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

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

==========

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

By Joann Humby (jhumby@iee.org)

Summary:
>From Gethsemane to the season premiere. 

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

Episode spoilers for Gethsemane.

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

Joann


===========



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

Hi Scully,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He looked at the keyboard and started to type again.

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

<<
....cont

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-----------

<< 
....cont

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<<
....cont

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

The info is in the file on Tunguska.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<<
..... cont

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

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

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

I had no choice tonight, Scully.

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

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

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

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

I don't know the goodbye words.

Be happy. You deserve it.
Mulder

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

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

Forgive me Dana.

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

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

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

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

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

What a mess.

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

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

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

Bad thought, I beat a retreat to the bathroom.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How can I be OK. I'm shaking.

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

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

"Pick up the gun and hurry up."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who are these people I sold myself to?

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

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



END of Part 1/6


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

Another light blinks out. 

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

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

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

I feel. I feel nothing. I feel fine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another light goes out.

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

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

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

I look at Skinner. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why make the effort over one lousy FBI Agent?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You're looking good, Mr Mulder."

"How is Agent Scully?"

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

"But?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

He's bored with waiting for a response from me so he's decided 
to play games, push for a reaction, but I'm not in the mood. I 
just smile.
 
He smiles back, acknowledges the unspoken 'fuck you' in my 
expression, before continuing. "Maybe you should consider taking 
up modeling."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How do you know?"

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

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

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

"Why as a profiler?"

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

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

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

"Did you enjoy the video of the funeral?"

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

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

Surprised? I was fucking flabbergasted.

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

"I did, didn't I?"

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

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

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

"Move on to what?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"My life as a vigilante?"

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

"A professional vigilante with a pension plan?"

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

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



END of Part 2/6


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

OUT OF TOWN

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

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

Life goes on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You okay?"

"I've been worse."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I mentally thank Skinner again. I shrug, we both know my 
name. I wonder if Chris is Chris's name. "Paul. Paul Miller. 
Pleased to meet you, Chris."
 
He recognizes my hesitation as I say the name, he shrugs 
apologetically in reply.

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

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

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

------

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What the fuck is he talking about?

No. No, they don't mean.

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

"Robbie the robot?"

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

"Do I actually have a choice?"

"Only about the appearance."

"Surprise me."

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

-------

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

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

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

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

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

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

=======
DC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Irony after irony. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

======== 
DC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

=========
LA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They glow differently?"

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

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

"Yeah. You just keep telling yourself that."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's a practice thing."

"A practice thing?"

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

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

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

-----------

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Normal human male response, nothing more."

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

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

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

He nods, a brief uncomfortable nod.

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

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

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

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

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

========== 
DC

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

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

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

Scully watched him closely. Skinner had something to hide.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

-----------

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

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

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

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

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

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



END of Part 4/6


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The further he dug, the less he liked it. Dana Scully was 
operating at some kind of subsistence level. Existing, working, 
but not living. It was not what he had wanted to discover. Now 
that he had, it was impossible to stop chasing.
 
The meeting with Skinner was difficult to arrange. That Skinner 
had played the role of reception committee on the first night had 
been a risk made necessary by the danger of Mulder reacting first 
and thinking later. Mulder had to fight hard with his bosses 
before they accepted that the risk was just as great again now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Shit. Does she have any theories?"

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

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

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

Mulder looked away. "Spooky, huh."

---------

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scully read the letter again.

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

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

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

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

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

--------

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No tears. No laughter. No weakness.



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

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

--------

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

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

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


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


LA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He looked back at the casefile.

========
VEGAS

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

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

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

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

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

The discussion turned to the case.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was another convention only days away. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And you are Mr?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The figure in the shadows stood still. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

21 June 97