Truths & Lies

Truths and Lies 1/5

Things to do in DC when you're dead.

Dead or temporarily past caring. Mulder ditched the car at his apartment and walked. Four miles and an hour later and he was looking around for a suitably nondescript bar to hide in. Somewhere where the expensive suit didn't automatically mark him down as a soft target. He was not in the mood to get mugged, or to fight back.

The world bothered him tonight. The paranoia was running hot in his veins. So why was he out here, instead of holed up in his apartment? That was something for his psychology training to work on. Though, perhaps it was a little too easy a problem to count as a challenge.

Too scared to go home. Too aware of the shadows of the bloodstains left by the body of a man who wasn't him, but who could have been. Too self conscious about the hole in the ceiling that had taken away the job a home's supposed to do, the spyhole that had stopped it from being a hiding place. Too alert to its emptiness and his own.

Why hadn't he told Scully before they left town. Just said it. Just told her that the case wasn't an X-File. Why couldn't he tell her any of it?

It was important to her. Of course. It was personal now. She'd been swept into it by forces unseen. She still bristled with the novelty of it.

It was personal. He'd been born into it. The family business.

She wanted to get closer to the conspiracy? She had a chunk of it in her neck. Not enough?

She wanted him to get closer? How? Take up their fucking job offer?

His eyes hurt. Loser, his brain suggested. Go home or pull yourself together. So he let his mind blank over, tune himself out. Let himself watch the bar like it was a bad TV movie.

A couple of beers and some dull music on the juke box and some trivial conversations overheard later and Mulder was starting to ease up. The lump in his throat was fading, he was not in danger of bursting into tears if someone said hello, nor of drawing his gun if someone slammed a door. He would live to fight another day. For better or worse, the mood had passed and now he was able to sit back in his chair and observe.

The couple who weren't married, not to each other at any rate. The couples who weren't yet couples. The men who were on their way home. The men who weren't. The woman who'd been stood up by her date. He moved his eyes quickly on from her. Just because "hello" wouldn't make him curl up in a tight little ball and hide didn't mean he wanted to risk talking to anyone.

The squeak of the phone in his pocket demanded his attention, saved by the bell. Frohike had some more news. He shook himself back into the present, paid the barman and slipped away. Quickly found a cab to take him to the Lone Gunman office.

Skinner's office was uncomfortable today, darkly claustrophobic and Skinner wasn't sure why. He studied the two Agents sitting in his visitors' chairs. The loss of synchronization in their movements and conversation were the most obvious signals of the shift that had taken place since Scully's return to work a few weeks ago. However out of step with the rest of the Bureau they might have seemed, they had always seemed united, until now.

Neat was the word that came into Skinner's head as he looked at Scully. She was sitting, poised in quiet concentration. It was one of her customary poses, her legs held tidily parallel and her hands resting lightly on her lap. Her shoulders were firm and straight, her head was held high. Her eyes looked directly ahead, fixed carefully on Skinner's face. Except when her partner spoke, then her eyes drifted to stare at her fingernails.

Mulder was arranged differently, sat far back in the chair, almost slouched. An open posture, determinedly at odds with the tension that Skinner detected in the man's muscles. The more Mulder tried to appear as if everything was normal, the less at ease he actually looked.

It just didn't fit together. Scully had chosen the case, they had closed it in a day, the local PD was grateful for the Bureau's assistance. So, what had gone wrong? Skinner thanked Scully for her report and dismissed her. He turned his attention to Mulder, who had sat up a little straighter as soon as Scully moved to leave. The two men waited until she closed the door.

"I won't profess to understand what's going on here. I always assumed that you respected Agent Scully. That it would not require an order from me to get you to act on cases she recommends. I was disappointed that I had to order you to do it. I'm even more disappointed it has led to conflict between you." Skinner sat back in his chair, not quite believing his words even as he said them, but still imbuing them with enough authority to guarantee that Mulder would answer.

Mulder slowly shifted to sit up absolutely straight and took a careful deep breath before replying. "I think Agent Scully was anticipating something more from the case, Sir."

Skinner paused at that, hesitated, a sudden flicker of recognition in the back of his mind. He rose and paced the office for a few minutes while the thought took shape, circling the room until finally moving to sit in the chair recently vacated by Dana Scully. "She thought it was a real abduction case?"

"I believe so, Sir."

"And you didn't? Even before the trip."

Mulder nodded uncomfortably.

Skinner frowned, slowly stroking a finger over an eyebrow, suppressing the urge to remove his glasses and rub at his suddenly tired eyes. "You told her that?"

"No."

Skinner was up on his feet again. "Why not?"

Mulder didn't reply, just stared determinedly at Skinner's empty chair.

Skinner's voice moved to a tone somewhere above a question and less than an order. "Should I be looking for new Agents?"

Mulder swallowed. "No, Sir. We'll resolve it." It was said with more conviction than the Agent's eyes suggested he felt.

The file Skinner handed Mulder had been kicking around the West Virginia office without attracting much priority for a few weeks. After the latest incident it had been punted straight up to DC. Three children were now missing and no indication of how or why. Except that people who should have been eye witnesses had been unable to offer any clues.

Mulder's eyes changed, Walter Skinner watched as the uncertainty and doubt disappeared. Mulder confirmed after reading only a few paragraphs that they would try and travel up there tonight. Skinner hoped that he was doing the right thing.

Sitting in half shadow of the office, Dana Scully waited for Mulder's footsteps. She'd felt Skinner's discomfort in their meeting. She had planned to ask him for a few private words, to explain why the case had not been what she expected, to inform him that Mulder seemed to have known that fact and yet had kept it from her. Her plan had effectively been pre-empted by Skinner dismissing her and keeping back Mulder. What had they been discussing?

The door opened slowly, yet Scully could still sense who was there. Normally Mulder's arrival would be instant, usually he was so urgent in his movements. Yet, even though in this delay he was performing out of character, she still knew it was him. He slipped quietly into the room and over to his desk without looking at her.

"We've got a case." He said quickly. "West Virginia. We can leave tonight if that's ok with you."

Another case chosen, another case chosen without input from her. What was it this time? A timber eating monster? A mine possessed by the ghosts of miners past? A ticket for the Knicks game? "May I at least have a look at why we're going?"

He handed her the file. "Three young girls have gone missing in the last two months. No bodies, no ransom demands, no real leads."

He carried on talking as if addressing a room full of people. "Aside from the choice of victim, the cases have one other aspect in common. In each case there were people around who might have been expected to see something, but who actually saw nothing. One girl appears to have vanished from home while she was watching TV with her brother." Voice stumbling slightly, before regaining its impersonal tone. "Another missing from her bed, her friend who was staying overnight slept straight through it. The third went from the living room to the kitchen of her home and never got there."

The photographs in the file slipped from Dana Scully's grasp. It looked like an abduction case. But he'd misled her before. She would force him to be explicit. "What makes you think we're needed on this?"

He dropped his head to rest on his hand, acknowledging the hidden question. "The witness reports, or more precisely the lack of them. The area the girls were taken from. They are all within thirty miles of Glen Aston Airbase.

"Is that significant?" Ice and suspicion in her voice.

A deep breath and careful words. "It's a UFO hotspot. Some would say. It's a base testing secret planes. Some would say. It may have more to do with secret weapons than secret aircraft. It's very high security."

"Secret weapons?"

Mulder shrugged.

They planned their trip. They would leave tonight.

The emotions that built in Dana Scully's chest were threatening to topple her over. She felt them arrive and ripple through, one after another. Fear, hope, doubt, optimism, suspicion. The chase was on. Again. The chase for the kind of people who thought other human beings were toys, pieces to be played with in their games. The ones who thought women were brood mares and children were experimental animals.

She watched him across the room as he dived through files, maps, pulled names and addresses. Not like the other case, this one was serious, this one was real. She hoped.

Another motel, another night in a town whose name she didn't want to know.

Three days they'd been here and in three days they had made no progress.

Crawling through old police files looking for similar incidents had taken most of Dana Scully's time. She'd reinterviewed the families and friends of the missing girls, quizzed neighbors and teachers about the connections between the victims.

Mulder had played soothing, sympathetic games with the girls’ parents. He'd played an even softer and stranger game with the local news reporters. Talking quietly of his optimism that the girls were still alive. Mumbling vague comments about the possibility of their kidnapper releasing them unharmed. Impossible words. But all said with the soft self confidence of a FBI behavioral specialist. And all spoken, "strictly off the record".

There had been no chance for Scully to call him on it. Either he was heading out somewhere while she was journeying to somewhere else, or they were surrounded by strangers. It was as if he was using the police officers, the reporters and the witnesses as a shield. Every time it looked as if he would be left alone with Dana Scully, he found someone or something to pull him urgently away.

Scully had concentrated on building up and understanding the pile of old missing persons reports. The catalogue of girls in the area who had gone missing and been returned was forming a pattern. The stack of hospital records of their mystery illnesses and hurts was growing higher. And Dana Scully's blood pressure was off the scale.

It was something close to fury that had placed her in Mulder's motel room. Confused, mystified anger that had caused her to sit at the table in his room reading through the reports on his computer, rather than her own. She would be in here when he arrived back. He would not avoid her tonight with talk of needing to run, or eat, or do research. Tonight, she would force him to explain himself. Tonight, they would clear the air. She didn't much care about the consequences, hadn't got that far, but she wasn't willing to live in limbo any longer. Either Mulder was an ally, fighting at her side, or he was of no use to her.

She scanned the papers idly, looking for something new in files she'd already read a dozen times. That was when she spotted a folder that she'd never seen before. She read it while she waited and let her temperature rise.

It had always been important in their partnership to make allowances for Mulder's paranoia, Dana Scully knew that. That was why she'd left the lights of his room full on, the curtains open and the door unlocked. After all, if Mulder thought there was someone creeping around in his room, there was no guessing how he might react. She was not surprised that on observing the lights, Mulder knocked on the door of the room rather than entering. "Just me. Door's open." She quickly shouted back.

The delay in opening the door was necessary. Mulder used it to get his breath back. He didn't immediately replace his gun in its holster, that could wait until he was inside the room and could check for himself that all was well. He shivered at that thought and wondered when his nerves had stretched quite this thin. Another deep breath and he placed a bland unconcerned smile on his face. Sure, some bit of his brain whispered, Scully would fall for the supercool veneer even though he still had his gun in his hand. He shook his head in disappointment at his performance and walked in.

A few seconds to read Scully's face and survey the room. Then he returned the gun to its holster. Mulder offered an apologetic half smile. "What's up? Heating failed in your room?"

She shook her head, spoke in a cold demanding voice. "Who's Michael Jordan?"

Eyes narrowed abruptly to a slit, his face became a blank mask. "Michael Jordan? I've heard about living a sheltered life but…"

"Michael James Jordan." Cold angry fire in every syllable she uttered.

A slow breath as Mulder straightened to his full height and angled his head carefully to look directly into the blue ice of Dana Scully's gaze. "You won't recognize him from the photo. He didn't look much like that after I left him in my apartment and you got called to ID him."

She had already guessed that much. So maintaining her composure gave her no problem, the hot anger remained held in check a few millimeters below the surface. "That's his real name?"

A shrug. "So far as I can tell. Ten years with the CIA, left them two years ago for some other branch of public service." Sarcastic words spat out past the choking restriction in Mulder's throat. "A wife and two kids. Seven and nine." A shaky deep breath and a flexing of fingers. "Seems they aren't all just nameless shadow drones with no life."

Silence as she gathered her thoughts, resting her eyes, staring blankly out of the window. Easing up as she let the anger drift deeper inside, frustration and anxiety taking its place immediately under her surface calm. "My God, Mulder. Why didn't you tell me?"

He slumped to sit on the edge of the bed. Leaned forwards to let his elbows rest on his knees and bury his face in his hands. Why hadn't he told her? He'd asked himself that same question over and over again. She deserved to know what it had cost. She deserved to know why he wasn't dancing in the streets over their triumph. Why every step he took was being taken so tentatively. Why he was having to carefully watch every response he made.

She turned back to him. "Are you getting counseling?"

What? Some bit of his mind tried to understand her question. Counseling? Why, did they have some techniques he'd not heard about for bringing back the dead? Or maybe employee services were running a course on how to tell the truth and live with the consequences.

"Mulder?"

The softness of her tone made him look up. Confusion spiraling out of control through his head. Sitting still and keeping quiet, the only way to stop from falling apart.

The softness of her voice was there again. "The hearing cleared you."

The hearing? The good men and true of the Bureau had decided that it was ok to kill and tamper with evidence and lie. Strangely, Mulder didn't find their decision to clear him that reassuring. Convenient. But not reassuring.

"Mulder?"

If she said his name again, he was going to explode. Explode or melt or disappear. He forced some more words out to keep her from pushing. "I expect they buried him at Arlington. You know. Killed in the line of duty." A pause. "Buried what was left of him. Bet they didn't go open casket." Tremors in the barely hissed words.

"Mulder." Less softness, more anxiety now. She stood up and moved towards him, crouching so they would be on the same level as she edged in close to his side.

Too close, she was far too close. He almost fell over in his anxiety to pull away. Rolled quickly off the bed and on to his feet, stumbling backwards until he felt the reassuring security of the wall. Used it as a prop, leaned back, snorted in another breath.

Careful, distinct words from Dana Scully, spoken as if addressing a small child. "You had to do it."

He could have laughed, except for the distinct absence of any humor in the situation. "I had to break in on his surveillance position without any backup? I had to wait until he pulled a gun on me so I could shoot him? I had to blow his head off so I could dump him in my apartment and go on the run with his identity? Or I had to lie about it?"

A little more hesitation in her reply now, as if her words were tasked with picking a way through a minefield. "But they…. The things they do. The things that man had done. The people he'd killed. They don't play to those kind of rules. Sometimes, you have to fight fire with…."

His words crashed in, quickly stopping her before she completed the phrase. Dry, cold tones. "I don't believe in holy wars. I never have."

Her voice came back, soft and scared. "You saved my life."

He drifted, eyes closing as he pushed even more of his weight into the wall, as if by leaning back hard enough he could disappear into its solidity. Hide from the world, from himself. Suddenly taking in a deep breath that seemed to give him back the ability to stand up straight. Cold control. "I never said I worked cheap."

Her next words were a little harsher and even more scared. Not quite a question, not quite a statement. "You don't think it was worth it."

"We both know what I did. Now we're just haggling over the price."

The tears that started to rise in Dana Scully's eyes could have been of anger, could have been of sorrow. She had no way to tell. Nor did Mulder. He quickly headed for the door and vanished into the cold night air.

It took Scully several minutes to get the energy to move. The turmoil in her mind was turning her limbs to jello, it took an unreasonable amount of effort to cover the few yards to return to her own room. She didn't bother to switch the lights on in there. It wasn't that there was anything she wanted to see. She stumbled to the bed and buried her face in the pillows.

He was angry with her. Dana Scully let the thought roll around her head. He was angry with her? Why? Because she'd contracted cancer? Because she'd almost died? Because she hadn't died?

Some part of him didn't want her there. Maybe that was unfair. She tried the thought again. He was going through a shock reaction to killing that man, Michael James Jordan or whatever his name really was. The return of his sister had been anticlimactic, no trumpets had sounded, no bells had rung. Just a brief encounter with a woman who didn't need him. All he'd discovered was his so called family had another set of lies to hide.

The conclusion was inescapable. It wasn't her who shouldn't be there. It was him. Whether the shock and disillusion was temporary or permanent, right now, Mulder wasn't up to seeking the truth. He was in no condition to go out uncovering the liars, the conspirators.

She had to call him on it. She hoped that it could wait until they got back to Washington.

Part 2/5

The calm mask that Mulder was wearing didn't slip for an instant during the briefing with the local PD. The discussion of victims and locations and links continued. People went away talking, reviewing, considering. A place where three girls could be held unseen against their wills for weeks. Mulder forced the pace, made them write locations and theories on whiteboards. He rolled his eyes with feigned disquiet when the local press and TV came wading through, staring at the boards. Smiled politely and begged them not to publish what they'd seen. They nodded their agreement as he reminded them that lives were at stake.

The scene disgusted Dana Scully. The anger she had suppressed the night before had now mixed with something more toxic. Mulder was deliberately misleading the police, the press and most contemptible of all, the victims' families. He no more believed this was the work of some lone psychotic, some serial kidnapper, than she did.

She waited until the room was empty. "You're deliberately sabotaging this investigation."

He stopped the process of loading papers back into files. A flutter of guilt flitted through his eyes before the calm mask returned. "Is that what you'll put in your report?"

"My report?" Her eyes flashed angry warning signs at her partner. "Since when have you cared about my reports? You hardly bother to read them."

He carefully folded his arms on the desk in front of him, ignored the anger in her eyes. "Which one do you want me to quote from?"

A slight, shrill edge to her voice as she replied. "Don't evade the issue. You're lying to these people and I won't be a party to it."

The petulance kicked in before Mulder could stop it. "You've gone along with it for four days. What's the big deal now? What do you want them to do?"

She frowned at the desk before locking eyes with her partner again. "The Airbase. You said it yourself. We've got to get in there past their so called Information Officers and find out what's really going on."

A frustrated shake of the head. "Not until we've got the kids back."

Her eyes widened for an instant before she recovered her poise. "What?"

"You've read all the files, the missing persons' reports, the hospital records. You know the MO as well as I do. Those girls may still be alive. So, we need to offer them an easy way to give the kids back to us alive. Whatever the tests have done, whatever condition they are in."

She froze. "We just wait for them to hand them back?"

His hand wandered into his hair, pushing it restlessly back into place. "What are you suggesting Scully. How big a SWAT team do you reckon it takes to secure and search an Airbase? Who do you think will sign the warrant and authorize the resources?"

"You're giving up?"

Arms calmly folded again, like the manager addressing his staff meeting. "Maybe I'm wrong. Ok. I'm asking you, how would you tackle the problem?"

She kept her eyes locked on his, looked for the weakness in his lies, his evasions. "By telling the truth."

"Which is?"

She almost stammered over that, but got it back on track. "The military are implicated."

"Prove it."

How dare he lay that at her door. Her anger up to now had merely fueled the argument, now it surfaced in its own right, quiet fury. "How can I prove it? You've not even tried to get information from your informants. You've not even tried to get us past security."

"And you have?"

Another shiver hit her body. She rocked back in her chair as if he'd slapped her. Caught herself, sat up straight, forced her voice to remain even. "I don't have your contacts."

Fast, snide reply. "Yes, you do. You're welcome to them. I don't know which side they are on. But, hey, you wanna do a dawn raid based on their advice. Great. I'll arrange for the EMTs." Closed his eyes, suddenly aware of the loss of control in his voice, the way he was attacking her without even trying to win her over. Trying again, softer, but still unable to shed the edge of irritation. "Don't you get it? If the girls are there, they'll be disposed of as soon as they hear we're coming, along with the rest of the evidence."

"So we play dead?" Cold, precise words spoken to the rhythm of a slowly beating metronome.

Paused, took a careful breath and another, waited until he knew his voice wouldn't betray him. Even so, saying this out loud was a chore he didn't want. Didn't want to admit how flimsy the theories were, how feeble their chance of getting the victims back alive. His voice was soft, even, careful. "We make keeping the kids uncomfortable, by getting the press in a feeding frenzy. Whoever has the kids won't want a fullscale FBI serial killer team out here working the area. Who knows what they might stumble over. So, before it gets too hot. If we're lucky. If the kids are alive. They'll drop them back somewhere. I've just suggested the kinds of places we'd find most suitable as drop sites for a psycho, or someone who wanted to act like one. I'm helping them preserve the illusion."

She looked at him, considering, hesitant. "But why won't they just kill them?"

"They might, but if they do, it won't just be us investigating. On the other hand. Three abductions, kids returned, the place will soon get back to normal. It won't get any priority for follow up. They aren't stupid. I hope."

Dana Scully scanned the room as if looking for an escape route. He told a good story. The words she used were spoken as an accusation. "Why now? Why the soft peddling now?"

"Don't Scully. Don't do this to me. Just because I've suspected experimentation, aliens, conspiracy on cases, it doesn't mean I ignored the victims." He stared at the ceiling as if waiting for some hidden message to appear. "One of the first cases we were on. A girl missing, her little brother getting messages from somewhere. We worked the case. Caught a killer. The girl came back. Don't you think I learn anything?" A note that was almost despair in his voice now. "Don't you ever read my reports?"

Her hand came up involuntarily to brush an imaginary strand of hair from her eyes. Who'd changed? Both of them? Closed or postponed, either way the debate stopped when the local police started to drift back into their briefing room.

The two Agents sat back in their seats, letting their pulse rates settle. Harrison, the police chief, dragged a chair over to sit close to Mulder. "The reporters will play it anyway I ask. They owe me some."

Mulder didn't miss a beat, placed a confident expression back on his face. "That's good. I think we'll need all the help we can get."

"Whatever I can." Harrison paused, fixed Mulder with a quiet stare. "I know how it must look. You know those old missing persons cases and everything. But, they came back. No harm done, no evidence of sexual assault or anything like that. If we'd known that someone was taking them, if we'd had any evidence, if the kids remembered something. But we didn't."

"It's understandable. Patterns seldom look like patterns until they are all laid out in one place."

Harrison nodded uncomfortably.

Scully couldn't help but stare.

By the following day and without saying a word, the two Agents had agreed a stand off. Personally and professionally. Because a stand off was the best they could hope for right now. Mulder would continue to lay his breadcrumb trails in the hopes of enticing whoever had the girls to release them. Dana Scully had other fish to fry.

The mound of reports in front of her held the key. Somewhere in that ten year stack of missing persons and hospital records there was evidence. There was something that would point the finger at the guilty party. Scully closed her eyes for a few seconds and waited for the calm place to come back to her. No Mulder, no implant, no panic. Just lots of data to be processed, analyzed and turned into evidence. She picked up the first folder and read the story again.

Glen Aston Airbase. "Secret weapons", Mulder had said. Scully looked at the file he had produced on the base. No particular pattern to the way Mulder had filed information. Whatever the source, whether it was the DOD's budget report, a copy of the National Enquirer, or a hearsay discussion a friend of one of the Lone Gunman guys had conducted with some MUFON member. It was all thrown in here. No weighting given to the significance of the data, nor the quality of the source. Diamonds and dust. Undifferentiated. So far as Dana Scully was concerned at that moment, the file was a microcosm of Mulder's whole approach.

The story was here. In these files. All she had to do was find it.

The attempt to look quietly confident was beginning to wear on Special Agent Fox Mulder. The enthusiasm to react to the FBI man's inexplicable optimism was running out amongst the police officers working the case. The journalists had gone from absurdly grateful for any tidbit of information to hungrily demanding more. Even the stalwart Police Chief was tiring of his self assigned role of running interference to protect the Bureau's Agents.

There was a cloud of disbelief forming. What had actually happened in the last few days since DC had sent in the suits? Nothing. No witnesses, no evidence, no suspects. No different to where they were before the dynamic duo had flown in. Just a cloud of hype and no content.

The grumbles built and Mulder prevaricated. He stared at the blank computer screen in front of him. They wanted a formal behavioral profile for this kidnapper that he'd been talking about. They wanted to put it into local newspapers, local TV, enlist the local citizens. A more pro active approach. Speed things up. After all, if there was a chance the girls were alive, surely every hour was another hour of torment for the victims and their families, another hour nearer to the psycho cracking and killing.

How can we speed it up? They had said. At least that was what they had said in front of Mulder. They'd probably have said more, but Police Chief Harrison was a scrupulously polite man. Mulder could guess what his officers were saying in private. Mulder tried to persuade his fingers to move to the keyboard.

Lies had this habit of multiplying. Layer on layer. Write a profile. Point the finger. He could write something so vague they could accuse half the state and then wait until some concerned citizens jumped to the wrong conclusions about a neighbor. Create a haze of terror until everyone stared at everyone else. He could write something precise, knowing that there would be no matches. He could make everyone run around in circles. Mulder couldn't bring himself to write it down. Vague words spoken aloud were bad enough, but writing was a commitment.

Noisy footsteps at the door. Mulder sat up straight and scowled at the Police Chief who had arrived looking keen to talk. The Agent spoke before Harrison got the chance. Sharp, irritable, self confident. "I need to work on the profile. I'm going to work where I can get some peace and quiet."

Mulder sighed with relief as the startled looking Police Chief turned on his heel and didn't call him on it. It was, Mulder noted uncomfortably, only a matter of time.

Dana Scully wasn't sure if she heard Mulder's return to the motel room or merely sensed it. Certainly, she was in no doubt when a few seconds later she heard his TV flick on, then noted the way in which he quickly turned down the volume. At least he shared some habits with the man she remembered.

The files had been unforthcoming, reading between the lines had never been one of Dana Scully's favorite pastimes. She struggled over the decision. She could hardly bring herself to talk to Mulder right now. She was not ready to listen to him defend himself by attacking her. Yet she would certainly not fail in her duty to the investigation by falling victim to some petty impulse not to ask him what more he knew. She gathered together both the files and her resolution and walked the short distance to Mulder's door.

The knock was familiar. Mulder moved quickly to open the door before his anxiety had too long to build and the action became unnecessarily difficult. He stepped back and allowed Dana Scully into the room.

She walked directly to the table by the window and sat down. "I need some information."

Mulder closed the door and leaned back against it. He gestured for her to continue talking.

"I've been reading the file on the Airbase. You said something. Back in DC. What did you mean by 'secret weapons'?"

Mulder swallowed his reaction. Had they really spoken so little during the case? Surely he'd explained? He shifted his weight uncomfortably as he realized that he had explained nothing. He wanted to apologize, then suddenly realized that he couldn't even do that, because he wasn't sorry. He didn't regret keeping his theories and suspicions from her.

Not this time. This time it was not an oversight. He hadn't told her, because he hadn't wanted to. If he'd told her his ideas about what they were covering up at Glen Aston Airbase, she might have challenged him on how to handle the case. She might have talked him into some new adventure, given him something new to regret.

Stood up straight, took a deep breath, nodded his head. "Biological warfare. The accusation was that they were working on diseases targeted to be more virulent against certain racial groups."

"You base that theory on?"

"The payroll data, you can get a list of employees. There are too many medical Doctors, biologists, chemists on staff for their claimed research on pilot stress and fatigue. Statistically their doctoral theses and their known work before the Airbase are biased towards subjects like genetics, epidimiology and virus structure."

Some part of her mind screamed circumstantial, that gene warfare was beyond the leading edge, that racial targeting was a conspiracy theory myth, why would her government fund such an obscene project? Some part of her mind wanted to warn Mulder about jumping to conclusions, about lack of evidence, about not rushing in. Her thoughts spun for an instant, then she remembered that this time, Mulder had no plans to go in anywhere, rushing or otherwise.

She drew in a breath. "Anything else?"

"Nothing substantiated. Some suggestion that they may be interested in diseases and conditions that seem to have a genetic component." He paused, tried to regain the impersonal momentum he needed to get through the scraps of speculation that had to pass for an hypothesis. "Not hereditary in the direct sense. Things like diabetes, certain classes of cancer."

"For what purpose?"

Angry thoughts swept through his head. Who did she think he was, some kind of mind reading act? The delphic oracle? She'd read the same file. He pushed down the sudden flare up of frustration. Reminded himself that she'd spent five years studiously not reading this kind of stuff, not reading the wild theories of the paranoid fringe. She left that kind of waste of time to him. While she concentrated on medicine, physics. What she termed hard science, real data. Deep breaths, he reminded himself. It was a division of labor that had always served them well.

All he had to do was help her, explain the leap he'd taken. Same as they'd always done, complement each others skills and knowledge. He couldn't get angry with her for not knowing the same things that he did. She had her own specialization. They were a team. Yet, here he sat, suddenly ice cold afraid of what she might do with the information. Of what she might want him to do.

A move to sit on the edge of the bed bought him a little more time. He steadied his voice and his thoughts. "A guess. They are looking for the genetic markers and then trying to identify the triggers that actually cause the disease or condition to develop."

"That's why they would need test subjects."

A shrug of already hunched shoulders was his only reply.

Dana Scully looked at him carefully. It was obvious that he hadn't wanted to have even this discussion. He looked so unsure of himself. So uncertain. Maybe they couldn't wait until the case was over before she called him on it. Maybe if she didn't act soon, then these personal issues of his might endanger this case, might kill those missing girls.

Her words were chosen with care, spoken softly, but confidently. "I think it would be wise for us to get extra Agents in as backup."

Mulder shivered a little at that, so they were back to square one. He tried not to make the urge to swallow too obvious. "Not yet. We've not given them long enough to return the girls. Even if they want to hand them back, they'll need to clean them up, maybe get drugs out of their bodies, give them food that can't be traced. Make sure there's nothing to link them to the kids. I don't want to panic them into a mistake."

"You still think they are alive?"

"The MO says they are alive. The other kids who disappeared came back."

Scully wanted to believe. "But they were always returned quicker than this."

"Yes. But."

"But what?"

"It's a hunch." He shifted nervously. "That's all."

She stiffened a little. Was that all? Or was he holding out on her. She'd had to fight for scraps of information on this case. "Just a hunch? No informants? No hacked records? No sightings?"

"Just a hunch." He shrugged stiffly as he replied.

This was hard. She could accept that with Mulder's record, even on unsubstantiated hunches, he might be right. They couldn't just launch an assault on the Airbase, official or otherwise. It would be too risky if the girls were alive. But they couldn't just let the perpetrators off the hook. There had to be something they could do.

They couldn't just let them play with people like this and get off scot free. One of the kids had been gone for two months. How long would they keep the next guinea pig for? What about the experiments that went wrong, the mistakes that might kill or injure. The kids might get returned intact, but then what? Would they return with timebombs in their bodies? Had they learned to trigger those diseases? What if their experiments were a success?

Her voice was tight. "I think you need to take a break, get off this case. I'm sure Skinner will approve it."

Mulder stared up at her, initially too stunned to reply. He gave himself a few seconds. He spoke slowly. "You're suggesting that we pull out? Go back to DC?"

She replied without hesitation. "I'll stay here to preserve continuity."

"You're saying that I should go back?" Voice controlled but distorted as if by a shortage of breath.

She shook her head in a brief instant of frustration, talked softly, but firmly. "You can bluff your way past the reporters and the local PD, but you can't bluff me. You need time to work things out. A lot has happened. You shouldn't be handling this kind of case until you are able to resolve some of your issues."

His hands stiffened into fists, his voice took on a cold and impersonal edge. "Are you implying mismanagement of the case?"

"The case is placing you under too much stress. I'm only suggesting that you pull back for your own good."

Sharp, professional accent in his tones now. "You have some evidence to back up your judgment?"

"I have five years of experience working alongside you. I'm a trained Doctor and Agent. If I tell Skinner that you need time out, he'll back me up."

"That's your evidence?"

She paused, took a deep breath. She hadn't wanted it to come to this. She had hoped that he would have seen his problems, understood that they couldn't just be ignored. Dispassionate analysis then, maybe that was something that he would understand, perhaps that would get through to him.

Her voice was clear and precise as it itemized his failures. "You've spoken to reporters without consulting a Bureau press officer. You've lied to the PD, asking them to conduct searches that you confirmed to me, you already knew were hopeless. You've failed to offer a formal behavioral profile despite repeated requests from the local authorities. When challenged on these issues by me, you became withdrawn and hostile. Last night, when I questioned you on Michael Jordan's death and its impact on you, you ran away." She paused, studied her silent partner as he sat slumped forward on the edge of the bed. "Do I need to go on?"

He slowly shifted his head to look at her, jaw tightening as he swallowed back part of his reaction. "No. I understand you perfectly." Deep even breaths. "It's a good story, but we both know that those aren't your real reasons for being angry with me."

She hesitated, started to stammer a reply, but Mulder spoke again before she got the chance. "What is it? What do you really want me to do? Make a hole in the Airbase's electrified fence and see how close to the hospital unit I can get before someone shoots me? Make a speech to the press to tell them I used to believe in little gray men, but now I reckon it's the men in gray suits who steal little girls? What's your best hope in this case, Scully? That the kids are dead and you can find evidence when you autopsy the bodies?"

They both gasped at that.

The silence fell between them. It was as if they'd been stood on the ice flow waiting and now the crack had appeared and they were drifting apart, each on their own piece of the glacier.

Unfair. Bastard. He knew better than that. She wanted the girls back safe and well. She had agreed to go along with his softly, softly scheme to give them time to return them. In the absence of something more positive, it remained the best hope. But that was all it was. It shouldn't rule out other lines of inquiry. It shouldn't stop them from finding out more about Glen Aston base. It didn't mean that her partner wasn't falling apart in front of her eyes. She concentrated hard on not losing her temper, on suppressing the frustration that was threatening to shred her heart.

She looked back over him. He had collapsed as soon as he said it, shrunk back like a deflated balloon. His shoulders were hunched tightly together and his head hung forward, eyes fixed on the floor, studying his shoes. His breathing was shallow, fast and uncomfortable. Falling apart. It was still in her power to stop him falling apart.

She moved forward towards the bed, crouching on her heels in front of him to get close to his eye level. "Mulder." Soft spoken, anxious. "This isn't you talking, Mulder. You know me better than that. You must know that I'm committed to seeing those kids safe." A pause. "But there's no reason for that to be at the cost of your health. Let someone else handle it." She reached out a hand to rest on his clenched fist.

He took a deep breath, didn't look up. "I'm sorry Scully. I shouldn't have said that. You didn't deserve it. It won't happen again. Let's get through this case, then I'll..." A pause, the words left incomplete, the thought left incomplete.

Mulder slowly lifted his head to look at her, carefully pulled his hands away from her touch. He pushed himself to his feet, stretching himself upright, offered her his hand to help her stand. "Scully. Thank you. I need to think about what you said."

For an instant, she waited, torn between the need to finish what she had started, not wanting to let it drop and yet at the same time feeling a desperate need for space for herself, room to get her bearings. She would back away, maybe all he really needed was time to think, then he would understand that he needed to deal with this himself, then he would see he needed help. Nothing lost. It could wait until tomorrow, it would have to.

She carefully gathered up her papers and returned to her own room.

It was only a few minutes later that she heard the door of his room slam. By the time she reached the window, he was already getting into his car. By the time she reached the door, he was already pulling away from the motel.

Scully turned back to the files, wiped angrily at her eye with her shirt cuff. Damn it. This was getting old, fast. If he hadn't come to his senses by the morning then she would call Skinner, get Mulder pulled off this case. She was too tired to play nursemaid.

Conditions with a genetic component? She rearranged the files. Did disappearances run in families? Had any of the Airbase staff had family members go missing? What was in the medical history of the three missing girls? What about the families of the missing girls?

At least now she had somewhere to start.

At least Mulder had given her that. Would it really have been so difficult for him to have just told her this at the start of the case? What else had he been holding out on her. She bit down her anger. He was in trouble. His treatment of her was just a symptom of that. Skinner would back her up.

Right now though, she had work to do.

Part 3/5

The following morning, Mulder's car was still missing.

A brief conversation with the motel manager and she was in Mulder's empty room. The bed remained undisturbed, apart from the creases marking where he'd sat as they'd argued the evening before. Scully stared carefully around the room, looking for evidence. Evidence of what?

Deep breaths. Observe, analyze. His computer was missing. No sign of his briefcase. She walked into the bathroom, he'd taken his travel bag. He hadn't repacked his case, his suits were still hanging in the wardrobe. He'd thought about this. He'd packed what he needed. He had planned to stay away overnight. Evidence then, but of what? That her partner had hit his working limit, got into his car and run away to cool off?

The dialing tone of the room's phone purred in her ear for a long time before she could force her reluctant fingers to key in Mulder's cellular number. She was not really that surprised when she heard it ringing, tucked neatly on the shelf of the bedside cabinet, recharging. Her next call was to Assistant Director Walter Skinner. She hit the instant brick wall of being told that he was in a meeting. She left a message with his Admin Assistant. Mulder, missing. Scully, concerned. A new variant on a too familiar old story.

She added his cell phone to the case files in her bag and made her way to the police station, grateful for the second rental car. The car which up until now, she recognized, had been just another one of his techniques for avoiding being alone with her.

The locals were in a frenzy when she arrived at the station and then mildly disappointed when they realized that Mulder wasn't following her into the building.

A journalist cornered her. "Mulder. He's supposed to be a top class profiler. Right?"

She grimaced at the over familiarity of the approach. She was in no mood to chat. She needed to get the assistance of the local police. Only basic good manners reminded her to answer, she might need everyone's assistance later. "Agent Mulder has a very good record. If you'll excuse me." She pushed her way onward into the main briefing room that had been serving both as the command center for the case and as the Agents' temporary office.

She looked quickly around, hoping to spot the Police Chief among the mass of faces. "Agent Scully." A young officer pushed a copy of a fax into her hand. She glanced down at the papers. A profile, FBI headed notepaper and all, received that morning from Mulder.

While she was still scanning the headlines from the fax, trying to digest what Mulder had said, her phone rang. She dug into her bag and realized that her phone had a flat battery and that it was actually Mulder's phone that was squawking for attention. She scowled a little at that, then quickly pressed the answer key. Skinner's Assistant was on the line and complaining about not having been able to reach her on her own number. Scully apologized. That damned argument with Mulder last night had left her so distracted that she'd forgotten to recharge her phone.

When Skinner's voice arrived, she heard his instant concern. "Agent Scully. Is there a problem?"

Yes, is there a problem? She moved to a quiet section of the room, cupping her hand over the phone in an attempt to maintain privacy as she spoke. "Agent Mulder isn't here, Sir."

"I'm aware of that, Agent Scully. He only left here a couple of hours ago. Has there been a breakthrough?" A pause. "Is there a problem?"

She quickly assessed the information in Skinner's words. Mulder had driven back to DC. He'd written the profile and faxed it to the PD. He just hadn't bothered to keep her informed about his plans. Scully took a deep breath and considered her options. "Agent Mulder is having some difficulties, Sir."

"Difficulties?"

"I believe the stress of recent weeks." She hesitated, she believed what? "I believe that his judgment has been affected. His behavior has been unusual. I am concerned."

The relief she had felt as she forced the statement out was short lived. Skinner's voice was cautious. "Agent Mulder seemed fine when I spoke to him this morning. I've approved the strategy he's adopting, including the press appeal for witnesses." A pause. "I need to ask, Agent Scully. Can this wait until the case closes?"

Could it? She watched her breathing. "I don't know."

The silence answered her. It was as if Skinner was so surprised by her uncertainty that he couldn't think of a response. His reply when it finally came was brisk. "I'd like to see you both back here tomorrow." A few seconds delay, then a hesitancy in his voice that sounded almost like anxiety. "We'd better make that friday. I'm at a conference."

"Sir."

"If it needs to be sooner, I can arrange for someone else to see you and Agent Mulder. Otherwise. Please keep me informed. If things deteriorate, I'll pull you out immediately."

Scully turned around, suddenly feeling conscious of the staring eyes of a dozen members of the local PD boring into her back. She made sure her glare was hard enough to make them at least pretend to get on with their work. Was she wrong? Mulder was on his way back to join her on the case. Time to think. She had his profile in her hands. She would read it. She would add it to the information she had gathered for herself from the medical and other files. They would discuss it. It could wait a few more hours. "I'll talk to him, Sir."

"Ok. Agent Scully. Keep me informed."

"Yes, Sir." She pressed the button to hang up the call and stood for a moment staring at the phone, controlling her breathing, regaining her poise.

The Police Chief found her, before she found him. He noted her tense posture and her anxious tone of voice. He suggested that she borrow his office if she needed somewhere quiet to read the fax. The briefing room was getting noisier by the minute as officers debated the profile from Mulder and argued the next steps. Scully was grateful for the chance to get out of there and concentrate.

She scanned quickly through the fax and realized that there was a second document in the pile. As well as the profile, there was a brief note addressed to her. 'Needed something, had to return to DC. Forgot my phone. Yours was off. Sorry. Back around lunch.' She tried to analyze her reaction. Was she upset or relieved? Just angry. She looked at the heading and realized that he'd directed the same fax to the motel and to her email account. All that adrenaline, panicking roller coaster, that she'd gone through was needless. He'd put her through that crap, just because he couldn't face talking to her last night.

It was after she read the profile for the second time that Dana Scully started to think about the task in hand.

Running the gauntlet of reporters and police officers was the easy part for Fox Mulder. The six hour drive back from DC had ruffled the suit, the lack of sleep had dulled his eyes. Which was why Mulder was grateful that years of practice had given him the ability to walk into a police station like he owned the place. It was an approach he seldom used, Federal arrogance was only an occasionally useful behavior when working an X-File.

Mulder made careful eye contact with Police Chief Harrison and ignored everyone else. "Good afternoon, Sir. I'm sorry that I couldn't get back sooner. I'd like to speak with Agent Scully, if I may." Softly polite. Even though Harrison had originally planned to talk to Mulder immediately upon his arrival, he'd forgotten it in the face of the Agent's respectful tone.

"I loaned her my office. She handled the briefing. Your profile was..."

A single quick nod of the head. "I look forward to updating you, Sir." Mulder moved forward past the Chief and down the corridor towards the office before the man got the chance to say anything more.

Mulder forced a smile of acknowledgment in answer to the secretary's offer of coffee and kept on walking. He paused for a few seconds when he arrived. The easy bit of the journey was over. Mulder choked down a couple of deep breaths, pushed the door open and went inside.

Scully looked up at him as he walked into the room. He let out the deep breath he was holding and gave a brief half smile, grateful for the absence of the animosity that he'd prepared himself to see in her eyes. He hadn't been sure how she'd be taking this. His vanishing act. The faxed explanation. The profile.

Another deep breath and he started to launch into an apology. Her raised hand and shake of the head stopped him. Dana Scully got straight down to business, brisk and professional. "Who's the guy in the profile?"

Mulder lowered himself into the chair. "Yeah. It is a bit specific, isn't it? I just didn't want any concerned citizens blaming their next door neighbors. The profile is an excellent match for about a dozen of the Doctors on the Airbase. It's actually based on a guy called Lance Ellis. He's been there for a year. Long enough for him to at least know rumors about the tests. But someone who maybe has not yet had any personal contact with the test subjects."

Scully nodded and leaned forward conspiratorially. "I had a lot of fun trying to justify the details in your profile. I mean, 'born in the east, educated in the west'. It really sounds like a rabbit out of the hat kind of story. Or, in this instance, a whole bunch of rabbits."

"What did you tell them?"

"Major dislocation between the UNSUB and his family occurring during adolescence. He went as far from home as he could." She paused, a faint shake of the head at the memory. "Course. I also told them profiles aren't hundred percent gospel. Could be a California kid, Eastern College. Maybe a foreign university. Family could have moved, while he stayed put. Divorce. Death of a parent. Whatever."

Mulder replied with a light smile and tipped his head back. "Great. Did they buy it?"

"Hook, line and sinker. I didn't even have to mention Glen Aston. They came up with it for me. They want to get personnel files, start house to house with current and past Airbase personnel, formal interviews with the medical staff who might match."

"Thanks." A shaky deep breath, grateful that things were moving this way. Mulder closed his eyes for an instant, opened them when he realized that if he didn't open them straight away, then he would fall asleep right here.

The young woman admin clerk entered, carrying coffee and doughnuts. The Agents thanked her. Mulder was grateful for the momentary distraction. Scully's unerringly calm demeanor was still giving away nothing of her mood.

Scully looked up from her cup of coffee, carefully neutral tone. "So. What next?"

Mulder rubbed at his forehead. Now he'd heard that, with Scully's support, the profile had triggered the right reaction, he'd given himself permission to feel tired, but the tiredness was hitting him a little too fast. "A quick word with the police chief. I'll suggest a few things for the press statement. I don't want them to just wade in. Soft build up. I don't want to panic anyone. Just give the right people enough time to worry about one of their staff getting scared when they are interviewed."

Scully nodded. "Ok. We'll talk to him together. Then, I'm taking you back to the motel before you collapse."

A quick smile, Mulder couldn't believe his luck. Scully had not only understood how to play the profile despite the fact that he'd had no time to brief her, she was going along with the plan. She didn't even seem to be angry with him.

Twenty minutes later and Mulder was belting himself into the passenger seat for the run back to the motel. He closed his eyes and was startled by the sudden push that Scully gave to his shoulder to gain his attention. "We're there."

"What? Oh." He looked around and realized that he' must have fallen asleep instantly he'd settled into the car and that they were already back in the parking lot of their motel.

"Have you eaten?"

He shrugged the reply. "Breakfast, before I left DC. And that doughnut."

"Let's get something. I need to talk to you."

The sudden shiver that ran up his spine didn't surprise him. He could avoid the confrontation, of course. Another yawn and a 'later', would work just fine. But postponing it wouldn't really help. Best to get it over and done with. "Look, Scully. I'm sorry about not discussing this with you. My taking off."

"And presenting me with a fait accompli?

"I'm sorry."

"I doubt that. Let's get in that Diner. It's too cold and I'm too hungry to stand and talk about it out here."

The lights and people meant sanctuary so far as Mulder was concerned. Scully was far too polite and way too professional to launch an all out attack on him in there, in front of whoever might be working or eating. He agreed to her suggestion.

They were rather late for lunch, so the Diner was pretty much deserted. They found a comfortably secluded corner table and ordered food.

A public place. Food and drink to distract them. Mulder wondered why Scully was handling it like this. Why not privately in one of their rooms? Ah. Neutral territory and observers. Even if one of them wanted to shout at the other, their sense of professional decorum would intervene. Food and drink, so if things got too personal or too tense, they could play with the cutlery, take another mouthful, give themselves a few seconds of breathing space. Dana Scully had profiled their talk and decided to artificially lower the risk factors. Fox Mulder tried to remember who the psychologist was supposed to be.

Inevitably, Scully set the ball rolling, a neat well placed serve to the edge of the court. "Why did you go back to Washington?"

"I needed to get hold of some files. I asked Frohike for help. I didn't want to use the hotel phone lines."

"You spoke to Skinner."

Mulder tensed at that. "Have you spoken to him?"

"I called him before I found your message. Why did you need to talk to him about this case?"

"He's our boss. If he didn't support our actions, I didn't want to..."

Scully broke in sharply. "Cut the crap, Mulder. 'Our actions'. Ours? You didn't ask me, you didn't even tell me."

"I know and I'm sorry."

"Will you quit with the 'sorry' crap. You trust Frohike and Skinner, but not me? Who else did you visit to plan your strategy with? Marita?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"So, I'm ridiculous. Thanks a bunch, partner." She sighed softly and shook her head. "You've not even bothered to ask about what I've discovered."

Mulder forced himself to sit up straight. She was right. He'd thanked her for her support, but he hadn't even asked for her input. "I'm sor... I'd like to hear whatever you have to say."

She didn't bother to disguise the sarcasm. "Really?" She paused to give the waitress the chance to place their meals on the table. When the woman was a suitable distance away, Scully turned back to Mulder. "The missing girls. Karen's uncle is diabetic, he works on the base. Anna's mother has had breast cancer. Vickie's grandfather became disabled through Alzheimer's at 55."

Mulder nodded.

Scully tried again. "Nothing to say?"

A shrug of the shoulders, an almost dismissive gesture. "It's interesting. Give me a chance to process it. See how we can use it."

"YOU need to process it, to see how WE use it?" She shook her head, decided that her own hurt pride was irrelevant to the conversation. "What happened to the truth, Mulder? Exposing it. Making sure they can't do it again. It's about more than just these three kids." A ragged deep breath. "You know." She stopped, stared down at the food on the plate. Her voice a low whisper. "I always thought, when you hunted Sam, it was about more than just her."

He quietly counted the fries on his plate. Let his fingernails dig a little harder into the surface of the table. Sniffed in a noisy lungfull of air. "It was. Always. About more than just her. It's been a while since she could even be the priority."

Scully's voice was dry and low. "We've not lived up to your expectations, have we?"

Mulder looked up at her, trying to gauge her meaning, suspecting that he knew, but hoping to avoid the thoughts, or at least the words.

A slight rise in her tone. "I was supposed to die, a martyr to the cause. Or be reborn and so grateful for your support that I would give up all my beliefs and accept yours." Scully closed her eyes. "But, not only am I alive, I'm still me." She paused and reopened her eyes, stared hard at her partner's bowed head. "And Sam. Even Sam's not delivering the goods. Just a woman, not a martyr, not your adoring little sister, not your grateful follower."

He let his hand rub at his eyes, slowly recovering his balance, before sitting up straight again and lifting his eyes to hers. Immediately let his gaze move on to stare at a point somewhere behind her on the wall. A delay where seconds seemed like minutes. Careful, precise reply. "No. This isn't about you, or Samantha. The one who doesn't live up to my expectations is me." He pushed carefully back in his chair. "I'm not hungry. I need to get some sleep." A single, unsteady deep breath, then forcing himself briskly to his feet he walked away without looking at her.

Scully's fist hit the table top with more force than she'd intended. The confrontation she'd hoped to avoid had crept up on them despite her good intentions. Suddenly she felt very alone.

This was getting out of hand. It had to stop. They'd scarcely talked during the case. When they had talked, it had been like they were like puppets in a play, acting out a script, forced to repeat the same misadventure. A brief exchange of data; a drift to the personal; and Mulder having to run away.

Run away, literally on a couple of occasions. Right now, he was too tired to run any further than his motel room. He hit the bed with a crunch, forced himself to lie flat instead of curling up; forced himself to keep his eyes open and stare at the ceiling; forced himself to keep his mouth shut instead of screaming.

Waited until his pulse rate had returned to some kind of safety zone, then rolled onto his side and switched on the TV. Mulder knew how wrong the reaction was, Dana Scully only wanted to talk to him, to understand what was wrong. She only wanted to have the input to the case that her abilities and experience justified. She only wanted to be treated as an equal partner, play her deserved role in the decision making.

Mulder knew all that. Yet knowing it, didn't help. Scully had spent five years protecting him from his obsessions, reining him in when he threatened to lose control, rescuing him when he'd run into trouble. It was a job she'd done so efficiently that they had nearly killed her for it.

Then almost without him noticing, the axis of the world had shifted and now Scully was egging him on, pushing him forward. Forward?

Once you've held the gun to your head, what's forward? Pulling the trigger?

Once you've blown someone's face away and stolen their body, what do you do for an encore? Kill for convenience?

Samantha's father had offered him a job. How long before that looked like the logical next step?

Standing on the edge of the precipice, peering down into an abyss, feeling its pull, being urged ever onwards.

Part 4/5

Dana Scully scrambled through the pages of her address book. Marita Covarrubias. Mulder had been so timid and passive on this case he hadn't spoken even to that woman. Scully doubted that he would lie about a thing like that. No problem. Mulder might not feel confident enough to see through these people when they lied. That didn't mean that she couldn't try and gather information of her own. She quickly pushed the buttons on the phone.

It took a few minutes and a couple of bounces around a switchboard before a woman's voice arrived on the line and announced herself as Miss Covarrubias. Dana Scully adopted a briskly polite, professional tone and explained that she was Fox Mulder's partner.

"Is Mr Mulder all right?"

Dana paused at that, of course Marita would assume that the only reason why Scully would make such a call would be that Mulder was in trouble. She quickly brushed that thought aside and swept on. "He's fine. It's a little difficult for him to call you at this time. But we would appreciate your help."

They danced around the subject for a few minutes.

Scully was left to await developments. She smiled grimly as she closed the call. She almost laughed as she reran the discussion that had taken place, all the shadow boxing. No wonder Mulder found it frustrating when everyone around him liked to talk without actually saying anything.

In this case, the caution and ambiguity had been necessary. The next step had to be face to face. A phone line offered no privacy. Scully had merely ensured that Marita would have the opportunity to prepare for a little visit. She quickly packed an overnight bag and headed to her car.

A long drive, lifted only by adrenaline. If Dana Scully had felt lonely when Fox Mulder walked out on her in the Diner, right now she felt isolated. High up on the high wire, waiting for the spotlight to fall upon her.

Like flying solo for the first time, a heady blend of fear and exhilaration. She steadied her thoughts and forced her brain to work through the specific questions that she needed to ask. Even amusing herself by rehearsing the exact wording of the exchanges, to ensure that she would give away nothing about their own tactics on the case.

By the time she was scrambling for a parking space, she was ready for war. Marita suggested they talk at her favorite coffee shop.

It seemed to Scully that it was a little late for coffee and a danish. But the cappuccino was rich and the pastry was fresh enough and expensive enough to glisten like a still life in a gallery. Scully remembered how little of that late lunch she had actually eaten after Mulder ran off today and felt no guilt about enjoying the food.

The Agent carefully but surreptitiously studied the slender blonde. Their business suits could have come from the same store. Marita's a little dressier, a little lighter, a little more linen in the mix. Scully half smiled at that, the kind of style that someone who didn't routinely stuff her work wear into a suitcase could choose.

At least there was no cloud of hormone interaction to confuse the discussion. Mulder had seldom talked about Marita, but he had once suggested that he suspected that she might eat her mates following sex. Spared of the need to play Mata Hari, Marita was smilingly polite, but businesslike.

They edged towards the main subject.

Marita Covarrubias's voice was, Scully observed, soft, slightly breathless, but always distinct. "Glen Aston is believed to be a very successful project."

"Successful for who?"

"The people who fund it are pleased with its progress. It's possible that someone may have taken unnecessary risks."

A Code-talker, Scully thought uncomfortably. Could she force a crack in Marita's shiny shell? "Taken risks and killed?"

"That isn't its purpose."

"What is?"

"Medical research. Disease mechanisms. Triggers. But then, you already know that."

Scully nodded. She'd driven how far? Wasted how many hours? To listen to someone tell her what she already knew. "Whatever their intentions, the ends don't justify the means. And I don't trust their intentions. If they need test subjects, they should use adults, people who can give informed consent. Or not."

"I believe that there have been changes in the medical personnel at the local hospital."

"What?"

"That's all I can say. I need to go now. I have things to do."

Scully's hand snaked across the desk to grip Marita's wrist. "Don't play games with me. Mulder might enjoy it, I don't have the time."

Marita quickly pulled her hands away from Scully, a more confidently physical response than Scully had anticipated. The blonde's eyes suddenly became icy, her body abruptly stiff. "I've given you enough." Covarrubias stood up and headed for the door.

Dana Scully half-heartedly considered chasing after her, but rapidly dropped that idea when she realized that, by now, the eyes of most of the customers and all of the staff were on her. Marita was someone else's messenger. She'd passed on her message and left. End of story. After all, short of beating the name of her boss out of her, there was little more Scully could do. Such an assault would not only be illegal, it might even be counter productive. Another day, Marita might have other information to offer. Scully resigned herself to a long drive back to Mulder.

The trouble with having an afternoon siesta was that afterwards, Mulder's sleep patterns were even more screwed up than usual. He'd spent most of the night restlessly flipping between reading and dreaming.

He scanned carefully through the medical histories that Scully had collated. Quietly and methodically going through the tedious task of looking for links between the old missing persons cases and the present and past staff of the base. Patterns, connections, anomalies, anything that might give him a handle on the choice of victim. More particularly anything that might give him leverage to get someone with inside knowledge of the base to open up.

When daylight came, he was grateful to be able to escape for a run in the frosty morning air. He didn't get very far. Ironic that the first thing he saw when he left the bedroom was something that wasn't there. Dana Scully's car was missing.

Great. Payback time.

He checked the motel office and found no messages; checked with the desk officer at the police station; checked his email. Nothing. Not quite a duplicate performance then. He called her cellular number before the panic kicked in too hard.

It was a long time before she replied.

She had left the phone in her coat. Her coat was on the back seat. She'd had to pull in to the side of the road to reply. No problem. She'd be back in a couple of hours.

Mulder threw the phone at the wall as soon as she hung up. No problem. Whatever.

The local newspapers had presented the case just as Mulder had hoped. Dana Scully's tempering of its focus had given the oddly specific profile both enough credibility and enough ambiguity to excite the right reactions.

No way to know if the theory would work. Either the kids would come home, because of, or despite the profile, because that was safer for their abductors. Or the kids would die, because that was safer for their abductors.

If the Police Chief was bothered by the reporters or the fact that his two DC FBI high fliers seemed to be working some kind of bizarre shift system, he never admitted it. If he cared that his briefing room looked like a cross between a zoo and a multi screen lecture hall, he said nothing. Mulder admired Chief Harrison's single minded devotion to the safe return of the missing girls. He dreaded to think what the Harrison's response would be if all that showed up were corpses. Mulder was just grateful that the man was on his side, at least for now.

The barrage of questions from press and police kept Mulder occupied. Harrison had taken Mulder aside once or twice to ask again if there was something else, did Mulder have some other suspicions of his own. Did Mulder have some theories he wasn't yet ready to share with everyone? Mulder lied without hesitation, told the Police Chief that the team knew everything he knew. He tempered his lies with the admission that he was indeed now thinking about the next steps.

Having returned to the motel, Scully had called the station to check on developments. Happy that nothing demanded her immediate presence, she'd caught up on some missing sleep. She ate a combined breakfast and lunch before going in to work.

It must have been some kind of intuition that made Harrison send out a couple of officers to accompany Scully from her car. Her escorts provided her with a fast track through the action. They moved her directly into the office where Mulder was staring blankly at a computer screen

Scully could see why Mulder had opted out of the fray, it was the land of the headless chicken. She raised her eyebrows as she entered the Chief's office and noted the little island of solitude Mulder had carved out for himself. The charming young woman from the front desk had even brought him his very own coffee maker, a couple of mugs and a carton of milk. She couldn't help but admire his nerve.

His eyes followed her across the room and watched her carefully for clues as she settled into a chair. "So. Any luck?"

"You mean, did I get lucky with Marita? More your territory than mine."

He flashed a brief, nervous half smile to acknowledge her attempt at lightheartedness.

She shook her head, realizing that she was suddenly absurdly embarrassed, torn for an instant between telling him that it had been a waste of effort and just lying to try and put the best gloss on the event. "Have there been any staff changes at the local hospital? The one where the girls would be examined if returned."

Mulder nodded. "I'd wondered that. There are a couple of doctors whose names appear on the files of several of the girls who went missing before. Do you want to go and visit?'

"Any reason why we shouldn't leave here immediately?"

Mulder gave a swift shake of the head and motioned in the general direction of the mayhem outside the small office. "Absolutely none."

The hospital was on the other side of town. Scully offered no further account of her ten minute tete a tete with Miss Covarrubias. Mulder asked no questions about her overnight excursion. Ask no questions and you'd be told no lies. Offer no comment and they could avoid another argument. Maybe.

Catherine Jacobs, the hospital administrator, didn't seem surprised to see them. After all, Dr Scully had spoken to a number of staff members on her previous visits. With the permission of the missing girls' families, she'd already taken the records of the girls and many of their relatives. The Agent had also been given access to the key data on the recovery of previous missing persons in the area, name of Doctor, duration of hospital stay and so on.

Dr Jacobs just hoped that they weren't back demanding more case histories. Cooperation was one thing, but she'd already handed over as much information as she could reasonably release without a court order. There was such a thing as confidentiality and Dr Scully was pushing awfully close to Jacobs' limits. Today was the first time the male Agent had joined in the action. Jacobs prepared to do battle. Coffee provided a suitable distraction to give Dr Jacobs the chance to prepare her arguments.

Dana Scully moved them to business. "Is it the practice of the hospital to assign a case to a specific doctor for the duration of treatment?"

Jacobs flinched a little at that. Not a question about another patient, a question about the doctors. She'd read the profile of the kidnapper in the newspaper that morning. Surely the Agents couldn't be suggesting that it might be someone on the hospital staff? She thought back to the specific question and focused on the answer. "Yes. The assignment is made shortly after admission, as soon as basic evaluation or emergency treatment is completed. We seldom need to make changes subsequently."

"How many doctors are on staff, who might be assigned in that way?"

"Thirty, give or take a couple of specialists."

"I received history sheets for eight patients, previous missing persons cases. Could you explain how the choice of doctor would have been made on those specific cases."

Catherine Jacobs reached forwards and took the list of assignments from Dana Scully's hands. She breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the names.

Scully quickly cut in. "What were you expecting to see, Dr Jacobs?"

The dark haired woman looked up, a nervous glance, almost half a smile as she replied. "I thought for one awful moment you were going to show me it was one of my doctors who'd taken those girls. The three doctors here. Well, Clark Jones moved to Los Angeles two years ago. Mike Reed, I'm afraid he was in a car accident two months ago, he's still in rehab. Paul Smith, got some kind of job at a research institute in DC, left six months ago. These case assignments just reflect that they have general surgical and pediatric experience, nothing out of the ordinary."

"Have you replaced them?"

Back on familiar territory, Jacobs was once more, all business. "Not directly, we have had a recruitment freeze for the last year. I'm afraid we have some funding problems with replacements. Mostly we're relying on staff rotation and locum cover."

"Could we see the personnel files for Dr Jones, Dr Reed and Dr Smith?"

Jacobs tensed a little at that. "None of them can be your kidnapper."

Mulder spoke for the first time in the meeting. "You're absolutely right, Dr Jacobs. However, there may be something in their histories that helps. A link to the perpetrator that even they may not realize exists."

Jacobs considered it, thought of three missing girls and that description she'd read in the morning newspaper. "I won't breach confidentiality. But I will give you their medical registration information and their current contact addresses."

Scully nodded appreciatively. "Thank you. We appreciate your assistance on this. We understand the difficulty of your position."

The hospital visit could scarcely have gone better. It seemed to confirm both Marita's words of the previous night and explained the shift in MO this time. The people who took the girls might well have returned them by now, if only they had the right doctor in place at the hospital to manage the after care. The right doctor, who wouldn't ask the wrong questions or put the wrong thing in the file.

The car ride back across town was a little less silent than the journey to the hospital, they were both finding it easier to talk. They planned their campaign.

They could easily get most of the information they needed on the three doctors through the standard academic, medical and FBI databases. After all, they only needed to confirm that it was plausible that these Doctors had been chosen as safe pairs of hands. Just making sure that the jigsaw puzzle kept fitting together as they expected. Even this far down the road they might be wrong, they might have to change tactics. They might stumble across something that offered a better chance of success.

How to handle the investigation of Glen Aston Airbase itself was a more complex issue. How many days of grace was it right to give the managers there, before a change of strategy was needed? How long could they concentrate on stirring up a nervous reaction among the medical staff on the base, before they had to close in?

On the one hand, move too quick and the girls could be killed in a panic, though even that view was tempered by the fact that the girls might, of course, already be dead or marked for death.

On the other hand, move too slow and any evidence would vanish. The doctors who had showed signs of nerves to their bosses would have been coached back to confidence.

The balancing act required a trust and confidence in each other's judgment that both Agents knew that they were still trying to rebuild. It was critical that they kept their nerves, maintained a united front. They tried to promise one another that much, at least.

The discussion flowed, they spoke more than they had done in the last week. They kept it strictly focused on the case, the tactics and the timing. An unspoken truce was keeping them away from their personal danger zones.

It had been a long day. Pulling computer files; soothing the ruffles in the Police Chief's feathers; stalling the press; answering questions from the local police officers about what a soft build up actually meant. Both Agents were grateful when they agreed that it was late enough that they could skip out of the police station with clear consciences.

It felt almost like tempting fate when Scully suggested that they eat at the same Diner that had witnessed yesterday's squabble.

The psychology still held good. A public place would help to enforce the cease fire between them. It hadn't quite worked yesterday. Mulder half smiled at that, maybe it had worked. Maybe if that little spat had taken place in private, then it would have turned so rough that they wouldn't be back on speaking terms now.

Scully studied him. "Penny for 'em."

Mulder relaxed into the chair. "Just thinking. You should have become a shrink. Here we are, back at the scene of the crime. Yet, it works. It's still a place of safety."

Her mouth quirked a little at that. "I just thought we could use some food."

Mulder gave her a quick acknowledging nod and looked down at the menu card.

The food was eaten without mishap. The discussion stayed within acceptable boundaries.

It was almost in a spirit of self congratulation that they decided to risk staying together to drink a final cup of coffee in Mulder's case and chocolate in Scully's.

They'd come so far. Scully decided to press forward. "I got very little from Marita Covarrubias."

"No kidding."

"It was probably a waste of time."

Mulder sighed slightly, let his hand drift to offer a dismissive wave. "You couldn't guess that ahead of time. I never knew whether she'd been primed to offer real information or not. In any case, it pointed out the hospital after care as a possible cause for the delay in releasing the girls. They need to send them back 'cleaner' than normal."

"Actually, I got the impression you had already decided to talk to that hospital administrator about those doctors."

He shrugged in reply. "Only in so far as you'd waved the files under my nose and forced me to pay attention to how your information fitted in with the rest of the MO."

It was a tentative discussion. A mild and unambitious piece of bridge building. They'd gone as far as they could in one evening. They were still smiling nervously when they said goodnight on the doorstep of Dana Scully's bedroom.

The phone call was from the Police Chief. Mulder found himself respecting Harrison a little more each day. Professional courtesy and absolute devotion to the needs of the victims. Of course, it was a two way street. It helped that the high profile of the two Agents on the case would ensure that no criticism would come his way should things go wrong.

Still, Mulder couldn't help but admire the fact that it was the Chief himself who was making the seven thirty call. It wasn't often that Mulder and Scully met someone putting more hours into the case than they were. Mulder felt a few guilty twinges at that, Harrison had played it absolutely straight with them, Mulder had basically spent the last week lying to him. A necessary compromise of principle, Mulder moved swiftly to stop the nagging voice in his brain before it paralyzed him.

Scully was mostly dressed when Mulder knocked on the door to her room but her hair was still wrapped in a towel. She quickly invited him in.

"Some of the girls’ clothing has been found. No sign of the girls yet."

"Who found the clothes?"

"A deputy in some small place forty miles out from here saw a light on in a house he knew should be empty. When he investigated, he found the clothes with the trash."

Scully shook her head. "I seem to remember you wrote that scenario on the wall chart the other day."

"So. No points for originality. I'm just hoping they stay with the rest of the story. Harrison's offered support from here for a sweep of the countryside around the house. I've said we'll meet them out there."

It was a little before 9am that Mulder and Scully arrived at the white painted house on the edge of the tiny community. The house had been empty for months, and the realtor had shown very few people around it in the last few weeks. The forensics crew hadn't arrived but the place was clearly a hive of activity. In fact, Mulder suddenly realized, the Police Chief was throwing the last of the unnecessary personnel out of the building and getting it cordoned off.

Scully looked at Mulder and gave a sad shake of the head. "What do you reckon our chances are for pulling trace evidence off the site?"

"I don't think they were ever better than one in a hundred."

Chief Harrison wandered over to them. "Not my men. A bit of overexcitement I'm afraid. They thought maybe the kids were in there. They've turned it upside down. Ripped the place apart looking for them. Cupboards, loft space, basement, floorboards."

Mulder sighed a little at that. "Floorboards?"

"Too many movies?"

Mulder gave a quick shrug. "It happens. But unless you're dealing with a joinery genius it's pretty obvious."

Harrison looked at Scully then back at Mulder, wondering if it was the voice of experience or just hype. "Anyways. Looks like someone forced the back doors. There's no sign of food or drink, so I guess he didn't keep them here long. Just a stopping off point like you suggested, or maybe just checking out an alternative hiding place. Least, there's no sign of blood anywhere."

"Good. Who's coordinating the search of the area?"

The Chief offered a humble smile. "Me. I guess. I'd appreciate your input on the briefing."

An hour later and the teams were on the road. Starting with the house where they stood and working outwards.

It was four in the afternoon when the call came in from one of the crews.

The Agents were huddling over a map of the area debating options. The Police Chief almost ran into them as he arrived to deliver the news. "We've got the kids, all three. They seem to be ok. Unconscious, drugged. There's a medical crew going up there to take them to the hospital." He pointed out the location on the map, a farm, a couple of miles away.

Mulder and Scully arrived at the farm just as the ambulances were loading up with the girls. Scully quickly moved to join the EMTs for the ride down to the hospital. Mulder would stay at the site and try and improve their chances of finding evidence. If there was any.

The tirade that the Police Chief had delivered to those trampling over the house where the clothes were found had been duly noted. This time the pack were outside, prowling the driveway. Mulder couldn't resist asking one of them if they'd noticed any tire tracks, cigarette butts, litter around the area. Harrison just groaned his disgust as the spectators moved sheepishly away.

The Chief had been getting a briefing over his radio on the way up to the site. He passed what he knew on to Mulder. "Apparently, it's been empty three months. The farmer died last year. His wife's lived here for a while on her own, but she's staying with her daughter out east. Someone's dealing with the crops under contract. But no one's had much reason to go near the house."

Mulder nodded. Water, electricity, furniture, empty of people, but not abandoned. Places to park the car away from prying eyes, yet a place where it would not be a surprise to see a car. An ideal home. Mulder had drawn this specification on the board as well. If only all his UNSUBs would be so well behaved.

More from habit than expectation, Mulder started to survey the building. The kitchen suggested that food had been prepared, but not much. Just enough to make the place look lived in, but not enough to make Mulder believe that had anyone had actually lived here. A too neatly organized piece of disorganization. Mulder guessed that the girls had arrived here the night before.

The electric heater had been running in the room where the girls had been found. They'd had blankets. An UNSUB with a heart.

Mulder reckoned the odds of finding something traceable in the building, whether a fingerprint or anything else, had gone from his first suggestion of one in a hundred, to closer to one in a thousand. Nonetheless, he talked Chief Harrison through the site, suggesting best practice. Habit rather than expectation. He allowed himself to keep the glimmer of hope that suggested maybe Scully would be having more luck at the hospital.

Part 5/5

The girls had been brought back to consciousness for a few seconds to check their responses and then allowed to sleep. It might be quite a while before they were ready to stay awake. Their parents were sat by their beds, as were three of the Chief's best officers. The men had been given strict instructions to call Agent Scully if any of the girls woke up.

Physical examinations had confirmed exactly what Dana Scully had anticipated. No sign of sexual or other physical trauma. The girls had been well cared for during their captivity. They were well nourished. They were clean. Scrubbed surgically freshly sort of clean. The only signs of abuse were the needle marks of drug injections and some bruising that suggested the use of restraints. Their blood samples had gone for analysis. Dana Scully anticipated finding a carefully measured dose of some slow release sedative and little else.

Scully busied herself by talking with the parents. With the prospects for the girls looking so good she was hopeful that one of them might now find it easier to chat. Certainly it did Scully's morale no harm to listen to their thanks and to see the optimism rising in their eyes.

Within a few minutes of Mulder's arrival, Scully had given him what she knew. For the first time in days Dana Scully allowed herself to relax. The mood of relief and the congratulations that permeated the hospital and the police had inspired Scully with hope. Her energy flowed and Mulder could feel the warmth of her confidence in her face and her voice. The next round in their battle was about to start.

Scully told him about the talk she'd just had with Karen Marriot's mother. "Karen has a near photographic memory." The previous missing girls all had no clear memories of their abductions.

"Karen was the first one taken, she's been missing for two months."

"Right." Scully paused. "It may be another reason why they were nervous about returning her sooner. If they were worried about her memory returning."

Mulder nodded at that, maybe there was a way of progressing the case. "And without a friendly doctor at the hospital to check that she wasn't remembering things. They were bound to get nervous."

Suddenly, that little glimmer of hope he'd felt seemed to have somewhere to go. Now, if only they could talk to the girls. The Agents started to look for somewhere to rest while they waited for the girls to regain consciousness.

Harrison took that decision out of their hands. He arranged for two rooms at a hotel only a short walk from the hospital and promised a call just as soon as any of the kids woke up.

The Agents managed to restrain their smirks until they had got back in Mulder's car. Scully couldn't help herself. "Who is that Police Chief? Your Dad?"

"Dad? Dad wouldn't have come up with two cups of coffee, never mind two hotel rooms."

Scully suddenly felt a blast of ice hit her spine. Mulder's family was a sensitive subject. She quickly checked him over. At least, Mulder didn't seem too put out by her remark. In fact he still looked vaguely amused by the whole thing. But they'd been so careful for the last couple of days. She suddenly felt the urge to apologize.

Mulder seemed to sense her unease and changed the subject. "It's ok. It'll take us under an hour to pack up and move motels. Harrison just reckons we won't get any sleep at all unless we're close to the hospital. Good judge of character."

Scully could agree with that.

The hotel near the hospital had the benefit of a good Italian restaurant only a few yards from the door. The ideal venue in more ways than one.

Harrison arranged to meet them there for a celebratory drink before they ate. Thanks and congratulations were exchanged. Mulder evaded Harrison's attempt to quiz them on their chances of getting the man who'd been holding the girls. That could wait for tomorrow, it could wait until they'd completed the study of the farmhouse and until they'd talked to the girls. The police chief reluctantly wished them a good evening.

Despite all that needed to be done, it was still a good moment. Scully hoped it marked a change in their fortunes. Mulder was breathing a sigh of relief that it had come off. They'd got the girls back. The methodology might have been trickery, but fire had been fought with cunning. They settled back comfortably to talk about tomorrow.

All the pieces were in place. The police forensics team would check over the farmhouse, Harrison had arranged for his men to go house to house asking neighbors about cars and visitors.

The crunch of course was how to handle the staff at Glen Aston, tomorrow they should be able to start interviewing some of the doctors from there. It was important to make the interviews count, they would only get one shot. They needed to find the weak links in the chain. The staff who didn't feel comfortable with the work, the ones who doubted that the ends might always justify the means. The quicker they could move the better.

The tests on the girls might yield something, but that seemed unlikely. Scully started to look at some of the things they could try with them and the other girls who had gone missing previously. Maybe they could get the hospital to manage an aftercare program.

The girls might remember something.

There had to be some way to build up a big enough weight of evidence to force some cracks in the walls of secrecy around whatever experiments were underway. Some way to make them pause and look for a better solution than playing with the lives of children.

It was heady stuff, the possibility that they could recover the girls had seemed remote. Now that they'd succeeded, they were looking for more.

For the first time in weeks, Mulder felt at ease. Almost buoyant, secure that he was doing the right thing. Suddenly free of the dread that Scully was in some way behind him, alternately pushing him forward or holding him back. Certain that now she was at his side.

A thrill of excitement ran through Scully's veins. She didn't need revenge, it actually seemed possible that she could again confidently fight for justice. Not just for her, but for all the pawns in other people's games. The chase was on.

The first chore following dinner and their motel move, almost inevitably, was to get the email back up. Mulder wasn't expecting anything, but if Frohike had come up with something new it would be waiting there and neither Mulder nor Scully had logged on all day.

It was the urgent message from Skinner's admin assistant that stood out. Friday. 2pm. The AD's office. The presence of Agents Mulder and Scully. Mandatory. Confirm by return.

Mulder grabbed his phone and quickly pushed in the numbers for Skinner's office. It was Skinner's voice mail that replied. Mulder tried again, this time going for the AD's home number. That attempt reached an answering machine. Mulder was just settling back to try and find Skinner's cellular number when he heard a fast rap on the door. Dana Scully's knock.

Mulder quickly opened the door. "Have you read your mail?"

Scully walked into the room, shaking her head as she did, puzzled by the angry note in Mulder's voice. Her voice was tentative in reply. "Not since yesterday afternoon. Why? Have you got something?"

"Skinner wants us at a meeting tomorrow. Do you know anything about it?"

Scully almost said no, then hesitated, paused for a moment, then suddenly understood. That talk she'd had with Skinner. Just a couple of days ago. Had it really only been a couple of days? Skinner must have told his secretary to schedule a meeting for his return from the conference and to get it confirmed by mail.

Mulder watched her hesitation and a sudden flicker of realization hit him. "You asked him for a meeting?"

"Yes. But not..."

Mulder was suddenly grateful that he'd not reached Skinner. He had been all set to launch into a tirade against conspirators who can make AD's jump like puppets. People who can get Agents recalled from investigations if they are too successful. Mulder's voice now was carefully controlled. "You discussed this with him, when you wanted me pulled off the case? While I was back in DC?"

"But I didn't think that he would recall us to DC just like that."

"What did you tell him?"

Scully tried to remember the words, but they kept slipping away from her.

Mulder's voice became several degrees colder. "Don't worry about it. Skinner will tell me exactly what you said."

"Mulder, look I was worried..."

He turned up the volume and talked straight over her hesitation, ice cold. "I'll see if I can get the meeting rescheduled or at least arrange it so we don't both have to go back at the same time. If you'll excuse me." He carefully turned away from her, moving to sit back on the bed, he looked through his notebook apparently continuing with his hunt to find Skinner's cellular number.

Scully clutched around for words, looking for a way out of this for the two of them. "I'll try and reach him as well. If we both make the request, I'm sure that he'll..."

Mulder nodded his head but didn't look up and said nothing.

As soon as he heard the door shut, he allowed himself to breathe again. Collapsing into tiredness, he let his eyes close. Without instruction, his body curled up tight to protect itself from the sudden chill.

Dana Scully quickly returned to her room and picked up her matching email. It was an impossible situation. She forced her breathing to remain even.

The case was playing out better than they could have hoped. The two of them had actually started working together again, talking about coming out on top for once.

They should be planning their next battle. They should be determining how to handle the interviews with the girls. She should be following up on the bloodwork, the examinations. They should be planning on how to increase the pressure, how to get closer to those people who thought little girls made good guinea pigs, the kind of people who put implants in people's necks, who steal their lives.

Instead she was desperately trying to work out how to get Skinner to postpone the recall to DC.

Skinner's meeting had finished at six, but by the time the after conference drinks had been drunk, it was past eight. After all, it doesn't do to cut and run from a meeting with four other AD's and two Deputy Directors. He'd not taken much pleasure in the dinner they'd ordered afterwards, but home was just an empty apartment. It wasn't like he had something else lined up for the evening.

Even so, he was not in the best of moods as he arrived back at his apartment after midnight. The answering machine was flashing eight messages. His cellphone was telling him about three calls. He almost smiled at that, the conference instructions had included a categorical "no phones" order. If something was really that urgent, some Agent would doubtless be co-opted to be the bearer of the bad tidings.

For a fraction of a second, he considered going directly to bed. Instead he poured a scotch and started to play back the messages. He soon regretted it.

Mulder, sounding furious, demanding to know why they were being recalled, asking who was actually giving the orders. Mulder, sounding embarrassed, apologizing for his previous call. Scully, sounding wretched, asking that their meeting be postponed.

Postpone the meeting? Based on those calls, he'd already left it too late.

Skinner had his best "no argument" voice engaged for the talk with Mulder. He was surprised when Mulder failed to argue.

"I'm pleased to hear that you've recovered the girls. Based on our discussion the other morning, I believe that more than meets your expectations on this case."

Mulder's voice in reply was soft and reasonable. "Yes, Sir. But we won't be able to make an arrest, we haven't got the perpetrator. We need to interview the girls."

From another Agent, Walter Skinner would have viewed the words as a respectful request. From Mulder, in these circumstances, it sounded like the going through the motions prelude to unconditional surrender.

"Agent Mulder. An interview when they are still half drugged could be viewed as unacceptable influencing of the witness. Even if they were adults, it could make their statements inadmissible. If the girls have any statements to make that would support a criminal charge, they will still need to give that evidence in a week's time, a month's time, three months. In front of a Judge, a Grand Jury, a Jury. If it's valid, it will still be valid next week. Have you forgotten how it works?"

"No, Sir."

Skinner wanted to be glad that Mulder was agreeing, but there was a passivity in Mulder's voice that didn't actually make Skinner feel glad at all.

"I'm not letting you and Agent Scully rip one another to shreds over this. I'll speak to you both tomorrow. We'll discuss the closure of the case after that. If we need to."

"Yes, Sir."

Skinner was not a happy man when he put the phone down.

Thanks for coming along for the ride, I hope you enjoyed the journey even if you don't like where we went. - Joann - [email protected]

EPILOGUE/ AUTHOR'S NOTES

"Well it has more closure than some of our other cases….."

This is bit of a departure for me, I don't usually write notes on my stories but I think this story may need some explanation. Most of my stories are written to fit in at a particular point in the show's timeline in terms of plot, situation and characterization. This one started at Redux and headed off in a completely different direction to the show.

Let me explain. Back in S3/4 Scully was allowed to ignore the warnings of the Allentown women about the risk of cancer until she finally became ill. She didn't go after the guilty men. She didn't even go looking for a cure until she was almost on her deathbed. Instead we were asked to believe that Skinner and Mulder had that responsibility.

Nearly half way through S5, Scully has an implant in her neck and the knowledge that potentially there are a whole tribe of little Emily's out there. Yet, if rumors are true, by the time the movie comes around she's thinking about quitting the X-Files.

This story stands that theory on its head. In here, Scully wants to fight, she wants to hit out at the people who hurt her, Emily and the others they've met along the way. But she has a problem, she's so used to playing it by the book that breaking out of that mold means that she needs even more risk taking from Mulder.

Mulder has made steadily more compromises with his conscience since that episode back in S2 "One Breath", where his actions tell us he doesn't want to be a player, ("become the thing I hate"). Then, he'd rather sit at Scully's bedside than get violent revenge.

In Gethsemane/Redux we are shown someone who'll blow a man's head off to steal their ID card. If forced to, I'll buy (but don’t like) an explanation that says Mulder was so high on stress over Scully's impending death that after killing the DOD guy, that just seemed like a minor misdemeanor. I don't accept that after Scully recovers, there's no price to be paid. At least in terms of the need for some soul searching by Mulder, questioning how far he might go.

And then there's Sam. I could talk at length about her significance as a symbol of Mulder's journey and about her role as flesh and blood real person. Instead I'll just say that I don't think it's that easy to walk away from something that has influenced your behavior for twenty odd years. Particularly when the implication is that you have been wasting your time fighting, that you fought only because you don't understand the real motives of the apparent bad guys.

I'll claim this as an alternative universe! Thanks for visiting.

- Joann