GRIEF
By. Paul Wartenberg
Thanks. Peggy Mei-Ling Li

(this story was written during "3" and before "One Breath")

The knocking at my apartment door began late at night, loud and
consistent, certainly waking my neighbors as well as myself. I fell out
of bed (pain is the easiest way to wake up) and stumbled to answer,
shouting back at whomever was rapping loudly at my chamber door.
I was startled to see who it was through the peephole. His
blank, expressionless face was even spookier than I had ever seen it.
I opened the door and Fox Mulder, special agent of the FBI and
occasional partygoer at the Lone Gunmen's annual "Guess That Defense
Budget," silently strolled into the room. He had three-day-old stubble
across his chin, his eyes circled and bleary, his hair more wasted than a
Superfund site.
"Hi," he mumbled. He quickly collapsed onto the sofa, sitting
upright but almost asleep.
"Mulder?" I asked. Normally, he avoided personal contact with
us, preferring to meet us professionally; we agreed, in the possibility
he might either (A)turn out to be an attempt by the Futilely Bumbling
Idiots to infiltrate our elite commando corps or (B)move in with one of
us. We feared (B).
He sat silently for a minute, then said, "They got Scully."
Dana Scully was his partner, a real by-the-book agent who, for
some strange reason, looked really sexy in plain clothes. They had
teamed up to take on some backlogged cases that had involved the strange
and unusual, what Mulder called "X-Files." That was why they stopped by
from time to time to pick our collective brains.
Mulder slowly told a tale about an escaped ex-FBI nutcase
convinced aliens were after him, who somehow abducted Scully and took her
to the Appalachians to be picked up by somebody. It first sounded like
ETs did the dirty deed, but Mulder soon mentioned a fellow agent who was
responsible for the psycho's death and who eventually disappeared
himself, leading Mulder to believe a man who smokes particular brands of
cigarettes planned the whole thing.
"That doesn't explain why."
Mulder shrugged. "He doesn't want the X-Files reopened. There's
a secret in there, among all that paperwork, like a huge jigsaw puzzle.
Fit the pieces together and a picture emerges. I've only seen some of
the pieces but they don't make any sense yet. If we had kept working,
the other parts would have been found."
"Why her?"
"I don't know. Maybe...everyone knows how obsessed I am with
this. If I go, others will aks questions. Scully's abduction still
looks like she's been taken and killed by a psycho. Case closed."
Mulder sighed. "I haven't slept in two days."
"Worried they'll come after you next?"
"No. I'm...having nightmares. About my sister, Sam. The weird
thing is, there's no consistency anymore, how I remembered what happened
seems to keep changing in my own head." He drooped. "Like I'm forgetting."
"Coffee?" I stood and went for the kitchen.
"Make it hot, damned hot," Mulder almost smirked about that one.
We both knew the FBI agent responsible for that saying, and I had a
sudden image of that pronounced chin and eager attitude.
"Friends," Mulder muttered. "They come and go, don't they?"
I worked on the coffee. "Maybe that's what keeping you up.
Scully's disappearance. It's not your sister, it's her you're worried
about."
"Maybe."
When I returned to the living room with two cups, Mulder was
staring out the sliding glass door to the patio. We were four stories up
from the ground and two stories above the parking garage next to the
building. He was intently staring at something below.
"That car is running on idle," he said. "Exhaust is coming from
the tailpipe. None of the car lights are on. Someone's watching.
Better yet, I've seen that car before."
"When?"
"When my car blew up last night."
"WHAT?" I nearly dropped the cups of coffee. "Your car? And I
thought you said they weren't after you."
"It's not them," Mulder replied. "It's a case I'm working on."
I lifted my arms to whatever angels were listening. "You're
working a case, and the people you're after are after you instead?
Greeaatttt." I grabbed Mulder and pushed him toward the doorway out.
"Next time, take your work home where it's supposed to go."
I quickly opened the door and quickly closed it again, slamming
it into the face of a rather large and menacing human killing machine
carrying a semi-automatic.

Mulder stood impassively as I dove for the floor. The large
human kicked the door open and aimed his semi toward Mulder.
Mulder suddenly reacted, reaching out at the man and twisting his
arms and his aim. The weapon fired and ripped through my furniture. It
was okay; I needed to reupholster most of the chairs anyway.
Mulder shoved the large man through the doorway, where I heard
more gun shots and then a confusing chorus of voices. I slowly rose from
the floor and tip-toed to the hallway, and saw the large man sitting
against the wall, unconscious and bleeding from a bullet wound.
"Police!" shouted someone. I turned and saw two women in
uniforms storming up one of the stairwells. "Get out of the way, sir!"
"Where's Mulder?" I asked.
"After the second suspect. Please return to your room!" one of
the women waved her gun toward my door.
My next-door neighbor came running out of her apartment. "What
the blue blazes is going on here?" shouted Mrs. Janssen.
"I'm throwing a surprise birthday party for myself," I answered.
"I'M not surprised!" she yelled as she stormed back into her
apartment. I shook my head, and against the policewomen's protests, I
went to the stairwell at the other end of the hall after Mulder.
I heard additional shots from the roof, and I sped up the
stairwell just in time to see Mulder wrestle a gun away from a
well-dressed, short blond gentleman. They staggered away from each
other, taking deep breaths, before Mulder raised the gun and said,
"You're under arrest, sir. Hands behind your head."
The man complied, but spoke, "You know the rules. You'll want me
to talk about this, why we're after you. But you know no matter what
I'll just deny everything."
A dark shadow crossed Mulder's face. "What did you say?"
"Deny everything," he said. "It's our credo."
Mulder stepped toward him, with an anger in his eyes I had never
seen before. "Who are you? Who do you work for?"
The blond slowly stepped backward, toward the rim of the roof
overlooking the garage. I ran toward that part of the roof to keep him
from the edge. He glanced at me and stopped about five feet from the
edge. "You really want to know?" he asked.
"You're not helping yourself with this crap," Mulder fumed.
"I...WANT...HIS...NAME."
The blond nearly laughed. "I'm not sure he was ever born with
one." He then jumped at me, knocking us both over the roof's edge.
I grabbed at the railing, gripping it with both hands. I heard
the man fall, not with a scream but with a wooshing sound. I also heard
a car screech in reverse and suddenly rev forward. Mulder soon came to
the railing and yanked me up by my wrists. We both gasped for air, then
turned back to look down to the twisted body of the blond man below.
"Mulder," I gasped. "You have GOT to tell me what the hell is
going on around here."

Mulder had spent one minute finding out no one kept an eye on the
wounded hitman, giving him a chance to swallow some object that forced
himself to choke to death. Mulder then spent another minute finding out
the police backup he requested before he got to my apartment that evening
did not arrive with a full complement; the two policewomen were the only
ones to show, with the others simply disappearing. The third minute was
spent with Mulder getting his ass chewed out over the phone by his
superiors. The fourth minute went toward drinking some now-cold coffee.
Finally, he told me what was going on.
"I'm assigned to a detail investigating bizarre kidnappings and
going-ons in a few companies involved with government operations. The
thing is, workers disappear and then re-appear with no memory of events,
and within the companies themselves there are bizarre orders,
counterorders and general confusion. The FBI assumed there might be some
attempt to interfere with the government through these private companies."
"Were the companies involved in any major projects or agendas?"
"No. The companies are in no way involved with any of the
government departments that work on...sensitive operations. Defense,
CIA, FBI, Justice, Treasury...none of them deal with any of those
corporations."
"Then what do they do?"
"They mostly provide telecommunications and computer technology
for most of the libraries, archives, and research divisions. One access
company provide communication link-ups via the nets, including Internet.
The only possible threat is that sensitive documents might be transferred
between terminals, but honestly all `national security' materials never
go those routes, they're handled with a lot more discretion than that."
"Well, couldn't some of these companies figure out encryption
codes, figure out ways of hacking into communication lines that tend to
be more secured than other nets?"
"That hasn't been determined. I would think whoever is kidnapping
people would find it easier to just hire some hackers, or would have
their own staff to break codes and enter secured channels. Also, the only
thing anybody would find out from one of these companies is what
grade of Windows they use in the Smithsonian. That's not much use in
breaking security."
"Huh. That is weird."
"The weird thing is that when the FBI began investigating, agents
started disappearing and others suffered memory lapses. One agent had a
nervous breakdown. Apparently, whatever happened to the private
companies was now happening to the FBI."
"Which is where you come in."
"I requested the assignment."
"What?"
"I have reason to believe whoever is behind this operation has
the means and the motives for acting against both private companies and a
major branch of the government. Remember what that guy said? Deny
Everything. I've heard that before from...someone who knows how these
people operate. I'm hoping to expose a shadowy part of the government
itself that could very well be acting against the country's best
interests in order to promote their own."
"They kinda sound like the same group of people involved with
Scully's disappearance."
Mulder didn't answer.
One of the policewomen came over with a notebook. "Agent Mulder,
we found this on Pink's body."
"Pink?" I asked Mulder.
"That's the hitman's nom de plume," he replied. "His real name
is Pasquele Oscar Lindensen."
He took the notebook. "It's an address book," he said, quickly
flipping the pages. He suddenly stopped and stared at one page. I
glanced over his shoulder to see what was up, and found his thumb
covering over a name in the K's.
"What is it?"
Mulder lifted his thumb. "Krychek," was all he said.

He sat in the back seat of my Caravan, turned to stare out at the
passing buildings and road signs. He barely moved and said nothing.
Once or twice his head rolled forward as though he wanted to sleep, but
he would suddenly sit upright again.
We were driving to an address out in Maryland, near Lanham.
According to the address book, in was Krychek's actual residence. This
bothered me. Mulder had explained to me how Krychek was able to convince
people he was FBI, which certainly suggested someone had used connections
to create a cover. Mulder also mentioned that Krychek was responsible
for Duane Barry's death and the disappearance of a skytram operator.
That suggested someone trained for wetwork.
What really bothered me was how someone as sneaky and dangerous
as that would give his address to a thug whose destiny was either a
coroner's table or a ten-by-ten jail cell.
I played a Matthew Sweet song on the tapedeck: "And it took me
years to figure out/ that there was nothing I could give to you/ years to
figure out/ that there was nothing you would take from me/ and how can I
describe the way/ you slowly put my hope away/ and all of the time/ I
thought I knew you..."
"Nice song," said Mulder, draping himself over the front
passenger seat.
"We're getting there," I replied. "Shouldn't you at least try to
get some sleep?"
He shook his head. I kept driving and we made the neighborhood
at about 2:20 in the morning. For some reason the street lights were
off. Only one house on this street had its front porch light on, but
other than that we were going into a very dark, forboding place.
"Stay alert," Mulder whispered as he got out of the minivan.
We slowly walked up the empty driveway. The only sign anyone had
been here was the freshly mowed lawn. The curtains were drawn; there was
nothing on the front porch.
I grabbed Mulder by his right arm. "Mulder, think for a second."
"What?"
"If you were Krychek..."
"I wouldn't devalue myself that low."
"Listen!" I hissed. "Krychek's been covering his tracks and that
guy with the cigarettes has probably been helping out. Now if these guys
are involved in messing with the minds of a bunch of computer hacks and
interfering with a federal investigation, they're not about to slip up by
letting a thug carry around any kind of paperwork."
Mulder never stopped gazing at the house. "A set-up?"
"Someone's obviously pushing your buttons. They've given you
Krychek's name to make sure you come here."
Mulder waved his right hand toward the garage. "Let's go that way."
We circled around the building to a side door to the garage. The
door windows were taped over with newspapers. "There's no curtains
here. Somebody doesn't want people to see what's in the garage," Mulder
whispered.
"Okay," he asked me. "How would you booby-trap a house?"
"Well, I'd use explosives. Nothing that would stand out, try to
make it look as accidental as possible. Natural gas pipeline rupture
would be a beaut. Would take out the whole block."
"Where would you set up the trap?"
"All doors and windows will be wired."
"They covered these windows. That means there's something in the
garage we're not supposed to see."
"The explosive device might be in there. Probably a container of
gasoline or chemicals that could take out the whole house."
"Okay. So how would you go in?"
"Through the roof," I said.
"An...interesting suggestion at best."
I went back to the Caravan and drove it backwards up the driveway
until the rear bumpers practically touched the garage door. I crawled to
the back seats where, underneath, I kept a bag of equipment:
screwdrivers, a hand-held shovel, climbing gear I used once to scale a
building to secure a laser-attuned listening device, and additional stuff
I collected over the years. I tossed the bag onto the minivan and
climbed up. From there I could hop up onto the house. Mulder followed,
carrying the bag with him.
We picked a spot on the far side of the roof to start digging.
With the screwdrivers and hammers, we pulled away at the tar roofing
shingles until we got to the wood underneath. I used the shovel to chop
away at the wood, with Mulder using the hammer to slam a hole into it.
We succeeded in punching a hole into the attic. I was worried
for a moment that whoever owned the house also set up a vacuum in the
building to encourage a sudden rush of fire when an atmosphere entered,
but there was no sudden intake or release through the hole. Mulder
climbed in first and I followed in with the bag.
I tossed a flashlight from the bag to Mulder. We could see there
wasn't much in the attic, and we quickly found the attic door. Mulder
gently lifted it up and peered into the house itself. "I can't see
anything," he said.
"Can you smell anything?"
"No. At least there's no noxious fumes." Mulder slid himself
through the opening, holding himself up on the edges of the attic door
until he could jump down into the house. He landed and rolled, gimply
standing after a minute of lying on the floor.
"Ouch," he whispered as he waved the flashlight about, searching
the house. I followed him down.
We were in a hallway going from the family room to the bedrooms.
The bedroom doors were gone, taken off their hinges. We walked to the
family room and kitchen area, which was practically devoid of furniture
or other signs of life. A refrigerator was gently humming in the
background. The light and plug sockets were all covered.
Mulder waved toward the garage, and we silently walked to that
part of the house. With the doors gone, we quickly got there and saw it
was empty, save for a large metal container. Wires were hooked between
the container and switches built onto the garage doors. The switches
were interconnected like locks, so that any motion would push the switch
out of position and open the lock.
Mulder reached over his head, feeling wires that were running out
of the garage to the rest of the house. "Good call," he said.
"I do try."
It took the rest of the night to try and disarm the explosive.
We simply ended up deactivating the whole thing from the single point on
the container. It was a pretty stressful night and I'm really not in
the mood right now to repeat the...personal insults and revelations
Mulder and I shared during those tense bomb-defusing moments. Suffice to
say, Mulder will never be allowed to drive my car, house-sit my
apartment, use my shower stall, or download a video game into my
computer, ever.

We opened the curtains to the sliding glass door at the back
porch, allowing the sunlight of a new day into the family room. The
light did nothing to improve the interior look of Krychek's pad.
I had decided to wind down from the defusing by resting on the
shag carpet in the family room, leaning against the wall that was away
from the light. Mulder, however, had this idea of examining every square
inch of the house, starting in the main bedroom and adjoining bathroom.
"Mulder," I called out. "You really should try to rest. Do you
know what happens to people who avoid sleeping for long periods?"
"Yes," he replied. "I dealt with some Vietnam vets who haven't
slept since the war."
"Holy cow," I whispered. "Talk about your post-traumatic stress
disorders."
I sat there, listening to Mulder knock around in each of the
rooms, checking each closet, examining each wall. In my mind, I could
picture him bringing his face close to a wall, just standing there,
staring straight ahead to a miniscule dot just an inch from his nose.
For a few minutes, I heard nothing from him, and I got the impression he
was doing just that. Standing there. Staring.
I must have nodded off, for the next time I noticed anything was
the sound of something hitting a wall. I looked around; the sunlight was
no longer shining brightly through the back porch doorway.
"Mulder?" I rose and ran to the room where Mulder was swinging
the hand shovel into the wall. I saw the expression on his face and
decided it was high time to crawl out of the hole we made in the roof and
drive off to someplace safe. Like Bosnia.
I ran from the room back to the kitchen, just in time to hear the
refrigerator kick back on, its cooling fans revving gently.
"Mulder?" I shouted out to him. "Why would an empty house have
a working refrigerator?"
Mulder stopped his redecorating and came to the kitchen. "It's
working. Somebody's definitely paying an electric bill around here."
He went to the refrigerator door and opened it. I cried out for
him to stop, fearing another trap. Instead, the not-so-frozen body of a
man in a mechanic's jumpsuit nearly collapsed out of its sitting
position. I covered my nose; the stench of death was noticeable, even
with the body cooled.
"I know him," Mulder whispered. "It's the skytram operator." He
pushed the body back in and closed the door. He walked past me, waving
to the room where he was making space for a regressed shelf. "This might
also interest you."
He led me back to where he was and pointed into the hole.
"Here's another explanation for why the refrigerator's still running."
I peered into the hole and saw a compact metal stand covered with
wiring and holding computer mainframe and processing equipment. A
computer network seemed to have been established at the house.
"I felt the vibrations of the equipment through the wall," he
said. "I measured out the room and realized there should have been some
closet space. A hidden enclosure had to have been made here. Someone's
using this house to transfer computer files, which explains why the
electric's still on."
I turned to Mulder. "This might also explain why somebody's been
messing with a bunch of computer hacks."
Mulder nodded. "Now we need to get into the network."

Mikey worked his way through the crowd of federal agents and
police officers who had come to scan the crime scene. Mulder was still
in the computer room, refusing to let anyone else inside.
Mikey was a Lone Gunman with a record of extreme hacker
activity. He was responsible for the `borrowing' of an entire militray
database, tying it down with a role-playing game that involved everybody
from Maine to Australia. He claimed the military mainframe had enough
mem space and thought "the guys wouldn't mind one round of `Paranoia'."
That one round lasted three days.
Mikey brought his usual hacker gear with him. He set up shop
within two minutes and immediately got the network up on his laptop.
"This," he said flatly, "is what I woke up for at 2:30 in the
afternoon?"
"Is there something wrong?" Mulder asked.
"I'll say," Mikey replied. "There's nothing here. It's just a
transfer point for FTPs and WWWs. Regular Internet junk. I coulda got
this from my home terminal."
"Yeah," Mulder responded. "But your home terminal isn't hidden
behind a false wall. Somebody hid this here for a reason and I'm willing
to bet it's because something's going through here that doesn't go
through anything else. Something illegal and secret."
Mikey shrugged and continued messing with the computer. Mulder
paced the room, accepting a cup of coffe from an agent. He sipped it and
promptly tossed it over his shoulder. "Billy, you really need to use a
filter when you make that dredge."
Mikey noticed something an hour later. "A lot of the files are
normal stuff going between researchers. But you said somebody's trying
to hide junk, so I figured stuff going through and from government
offices ought to be checked as a priority. Know what I found?"
"Obviously, no," Mulder said.
"Hidden files. Lots of them. Most of the packets use more
memory than what the addresses say in the directories. NOw, if you'll
excuse me, I'll decode those files. Please scram," Mikey snarled.
"What?"
"C'mon," I said, grabbing Mulder by the elbow and dragging him
from the room. "You're lucky he let you see that much of his hacking."
"Hold on..."
"Forget it, Mulder. Look, go out to the minivan. I had it moved
out of the way for the investigators to pull in. Go to the back seat and
Get...Yourself...Some...Sleep." I prodded him down the hallway until he
agreed to go.
I went back to the room, just in time for Mikey to sit up and
say, "Done."
"Already?"
"Yeah," Mikey tapped the computer screen. "Easier than I
thought. They must have figured nobody would have cracked the mainframe,
so they did a lousy job encoding the files."
I leaned over his shoulders. "So what's in here?"
"Well, this file's been obtained from a Japanese laboratory..."
"Explains why I can't read the handwriting."
"Anyhow..." Mikey stuttered into silence. He scowled and began
tapping the keyboard. "What the..." he banged down on the laptop. "No!"
The screen was encrypting itself, each character bit rearranging
itself until the screen was covered in gibberish. Then, suddenly, the
middle part of the screen cleared and a two-word sentence began blinking
on and off.
"Congratulations, Mulder."
"Oh my God," I whispered. They had considered that Mulder would
get this far...that meant...
"Move!" I shouted as I grabbed Mikey and dragged him from the
room. I smashed our way through a crowd of agents, screaming, "That
bomb's still active! Get out of here!"
With the bomb close to the front door, that would have been a
losuy escape route. So I got to the sliding glass door, opened it so
forcefully I nearly popped it off the tracks, and pushed Mikey outside to
the backyard. About two agents and a handful of officers followed me out.
We stood there in the backyard for five minutes. Nothing
happened. Mulder circled around the side of the house to the back and
walked up to me. "What happened?"
I shrugged. "The mainframe was booby-trapped. I figured they
still had a way of detonating the explosive in the garage."
Mulder slapped me upside the head. "You idiot. We disconnected
all contacts to the container. Nothing's going to explode."
Mulder told me later that the arson experts, determining every
aspect of the aftermath, believed there were some explosives behind the
rest of that false wall. The blast took out everything in that part of
the house. Mulder and I ducked as the explosion shattered every glass
window in a two-block area.
We both stared at the damaged home, then at each other.
"Krycek," we both said at the same time.

I drove Mikey back to his apartment; the police who drove him to
Krycek's place weren't really too happy to do us another favor. I left
Mulder at the scene, wrapping up some of the details and reporting to his
superiors.
"Sorry 'bout everything," I said as we walked up to his apartment.
"It's not every day I get shoved out of an exploding home," Mikey
replied. "I'm still bummed about losing my geek gear. How am I going to
get dates now?"
We chuckled at that and I turned to go. Mikey called out, "Oh,
by the way, I know who's been handling most of those files and where he's
working from."

I returned to Lanham to find Mulder standing outside a devastated
home covered in yellow tape. His physical appearance was the worst I had
ever seen. The circles around his eyes resembled those patterns they
find in the fields of England. His hair was now going in thirty-nine
different directions.
He never acknowledged me when I pulled up, and he rode the whole
way back to his apartment.
We entered his place to find everything a mess. Paper was
everywhere. His equipment all seemed to be smashed up and strewn over
his chairs. Two lamps were knocked over. The fish were swimming backwards.
"Nice to see nobody's disturbed anything," Mulder muttered.
I shoved him toward what appeared to be a bathroom; what confused
me were all the automobile parts covering the floor. "Shower, shave, and
for God's sake Mulder, put on some deodorant."
He showered as I resigned myself to cleaning his apartment. I
picked up some papers and suddenlt discovered I had nowhere to put them.
The temptation to toss them out a window was pardoned by the knocking of
someone at the door. Mulder later told me those papers were key evidence
that put a mutating lifeform in solitary confinement for life.
Assistant Director Skinner walked in. I offered my hand in
greeting but he refused, asking for Mulder.
"He cleaning up right now," I said. "He's had...a busy day."
"Certainly," Skinner said. "Losing one of the agency's cars,
property damage covering two states, at least two suspects dead. His
performance on this case isn't exactly putting points on his next
evaluation."
I felt I had to cover for Mulder on this. "This has been an
intense assignment for all concerned, sir. Hasn't this assignment
already cost your bureau some men before Mulder signed on? At least he's
gotten a tag on the persons responsible for this."
"Great," said Mulder, coming out of the bathroom wearing
underwear and a towel around his shoulders. The tired, lost expression
was gone, replaced by that passionate stare.
"Well, agent Mulder," Skinner asked. "Who is responsible for
kidnapping, industrial sabotage, and the loss of men and material?"
I looked between Skinner and Mulder. Mulder was so close into my
face it was like he would examine my medulla without the aid of magnetic
resonance imaging. I didn't want to tell Mulder; I had hoped to pass
this on to Skinner with the suggestion somebody else take over from
here. I decided Mulder would have found out anyway, and would have
forced himself back into the assignment.
I sighed. "The special file transfers located in that mainframe
tended to go to and come from certain offices within the Defense Department."

I was amazed Mulder was able to bully all those Marines at each
of the security checkpoints. A trail of crew-cut young men were
following us and we kept adding another one or two at almost every corner
of the building. All Mulder did was flash his badge at every guard,
shout "This is an official investigation," and give them that stare.
They were spooked.
We reached the main computer terminal room for the Pentagon, where
a handful of civilian night shift workers stood and moved away from this
wave of men entering the room. Mulder strode quickly to the supervisor's
room, but the supervisor stepped out first and greeted him in the main
room. "Can I help you?"
As Mulder stopped in front of him, every Marine finally pulled
their sidearms out and they all aimed right at Mulder's head. This was
important, because it gave me enough time to duck under a desk.
Mulder slowly turned and surveyed the result of his run through
the largest building in the hemisphere. He then faced the supervisor and
handed him the technical data Mikey wrote down for me. "Can you inform
me where these downloads occured and who would be using this terminal?"
The supervisor crushed the paper and dropped it. "That...would
be a violation of certain regulations, especially considering the need
for national security."
"National security," repeated Mulder. He then pulled out another
slip, one that took hours to get and involved a lot of executive and
judicial offices. "This is a warrant signed out for the FBI to retrieve
evidence regarding these file transfers. This has been approved in a
joint investigation with the NSC, who are in charge of determining the
importance and misuse of any of those files." He placed it in the
supervisor's hand.
The supervisor handed the warrant to the nearest Marine. "I'll
have to confirm this." He walked back in to his office and picked up his
phone.
In the hallway outside, more FBI and NSC agents began to arrive,
pulling some of the Marines away from Mulder. I crawled out from under
the desk and stood next to Mulder. He nodded to me as we watched the
supervisor argue with someone on the phone.
"Can you get a warrant to search the Pentagon?" I asked.
"Maybe," Mulder whispered. "But there's a lot of closets to search."
The supervisor opened the door, still holding the phone in one
hand. "He wants to talk to you, agent Mulder."
Mulder quickly went inside and took the phone. I suddenly saw him
flare up, pace the room, shout into the phone, hold it away from himself
shaking with rage, putting it back to his ear, paced the room some more,
and then slam the phone down so hard he knocked it off the table.
He stormed out of the office, grabbing me and dragging me with
him. "The other agents will wrap this up," he said. "We have other
loose ends to secure."

He made me drive from the south side of D.C. straight to
Georgetown. We drove past the National Cathedral and kept driving until
we reached a small graveyard out in the middle of a suburb. Here, two
hours before dawn, we sat and waited.
"What are we waiting for?"
Mulder didn't answer. He simply sat there, staring at the
graveyard.
I decided to try and get some more sleep. It had been a busy
weekend. I moved over from the driver's side to the passenger seat in
the front, and adjusted the seat to lean back.
Light was brightening the sky when Mulder shook me awake. He had
hunkered down as though he was hiding from someone. "Shh. A car just
pulled into the graveyard."
"Who?" I asked.
Mulder didn't answer. Instead he slowly got out of the car and
opened the front door on the passenger side, dragging me out.
We walked to the graveyard. A fine mist hung in the air, rolling
off the surrounding scenery. The sun was not yet up; the air was cool,
and the sky retained a grey, haunted appearance.
We walked through the opened gate and strolled quietly as
possible down the driveway. Only one car was sitting in the parking
lot. We circled it, to see any markings. Mulder whispered this was the
car in the parking garage outside my apartment.
Mulder must have had an idea on where to go; he followed metal
signs that were pointing in a specific direction. It wasn't bright enough
yet to read the signs and Mulder wasn't giving me any time to stop and
read.
We came to a tall shrubbery, which was well-cut; I thought it
might have surrounded some crypt. Mulder pointed for me to go around one
way while he went another. I tried to protest, pointing out I had no
weapon and therefore ill-equiped to confront anybody; but he had turned
and went his way.
I moved slowly around each corner, making sure I wasn't strolling
into anybody with more weaponry than I did. I was almost around the
second corner when I heard Mulder shout, "Krycek!"
I ran the rest of the way around to see there was a clear opening
in the shrubs, leading to a small hollow. A stone bench was against one
wall of shrubs, and a statue of a hooded, bereaving woman sat nearby.
Mulder and another man I guessed was Krycek were struggling on the
ground; two guns were lying nearby.
I got involved and kicked out at Krycek, hitting him in the side
of his stomach. He fell down coughing. Mulder stood up, breathing
heavily, and wiped his forehead.
"Good morning," said someone behind me, and I turned to see
another man, this one tall, old, imposing. He held a lit cigarette.
Mulder stood there, with expressions on his face bouncing between
contempt, anger, and fear. It gave Krycek time to grab one of the guns
and stand with it at the back of Mulder's head.
"Stop," the Smoking Man said calmly to Krycek.
"Sir," Krycek protested. "Mulder had interfered with an
operation. It's our imperative to end his interference."
"It's too late," the Smoking Man answered. "The operation's
cover has been blown, literally." He took a drag on his cigarette. "Of
course, you do realize, agent Mulder, that the evidence you seized at the
Pentagon won't even make it to the security holds."
Mulder scowled. Krycek lowered the gun.
"Especially when you consider we've set other secret terminal
points elsewhere across the nation. Losing this one house is just going
to justify certain expenses. I'd like to thank you for that at least,
Mulder. All that work, all that effort. No evidence, no case, just
suggestion, possibility, theory, conjecture."
"Where's Scully?" Mulder asked.
The Smoking Man took another puff. "I can neither confirm nor
deny any information regarding her case. The FBI, I must admit, has lost
a good agent."
"WHERE?"
The other man shook his head. "And where will that get you? Will
it really prove anything?"
Mulder stared at him incredulously.
"There's every possibility she's gone for good, Mulder," he
continued. "You're missing the point of my conversation. Like I said,
you work so hard, so desparately to prove your cases, and yet the facts
of each case can never see the light of day."
He dragged the cigarette slowly, finally exhaling a huge, pale
cloud. "Other men, they would have quit by now. Men your age, they've
settled down, met someone, tried raising families like their fathers
before them did, probably try some golf. Got on with their lives.
"You don't seem to realize what kind of life you might have away
from the X-Files. And you won't really miss anything, except the loss of
friends, the lack of respect, and the erosion of your sanity dealing with
psychotics and murderers," the Smoking Man paused, taking another puff.
"Even if Scully comes back, you'll still have to face that madness, that
loss. She might come back, but given the nature of the X-Files she could
get lost again."
"You're telling me to quit?" Mulder asked. "Just like that?
Without finding her? Without finding the truth you're so eager to hide?"
"Am I hiding anything, agent Mulder? Can I have such a hold on
something as vague as the `truth'? This truth of yours, can anyone
believe any of it? Does it have any value to anybody? Most people are
just trying to raise their families, keep their jobs. This `truth' you
seek doesn't have any real value."
The Smoking Man nearly finished his cigarette. "As for quitting,
well, I know you, Mulder. You make your own decisions. I'm only asking
you if you know where your life's been and where it's going. I'm
offering you a chance to reconsider your priorities."
I stood there, unable to say anything. Mulder closed his eyes
and thought.
<Mulder thought:>
<And do you believe the voices?>
<...I want to Believe...>
<Well, trainee Mulder, the best thing Albert and I can teach you
is how to enjoy a good hot cup of coffee.>
<I had a clean shot. I had a clean shot and I didn't take it.
And an agent died for that...>
<Scully, we need to talk...>
<Mulder, finding this girl isn't going to help you find your
sister...>
<If it's tea, it's love.>
<Must be fate, Mulder. Root beer.>
<Scully, they've shut us down...>
<I wanted to Believe, but they took the tools away...>
<Why don't you come back to the Academy?...>
<I guess it must be nice now to have a partner who doesn't
question every theory...>
<Hold on...oh, my...Mulder!.....Mulder!...........>
<Maybe you should only worry when the dreams stop...>
Mulder reached up to his chest, and pulled a small cross from his
breast pocket. Without opening his eyes, he said, simply, "You will
never understand what I consider valuable. No deals."
The Smoking Man dropped his cigarette and crushed it with his
left foot. He turned and without a word he walked away. Krycek followed
him, staring back at Mulder with a vicious, vengeful stare. They
disappeared into the fading mist.
Mulder opened his eyes and took a seat on the stone bench. He
waved a hand at the statue. "I've heard that Mark Twain said this statue
was the expression of the whole of human Grief."
A few minutes later, we walked back through the empty parking lot
back to my minivan. Mulder said it was okay for me to drive back to my
place first before taking him home.
On the ride back, Mulder finally went to sleep. He laid on the
back seat and closed his eyes. I think the cross fell from his hand to
the car floor.
I played some Tori Amos on the way home. "Senator, let's be
sincere/ as much as you can/ he called her up and he said/ the new
prosecutor soon will be wanting a word/ so she's got a soft spot for
heels and spurs/ and there's something believing in her voice again/ and
there's something believing/ instead of just leaving/ instead of just
leaving..."
I made it back to my apartment. Mulder was still asleep so I
left him there, with the windows down. I went up to my floor, still
taped off by the yellow police ttape, although you could see some of the
strands had been cut by some of the locals; indeed, the children could be
seen for weeks afterwards wearing them like pagentry banners across their
chests. A chalk outline marked where the large hitman was left to die.
I took about twenty minutes to clean up, then went back down to
drive Mulder home, only to find him gone. I wasn't too sure what had
happened, and for days I was worried the Smoking Man had changed his
mind. However, I noticed the cross was gone; I didn't think any men in
black would have picked up everything, especially since they left my
Pearl Jam tapes in the minivan. Later, I heard Mulder went to L.A. and
enjoyed the night life.
It's now a few days after all the stuff went down, and now things
have gotten back to normal. Why we just had another visit at the Lone
Gunman office by...well, you'll hear about it...

EPILOGUE

On a distant shore, as far away as another star, or probably as
close as an island off Morocco, a lone figure stood silhouetted by the
sunrise, silently praying for an absent friend...

AUTHOR'S NOTES:
This was originally finished before "One Breath," so the exchange
between Mulder and the Smoking Man here is a bit off from what happened
on the show. Other than that I hope I was faithful to the detail and
spirit of the show.
Also, I mispelled Krycek in the earlier bits, so please don't mind.
Thanks again to Peggy for downloading this, and thanks to
<entity@io.org> for telling me to hurry up.
December 9, 1994 11 p.m.

Okay, Peggy, somebody told me I should mention where the statue
is in Washington DC. It took me awhile...I should mention a good source
for finding this is called the Walker Guide to Washington D.C. or
something to that effect.
The statue is by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The original title for
it is the Adams Memorial, created for the suicidal wife of Henry Adams.
It is located in Rock Creek Cemetary. The exact quote from Mark Twain is
in the Walker Guide. In the book "19th Century Sculpture," by H.W.
Janson, there is a picture of Grief on pg.255.

----------------------------------- "I will not be filed, stamped,
Paul Wartenberg briefed, debriefed, or numbered!"
z004799b@bcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us -Number 6.
------------Soon, power will be restored to the Village----------------
------------Be seeing you...