Begin: A Moment In the Sun: Part VI *~*~*~* "How is he?" Mulder had yelled over the din of the fans greeting the other players outside the stadium. No one even noticed him; they probably thought he was there to carry the luggage. The driver finally turned off the bus engine and he could hear and breathe a little easier inside the phone booth. "How's my boy?" "I'm fine, thank you for asking, Fox," Phoebe had answered, sounding tired. She was at the payphone around the corner from their apartment, and in the background, he could hear Will whimpering and traffic slogging past. "I meant you too, honey. You know that. How's everything?" "Where are you?" "Detroit. We just got here and we have a game in a few hours. Lou Gehrig's not going to play, so I'm in the line-up; that means I'm batting. Hitting." Someone tapped on the door of the phone booth and he turned, coming face to face with Lefty Gomez through the smudgy glass. Lefty Gomez wanted to use the phone. Mulder still mentally addressed his teammates using both their first and last names: Someone wake Bill Dickey; it's time for practice. Joe Gordon was next in line to use the john. Lou Gehrig wasn't batting today; he wasn't feeling up to it. These were the New York Yankees, for God's sake, and he felt like a kid who got on their bus by mistake while trying to get to his Aunt Greta's in Normal, Illinois. "Where is Detroit?" "A long way from home. Listen, someone else wants the phone. Does William need anything?" "He needs the rent paid, Fox." He looked around the cramped booth like he was going to find an easy answer. "Stall the landlord. I won't get a check for another few weeks. I don't think I can get an advance." He couldn't; he'd already asked. When he hit .300 in The Show, they'd be glad to give him an advance. While he was still an untried rookie, he'd better be glad they were paying him at all. "He said he's going to evict us from the flat if it's not paid by Friday. I can't live like this, Fox." He turned his back to Lefty Gomez and the rest of the team and slouched over the pay phone. "Okay, I'll get it. Don't worry. I'll wire the money tonight and I'll call tomorrow morning at ten to make sure you got it. Give my boy a kiss for me." He waited for her to say something, but there was only the crackle of static over the long-distance line: she'd hung up. He pushed the cradle down to end the connection and asked the operator to put another call through to his parents' number in Boston, fishing the last of the change out of his pocket. He'd called when William was born, eager to tell them they had a grandson instead of the granddaughter Mulder had been expecting. His mother had sent a bouquet of flowers with a hundred dollars cash inside the card: probably her secret cookie jar stash. His father hadn't come to the phone. "Rosa, it's Fox," he told the maid who answered. "I need to talk to Mom, please." "She can't come to the phone, Mr. Fox," the old woman responded. "Is she there, Rosa?" "She and Mr. Mulder: they're both here. She's not gonna be able to come to the phone no more, Mr. Fox." "Did Dad find out she talked to me?" There was silence on the other end of the line. "Do you think he'll talk to me, Rosa? It's important." "No, I don't think so, Mr. Fox." He opened the folding door of the phone booth and bent down pick up the suitcase he'd dropped, nodding politely at Lefty Gomez as though it was just another day. Across the street from the stadium, a sign glowed in a dingy window, a beacon for sure things and last chances. "You got a kid, Mister?" the nosy man behind the counter of the pawnshop had asked as Mulder slipped off his heavy wedding ring, weighing it in his hand. Gold was gold, but he was hoping a family man might get a slightly better deal. "How old?" Providing they didn't fire him after his first game, the Yankees played Detroit again in a month; he could get the ring out of hock then. Phoebe, miserable in the last months of her pregnancy and then exhausted and frustrated as a novice mother, was already accusing him of bedding every woman in the neighborhood. Mulder hadn't even had sex on American soil yet - with Phoebe or otherwise - although he was still optimistic. He wasn't sure how he'd explain coming home without his wedding band, but he'd think of something before he had to face his wife again. At the time, he'd had no idea Phoebe and William wouldn't be there when he got home. "He's three, almost four," Mulder had answered, laying it on the counter. "Months. Three months." *~*~*~* They must be back in Manhattan. The car hit a pothole large enough to swallow a Volkswagen, jarring Mulder awake and reminding him where those five chilidogs with extra onions had gone. A damp beach towel was wadded under his cheek, but otherwise the back seat made a nice, if cramped, bed. Raising his head, he saw Em still asleep on Will's lap in the front seat, her new cat clutched tight. They'd found 'Kitten' prowling the parking lot as they were leaving and Emily had insisted he was homeless. He was friendly and tolerant enough, so they'd agreed, but 'Kitten' was a misnomer for the grizzled old tabby. He peaked out over the collar of Mulder's jacket, which was draped over Emily, surveying his new family with his one good eye. Privately, Mulder thought the animal was on its last leg; he wasn't sure the cat had enough working appendages left to warrant a plural 'legs,' but Emily was in love. Like her mother, she took in strays. The sun had left Mulder and Will bronzed and drowsy, but Scully and Emily's fair skin was pink despite the sunscreen and hats and beach umbrella. Will had one tanned arm around Emily and the other hanging out the window, talking easily with Scully as she drove. "You really put zucchini in it?" Will was saying, "That sounds horrible." "It's like the carrots in carrot cake; you grate them fine and you can't really taste them," Scully responded. "You can add nuts or raisons or applesauce and some people even put in carrots or pears or pineapple. "Carrots should only be eaten with peas. Peas and carrots. And zucchini shouldn't be eaten at all. It's bread? How is it bread?" Mulder smiled to himself, shifted contentedly, and settled back down to his nap. Will would die if he thought anyone besides Scully could hear him blowing his cool cover. Mulder was 'Daddy-O', but Scully was 'Dana,' and she filled some maternal, big sister, intermediary, confidante role in his son's life. If Will had a secret, and he had a file drawer full of them, Scully was more likely to know it than Mulder. "It's a dark, moist cake baked in a loaf pan. Your father likes it. I don't think he realizes it has nutrition in it." "Dad likes just about anything you do," Will said lightly, then turned to look out the open window. He raised his hand, opening his fingers so the cool air caressed them. "Did he tell you what happened this morning?" "Yes, we talked about it." "It wasn't her fault. She's not like that, not usually. I was being disrespectful. Mother- Mother loves Dad as much as she hates him, and every time she looks at me and sees him, she hates me. And when she sees him happy with you, she hates me even more." Mulder knew how badly Scully wanted to say 'She doesn't hate you, Will' but she didn't. "Do you really think she feels that way?" she asked instead. Will hesitated. Poor kid; it couldn't be easy going through life as a helping verb. "No. She doesn't hate me. I don't think she even notices me most of the time. Dad doesn't love her. He never did. She tries to make him pay attention to her, but all she does is annoy him. He doesn't care about her, so it's easier for her to pretend I don't exist." "You're still her son," Scully responded, a hint of anger creeping into her voice. "Like Emily's your daughter?" "Yes," she answered softly. "I'm sorry," he apologized immediately. "I shouldn't have said that. Dad- Dad told me. About Emily's father. That he'd-" The passenger seat squeaked as Will shifted uncomfortably. "That he did something he shouldn't have." Mulder closed his eyes as Scully glanced in the rearview mirror, her gaze hidden by her sunglasses. "Dana-" The seat squeaked again. "He told me because I asked. I didn't tell anyone. And I won't. Dad thinks you were very brave. And so do I." The car slowed, then made a gentle right turn. "Last year, I didn't mean what I said about him and Mother getting together. It wasn't true. Not for a long time. And I shouldn't have called you names. I was just angry. I didn't mean that, either." "I know." He resettled Emily on his lap, then draped his arm out the window again. As Mulder looked up, the skyscrapers whizzed past like giants peering down at the populace, keeping watch as the lazy sun slid into the dark formality of evening. "Do you mind if I live with you? I'm won't be any more trouble." "Do I mind? Of course I don't mind; that's like asking Mulder if he minds if Emily lives with us. He's going to find a bigger place next week." "We're going to need a house bigger than the one he has? Is there something I should know?" Scully cleared her throat, ignoring that. "Mulder is going to stay in New York with you, and once this semester is over, Emily and I are moving back here as well. He's going to find a bigger apartment in Manhattan so you can stay at Packer. There's no sense in you changing schools when you only have one more year. And Emily's doctors are here." "So you finally set a date?" "I'm sure he wants to talk to you about that himself." "I already accidentally overheard him talking to Mother this morning. What about your school? Are you transferring?" "I'll finish this semester, and then take some time off and go back when I can. I'm going to stay home with Emily for right now." "And with the baby?" There was another uncomfortable pause, more throat clearing, then Will meekly added, "Mother asked why you two were getting married. That's what started everything this morning." "There's no baby; that's not why we're getting married," Scully answered almost too softly for Mulder to hear. "He told Mother he wanted a little girl. I guess I was just hoping…" "He said that to her?" "Well, he said it last year in the hospital. They were talking about why you uh, why you were, uh, gone for so long, and he was pretty doped up." Mulder leaned forward and slid his hand between the driver's seat and the door, caressing her hipbone as she drove. Leaving one hand on the steering wheel, she laced her fingers through his and glanced in the rearview mirror. She was still wearing sunglasses, so he couldn't see her eyes, but he could see his reflection in the lenses. "Why can't you just go to school in New York?" Will persisted. "I don't think Dad would care, even after you're married." "I'm not quitting school, I'm just taking some time off. I want to be with Emily right now. And with you," she quickly amended, stopping and putting the car in reverse to back into a parking space. "It's a fulltime job keeping up with you and your dad. Mulder, are you awake back there?" Obviously awake, Mulder sat up and looked around, trying to figure out why they were parked in front of Phoebe's apartment building instead of The Plaza. "Will needs to get his book bag. It has his report in it." "It's due tomorrow," his son added, twisting sideways in the front seat. "I called from the beach and Mother didn't answer. I don't think she's here. I just need to go up and get it." "You and that book bag." Mulder yawned, rubbing the towel indentions on his cheek. "Do you want me to go with you?" Scully had a smug tilt to her chin, indicating that was what she had planned all along. He curled his lip at her like that Elvis kid everyone was going crazy about; as if he hadn't lived thirty-nine fairly productive years on this Earth without her planning his every move. "All I need is my book bag. And some clothes." "Why can't you wear mine?" he responded, wanting to do this as quickly as possible. "Just for tomorrow." They already weren't going to be able to have dinner before the opera, and they were going to be late if they didn't hurry. Mulder liked Faust, and he liked to get there early so he could be sound asleep on Scully's shoulder fifteen minutes into the first act. Will smirked and silently outlined a square in the air with his index fingers. "Besides, the last time I borrowed your clothes, my shorts had 'Scully' written in them. That's too weird to even think about." It wasn't weird; it was the pair Scully slept in, and it was a joke, but as they got out of the car he murmured in his son's ear, "That's because those are the pair with the balls in them." Will gaped at him, too taken aback to speak. That should teach him to call his father 'sku-whah-air.' His son's stunned expression kept Mulder amused through the lobby and on the elevator and he was still grinning as Will unlocked the apartment door. "I knew you must have left them somewhere," Will finally responded, taking six minutes to think up something witty. Mulder swatted him gently on the back of the head, then tousled Will's picture-perfect hair like he was scratching for fleas. "Hey, stop it. What are yo-" Will wound down like an old phonograph and came to a halt. Phoebe was asleep on the sofa, still in her silk robe from that morning and showing more leg than a teenage boy needed to come home to. "She's here," Will whispered, demonstrating an amazing grasp of the obvious. "Just go get what you need," he answered, closing the front door quietly. While Will retrieved his book bag and a few shirts and pairs of slacks from his bedroom, Mulder got the blanket off Phoebe's bed to cover her. He should just let her lie there and be cold, but old habits died hard. Once an albatross necklace, always an albatross necklace. Draping the blanket over her, he noticed the open prescription bottle on the rug and, to his growing discomfort, a half-empty bottle of vodka. "Phoebe, you okay?" he asked tiredly, jostling her. "Phoebe?" She didn't respond, so he picked up the prescription bottle, noting it had been filled at the drugstore three days ago and was now empty. He didn't know what 'Miltown' was, but he was betting she wasn't supposed to take all of it in three days. Opening the window, he called for Scully to come up and saw her quickly get out of the driver's seat and pick up Emily. Pulse; she had a pulse. And she was breathing, but only in little short, shhallow pants. "Don't you dare do this to Will!" he ordered, shaking her shoulders. "Is she okay?" Will asked from the hallway, coming to see what the commotion was about. "What is this?" Mulder asked curtly, holding up the prescription bottle. "Nothing. She just needs some coffee and she'll wake up." "What is it?" he barked. "Tranquilizers; nerve pills." "How many does she usually take?" "The doctor said to take one if she can't sleep." That wasn't an answer. Will was an amateur pharmacist as much as he was an amateur bartender. It had always made Mulder uneasy that he could rattle off does and indications as quickly as Scully. "William, now! This isn't a game!" "If they're 400's, she's not supposed to take more than four a day. If she does, it makes her too groggy." "What's an overdose?" "Twenty-four hundred milligrams. Six pills." "She won't wake up," Mulder told Scully as she came in, handing Emily off to Will and bending over Phoebe. "She took Miltown, 400 milligram tablets. There were two-dozen in this bottle three days ago and it's empty. And vodka." Dana Scully, meet Phoebe Mulder; Phoebe: Scully. "Put her on the floor: flat," Scully ordered, and Mulder shoved the coffee table out of the way and slid his arms under her knees and shoulders, easing her off the sofa. Scully steadied her head, which lolled drunkenly. "Will, call an ambulance." "She just needs some coffee and she'll wake up," Will offered again, holding Emily in the background. "Call an ambulance!" she ordered. "Now. Do it now!" *~*~*~* "We'll keep her under observation for a few days, and then relocate her to a residential facility for long- term treatment," the doctor was explaining, tapping his pen on his clipboard in a way that indicated he felt these big words were wasted on Mulder. He was in charge of many important crazy people and he was in a hurry to get to them. "You mean you'll commit her," Mulder said tiredly, leaning against the cool wall of the long, windowless hospital corridor. "You mean you'll put her in a mental asylum. It was just an accident; she wasn't trying to commit suicide." "Mr. Mulder, she swallowed four times the amount of tranquilizers needed to overdose: that's twenty-four pills. She then drank alcohol so she wouldn't vomit. What do you think she was trying to do?" "I don't know," he mumbled. "I don't." "Of course you don't. We're the professionals. We'll take good care of your wife. Don't worry. And I wanted to tell you: I'm a big fan of yours. Nobody smacked those balls like you did." Mulder had about a thousand responses to that statement, but none seemed worth the effort. "Is she awake?" "She's groggy, but you can see her for a little bit." Mulder stared at the wooden door for several seconds before he pushed it open and stepped into the room. He was tired: tired of her, tired of this game. He wished he had a magic eraser so he could erase her from the picture and leave Will, but it didn't work that way. "Fox?" she said softly, turning her head to him, her pretty eyes glassy and unfocused. This was the psychiatric ward and she was on a suicide watch; the straps around her wrists were fastened to the sides of the bed so she couldn't get up or hurt herself. The nurses had dressed her in a thin white gown that hit mid-thigh and showed some of the best legs in Manhattan and would have been sexy if it hadn't been so pitiful. "Some day, huh?" "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." "I know; it was an accident." "I didn't know you'd want him," Phoebe murmured slowly, blending the phrases together like sugar folding into meringue, "Give me money like… others. Didn't know you'd want to get married." Mulder put his hands on his hips and rolled his head from side to side, trying to make sense of what she was saying. "Is that why you did this? Phoebe, we haven't been married in a decade. Scully's great with Will; why do you care if I marry her?" "Nice guy: sweet, shy, rich. Lonely. Easy mark. But you wouldn't walk away, Fox. Supposed to walk away- Stupid Yank. Wasn't supposed to really get knocked up, but I could've fixed that." "Phoebe, I don't understand." His words didn't even seem to register in her hazy brain. "So nice. Didn't want to be married, but- Nice to me. Like I was worth something and you wanted the baby so much. So, marry the rich chump," she rambled, slurring her words. "Wanted you to want me, but you didn't. Just him," she mumbled, turning her face back to the wall. "Just him." In the industrial-strength insanely white hospital room, his watch ticked loudly as seconds and then minutes passed. Until he was sure she was asleep, Mulder was so still he could feel his pulse throbbing in his palms and the air passing over his lips as he breathed. Then he backed slowly out of the room, blindly feeling his way as he went. He slipped through the doorway as effortlessly as fog, and then pulled the door closed, feeling a little better as the latch clicked into place. "Are you all right, Mr. Mulder?" some young nurse asked when she almost walked into him. "No." No, he was certainly not all right. 'All Right, Mulder' was a town outside of Normal, Illinois; he'd missed that bus a long time ago because of this woman. When he was twenty-three, he'd gotten drunk and been sold a ticket to the suburbs of Hell, Michigan, while his luggage went to Lawyersville, New York. He never had been good with maps and that layover in Intercourse, Pennsylvania had screwed up his sense of direction for too many years. Scully had the car; if he was lost he could always call her to come get him. "Sit down," the little nurse said, looking ready to candy-stripe something as she dragged a chair into the hallway. "Your wife is going to be just fine. You don't need to wworry. Sometimes it's just a little bit scary seeing her like that, but she'll get better. Sit down, Mr. Mulder. Your wife will feel much better tomorrow." Mulder sat. Good dog, Mulder: pat, pat. "She's not my wife; my wife is with the kids. They were upset and Scully took them home. She'll be back at seven," Mulder told Miss Candy-Striper from Happyland, Oklahoma. "Em has to see the doctor. She's sick." "Then who is that?" She pointed at the closed door on the other side of the corridor with a perfectly oval fingernail. He exhaled and shook his head from side to side. "I have no idea." *~*~*~* Mulder took sinister pleasure in thwarting Miss Candy-Striper's mission to spread good cheer. No, he wasn't hungry; no, he didn't want coffee; no, he didn't want to talk; no, he didn't want anything except to occupy his designated chair outside Phoebe's hospital room and wait for Scully and morning. After repeated attempts at brightening his life, she finally gave up and went home at six a.m., which left Mulder a solid hour of wonderfully morose silence. No one else on the ward seemed to give a damn about him, and he liked it that way. Until further notice, the bluebird of happiness had been replaced by the grizzled buzzard of malcontent. Sneakers squeaked down the waxed hospital corridor and came to a stop in front of his chair with a final anxious yelp. Once there, they started rocking back and forth as his son shifted his weight from the dingy canvas tips to the worn rubber heels and back again. When Mulder didn't look up, the shoes eventually came to a standstill except for some nervous toe wiggling. "So, how was Faust?" Will asked, sounding as if he was going eighty miles-per-hour in third gear. Without disturbing his Thinker pose, Mulder answered, "It was great. Wonderful evening: the arias, the ambiance, the women in horned hats and steel underwear. Hey Will, was there anything in your book bag you actually needed yesterday or was it just a ploy to check on your mother when she didn't answer the phone?" The sneakers started rocking again. Mulder's dark moods always made Will nervous, as though teenagers had cornered the market on angst, and being an adult was all sweetness and light. "Yeah, I thought so," Mulder mumbled. He finally raised his head to see Will was holding Emily, still in her bunny-printed pajamas and looking tearfully unhappy. "Why aren't you in school?" he asked tersely, then repeated to Scully as she finally caught up with Will. "Why isn't he in school?" Scully threw up her hands and tilted her head to the right, indicating the joyful series of events that had been the last twelve hours. "The same reason Em's still wearing her pajamas and almost brought Kitten to her doctor's appointment." "The Gods are against you?" "I'm beginning to think so." "You're not the only one." Mulder stood, stretching his aching back. "She's okay, Will. Your mother's just resting; just like she was when you called the nurses' station at one, and at three, and at five." He squinted at his watch. "It's seven, right?" "Seven-oh-five," William corrected. "Yeah," he grunted, rubbing his eyes. "Anyway, the doctor just saw her and she's fine." "My doctor?" Emily asked apprehensively. "No, not your doctor," Scully said immediately. "Another doctor." "I don't want to see my doctor," Emily insisted loudly, turning the nearby nurses' heads. "I don't like him." "I know you don't," her mother responded, then exhaled like she was being deflated through her lips. "Mulder, I brought you clean clothes. Come change; there's a nurses' lounge. Will, watch Emily. Fran," she asked a passing nurse, who seemed to be an old work acquaintance, "Could you keep an eye on them, please?" "Sure, Dana," the woman answered, wrinkling her nose at Emily, who didn't wrinkle back. After so many medical tests, Em distrusted anyone wearing white; even the milkman was under suspicion. Scully picked up the shopping bag she'd brought and walked away, not looking back to see if Mulder was following. He was left standing in front of his son, Em, and the wrinkly-nosed nurse, looking less than master of his domain. Pretty soon he'd be the little old man who stood outside the dressing room holding his wife's purse while she tried on bras. "William, watch Em for a few minutes," Mulder ordered, because Scully saying it wasn't sufficient, and then slouched down the hall after her. Will raised an eyebrow, but kept his mouth shut, at least until his father was out of earshot. "Bad morning?" he asked her, closing the door of the nurses' lounge after them. She looked at him like a disenchanted hero trying to decide if the villain was really worth the bullet or if she should just pistol-whip him and keep walking. "Bad morning?" she answered. "I had to drag Emily out of the hotel and into the car. Literally, drag. She doesn't want any more needles and I can't blame her, although the alternative- Will's been climbing the walls all night; he's upset and he thinks his mother's overdose was his fault. No one has slept. No one ate breakfast except that damn stray cat, who then peed on the rug. I yelled at The Plaza parking valet. I had to make Will pull over and let me drive because he was running red lights. That also involved yelling. Then, he promised Emily a pony to get her out of the car and into the hospital. I think I'm wearing two different shades of beige stockings. Yes, you could say it's been a bad morning." "Any word about the, um, future of the bunny?" She shook her head 'no,' which could mean the rabbit was in no mortal danger or could already have been sentenced to death; he didn't know. "Still no comment," she clarified, not wanting to discuss it. "What about you? You have that 'show me to the scotch' look on your face, and that worries me." "Me? I have a 'look'? You're late; I'm wearing the stupidest grin I own, sweetheart," he retorted, getting both ends of his mouth to tilt upward simultaneously and, with his stubbly beard and disheveled hair, looking like an evil scarecrow. Scully crossed her arms and leaned back against the dented lockers. "You. You have a look. She was your wife; I'm sure you're upset-" "Ex-wife. Ex. Over. Done with. All she is to me is a check I sign every month and a giant pain in the ass." She shook her head again, not buying his act. "I don't need you to come to my rescue and bandage my boo-boos. I'm a big boy. I'm fine." "You're not fine. You're so far from fine, you should have a sign around your neck warning people to keep their fingers clear of the cage because you may bite." He barred his teeth at her and growled, but she didn't look amused. "All right; I'm not fine," he admitted sarcastically. "You could add up all my issues and have a decent Greek play. It was my mother and her overly zealous toileting training. I fear abandonment, indigestion, and big green bugs. When rejected, I narcissistically self-destruct with women who remind me of my sister in order to reinforce my self-serving guilt complex. I'm obsessive, self-centered, insecure, cynical, and still a closet romantic. I read Robert Browning's poems, but I don't admit to liking them. I'd wear women's shoes, but who can find tasteful spike-heeled, thigh-high boots in a size twelve? I repress, project, displace, intellectualize, and sublimate, all in one swoop. No one is ever more disappointed with me than me. And I hate opera. And zucchini bread: it's an aberration of nature. There, I feel much better now. Thank you for listening." "Oh, for God's sake, what's wrong, Mulder?" He started to tell her, then hesitated, then didn't. When she asked again, he shrugged, feeling a dangerous kind of power and eye-of-the-storm calmness in not answering. There was safety in smoldering fury. It was as though he was wearing armor and nothing could hurt him unless he allowed it to. He was bulletproof. He could leap tall buildings in a single bound. "I know you and Phoebe got into it yesterday morning, but you can't possibly think her overdose was your fault." "I don't. For the first time in twenty-seven years, I don't think something is my fault. In fact, I couldn't care less. In fact, I wish we hadn't found her in time." He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, fishing around for his super-human invincibility and only finding some blue lint. He must have left his cape, tights, and phone booth in his other pants. "No, nothing's wrong at all. All right: sit," she requested, backing him toward the sofa and beginning to unbutton the shirt he'd been wearing since Monday morning. It still smelled of sand and ocean air and yesterday, like an innocent memory pressed and preserved between the pages of his mind. "Let's get you cleaned up and maybe you'll feel better." "Damn it, I can dress myself, Scully. I'm not helpless." "I'm just trying to help," she answered angrily, jerking at his buttons. "I can do it faster than you can." "I don't need your Goddamn help!" he barked at her, pulling away. "I don't need anybody's help." Giving up, she sat on the torn vinyl sofa, putting her elbows on her knees and her forehead on her palms. For a second, he thought she was going to cry, but she didn't. She just looked tired and alone. "I'm sorry, honey; I didn't mean to yell. I know you've had a long night." There was a little sink and mirror beside the nurses' lockers, and he rinsed his face, then stared at the lines around his eyes while she didn't answer him. "Sorry," he muttered again. "Is it-" "No. Whatever you're going to guess, the answer is no." He stared through the man in the mirror and said angrily, "Phoebe went to bed with me so I'd give her money for an abortion. That was it; that was the only reason she did it, except she accidentally got knocked up. Really being pregnant wasn't part of the con," he almost spat, speaking as crudely as he felt. "And neither was me wanting to marry her. Will's always told me she hates him and he's right. She got stuck with a kid she never wanted in the first place and a husband she was trying to play for a chump, and I never had a clue." "Does Will know this?" "No, usually she tells him I got drunk and forced her. When she was seventeen, according to Phoebe's math. By my math, she was twenty-six." There was the Gregorian calendar, the Hebrew calendar, and the Phoebe calendar, which ran on dog years and vanity. Scully came to him and, too tired to fight back, he let her hand stay on his shoulder as he leaned over the sink and rested his forehead against the cool, smeary mirror. "I'm so sorry," she said sadly. "I guess I had a crush; she was pretty and fun and one of those girls who made you feel like everything you said to her was brilliant. I knew she didn't love me, but I thought she at least liked me. I did everything I could to make it up to her: I married her, I left school, I alienated my family." He tried to stop talking and couldn't; the words kept spilling out like spaghetti sauce boiling over onto the stovetop. "I keep thinking 'If she didn't want the baby, why didn't she just say so and make both our lives easier?' And then I think of Will and I think 'what kind of man am I that I could even think that?'" "You don't have to love where a child came from to love the child," she said softly, rubbing his back through his wrinkled shirt. "Yeah," he muttered. He turned around and buried his face in her hair, swallowing hard. "Why'd he hafta promise Em a pony? Why not a puppy? Where the hell are we gonna put a pony?" Mulder whispered to her, sniffing. "Basement," she whispered back, holding him close. The buttons on the front of her dress pressed into his chest, and the crinolines under her full blue skirt sighed and compressed as he crushed her against him, afraid she might get away. He ran his hands over her breasts and down and around her waist. His fingertips still touched, but they wouldn't soon. "I hate her," he confessed, exhaling angrily. "I can't think of anything nasty enough to call her." "I can, but I grew up around sailors." His chest rumbled as he almost laughed, then sniffed again. "Sorry, honey. I'm sure you didn't need anything else to deal with today." "Emily sees Dr. Calderon at eight; we're supposed to be there at seven thirty to get ready." "You're really going to try?" "I'll try. I'm not forcing her. I'll cajole, I'll bribe, and I'll plead, though. Will you be okay?" He nodded, loosening his death grip on her body. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll be okay. Let me calm down, get some coffee, and I'll be up to help. Tell Will to go with you and Emily, just in case." "Just in case of what?" He didn't answer. He didn't know. "I'll tell him," she answered. Leaning back against the sink with his eyes closed, he felt her mouth lingering on his for a moment, then heard the door opening and closing as she left. *~*~*~* He could have a hot, flavored beverage that didn't taste like coffee, didn't taste like cocoa, or didn't taste like chicken soup. There were options for extra sweet and extra cream, but none for extra caffeine, which was what he needed. Mulder stared at the buttons and rattled the change in his pocket, trying to decide. Behind him, someone dragged a chair across the floor to the vending machines with a jerky, nerve-wracking screech. Thinking the next machine might have something better, Mulder looked over and saw a boy climbing on a metal folding chair to reach the selection buttons. "Do you need help, buddy?" he asked out of habit, then realizing who it was said, "Gibson? Wow. It's good to see you again; I was worried about you." "Hello, Mr. Mulder. No, thank you, Mr. Mulder. I don't need help," the solemn child responded, pushing the button for chicken soup. A paper cup dropped down and began filling nosily. Noting the boy was wearing hospital pajamas and slippers, Mulder offered, "Do you want me to carry that upstairs for you?" The children's ward was one floor above them and the stairs were just around the corner. "I'm going up anyway." "No, thank you, Mr. Mulder." "Okay. Be careful then. It's hot. Wait and we'll ride the elevator together. I'd like to meet your Mom and Dad." As Mulder dropped his nickels in the slot of the first machine and pushed the buttons, Gibson climbed down from the second one and pushed the little door aside to get his cup. The kid always had seemed to live inside his own head, so it didn't surprise him when Gibson politely said, "Goodbye, Mr. Mulder," and turned away. "Bye," Mulder answered. They were going in the same direction; he could catch up later. He didn't worry until he saw Gibson open a security door marked 'high voltage.' "Whoa; wait a second, buddy. That's the wrong-" He bolted through the door after Gibson, catching up with him in a narrow service corridor. It sloped gently downward and grew gradually smaller until it disappeared into a pinpoint of light far in the distance. Overhead, rusting pipes and ductwork hung from the ceiling like post-modern spiders' webs, and water stains crawled down the cement walls. "You're not supposed to be back here. Come on; I'll walk you upstairs." "I'm supposed to be back here," he asserted. "No, you're not. You'll be in trouble. Big Trouble," Mulder, not the disciplinarian of the house, added. "Where's your mother? Your real mother?" Gibson shrugged, fogging his glasses as he tried to sip his soup. "Stop that. You have parents somewhere. You didn't come from Diana's Rent-a-Kid-to-Impress-Mulder store. Who takes care of you?" From behind his steamed lenses, Gibson blinked in confusion. "Who brought you to the hospital? Why are you here?" 'And why aren't they watching you?' he wanted to ask. Diana had said her 'son' was six, but to Mulder he'd seemed closer to Em's age. After that day in Central Park, he'd called the police to report a possible kidnapping, unsure of exactly how crazy Diana had been. She was insane enough to bug his phone, and Gibson certainly wasn't her son. After searching, the police had concluded no one named 'Diana Fowley' existed, nor did a missing child fitting Gibson's description. They'd 'continue to investigate all avenues,' which was what detectives said when they had no idea and just wanted annoying, crazy people to go away. "Gibson, why are you in the hospital?" he repeated in frustration. Blink. Sip. "I live here." Mulder relaxed, tilting his head from side to side and popping his neck. "Buddy, sometimes I feel like I do too. Come on, let's go find your Mom and Dad." Sighing, Mulder took the cup so Gibson wouldn't burn himself and turned back to the door to the lounge. When he tried the knob, it was locked. "Oh, damn it," he muttered under his breath. "I drink all the soup first and then eat the noodles out of the bottom of the cup," Gibson said as though someone had asked a question. "What?" Mulder asked, jiggling the knob again. "You wondered what I was doing at the vending machines. I like the chicken soup. Not the hot chocolate, though. All the cocoa sinks to the bottom and makes icky black sludge. Mr. Mulder, can I have my cup back?" "Yeah; here. Stay right here." He handed it back while he looked for a way out. There were several identical doors, but each one he tried was locked. While he jiggled and cursed, Gibson turned away again and ambled down the dim hallway. "Gibson! Come back- Damn it!" Gibson had opened a door opposite and a few yards down from the one they'd come through. Mulder had tried it, but it must have been stuck. Not knowing what else to do, he groaned and went after the boy again and found himself in some sort of medical laboratory or exam room. The room was so cold he expected to see his breath forming white clouds in front of his mouth. Experiments had been set up to run overnight, and amber liquid drained slowly through glass coils and into flasks. Metal cabinets lined an entire wall and low stainless steel tanks punctuated another, their metal sides covered with frost. The tanks were refrigeration units, probably, given the hum of the compressors attached to them. In the center of the lab was an operating or examination table bordered by trays of surgical instruments and equipment. Above the table, an adjustable spotlight glared down, illuminating nothing. "No one's here, Mr. Mulder," Gibson assured him, crossing the tile floor in his slippers. "No one comes until eight." "We still can't be here," he insisted, trying to figure out where 'here' was. They'd had Emily in this hospital so many times he thought he had the place memorized, but Mulder hadn't seen this area before. "I mean it," he added. Gibson sipped his bullion as he crossed the room, seeming to know where he was going, but fogging his glasses again in the process. While he stopped to wipe them on the hem of his pajama top, Mulder tried the door at the back of the lab and found it was also locked. Getting increasingly angry, he tried the front door they'd come in and it was bolted as well. It must have locked automatically when they entered. "Great. We can't get out. Maybe there's a phone." The doorknob turned easily under Gibson's hand, and Mulder's stomach started to get nervous. "Where are we?" he asked sternly, propping the door at the back of the lab open with his foot and putting his hand on Gibson's shoulder to stop him. Outside the door, bare light bulbs sputtered every fifty feet, revealing another identical cement hallway lined with unmarked black doors. It was also cool, but damp, as though they were underground. It reminded Mulder of a beehive with all the bees away; it had the same empty stillness of activity on hold. "Gibson, stop playing games. We're not supposed to be down here." "I am." "You are? You're supposed to be here?" Mulder asked in confusion. "No, not right here. This is the Dr. Calderon's lab. My room is down the hall, but I can open the door. It's a secret. They don't know I can do it." Keeping his hand on the doorknob, Mulder squatted down so he and boy were eye-to-eye. "You must be in the same research project as a little girl I know," he said sympathetically. "She doesn't like the needles either. Are you sneakin' out, buddy?" "No, I'm not a hybrid. I was born this way, like you. Mr. Mulder, can we feed the ducks again sometime?" "A-a hybrid?" Gibson nodded. Stunned, he leaned back, propping open the door like a human doorstop. Every few seconds, he glanced up at Gibson, who waited patiently. "A hybrid," he repeated. "A hybrid with what?" "With Them. Mr. Mulder: the ducks?" "Sure," he mumbled. His 'Them' were the same as Gibson's 'Them.' He found that strangely comforting: there really was a 'Them,' whatever the hell 'Them' was. Were. Anyway, he wasn't just flypaper for brunette fruitcakes. Diana was a 'Them;' something to keep him occupied and away from Scully. It was a Picasso: all the important features were there, but shuffled together into a confusing mishmash. Once someone told Mulder what he was supposed to see, it was obvious, but until then all he saw was an anatomical tossed salad. Once he had the magic Them decoder ring, the pieces started falling into place; all he needed was some time to think. "It's the implantation room." "What is? To implant what?" Mulder thought he asked aloud, but might not have. Reality was getting disjointed. If the world had been a merry-go-round, he'd have knelt at the edge and pushed with his foot to get it moving a little faster. He looked back at the operating table and noticed stirrups at one end like doctors used as women gave birth. These, though, had straps so the patient's legs could be tied apart. Further up were two more straps to fasten wrists down. Doctors didn't allow fathers in delivery rooms, but he couldn't imagine four-point restraints being standard issue. "They're coming. She needs you," Gibson said in his toneless way, always sounding like he was relaying bulletins from his own private radio. "Who's coming?" he asked. He scrambled to his feet, looking up and down the corridor for the bad guys. "Who needs me?" "The girl and the woman from the park." Heart pounding, Mulder hurried after Gibson, who again opened the door at the front of the laboratory with no problem. "That was locked. How did you do that?" The boy didn't respond, but crossed the hallway and opened the original 'high voltage' security door that had led them through the looking glass in the first place. He moved aside to let Mulder rush past him, instinctively reaching for a revolver that hadn't been on his hip since WWII. And suddenly Mulder was back in Normal. The glaring lights over the coffee machines and the smell of sticky-sweet pastries were overwhelming in comparison to the mechanized sterility of the laboratory and the stale air of the catacomb of service corridors. "You didn't put any money in the vending machine," he realized, feeling disoriented as he turned back to look at Gibson. "You can work the machines somehow, just like you can open those locks. And you answered questions I was only thinking. How is it you can make the coffee machine work without coins, but you had to push the button to choose soup?" He shrugged. "I just like to push the button. Goodbye, Mr. Mulder," he said politely, quickly closing the metal door. "No, wait-" he said desperately as the latch clicked into place. Mulder tried the door, but it was locked. He listened, but there was only the air conditioner blowing through the overhead vents and the distant cacophony of voices in the hospital lobby. "Open the door, Gibson! Come on, buddy…" Damn it, he'd had a clue: something tangible he could hold in his hand and feel growing warm under his fingers like a woman's body. It was there; concealed by steel plate and hinges and hiding in plain sight. He'd put the border of the jigsaw puzzle together and now he just needed to fill in those tricky middle pieces. Bad guys. He needed bad guys. He pounded on the door with his fist until people started wandering in, looking at him warily, and backing away. His watch said seven nineteen; barely any time had passed at all. His coffee, extra cream, no sugar, since he'd probably share with Scully, was waiting in the dispenser behind the little plastic screen. Prowling the room, Mulder drank it carelessly, burning his mouth, and then ran his tongue along his teeth, comforted by the unpleasant, familiar sensation. Beginning to doubt himself, he looked around the lounge nervously, waiting for someone to jump out and yell 'April Fool!' How many hours had it been since he really slept? He'd spent last night in the emergency room and the psych ward with Phoebe, and the night before that at Yankee Field with Frohike. Forty-eight hours? Sixty? The universe was just starting to get a little unfocused. It was just a paranoid, self-serving hallucination. It was all perfectly explicable and related to some hard to pronounce medical condition Scully would know. He tried the security door one last time, found it locked, then stared curiously at the metal folding chair still in front of the vending machine. Picking up his coffee, he started to take the elevator, then decided the stairs would be faster. *~*~*~* As he stepped out of the stairwell and saw Will and Scully, with Emily in her arms, walking toward him, he realized it was the beginning and the end. Mulder didn't often think of how much taller he was than Scully: she didn't seem as small as she looked. He and Will were roughly the same height and build, though, and she looked so small beside him. She was saying something, and Will tilted his head down, listening, then nodded in understanding. Whatever it was, Will would handle it. Watching his son walking slightly behind her, jaw set and head high, he was seeing the end of a boy and the beginning of a man. It made him proud, but sad, mourning the childhood moments that would never come again. Emily's face was flushed; she'd been crying again, and her mother had the same determined expression as Will. And they were leaving. Mulder and Scully had already discussed it; whether it was worth putting Em though this every month: if all the shots and trauma and tears made enough difference to bother. She wouldn't get better; every doctor they'd seen had been specific about that. Dr. Calderon managed to slow the progress of the disease, but the side effects of his treatments made her just as sick as the mysterious auto-immune anemia, and she dreaded the hospital. They'd spent many late nights talking about it, about when to stop fighting. This morning, it was time to stop. "Where've you been?" Will asked tersely, sounding paternal. "Chasing rabbits. Are we going somewhere?" Will nodded, and as Mulder got closer, he saw Scully's eyes were slightly bloodshot and her cheeks were damp. Emily was curled against her chest, sniffing, and refusing to look up. "I can't do this," Scully said hoarsely. "Do you want me to try?" Emily liked the 'I get a shot; Mulder gets a shot' game. Not as good as 'Bub gets a shot and Bub gets another shot,' but close. The bandage on the back of Will's hand indicated they'd already played that one while unsuccessfully trying to get Em to let them put her IV in. "No, I want to go home." "Okay," he said quietly, putting his arm around her shoulder. "We go home." "I can't do this to her," she repeated shakily. "I won't let this be her life. She deserves to be a little girl." "Okay. We're going right now," Mulder assured her. Without being asked, Will took Emily from Scully. Temporarily relieved of her burden, Scully leaned into Mulder as though they could merge into one, mindless of anything else around them. "Right now," he reiterated, stroking her hair and the hot skin on the back of her neck. "We're taking her home." "Miss Scully!" Dr. Calderon curtly, probably having been alerted by his nurses. "What is the meaning of this? Is there a problem, Miss Scully?" "There's no problem; we're just leaving." "I wasn't addressing you, Mr. Mulder. Miss Scully, let's speak in my office." Scully's back rose and fell as she took a deep breath, then composed herself, squared her shoulders, and answered, "We're taking her home. I'm withdrawing my daughter from your project." "It's not that simple, but I can see you're upset. Let's speak privately. Right this way, please. Right this way, please," he repeated firmly. When Dr. Calderon said 'privately,' he probably hadn't meant 'with Fox and William Mulder looming behind her like barely tamed guard dogs,' but that was what he got. He could take it or leave it. "You're a nurse, Miss Scully," he said, sliding into the oversized chair behind his desk and leaning forward, sympathetically folding his hands. "You're aware of the repercussions of withholding treatment, even for a short period. Your daughter is very ill and very valuable to our research. I'm sure we can reach some mutually beneficial agreement." When that offer didn't get a nibble, Dr. Scanlon added, "I can assure you the consequences of this hasty decision will be," he paused to purse his lips, "dire. To everyone involved." "Don't threaten me," she responded evenly, getting up from her chair. "How do I know what you're doing isn't making her sicker?" "I can assure you it isn't. It's the only thing between her and," he did that annoying lip-pursing thing again, "the inevitable. I would say what you're doing, withholding medical treatment, constitutes child abuse. You're the mother of an illegitimate child and you're living with an alcoholic womanizer who's already lost custody of his own son. I believe criminal charges were filed against you last year for having an abortion. Is that correct? Those charges were dropped, but I can see how a judge might not be sympathetic to your position now, given your questionable history." If Will hadn't been 'in the know' about all the dirty laundry before, he was then. Mulder shook his head, speaking for the first time since they entered the opulent office. "Don't try it; my lawyer will bury you." Calderon ignored him and continued addressing Scully. "You must understand that you can't just walk away from the project." "Watch me," Scully responded, growing larger. A side door opened and two men slid out of the proverbial woodwork, one nursing his cigarette. Dr. Calderon pushed back from his desk, distancing himself. Mulder tensed. Smokey probably wasn't at the hospital because he volunteered to read to sick kids in his spare time. The hair on the back of his neck bristled as though a storm was approaching. "Mr. Mulder," the smoking man nodded, leaning against the edge of the doctor's expensive desk. "Miss Scully. Is there a problem?" "No problem. We were just leaving," Mulder responded, reaching for Scully's hand. "I'm sure we can reach some agreement," the old man echoed casually. He leaned close, blowing smoke in Scully's face. "Very sure." The smoking man didn't move, but his goon did, blocking Will and Emily's path to the office door. "What are you doing? Who do you think you are? This is a hospital, not a prison," Mulder argued. "Anyone can seek or refuse medical treatment. We're refusing. To Hell with your study." "We've invested a significant amount of time and money in this child," Dr. Calderon piped up, personifying the word 'pipsqueak.' "She's worth a great deal to us." "Bill me," Mulder snapped. Smokey smiled so coldly Mulder shivered. There was a flash of silver as the goon drew and raised a gun, pointing it directly at Will's head. Sound stopped and seconds stretched into hours. Will froze, holding Emily tightly against him. His terrified brown eyes cut sideways at the gun and then at his father as his chest swiftly rose and fell. Mulder saw, but didn't hear Goon cock the pistol, pulling the hammer back with his callused thumb. He leveled the barrel inches from the hair Will was so fond of fixing and waited for the order. The world became a series of stark, silent black and white textures, like an Ansel Adams photograph. 'Don't hurt him, don't hurt him, don't hurt him,' Mulder prayed silently. Goon hesitated, shifting his weight between his feet as he adjusted his stance. Will trembled, but he didn't blink. Mulder saw a tear trickle out of the corner of his son's eye as Emily hid her face against his shirt, gripping fistfuls of the soft cotton fabric. The expensive clock on the wall finally ticked, the brass pendulum swinging with perfect Swiss precision, and color flooded back into the world. Mulder could see it: it was blood red. He'd always wondered what color true red was. It was the color a father saw when someone threatened his child. The only muscle Mulder purposely moved was his diaphragm to breath, and only because that was necessary. He could feel his heartbeat in his ears and his fingertips tingling with fury, ready for battle. With the static intensity of a soldier, he waited, which was a thousand times more difficult than attacking. "Think this through, Miss Scully," a distant voice rasped. "Would he ever forgive you if something happened to his son?" Inhale. The smoking man leaned even closer until his lips almost brushed her cheek. "We don't want the boy. Tell Mulder to take him home, Miss Scully. Let them walk away while they still can." Exhale. Smokey glanced down at her abdomen, his eyes caressing her body like a lover's hands. "I know your secret," he added dramatically. Inhale. "And I know yours," she responded coolly. "Don't play games with me, little girl," he hissed. Exhale. She didn't flinch as she added, "And I can prove it." He shook his head, not believing her. Inhale. "A majestic December day in Central Park," she answered, sounding like she was quoting something. "Miss Scully carries a blue book with a paperclip marking her favorite chapter." She paused, tilting her head back defiantly. Exhale. "Check," she breathed. "Your move." Inhale. The smoking man recoiled, surprised, and Mulder threw his cup of scalding coffee in the goon's face, grabbed the gun, and shoved Will and Scully through the door in front of him. "Run!" he ordered them. He turned back and kicked Goon hard in the ribs, hearing and feeling the bones give. "Don't you ever- You son-of-a-bitch!" Mulder shouted at him, grabbing Goon by the hair and slamming his head against the floor. It made a dull, satisfying sound, like a melon splitting as it hit the sidewalk. "Dad!" Will yelled from halfway down the hall. "Down the stairs," Mulder yelled back, following, and disappointed he didn't get to break as few of old Smokey's bones as well. As they pounded down the metal stairs, the alarm sounded for hospital security, and there was the heavy sound of the men's shoes chasing after them. They burst into the lobby and rounded the corner, only to be intercepted by a hapless security guard. Mulder punched him in the jaw and kept running, chalking up his second assault charge of the morning. At the hospital doors were a half-dozen more guards, and he could see red and blue lights flashing through the lobby windows as the patrol cars arrived outside. Whirling around, he grabbed Scully's wrist and ordered Will to head for the vending machines. "Open the door, open the door, open the door," he chanted, hearing the footsteps getting closer. Scully started to falter and he put his arm around her shoulders, keeping her moving. Saying a final silent prayer, he jerked the knob and the 'high voltage' door opened. "I can tell you where your sister is," the smoking man said breathlessly, bracing one hand on the coffee machine as he gasped and coughed. "She's alive, Mulder. Or I can destroy you." Mulder hesitated less than a heartbeat, then followed Will and Scully into the musty corridor, closing the steel security door firmly after him. He panted, bracing his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath and makes some sense of whatever had just happened. Scully leaned back against the damp cement wall, looking pale and disoriented. "Honey, are you-" Mulder grabbed her shoulders as she slid slowly to the floor, fainting. Emily started crying again, and Will tried to shush her, jiggling her nervously. Under the bare light bulb swinging dizzily from the ceiling, as he picked Scully up, his watch read seven twenty-six. *~*~*~* Either a hundred and ten pounds of pretty woman was heavier than it used to be or he was getting old. Mulder paused to adjust his grip on Scully's limp body, trying to find a way he could hold her that didn't make his arms ache. "Where are we going?" Will asked, shifting Em against his chest. He'd gotten her to stop crying, and now she was just terrified into silence. In the distance, more men were shouting and more boots were pounding angrily against the hard floor. The lynch mob sounded as if it had gained a few more supporters and caught the scent of blood. "Keep going," Mulder ordered, commanding his feet to start moving again. They were underground; that was all his senses told him. Having no idea where the tunnels led, they tried every knob they passed and entered any room they found unlocked. It was an unscientific system, but so far it had kept them ahead of Them, and that was what counted. Will seemed to think there was a plan. Actually there was. It was 'we don't die today.' The rest was details. The first open door had been Dr. Calderon's lab, which was either some sort of hub or Gibson's favorite shortcut, then another corridor, then a series of archives with shelves of boxes to the ceiling, and now another identical corridor. Gibson could be carefully, remotely directing their escape or they could be circling mindlessly like cattle being steered toward the slaughterhouse; he didn't know. "This one's unlocked," Will whispered thankfully, and braced the door open with his foot while Mulder carried Scully inside. His son stopped short, mouth agape, and the door banged closed behind them, announcing their location and almost certainly locking them in. Will pulled Emily a little tighter against him, protectively cradling her head in his hand. Holding Scully in his arms, Mulder pivoted in a gradual, stationary circle, trying to take it all in. He could see it, but he couldn't process what he saw. If much of the morning had been surreal, then this room was pure science fiction. "You know, I understand the doctors being angry at Dana pulling Em from their research study," Will murmured. "That made sense. And you did hit those men. I'm a little uncertain as to why there's a concrete maze down here, or how you know where we're going, but I thought I'd ask later. When people aren't chasing and pointing guns at me. But, Dorothy," his son said deliberately, almost reverently, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." There were dozens of high tables, each containing a woman's heavily pregnant, nearly nude, sleeping body. IV's dripped into their arms, and tubes, oxygen, Mulder guessed, ran into their mouths. Each had her groin and chest covered with light blue fabric, but her swollen abdomen exposed. From the ceiling, long, needle-like probes extended downward and into their stomachs. *'A needle going into my belly. And a drill like a dentist would use,' he remembered Scully's sleepy voice telling him after he woke her from a nightmare.* "What are they doing down here, Dad?" *'They're building a better human: smarter, healthier, more athletic,' Frohike had speculated last year, 'And they're doing it against people's will.'* "I think," he said uncertainly, "They're making babies." "I don't think - and I'm not telling you how I know this - but I don't think this how people normally do that," Will responded. *'She's an experiment,' Scully had whispered when he'd insisted she tell him what was wrong with Emily. 'And the experiment, for her, failed. She's something that was never meant to be.'* Mulder had a pounding in his temples he was blaming on his lack of sleep and a queasy stomach he attributed to the bad ccoffee he hadn't drunk. "Just keep walking, Will. Don't think; just keep moving." *'They took the baby,' she'd sobbed Christmas night, not really awake. 'You hate me.'* Under the blue-black lights, the room was completely, eerily silent. The women didn't move; didn't even seem real. As they reached the last row, one's belly shifted suddenly, and Will jumped away like he'd been burned. "It's the baby. The baby's kicking," Mulder assured him, but his son didn't look comforted. *'You really think any government would just throw away decades of research attempting to create a super-soldier?' Frohike had asked, lying back in the grass with him in Yankee Field and staring up at the stars. 'There are whispers that we didn't; that we brought the Nazi and Japanese scientists to the US and put them to work in our labs, on our agendas, and now we've had ten years to perfect the science.'* He didn't think either of them breathed again until Will tried the knob on the metal door at the back of the room and it turned. Mulder looked back, assuring himself he'd just seen what he thought he'd just seen. *'Of course, Mulder,' Scully had told him, walking out of his bedroom at The Plaza after the first time they'd made love. 'It all sounds so silly. Of course, I would make up a story like that instead of just picking out a late husband off a tombstone.'* In the next corridor, the cement walls widened and were bordered by row after row of what looked to be steel card catalogues used in libraries. For a while, he read the labels on the drawers: years beginning with 1947 and a code of letters. *'Except that my part was a joke: they had me maintaining medical records and storing tissue samples," she'd said of her time in the Army, 'I never laid a finger on a live person. Within a few months I started getting sick and fainting and the doctor said I was going to have a baby.'* 1949 DKS-ALK. Files: lots and lots of files. They started to blur as he passed them, carrying Scully and concentrating on keeping his feet moving. 1954 DKS-FWM. *'Then, they have files that have something to do with vaccinations for anyone I thought to ask about: me, you, your sister, the President, Hoover, everyone,' Frohike had told him.* Eventually the cabinets stopped, as did the light bulbs overhead, and there was only smooth darkness. He could hear his and Will's feet moving, and Em and Scully's soft breathing; his plan was still working. "You still back there, Dad?" From behind him, Mulder responded that he was, feeling Scully's arms tighten around his neck. "We're out of hall," Will informed him uncertainly. "Wherever we were going, we're there." Mulder squatted down and gently set Scully against something solid, feeling brick instead of cement. He stood, suppressed a groan, and ran his hands over the walls in search of some way out. "I'm open to suggestions." "I suggest we hurry," Will answered, listening to the approaching voices. Their pursuers were close enough that Mulder could see their flashlights, pinpoints of light bobbing in the distance. He checked the pistol. As far as he could tell, it had a full clip: six bullets. It sounded like more than six people were after them, though, and there was nowhere for Will, Em, and Scully to get out of the line of fire. He flicked the safety off, just in case. *'Those men will kill you and not think twice,' Scully had promised himm ages ago. 'I shouldn't have told you.'* "Up," he decided, seeing a stray beam of light glance off a rusted metal bar. "Up?" "Up," Mulder confirmed, exploring the iron rungs fastened into the brick about seven feet from the floor. As the lights and voices closed in, Will told Emily to hold on to his neck tightly, put his hands on the bottom rung and pulled himself up. Propping Scully on her feet, Mulder listened to him climb into the darkness above them. "There's a manhole cover," he called down, and metal squealed nosily over asphalt as he pushed it aside. Mulder squinted into the sunlight, seeing the particles of dust floating through the yellow air. The sun seemed foreign, as though days had passed while they were underground. "It's an alley: come on," Will ordered, leaning over the manhole and partially blocking out the sun. "Hurry up." "Scully, honey, you have to wake up," he tried, jiggling her. She'd been semiconscious for several minutes, and she opened her eyes, trying to focus on him. "I can't lift us both. I'm going to lift you up. Grab a rung and hang on. I'll be right behind you. You understand?" She nodded. As the flashlight beams got close enough to be faint rays instead of pinpricks, he put his arms around her hips and lifted her up, feeling the weight against his shoulder lessen slightly as she grabbed the bars. Will came back to help, and a few seconds later they were sitting in an alley behind a row of rundown stores and dreary restaurants. Mulder helped Will slide the manhole cover back into place, then looked around again, trying to figure out where they were. Someone had knocked over a trashcan, and empty tin cans and limp newspapers littered the alleyway. The place was overwhelmingly real. It smelled of soured milk and wet cardboard and coffee grounds: like used things. "Third Avenue," Will answered the unspoken question. "That's the Third Avenue El, I think," he said, pointing up. Overhead, the elevated subway tracks cut the morning sky in two. "I think we're a few blocks behind the hospital." On the oil-stained, gritty asphalt, Scully clutched her daughter, arms shaky but eyes vigilant. She ran her fingers through Em's sweaty blonde hair and murmured softly, trying to sooth the frightened girl, but all the while watching the shadows like a hunter watches the horizon. "We need to keep moving," Mulder said, switching the pistol from the back waistband of his pants to the front. In the tunnel below them, he could hear men's voices shouting in confusion. Even in New York, people looked at them oddly as they hurried up the steps to the station. Families generally didn't get on the subway looking like war refugees from the land of Casual Sportswear. Mulder ignored the stares and found Scully a seat among the commuters, putting Emily on her lap. The last passengers crowded in and doors of the subway car closed. And they waited. "Move, move," he prayed under his breath, talking to the driver somewhere far down the tracks. "Move," he pleaded. His shoulders and arms were so tired they trembled. His right fist was sore; the knuckles bruised where he'd hit the hospital guard. All Mulder had done was knock him out, but that goon might or might not get up again, which would make Mulder a murderer. Self- defense, Byers would claim, although it wasn't. The need for self-defense had ended when Mulder had grabbed the goon's gun. The rib-breaking kick and head banging had just been for the primal, teeth barring pleasure of it. *'Are you a murderer, a rapist, or a mobster, Mr. Mulder?' Scully had asked him the morning he'd first followed her home, planted himself on her front stoop, and refused to leave. 'Married, insane, or a communist?'* Scully held Emily close, watching the men shoving through the workday crowd to get up the metal steps to the platform. Smokey was with them, pointing frantically at the El and yelling. Scully flinched back against her seat, and Mulder put his hand on the gun in his waistband, drawing more curious looks. *'You don't understand, Mulder: there's nothing wrong with me,' she'd told him as he'd pleaded with her to stay, telling her he'd make everything right. 'There's nothing wrong with my daughter. You're welcome to love us, but we don't need you to fix us.'* Beside Mulder, Will held tightly to the overhead rail and stared out the window, watching a group of men in suits cursing as the subway car slid away from the station. Mulder put his hand on his son's shoulder and Will startled at the touch, like a soldier who'd seen one too many horrors. In Will's air- conditioned, prep school, freshly starched-and- pressed world, this wasn't happening. *'There will be a price, Mulder,' she'd promised him. 'So what do you think I'm worth?'* Mulder grabbed for the rail as the car lurched forward. As the El settled into its slow, slapping pace along the tracks, he rested his forehead against the round glass window of the door, letting the train take him downtown. On the other side of the glass, Smokey and his men watched from the edge of the platform. Smokey threw down his cigarette, grinding it disgustedly into the grate with the well-polished toe of his shoe. *'If you keep asking questions, it doesn't matter who you are. They will get to you,' she'd assured him.* Scully reached out, weaving her index finger through his belt loop and leaning her pale cheek against his hip. He rested his hand on her head, stroking her hair absently. His watch, when he squinted to look at it, said seven forty-eight. *~*~*~* They needed help. Mulder was too tired to see straight, and Will was acting like he'd convinced himself this was a 3-D movie. It looked real, but that was just the funny glasses. Scully was normally great in emergencies: gunshot wounds or small kitchen fires, but she seemed stunned, keeping one hand on her flat stomach and one on Emily's shoulder. They needed someone who would believe this paranoid story: that there were Nazis or Communists or someone kidnapping women, making them have babies, and then using those babies for God only knew what. They were breeding superior athletes or genius scientists or super-soldiers, and they were doing it under one of the world's best hospitals in the middle of Manhattan. That something about Mulder and Scully, separately, but especially in combination, made their genetics vital to this breeding project. They needed someone shadowy, someone just a hair this side of dishonest, and someone who had all the right connections to all the wrong kind of people. They needed Melvin Frohike. And two subway trains and a taxicab later, they were there, pounding on the reinforced door of his loft. "Office hours start at ten," he muttered, seeing only Mulder through the peephole. He opened the door in his helmet, undershirt, and pajama bottoms, scratching himself irritably. "What, Mulder?" "Get inside," Mulder ordered, and Will ushered Em and Scully out of the freight elevator and inside the loft, and Mulder slipped in after them. Surprised, Frohike paused mid-scratch. "What's-" "We're in trouble. I need to get Scully and Em someplace safe. And I need Byers. I think I probably just killed someone." "Oh," Frohike answered, as though Mulder had just asked for mustard on his hamburger rather than ketchup: it was a less conservative choice, but still within the realm of normal. "Okay. I'll make coffee." Frohike's place looked like a newly divorced man was trying to furnish an enntire apartment with only one room's worth of belongings, the empty space just being filled in with junk. It had always looked like that, throughout all the years Mulder had known him. There was a great deal of iron and exposed brick and broken testaments to the Electrical Age that Frohike was going to get around to fixing 'just any day now.' Will shoved a pile of magazines and a dissected short wave radio off the sofa and sat down, putting his elbows on his knees and covering his face with his hands. In addition to everything else, Will was worried about his mother. Mulder wanted to say she was half naked, doped to the gills, tied wrist and ankle to a bed, and probably couldn't have been happier, but he didn't. Whatever Phoebe was, and he'd finally thought up a word for it, she was still Will's mother. Scully took Emily to the bathroom, then just sat at the kitchen tabble and did nothing. The ice dissolved slowly in the glass of water in front of her, and the condensation dripped down the sides to form wet rings on the tabletop. Em wandered to the couch, eventually curling up against Will and watching everyone with big, frightened eyes. "Honey," Mulder said hesitantly, as Frohike called Byers' office, trying to explain the situation. "Do you remember something we saw on television, on Alfred Hitchcock?" he whispered, standing behind her and stroking his fingertips over her shoulders. "A man breaks in a house and attacks a woman, and when her husband returns home, the policeman tells the husband to take her away for a little while, just take her someplace different for the night until she can calm down. So they're driving to the hotel, the husband and the wife, when the wife says she sees the man who attacked her walking on the sidewalk. The husband stops, gets out, and beats the man to death, then gets back in the car and keeps driving, thinking he's avenged her. A few minutes later, the wife points out a different man and insists he's the one who attacked her. And then another man and then another, and the husband realizes she's so upset she's just pointing out every man they pass. That's how I feel. I'll kill 'em, honey, but I need you to tell me who the real bad guys are." She leaned her head back against his stomach, closing her eyes. "What am I, Scully?" he finally asked. "Is it just a genetic fluke or is it something else? Did Samantha just get lost playing in the woods one day, or was she one of those women underneath the hospital?" "I don't know. I don't know anything about Samantha. And a year and a half ago, I thought the only special things about you was a complete lack of mechanical ability, that you could hit a baseball, and that I loved you." "When did you realize there was something, s-something else?" "When I woke up in the hospital to my mother crying and the police explaining I was going to be arrested for having an abortion. The last things I remembered were you teasing me about my overly neat packing and then a knock at the door a few minutes later. I hadn't even realized I was going to have a baby." "Wanna see me bend a pen with the power of my mind?" he said softly, caressing her cheek. "When I was in the Army, I paid attention to what I was filing. Most of it made no sense, but some did. I guess they expected me to be so humiliated I'd give up Emily and walk away with my tail between my legs, but I didn't. Those phrases I asked Mr. Frohike to put in the paper last Thanksgiving, after you were shot, those were the names of project files: Blue Book, Paper Clip, Majestic Twelve. 'A majestic December day,'" she clarified, staring blindly at the empty kitchen wall. "I was letting them know I knew or had something, that if they hurt you or Will, I'd go public. If they left us alone, I'd stay quiet." "Was that what the man was looking for in our house? Something he thought you had?" She swallowed, then took a tiny sip of her water. "I think so." "You said you weren't sure the doctors were helping Emily. Was that true? I was the one who started taking her to all those doctors. She started out with a sore throat and just kept getting worse. Maybe they were the ones making her sicker and I didn't realize it. The Nazis used to do that: see how long it took babies to die of exposure or children of typhoid. Is that what's happening?" "I don't know," she answered irritably. "Why did they try to kill me?" "Mulder, I don't have all your answers. Maybe because they had what they wanted from you; they had the babies, and you were causing problems. Maybe because I told you about Emily. Because you won't stop asking questions. Because if you had believed me, and stood up and announced you believed me, people might have listened." "I do believe you. I know what I saw, Scully." "I'm sorry," she answered, picking up the cold glass and holding it against her forehead, then her cheek. "I never meant to hurt you. You can't imagine how many times I tried to make myself walk away." "Like you could get rid of me," he teased gently. "You can't outrun me in those damn high heels, anyway." "Byers is on his way," Frohike announced, sticking his head around the corner. "I need to make a few more calls, and then we're ready to go. And I need to have Langly transfer some money, Mulder. A pretty good amount." "That's fine. Whatever you need." Scully's chair squeaked against the linoleum as she stood suddenly, covered her mouth with her hand, and bolted for the bathroom. Her glass spilled, and Mulder reached for a dishtowel to mop off the table before the water could hit the floor and make a clean spot. Will looked up as she passed, then glanced at his father, then lowered his head again. "Congratulations," Frohike mumbled, hearing retching a second after the bathroom door slammed. "I didn't realize. How far along?" "Not very." Mulder concentrated on wiping off the kitchen table, scrubbing off some jelly smears while he was at it. "That changes things; it ups the ante. They'll come after that baby." Mulder nodded tiredly, tossing the damp towel in the sink. "They already tried." "I'll have Langly transfer seventy-five thousand. He'll shuffle your account and a few others around to cover his tracks so it doesn't look like you funded this. He doesn't exactly launder money for the mob, but occasionally he spot cleans it." "Seventy-five thousand?" His last year with the Yankees, he'd only made fifty thousand, before taxes. He'd made money playing ball and he'd invested it, but between alimony and tuition and medical bills and two houses in two cities, there was a lot of outgo and no new infusions of cash to pad the nest egg. He couldn't stand to just write a check for seventy-five thousand dollars. "I need to make Dana and Emily disappear. Forever. If you want to be sure they're safe, they have to disappear from the US Government. Hell, they have to disappear off the face of the planet. And now there's a baby coming. That takes a lot of money. It might take more than that." Scully emerged from the bathroom, then immediately turned around and hurried back inside. "Dad?" "She's okay. Give her a minute. Are you okay, Will?" Instead of answering, Will just smirked and put his face back down on his open palms again, shaking his head 'no' and laughing nervously. The toilet flushed a second time, and the door opened. "I need to talk to Mulder. Alone," she said as all the men pretended they hadn't noticed her morning sickness. Since there was no 'alone' in Frohike's loft, Mulder followed her to the hallway, feeling like a kid on his way to the principal's office. "If you're going to tell me you're going to have a baby, give me a minute so I can act surprised," he kidded tensely, leaning against the paneled wall beside the freight elevator. He put his hands in his pockets so he'd have something to do with him. "Okay, now I'm ready." "Mulder- I, uh, God, I'm not sure how to say this." "Try, 'Mulder, I'm going to have a baby. We're going to have a baby.' I have my stupid grin ready." "But I shouldn't be. I told you that." Something about her tone made him swallow, trying to get a lump to go down. According to her, she had no memory of conceiving Emily, or of even most of her pregnancy. She called it 'missing time,' which was a phrase popular in the UFO novels Agent Dales used to lend him. Mulder had teased her about it until he'd realized she hadn't found it funny to have no memory of months of her life. "Well, do you think someone's," he ran his tongue over his teeth, "done something to you?" "Yes, but that someone would be you." He slouched slightly, examining the cracked tile mosaic on the floor. It had been those black-rimmed reading glasses, bare legs, and bobby socks; no man could be expected to control himself if he woke to that in bed beside him. "I didn't mean to say it like that. Mulder, whether you say it or not, I know how much you want more children. I know how difficult it is for you to stay with me, knowing that won't happen." "That's not-" "Just don't interrupt. Please. Let me speak. Mulder, this shouldn't be happening. I've seen the doctor's reports, and this shouldn't be happening. If I thought there was any chance of me actually carrying a baby to term, don't you think I would have told you?" "I don't understand." "Maybe this is an ectopic pregnancy: a pregnancy somewhere outside the uterus. If it is, that's dangerous and I'll need surgery. Or, if it's not, if the baby's growing where he's supposed to be, the uterine walls have significant scar tissue. And the cervix is weakened. Spontaneous abortion is a real possibility." Seeing the look in his face, she clarified, "A miscarriage." "Which part's the-" "The 'ouch, not so deep' part. The cervix has to stay closed as the baby grows or else labor starts too early. Just- please stop looking at me with those expectant puppy dog eyes and seeing maternity clothes. Just because we've conceived a baby doesn't mean we're- It doesn't mean I can manage to have one." He nodded, checking that mosaic on the floor again. "If you're sure, absolutely sure, do you want to stop this now? Frohike knows good doctors; I know he does; he's arranged things for Phoebe." He found a good place on the inside of his lip to gnaw. "I don't know where we're going or what's going to happen. Those men at the hospital will take this baby, if they can find us. I don't want you mu-miscarrying somewhere where we can't get to a doctor. Just tell me what you want, honey." "What do you think I want?" He shrugged, afraid to speculate. He had his mental picture all conjured up: getting to coach his son's little league team or going to his daughter's dance recitals. Actually, he'd be happy to coach his daughter's baseball team and go to his son's dance recitals. "I want to try. I just wanted you to know the possibilities." Mulder nodded, not risking looking up. "All right?" "All right," he mumbled, following her back inside the loft. *~*~*~* It was a cold dream of the black, white, gray, and red variety. He could always see color in his dreams; that was how he knew it existed. "She just turned four," Scully had answered, buttoning the top button of her coat as she walked beside him, her head barely coming up to his shoulder. This had been before he'd started calling her 'Scully,' of course. It had been just after Halloween 1953, right after he'd quit playing ball, and a few weeks after he'd stopped drinking. And a week after Will had accidentally cracked him in the head with a baseball bat and sent him to the Mercy Hospital Emergency Room for stitches. "My son's fourteen. It changes things. It changes everything," he had commented, watching Emily running down The Boardwalk in front of them. Except for the wind and the distant waves pounding the beach, her feet on the weathered planks and their voices were the only sounds. The cold, salty Atlantic air caressed his face with its icy fingers, draining color from the world like an artist rinsing water over his pallet. The early November sun lurked behind the clouds, casting long shadows as Coney Island stretched, yawned, and hesitantly woke to winter. Above them, the sky was dense and heavy, threatening snow. "Having a child– Both of us having children makes everything automatically," He hunted for the right phrase, "Less casual." "Yes, it does," Scully responded, hands deep in her pockets. "You can run now, if you like." The brisk wind colored her cheeks scarlet and blew her auburn hair out of the neat bun she'd had it in at the hospital. She kept tucking the strands behind her ears and they kept whipping around her face again. Below her coat, the fluttering skirt of her nurse's uniform still had a red splatter of blood droplets on the hem. "I don't run; I have a policy. I was only saying: seeing someone when kids are involved: the stakes are higher. It isn't fair to be casual." "Are you used to casual?" He had considered the intoxicated blur of the past month, then responded, "I've tried it." "I'm sure you have." "It's overrated." Mulder hesitated, then asked, "Did you like Aiello's? I know it's a little odd, but-" "No, I liked it. It was different," she said cautiously. "Emily liked it. Were all those people sideshow performers?" "Yes. It's a favorite of the locals. If you want to eat breakfast with a tattooed man and a bearded lady, that's the place. Will loves it. We go there for pancakes on Saturdays if I can get him out of bed before noon." "Is that your son? Slugger? Will?" "William." The word formed a white cloud in front of his lips. "Can I ask-" He stopped and leaned back against the wooden railing above the empty beach. If she asked, she was at least interested. "He lives with his mother in Manhattan; before that they lived in London. It's very over between his mother and I; we've been divorced a long time. My father died last year; my mother lives in Boston. I flew up to check on her a few weeks ago. I grew up there with a younger sister named Samantha. I played professional baseball from 1939 until last season, in between being drafted into the Army and a few injuries. I guess you could say I had some trouble adjusting to retirement, but I'm doing better. I think I have my act together now. I'm trying, at least. Again, there's a lot at stake." "Did you meet your ex-wife during the war?" "No, I met her when I was in school. What about you?" he had asked, refocusing the discussion. "What's your life story?" "You're looking at it," Scully answered, watching Emily. "I went to college, became a nurse, and then, in what my father thought was an act of rebellion, joined the Army to go to one of the M.A.S.H. units in Korea. Then Emily came. Now it's just the two of us." "That's the whole story?" he asked. "No. Was that your whole story?" She glanced up at him, then turned away, calling for her daughter to come back so they'd have a buffer to fill the silence between waves. "No," he mumbled, following her down The Boardwalk. The hinges creaked as a few garish booths opened, and the cotton candy machine began to spin pink silk threads. "No, that's not nearly the whole story." "I didn't think it was," she answered, stooping down to tighten the strings on her daughter's hood. "Are you a daddy?" Emily asked pointedly, looking over her mother's shoulder at him. "I am. I have a son named Will." "Is he big?" "He's about-" Mulder held his hand even with his eyebrows. "This big." Her mouth formed a silent 'wow.' "We don't have a daddy. Or a Will." "Oh, well, uh. You don't have a lot of room. You have a cat, though. He's probably less trouble." "He's a stray." He glanced at down Scully, who was taking in this dialogue with an amused glint in her eyes. "Help me out here." "Mommy says he's a Tom Cat," she continued. "And I'll be sorry. She lets him in, though." "Your Mommy's a smart lady." Scully didn't respond, but she smiled as she stood up, and he put his hand cautiously on her back as he turned her toward the car. "I need to be back in Manhattan for a meeting in an hour," he explained, listening to the weathered gray boards creaking under their feet. "But if you want, I'd like to take you to dinner Friday," he offered. "We'll go someplace without dwarfs." "You're not going to make your meeting." "They'll wait." "Emily and I could take the subway home," she offered, walking beside him. "Then you'd be less late." "Am I doing that badly?" She stopped, looked at him, then laughed, a sound that had seemed out of place in the stark surroundings. "Aside from getting me fired, following me home like some lunatic, coercing me into going out with you by charming my daughter, buying me pancakes in a restaurant full of circus freaks, dragging me for a walk in the Antarctic, and giving me the Readers Digest happily-condensed version of your life story, no, I'd say you're doing very well." He stared at his shoes, having no idea how to respond. It sounded like a crappy morning when she said it that way. "I almost didn't go back to the emergency room this morning," he finally told his shoes. "I was going to have my doctor take the stitches out." "I almost wasn't there; my shift was supposed to end at midnight." "Must be fate," he said lightly, uncomfortably. She considered, then decided, "Fine: dinner Friday. Now take me home before I pass out from exhaustion and the police find my frozen body under The Boardwalk clutching some cotton candy." He glanced up uncertainly. "You're sure?" "No, I'm completely not sure, but fate is fate," she had answered, carrying Emily on her hip as they walked down the broad, endless Boardwalk. Hours before the thin, off-season crowds would arrive, it had seemed like they were almost the only people on the planet. It was a nice dream. *~*~*~* "There he is," Frohike said sharply, and Mulder raised his head from the kitchen table, wiping a few minutes' sleep from his eyes. He pointed out the window to the street below. "Finally. Let's go." Although he could have afforded whatever he wanted, John Byers drove a pristine, baby blue, Studebaker station wagon: whitewall tires, chrome bumper, luggage rack, and all. And he drove it slowly. He was waiting at the corner below Frohike's apartment building for the light to change, his blinker flashing patiently. Going 'right on red' made Byers nervous. "Don't give him that," Mulder said as Frohike started to hand Will a pistol. "He doesn't know how to use it." "I do. One of Mother's friends showed me." Mulder didn't even want to consider all the possible definitions of who 'Mother's friend' could be. "Fine. Whatever. Scully, are you okay?" He shoved the goon's handgun back in his waistband, then pushed the button for the freight elevator. Scully picked up Emily, nodding that she was ready. As the elevator slowly lowered them to the ground floor, the sun was shining, shimmering bright yellow through the mental grating. The world had continued turning, except it seemed cheapened, like a dime store ring when the shine wore off, the ugly metal showed through, and it began to turn the skin green. "Beside Wollman's ice-skating rink in Central Park," Scully said, startling everyone. "In locker thirteen. The key is inside Emily's Kitty: the stuffed one. Take what's inside the locker and go to Mr. Skinner at the FBI. Tell him you want to make a deal." "What's inside the locker?" Mulder asked as the doors opened. "The truth," she answered. "Pandora's box." Byers was parking exactly eighteen inches from the curb as the elevator doors opened to the parking garage. He locked the station wagon, then hurried toward them, bringing two Macy's shopping bags. "What is this? Langly just dropped this off at my office. Why am I carrying this much cash? And what is this about you killing someone, Mulder? I called the hospital; there's no record of any disturbance this morning. Are you insane? I'm supposed to be in a meeting right now." By trade, Byers did property law, which he insisted was more complex than 'finders keepers, losers weepers,' and suited his buttoned up personality. He was to 'paranoia' and 'aggression' what 'mild' was to 'Tabasco.' Confronted with a non-legal crisis, he usually started jabbering facts and statistics like a frantic chipmunk. His wife Susanne was the cool head of the two: the Army would have done better to draft her during WWII. Without comment, Frohike took the shopping bags, putting them on the passenger-side floor of his truck. "Dad, I have school," Will blurted suddenly, which was code for 'who's going to take care of my mother?' "It's okay, Will; you can stay with Byers for a little while," Mulder decided as calmly as possible, barely able to believe he was deciding it at all. "Don't give Susanne a hard time. You can stay in the city, go to school, check on your mother. As soon as it's safe, I'll contact you. All right, Will? You're coming up on seventeen years old; you-" "Wait, why is he staying with Byers?" Frohike interrupted as Byers just stood there with his mouth open. "Where are you going?" "I'm going with Scully and Em." "No, you're not. I can hide them; I can't hide you. You're Fox Mulder; your face is on baseball cards and cereal boxes around the world. I could send you to Siberia and you'd still stick out like a sore thumb." "Who's going to Siberia?" Byers demanded. "No one," A voice answered from the shadows behind them. Six heads turned, and Alex Krycek stepped out, carrying a sawed-off shotgun. "No one's going anywhere except the ladies. Dana, let's go. Bring the girl." "Not a chance," Muldder responded, raising Goon's pistol. Scully and Emily had been the last ones out of the elevator, so they were between him and Krycek. She stopped, pulling Emily against her chest, ready to run. "My gun's bigger than yours." "And Freud would say there's a reason for that. You're the guy who shot me. You were in our house. Who the hell are you? What do you want?" Will nodded in agreement, edging toward Scully and Emily with the gun Frohike had given him in his hand. "Don't move, boy," Krycek snapped, alternately pointing his shotgun at Will and then at Scully and Emily. From the other side of his truck, Frohike cocked his old Army rifle, which made three weapons against one. Mulder didn't know how well Frohike and Will could shoot, but he'd have no problem nailing Krycek at this distance. His finger twitched in anticipation, molding into the steel of the trigger. Krycek seemed to realize that, and looked around nervously. "You won't shoot. The boy won't shoot." "Don't bet on it. What do you want?" Mulder demanded, still aiming past Scully's shoulder and directly at Krycek's head. "Who are you?" "Just the errand boy. I'm what Daddy did in his spare time. You can consider me the next generation," he said sarcastically. Mulder jerked his head for Scully to come toward him. She knew enough about guns to move sideways, getting out of the line of fire. As soon as she reached Will, Emily pulled away, hurrying to Mulder as quickly as her stiff joints allowed. "Stay behind me, honey," he told her, keeping his pistol trained on Krycek as Emily clung to his left leg, terrified. "She's grown," Krycek said absently. "Since last year: she's grown." "They do that. She's not yours. And Scully's not going with you. Turn around, scurry back into the gutter, and tell whoever you work for to back off before I put their secrets on the front page of every newspaper in this country." "Can you tell when she's thinking about me? I bet you can't, Mulder. I've watched you with women," Krycek spouted off, his eyes darting randomly around the parking garage. He was stalling for time, either waiting for backup or calculating his next move. "I've sat on the other side of the lens and just watched you. You're not that damn suave, although I'd like to have been in your shoes a few times. That blonde: the actress last spring. Not a natural blonde, but still. You picked her because she reminded you of Dana, didn't you? Get drunk enough and you couldn't tell the difference in the dark. Petite, fair, blue eyes." He paused to whistle under his breath. "Damn. And Diana's not bad, either. We paid her to be very, uh, enthusiastic. So can you tell, Mulder? I bet Dana told you she doesn't even remember me." "Shoot him," Scully's voice said from nearby and he pulled the trigger, putting the bullet in the middle of Krycek's forehead. The body hit the cement floor before Mulder heard the gunshot. "Jesus Christ!" Byers exploded, sounding like a hyperactive metronome. "You just killed him!" That was another brilliant statement of the obvious. "Let's go," Frohike barked, hurrying around to the driver's side door of his truck. "If he's here, my phone must be tapped. There'll be more men coming. Byers, take care of the body." "The hell I will. I'm a lawyer. This is aiding and abetting murder. This is the type of thing we're specifically not supposed to do." Still clutching the gun, Mulder squatted down and picked Emily up, setting her on his left hip. This wasn't real. This absolutely was not happening. "Get in," Frohike ordered, starting his truck. "Dana, Emily: now." In slow motion, Mulder opened the passenger-side door, and Emily crawled inside. She liked to sit in the middle so she could help shift gears: Mulder let her do it in the Porsche. "Mulder?" Scully said numbly. "Get in," he responded, holding the door open. "I want to go to a movie," she said suddenly. "To one of those really awful science fiction movies you like. We'll sit up front with Em and eat popcorn and Will can sit in the back with his latest girlfriend and pretend he doesn't know us." "Okay, we'll do that," he answered automatically, his nose still stinging from the gunpowder. "You said you'd teach me how to hit a baseball. You always said you would and you never did." "We'll do that the next time around," he promised, closing the door. "I'll call you later," he lied, keeping his hand on the door handle. She stared at him through the glass window, blinking. In her universe, this wasn't happening, either. It was just another Tuesday morning. She'd just be getting home from her early class and they'd have a second cup of coffee and read the paper. The kitchen would smell like soap bubbles and toast. Emily would climb on Mulder's lap and insist he read the Lil Abner comic strip and do all the voices. The truck started backing away, and he saw Scully tell Frohike to stop, trying to twist the expensive engagement ring off her finger. 'Keep it,' he mouthed silently. 'Come back.' It wasn't eloquent, but it was the only thing he could think of. "Dad," Will said from behind him. Mulder had forgotten Will and Byers were still there. Wondering where all the air on the planet had gone, he turned around, seeing Will pointing at Krycek's body. The corpse was dissolving into a yellow and green puddle and smoking as though there was a cloud of lime Jell-O forming over it. "What is that?" "Oh my God," Byers mumbled. As he, Will, and Byers stared at the melting body, trying to comprehend what it might be, tires squealed as Frohike ran the red light outside the parking garage, taking Emily and Scully wherever they were going. Within seconds, there was nothing left of Alex Krycek except the sawed-off shotgun and a few scraps of leather and denim cloth. There was nothing left of anything. It just turned to mist and drifted away in the morning sun. Mulder's watch said ten-o-five. He tapped it with his fingernail, then held it up to his ear, certain it must have stopped. *~*~*~* In the back seat of the car, Will held the film up to the glowing red sunset, squinting at it. "Could be a girl with birth defects," he proposed, unwinding a few more inches from the reel and studying it carefully, trying to see the body the doctors were examining on the metal table. "Some weird syndrome. Or it could be exposure to radiation." "Could be." It wasn't. As it grew darker, Coney Island came alive with lights, outlining the roller coasters and Ferris wheel like patterns of white stars against the velvet of space. The sticky-sweet smell of cotton candy and funnel cakes drifted down The Boardwalk, mixing with the old salt fragrance of the sea. They'd decided they wanted dinner at Aiello's, then forgotten they were hungry once they got there, so they just sat in the parking lot for an hour, taking turns speaking every ten minutes. In the front seat, Mulder was sitting sideways with his back against the driver's side door and his feet hanging out the passenger side window. He watched as another plane took off, arched away from them, and disappeared into the last of the sunset, thus ending the movie in Technicolor splendor. "Could some sort of hairless monkey," Will continued. It wasn't. "Yep. Could be one of those hairless monkey autopsy films the government doesn't want us to see." Mulder put his feet down and pivoted around, then opened the driver's door. "I'll be back." He hesitated before he picked up the pay phone, then grabbed the receiver and dialed quickly before he lost his nerve. "It's Mulder. Don't hang up," he said when Scully's mother answered. "I was wondering if you'd heard from Dana. I'm not sure where she is and I was hoping she might call you." Mrs. Scully answered that she hadn't seen nor heard from her daughter, then asked evenly what was wrong. Her jury was still out on whether Fox Mulder was friend or foe. "We had a fight. She's upset. She took Emily and took off. She's pretty sore at me." "And why would that be?" Maggie asked icily. "I just don't want her to do something stupid again," he answered evasively. "I'll fix things; I just have to find her." There was a long silence on the other end. To hell with this shadowy government hybrid-breeding project: Bill Scully was going to kill him first. "You'll fix things?" "Yeah, it's no problem. I mean, I'm not marrying her, but I'm not abandoning her, either. I care about her. She's great fun." He bit his lip so hard the coppery taste of blood trickled back onto his tongue, and was relieved when the line went dead. Out of curiosity, he listened and heard a second click a few seconds later. They were listening; mission accomplished. Victory should feel better. Hands on his pockets, he walked slowly down the long, shadowy boardwalk and back to the car. The ocean seemed endless, as though there was nothing between him and the end of the world. He paused to look up as another plane flew over, staring at it until it was out of sight. "That's the seven-ten to London," his son informed him. "There's also a redeye at eleven. The last flight for DC took off about half an hour ago; she could have been on that one, too." "She and Em could be anywhere, Will, and it's nowhere you or I would ever think to look. This is what Frohike does best. He'll send her someplace safe: that's all we need to know. If we know where they are, we could put her and Em in danger." "You gave her a lot of money, Dad," he said warily, testing the waters. "I know there's money, but I thought it was invested. Where do you have that much cash just sitting around?" "Don't worry about it." "I do worry about it. Taking care of Emily had to cost a bundle, plus my mother, plus what you gave Dana, plus I'll have college-" "College? I thought you were going to drop out and be a bum? Will, I didn't budget college; I budgeted bail," he teased, then added, "The Yankees made me a really good offer to come back for one more season. We don't need to worry about money." As Mulder opened the driver's door, the light glinted off a silver dime store lipstick case that had accidentally fallen down beside the seat. He picked it up and it was still warm, like the sidewalk just after dusk. He sat down tiredly, holding the case in his palm. "Should I ask about the baby? Or if Emily is going to be okay? Or about that man you shot and why he bled green?" "No, you probably shouldn't," Mulder mumbled. Will nodded, focusing on the metal film case lying on the passenger seat. The white label stuck on it read 'Roswell, New Mexico 1947: Project Blue Book.' "Do you think she's coming back?" "I don't know. Tomorrow, I'll take this film to Walter Skinner and see if it's worth what I think it's worth. I'll see if he can help me make a deal." "Is it real?" Will asked, unfurling a few more inches off the reel. "What are these doctors autopsying on here?" An alien. They weren't breeding superior humans anymore; they were trying to breed alien-human hybrids. "It doesn't matter. It's either the government- created a hoax to make people think aliens exist, or it's the real deal. Either way, I bet whoever made it doesn't want it shown on the evening news." "And Dana had it the whole time?" "Yeah, she had it the whole time." By the time he and Will had returned to The Plaza that afternoon, They, the omnipresent 'Them,' had been through the suite like a tornado, searching for the film. It wasn't there, of course. It was in a locker across the street in Central Park where Scully had hidden it. And Kitty, stuffed Kitty, was still on the floor of Emily's bedroom. Real Kitten was under the bed, hissing at everyone. Mulder's World Series rings were missing, but everything else was just ransacked. Curiously, the police found no fingerprints, nor had anyone noticed anything suspicious happening on the top floor of one of the world's most conscientious hotels. Mulder opened the glove box, putting Scully's lipstick beside a spare set of keys she'd left there. She'd had half a dozen sets made so she stood some chance of finding one when she needed them. "Sixty-eight Saturday afternoons: that's not nearly enough," he said softly, draping his arm across the front seat and around nothing. In the back, Will looked down from the film stock. "Nineteen months; that's four hundred and seventy-six days, but only sixty-eight Saturday afternoons. That's two Christmas's, but only one summer." Will leaned over the seat, not understanding. "It's not enough," Mulder repeated. "I keep thinking this isn't happening; that it's a bad dream and I'm going to wake up and they'll be here." He looked up at the sky again, then back at Will. "You're here, though. You wanna go see a movie?" "I'm not a kid anymore. You don't have to buy me a milkshake and make it better, Dad." "What about 'Killers From Space' or 'Invaders from Mars,'" he answered, reciting the movie marquee from memory. "Or simply 'Them!'" "Or 'The Creature Walks Among Us,'" Will suggested. Neither of them wanted to go back to The Plaza where all the phones had bugs and all the mirrors had lenses behind them. "Nah, I'm tired of seeing the creature get his ass kicked. How about 'Earth Versus the Flying Saucers'?" He looked back and Will and forced an exhausted grin. "Does Earth win?" "My God, I hope so." *~*~*~* End A Moment In the Sun: Part VI