer was someone who could get close to his victims. He
could introduce himself to nice, normal women. It looked like he
didn't scare them, they went with him without fear. The fear came
later.

Despite the setback, Hall had carried on plugging away with the
idea, trying to build up more background data. Trying to find a
pattern in the dates. He thought that he might have stumbled
across it. Conferences and conventions.

Scully looked speculatively back at him, conferences and
conventions were ubiquitous. That hardly constituted a pattern.

"Not ones that specialize in printing technology. The murders are
either the day before the convention or immediately after it
closes."

She shrugged. The timings would suggest an exhibitor. It was
certainly a good place to start.

They started hunting. Hall quietly enlisted colleagues to do more
of the legwork as they looked for the exhibitors who had been at
all of the events.

There was another convention only days away.

-------------

Dana Scully felt the familiar buzz of adrenaline as they moved in
towards the killer. The paper enquiry was finished. Tonight they
would start meeting the suspects from their new shortlist.

Only twenty seven people had been at every event. From the sketchy
details on their credentials they had chased them further, then
filtered the information they had obtained against what they knew
of the killer and what the profile had indicated. After that
filter only seven names renamed. Only six of them were expected to
be at the upcoming show. They asked the hotels to keep them posted
of their arrival.

Of course the whole thing was based on a single supposition but
then stranger hunches had paid off. Scully kept feeling glimmers
of optimism about this one. Definitely worth a shot.

Her mind kept drifting to consider just who exactly it was that
she was hunting. Another victim of experimentation, just like her.
Not just like her, the results showed a different kind of damage.
Maybe this one had been subject to a test that had given them not
a cancer but a taste for murder. There might be more than one kind
of victim in this case. The first priority was to get the killer.
Then she could look at the reason why he had killed.

The cellphone gave its familiar buzz, Dana Scully quickly replied.
Suspect number three, Mark Hardy, had just checked in at his
hotel. This was her and Alan Hall's chosen quarry for the evening,
top of their suspects' list. They made their way over to the
hotel, quietly debating tactics as they drove.

They were ready to work by the time they reached the hotel. They
went directly to the room number they'd been given for the
suspect. They got out of the elevator only pausing to give one
another a confirmatory nod of preparedness as they headed towards
the bedroom door. Just before they reached it, they saw a tall man
walking away from the door of the room.

Alan Hall stepped forward. "Excuse me. Are you Mr Hardy?"

The tall man stopped and looked at them, he hesitated for an
instant as if weighing them up and then smiled politely. "I'm
afraid not, I just came to visit him but he's not in his room."

"The reception desk say that he came up here only a few minutes
ago."

"Then I guess he must have left immediately because he isn't there
now."

"And you are Mr?"

"I'm Richard James. Who are you?"

Dana Scully felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise in a
familiar bristle of worry. This man matched everything about the
killer. Everything, right down to the bad photo on the delegate's
badge that she'd seen. Why would he lie. Even if he thought they
were police, why would he lie. He couldn't expect to run from
them, so what was the point. Unless, he thought he could get away
with killing them as well. Her hand drifted unconsciously to her
jacket to check her gun.

The tall man immediately pushed past them, sweeping both of them
aside before disappearing down the stairs of the fires escape.

Shit. Scully cursed her misjudgment. She was rusty, but she would
never believed that she was that rusty. She nodded quickly at Alan
Hall and the two headed for the stairs.

Scully winced as she caught her heel on the loose carpet runner.
Damn it. She hoped the Bureau sued the hotel. She dragged herself
back to her feet and started to chase after her police colleague
who Scully gratefully noted had kept up his pursuit despite losing
his backup.

She ran down the stairs as fast as she could but having been left
behind, she was forced to pause briefly to check the doors at each
level to see if she could hear Alan Hall and their runaway.

As she reached the basement parking level, she waited and listened
again.

She recognized the voice. She recognized it, didn't she? No, not
the voice itself, the intensity, the intonation in the voice.

Damn it. No, not now. This couldn't be happening to her now. For
the first few weeks after he'd died, she'd seen Mulder in every
tall figure in a dark suit, heard his voice in a thousand places.
As the weeks had gone on, it had become easier, she'd seen him
less often, heard fewer words. Not now. She couldn't afford this
to be happening to her now.

She steadied herself, forced herself to think clearly and not just
barge in while upset and potentially make a bad situation worse.

Whoever was talking, one thing was for sure, it was not the voice
of the man who they had met back upstairs by the hotel room. Two
of them? How could there be two men involved, there had been no
suggestion of an accomplice on the six deaths. It made no sense.
Unless... Unless what? It taunted her, dangled there, somewhere on
the edge of her thoughts. The odd DNA results. What if it was a
shape changer, like the man who Mulder had claimed was an alien.
Like Eddie Van Blundht who was just some kind of human oddity.
What if.

She quickly hit the buttons on her phone to request back up. Even
as she spoke to the operator, she could hear the words of the man
drifting towards her. Calm, solid. Model Quantico. No room for
disagreement or misunderstanding, the voice of a man who meant
business.

"Put down your weapon." She heard the voice say again.

Dana Scully closed her call and edged back towards the doorway.
Two men were in there with Alan Hall. Not a shape changer. Ok,
that answered the first question. There actually were two men
involved. She was grateful that backup was on its way.

It took a few seconds for her eyes to accustom themselves to the
darkness. It was then that she realized that her colleague, Alan
Hall was holding his gun on a man who didn't really look like Mark
Hardy except for the similarities in his clothes. In the shadows,
there stood another man holding a gun on Hall. The man in the
shadows was speaking carefully. "Put down your weapon. Please do
it now. You are in extreme danger if you open fire."

Hall was clearly wavering, he'd got the wrong man as a target and
yet he hadn't, he was sure of it. Mark Hardy had never been out of
his sight. Yet this man was different and now this other guy was
holding a gun on him. The man in the shadows walked slowly
forwards, talking all the time as he approached. "Put down your
weapon. You are in extreme danger. Please put down the weapon."
The same kind of phrases, over and over again.

Dana Scully stepped forward and pointed her gun at the man in the
shadows, "Federal officer, put down your weapon."

Everyone turned towards her voice. The man who she had once
thought looked like Mark Hardy decided that now was a good moment
to reclaim some advantage. He leapt forward, knocking Hall to the
ground and pushing Hall's gun away into the darkness of the
shadows.

Dana Scully quickly recovered her composure and spoke again.
"Freeze. I'll fire if I have to." She turned her eyes back to the
man in the shadows. "Put down your weapon."

The figure in the shadows stood still.

There was a moment of silence and then it seemed to Dana Scully
that the man who had looked like Mark Hardy started to look like
Fox Mulder. Dana Scully felt her breathing become unsteady, felt
her hands turn to jelly, felt her eyes start to hurt. She could do
nothing as the man from the shadows moved quickly forwards and
removed the gun from her hand.

Alan Hall pushed himself up and dived towards the man who looked
like Fox Mulder. But Hall was no match for the morph and the
detective quickly found himself lying face down on the floor with
his hands cuffed behind his back

Dana Scully stood absolutely still and stared first at the morph
and then at the man who had disarmed her. Was she losing her mind?
One definite shape changer and now this? But how could it be, Fox
Mulder was dead. It wasn't him, it didn't even look like him, not
really. Another morph? But why not morph into a one hundred
percent likeness, like the morph who'd been Mark Hardy and someone
else and Fox Mulder in a matter of minutes.

Dana Scully screamed. She shut her eyes to the world and forced
her brain to imagine only the approaching police sirens. And then
she threw her head back and screamed to welcome the darkness.

She felt a light touch of fingers against her arm, she shivered
sharply away from the contact and with a big gulp of air,
stiffened back into silence. It was then that she thought she
heard a soft voice that said, "I'm sorry."

When the backup unit arrived, they found the handcuffed body of
Alan Hall, dazed and confused but uninjured. They helped him out
of the cuffs and back on to his feet.

Dana Scully was sitting on the concrete floor, her body pressed
tightly up against a concrete pillar, curled as small as she could
make herself, hugging her knees to her chest and rocking gently.
Bright tears were streaming down her face. Every breath she took
was another gasp. There was no one else to be seen.

END
Which takes us to a point just before the season premiere...
Hope you enjoyed this hiatus journey - Joann - jhumby@iee.org

21 June 97