Book III: Brought to you by the letters F and U
  
  ****
  
  "Sir?" the paramedic repeated, smoothing the last Steri-Strip into
  place. "Do you remember?"
  
  Mulder stared at her as he slouched on the back bumper of the ambulance. 
  Of course he remembered.  He remembered everything: the light, the ship,
  and the cold emptiness that followed.  The nothing that the UFO left
  behind had settled into the valley like a killing frost, draining the
  color from his world.
  
  "Do you remember the date of your last Tetanus shot?" the woman repeated
  slowly, her words drifting away in puffs of white vapor. "Or should I
  give you another?"
  
  "I've been dead since then," he mumbled, finally making the effort to
  speak. "You might wanna give me another."
  
  "Okay..." the paramedic said, and reached for a syringe. "If you won't
  go to the hospital, I want you to follow up with your primary care
  provider as soon as possible.  Can you do that?"
  
  Mulder looked past her, at the flashlights bobbing as FBI agents
  searched the fields and woods around the compound of The Church of the
  13th Sign.  The heat from the ship had scorched everything it touched,
  and the acrid smell of burnt weeds and dirt mingled with the scent of
  gunpowder.  Asphalt shingles had melted, paint had blistered, and
  several of the outbuildings were smoldering ruins, with the gray smoke
  clinging to the ground.  The firefighters didn't seem to think it was
  worth the trouble to put them out.
  
  Against all odds, dawn was coming, creeping like a traitor over the
  black horizon.  Away from the compound, lights flashed as a Medevac
  chopper rose high in the sky, pivoted, and headed for the nearest
  hospital.  The remaining cult members had been carted off for
  processing, most of the ambulances had left with the injured FBI agents,
  and the medical examiner's vans had just arrived for the dead.
  
  Both FBI helicopters had crashed when their engines failed and now lay
  on their sides like a child's forgotten toys.  White sheets covered the
  bodies in front of the church: cult members who'd rushed outside to
  greet the ship and directly into Ophiuchus' line of fire.  Twelve
  adults, two children, and three FBI Agents were scattered over the cold
  ground like fallen leaves.
  
  A line of reporters waited on the other side of the chain-link fence,
  their cameras scanning the scene like mechanical vultures. "Seventeen
  Dead After Improper FBI Raid, Dozens Injured" the headlines would read,
  splaying the gory photos across the front page and the morning news:
  heavy on blame, light on facts.  The FBI hadn't negotiated with
  Ophiuchus, but they hadn't fired first and had shot Ophiuchus to prevent
  him from killing more of his own people.  It wouldn't matter; heads
  would roll, and the truth would get lost in the media glare.
  
  Any reports of a UFO would be officially denied.
  
  "Do you have a primary care provider, sir?" the paramedic checked. "A
  doctor you see on a regular basis?"
  
  "Yeah.  I do," Mulder said numbly.
  
  "I want you to make an appointment as soon as possible."
  
  Mulder squinted at the remains of the compound as the agents dissected
  it for clues. "That's gonna be a little tough," he mumbled.
  
  Skinner approached like an angel with broken wings, his shoulders bowed,
  his dark trench coat flowing behind him, and backlit by the headlights
  of a patrol car. He brought the baby carrier and diaper bag, awkwardly
  setting both in the back of the ambulance, behind Mulder, where it was
  warm.
  
  William was awake.  He had his little knit hat pulled tight over his
  head and the blanket pulled up to his chin.  He studied Mulder with his
  serene blue eyes, then looked away, watching the paramedic.
  
  "She's not here, is she?" Mulder asked, already knowing the answer.  He
  could feel the hollowness inside him, like his soul had been stolen.
  
  Skinner shook his head tiredly. "We've identified all the bodies.  Hers
  isn't among them.  They're still searching the woods, though."
  
  "They took her.  Again."
  
  "It looks that way." He studied his shoes, and then massaged the bridge
  of his nose. "Agent Reyes just took off with Agent Doggett.  They have
  him stable, so they're taking him by chopper.  She said to bring the
  baby to you, and that she'll call you as soon as she can."
  
  "Thank you," Mulder said automatically.  He hadn't realized Doggett was
  injured, or given any thought to who was taking care of William.
  
  "I'm going to call Margaret Scully to come get the baby.  Who do I call
  for you?  Those Gunmen people?"
  
  "I'm okay.  She's patched up my-" He glanced down to see what was being
  patched: a jagged cut across his left deltoid. "My arm." He hadn't felt
  it at the time, but he hadn't cleared the barbwire at the top of the
  fence as neatly as he'd thought.
  
  "He's a little dazed," the paramedic offered. "And I'd like a doctor to
  take a look at these blisters on his face."
  
  "Can you keep him here?  Just keep an eye on him.  And the baby?  I'll
  send someone after them."
  
  The paramedic nodded, turning to smile at the baby.
  
  "We're gonna find her, Mulder," Skinner assured him. "We found you;
  we'll find her.  Do you hear me?"
  
  "Yeah," he muttered, looking down at the dead weeds around his boots.
  
  An agent called for Skinner, and the Assistant Director turned away,
  promising he'd be back.
  
  Mulder closed his eyes, trying to block out the all-too-familiar sight
  of death, but he couldn't block out the sound and smell of it.  Long
  zippers hissed as the dead cult members were placed in plastic body
  bags, and metal stretchers clattered as they were carried away.  His
  nose stung with the peppery scent of scorched earth and gunpowder.  And
  blood - the coppery smell of it lodging in his throat and threatening to
  choke off his breath.  
  
  However much he told himself it wasn't real, it was.  
  It was too real, and he wanted to let his soul rise above it all.  He
  wanted to leave his ineffective body and reach out, to let his spirit
  interweave with the fabric of space until it found hers.  She was out
  there.  Somewhere.  He could feel her pulling him, like they were binary
  stars orbiting each other: locked together, one star seen, one unseen to
  the naked eye.
  
  "Mulder..." Scully's voice whispered to him, washing over him like a
  warm tide.
  
  He inhaled sharply, opening his eyes, but there was only the same
  shadowy, smoking ruin.  His shoulder throbbed, and his face felt
  scorched, and, behind him, William mewed softly.
  
  "Is that what they call you?" the female paramedic asked gently.
  "Mulder?  Is that your name?"
  
  He stared at her.
  
  "Is your wife the FBI agent they're searching for, Mr. Mulder?  The one
  who was undercover?"
  
  He continued staring at her, hating her for daring to be any woman
  besides Dana Scully.
  
  "I'm so sorry," the paramedic said. "This is her baby, isn't it?"
  
  "Yeah," he heard his voice answer as he looked up, searching the
  moonless sky.
  
  ****
  
  Eventually, after a few hours, he went back to Scully's apartment not
  because he lived there, but because William did.  The only signs of
  Mulder's presence during the last six weeks were a disposable razor and
  a toothbrush beside the bathroom sink, a few clothes in a duffle bag in
  the bedroom, and a NICAP coffee mug in the dish drain.
  
  He laid the baby in the bassinette and gave the mobile a few twists,
  hoping William would settle down, then went to Scully's bedroom and sat
  heavily on the side of her bed.  Outside the window, the sky was a thin
  shade of gray, still spitting a little sleet.  It was mid-morning in
  Georgetown; the well-shod and forward thinking braved the weather for a
  low-fat caffeine fix and a gourmet muffin.  Mulder could hear voices
  chattering on the sidewalk below as life went on, but it had little
  relevance to him.
  
  It wasn't real.  It wasn't happening.  He'd listened to his gut instinct
  when Scully told him about the undercover assignment.  He'd realized it
  was a setup and acted sooner.  He'd run just a few seconds faster and
  gotten to her before They did.
  
  It wasn't real.
  
  Any minute, Scully would come through her front door, breathless from
  the cold, carrying a cup of decaf for her, a cup of high octane for him,
  and a bag of baby sundries from the drugstore.  She'd ask if William was
  hungry, and Mulder would surrender the fussy baby to her gladly.  She'd
  lay back on the bed, open her blouse, and put William to her breast. 
  Mulder would stretch out on the mattress, folding his arm under his head
  and watching them.  Once William was sated and drowsy, they'd put the
  bassinette beside the bed and take a nap themselves, safe under the
  cover of tentative happiness and smooth percale sheets.
  
  Any minute.
  
  He stared at the empty bedroom doorway, waiting.
  
  He looked at the bedside phone, hoping against all logic that it would
  ring and Skinner's voice would say it was a mistake: they'd just found
  Scully hidden in the woods or one of the dilapidated buildings on the
  compound.  She was cold, confused, but safe, and waiting for Mulder to
  take her home.
  
  Any minute.
  
  He let his body fall back on the mattress, his feet still on the floor. 
  He was so tired that he felt the bed spinning and the blood coursing
  through his veins. He closed his eyelids over his stinging eyes, then
  rolled, grabbed Scully's pillow, and buried his face in her scent.
  
  The furnace purred as it kicked on, shoes passed on the frozen sidewalk,
  and the mobile above William's bassinette squeaked as it turned.  Mulder
  raised his head, checking on the baby, then laid his cheek against her
  pillow and closed his eyes again.
  
  Any minute.
  
  ****
  
  As straight-laced as Scully could be in her work persona, she was a
  sensualist in private, with her satin pajamas, scented candles, fine
  lotions and potions, and long, hot, Saturday soaks in the tub.  On
  Saturdays, the suit and high heels fell away, the coiffed hair was
  allowed to curl randomly, and the soft woman behind the seventh veil
  came out to play.
  
  The steam from the bathroom smelled like Neutrogena shower gel, and one
  of her expensive, multi-wicked candles flickered on the dresser.  The
  scent was exotic, like sandalwood and mist, and the flames made long
  shadows dance across the wall.  Her favorite Eagles CD played, and as he
  stretched, waking, the sheets were cool against his bare skin. 
  
  Mulder pushed up on his elbow, grinning as he watched Scully approach. 
  She'd twisted her hair up and fastened it with a plastic clip, but a few
  damp strands had worked loose.  Instead of pajamas, she'd put on his
  white dress shirt, which hung almost to her knees.  Her legs were bare,
  and socks covered her perpetually cold feet.  She unfastened the clip
  and shook her head so her hair fell around her face, untamed.
  
  "Hi," she purred, pausing beside the bed.  She slid one electric finger
  down his chest, tracing a lazy path and making the dark hair stand at
  attention.
  
  "Hi," he exhaled. "You're certainly something for a fellow to wake up
  to."
  
  "A good something?" She licked her lips as she crawled onto the
  mattress, moving like a cat stalking its prey. "Or a bad something?"
  
  "Oh, a bad, bad something.  Who-rah," he added under his breath, laying
  back. "Come here, Miss Bad Something."
  
  She straddled his hips, inviting his hands to find their way up her
  freshly shaved legs, then thighs, to the tiny lace panties and bare
  breasts beneath the oversized shirt.  Her skin was slippery from bath
  oil and superheated from the water, and seemed to mold perfectly against
  his.  His erection pressed against the crotch of her panties, and she
  rocked slightly, rubbing against him.  Her kisses lingered on his skin
  like sea foam, sending little electric charges through his body.
  
  "I want to be with you," she said, then slid her lips to his earlobe,
  which suddenly had a pulse all its own. "Not Them," she whispered in his
  ear.
  
  He nodded, understanding.  This wasn't his fantasy; it was hers. "Tell
  me what you want."
  
  "You," she answered. "Just you."
  
  She unfastened the first button of her shirt, then watched as he undid
  the rest.  The flesh underneath was perfect, unmarred by scars or
  stretch marks. The body she gave to him had never been experimented on
  or wounded or carried a child.  Her breasts were small and high, her
  stomach flat and firm.  He took a nipple between his lips, sucking, and
  her fingers tightened in his hair.
  
  "I love you, Mulder," he heard her whisper, as though she'd said it a
  thousand times before.
  
  No games, no power struggles, no excuses or regrets.  Nothing left to
  prove or lose.  It wasn't the way he'd ever made love to her, but it was
  the way he'd always wanted to.
  
  He rolled and laid her back on the pillows, watching her watch him as he
  folded her shirt open, slowly exposing her breasts again, then slid the
  delicate panties down her hips.
  
  The original Eagles crooned, the candle flickered fairy light, and her
  skin was warm and clean under his tongue.  Her soft hands caressed his
  face and shoulders as they kissed, combining lips and tongues and souls. 
  Her thighs trembled as he touched between them, then opened wider.  
  
  He heard a knock at the front door: far away and unrelated to them.
  
  "Nice," he whispered, then blew across tender flesh, making her shudder. 
  When he ran his tongue over her for the first time, she whimpered and
  shifted her feet, toes curling. "Slick.  Like honey," he told her,
  glancing up.
  
  He saw her turn her head to the side, eyes clenched shut, before he
  lowered his mouth again, exploring her secrets.  She was all around him:
  the sounds, the smells, the textures of her.  He could feel and taste
  her body warming to his, then beginning to pull taut, like the strings
  of a violin, seeking release.
  
  "Now," she requested in a voice no man with good sense would ignore.
  
  As he made his way up her body, her sock feet ran up the backs of his
  thighs, drawing him down on top of her.  He kissed her, urging her lips
  apart and letting her taste herself on his tongue.
  
  "Fast or slow?" he asked, pressing his erection against her, feeling her
  body start to open for his.
  
  "Slow," she whispered. "Forever, Mulder."
  
  "Forever," he echoed, promising.  He looked into her blue eyes, then
  relaxed and let himself fall into her.  Her breath was hot against his
  shoulder, her body ready, and her arms safe and welcoming.
  
  The person at the door knocked again, startling him, and suddenly, there
  was nothing.
  
  He woke, finding himself sprawled across the cold bed, his face pressed
  into her pillow and his erection against her mattress.  He raised his
  head and looked around her bedroom.
  
  "Scully," he called hoarsely, hopefully, as though she might have just
  stepped out for a moment.
  
  The sky outside the window was a darker gray, but, except for the
  uncomfortable tightness in his jeans and the wrinkled comforter,
  everything else was the same.  His face and shoulder still ached, and he
  was still alone.  There was no candle, no music.  There were no
  welcoming arms, no sweet words, and no slick, inviting depths.
  
  He licked his lips, wanting to detect some trace of her on them, but
  there was none.
  
  The furnace clicked off, the sidewalk outside bustled with the lunchtime
  crowd, and William started to fuss again.  As Mulder moaned and swung
  his legs over the edge of the mattress, a key turned the deadbolt lock
  in the front door.
  
  ****
  
  Scully had taken her SIG-Sauer with her, but her Smith & Wesson was in
  the nightstand, and his old Glock was in his duffle bag on the bedroom
  floor. Making a quick decision, he reached for the Glock, fishing
  blindly inside the bag.  Finding it, as the front door opened, he pulled
  the pistol from its holster and flicked the safety off.
  
  The bassinette was beside the sofa: between Mulder and whoever had just
  entered Scully's apartment, but not directly in the line of fire.  He
  wasn't sure a nine-millimeter bullet -- or sixteen of them -- would stop
  what was coming through the door, but he didn't have many other options.
  
  He raised the pistol, crouched beside the bedroom door, took a breath,
  and was starting to move when Maggie Scully's voice called, "Fox?"
  
  He stopped in the doorway, heart pounding. 
  
  "Mrs. Scully." He exhaled. "I thought someone was after the baby."
  
  "Fox?" she repeated, eyeing the Glock. "Mr. Skinner said you had
  William, but he wasn't sure where you were. Where you went. You didn't
  answer your phone, and when you weren't at your apartment, so I thought
  you might be here.  I- I knocked."
  
  "I was asleep."
  
  She glanced past him, at her daughter's rumpled bed, but reserved
  comment. "Mr. Skinner said Dana's missing."
  
  As much as Mulder didn't want to, he nodded that she was correct.  
  
  "He said Dana was undercover, something went wrong, and now she's
  missing.  There was an FBI raid in Virginia; I saw it on the news this
  morning.  A UFO cult.  People were killed.  Was Dana there?"
  
  Mulder nodded again, barely moving his head.
  
  "Were you there?" she asked.
  
  "Yes," he said numbly.
  
  She looked at the bassinette, then at the pistol in Mulder's hand. "I'm
  not going to hurt the baby, Fox.  I'm just here to help.  Mr. Skinner
  called me.  Put down the gun and tell me what's happened."
  
  The few functioning cells in his brain conferred and agreed that it was
  impolite to hold Scully's mother at gunpoint, so Mulder lowered the
  Glock, flicked the safety on, and laid it on the end table. 
  
  "Sorry." 
  
  William mewed again, and Mulder walked around the sofa, lifted him out
  of the bassinette, and settled the baby against his chest. "Hey, buddy,"
  he murmured, feeling the world steady a little. 
  
  "Fox, I can take him.  Here," she said, offering her arms. "Here -- let
  me have him."
  
  "I have him.  He's okay." William's downy head was warm against Mulder's
  neck, and a tiny fist gripped his sweatshirt instinctively. "We're
  okay."
  
  "Are you sure?" she asked, hovering protectively.
   
  "I'm-" he started, then looked down, realizing what was worrying Mrs.
  Scully.  Dried mud flaked off his boots and jeans, and the sleeve of his
  sweatshirt was torn, revealing the bloody t-shirt and gauze underneath. 
  He hadn't shaved or showered since the previous morning.  He hadn't
  looked in a mirror, but the blisters on his face probably weren't very
  pretty. "Just a little rough around the edges.  We had a long night."
  
  "I see." She took a step back, staying within arms reach. "Where's Dana,
  Fox?  What's happened to my daughter?"
  
  "She was abducted early this morning by a ship like the one that took
  me," he said, hating the sterile sound of the words coming from his
  mouth. "I saw it, and I tried to stop it, but I couldn't.  They didn't
  want William or me, but They took her.  I couldn't stop Them," he
  repeated. "I'm sorry."
  
  He sat on the sofa, shifting the baby to the crook of his arm.  William
  wrapped his miniature fingers around Mulder's pinkie, stopped fussing,
  and watched him, fascinated by his face.
  
  "Agent John Doggett was injured in the raid," he continued, stroking
  William's belly with his thumb. "But it looks like he'll pull through. 
  Once he's conscious, maybe he'll be able to tell us something useful. 
  The same goes for the cult leader: if he lives through surgery, he'll be
  questioned.  We'll try to track the ship, maybe predict its next pickup
  point.  And we can look for patterns in recent abductions: some
  abductees are returned unharmed within hours or days.  Or, like Scully
  and I, within a few months-"
  
  "And some are returned dead, or never returned at all," she finished for
  him, her voice faltering.
  
  Mulder nodded, looking at the six-week-old baby in his arms rather than
  Mrs. Scully. "I wish I could tell you more, but the truth is that I
  don't know: why They took her or where she is.  When or if she'll be
  returned.  All I know right now is that she's gone."
  
  She inhaled and straightened, like Scully did when she steeled herself.
  "All right.  Please keep me informed.  I'll just get some of William's
  things: the diaper bag, some bottles..." She turned away, heading for
  the kitchen, and Mulder rose and followed, carrying the baby. "Clothes,
  bibs," she continued. "I have a portable crib.  Where is the baby seat?"
  
  "It's in my car.  You're, you're taking him?"
  
  "I think that would be easier than staying here."
  
  "I can take care of him," Mulder insisted as she opened the dishwasher
  and started collecting clean bottles. "I promised Scully."
  
  "No, no one expects you to do that.  You look like you haven't slept in
  days.  I don't know why you didn't call me this morning."
  
  She added a pacifier, then returned to the living room with Mulder at
  her heels.
  
  "He's fine.  I-I was sleeping, but I woke up when he cried.  I just
  hadn't picked him up yet.  I don't ever let him cry."
  
  Mrs. Scully stopped packing the diaper bag and looked at him, puzzled.
  "It's all right.  Dana asked you to look after him, and you did. I'm
  sure you did a good job, but she couldn't possibly have meant for you to
  keep him for weeks.  Or months." She paused, swallowing tensely. "Or
  forever.  He's not your responsibility."
  
  "Yes, he is."
  
  "Fox," she started soothingly. "I know you care about Dana.  I know
  you'd do anything for her, but-"
  
  "He is my responsibility." She kept looking at him like they were
  speaking two different languages. "Mrs. Scully, what did Dana tell
  you...  How did Dana tell you she was able to conceive?"
  
  She hesitated, then must have decided he already knew. "Through in vitro
  fertilization.  Using an anonymous donor."
  
  He stared at her, waiting for the rest of the story.  When he realized
  it wasn't forthcoming, a dull knife twisted in his stomach, then made
  its way upward, aiming for his heart. "And did she ever tell you who Mr.
  Anonymous was?"
  
  "No.  I have some idea, but no, she never did.  And I respect her
  choice.  And so should you."
  
  He chewed his lip and shifted William to one arm, weighing his options.
  "What if it wasn't in vitro?"
  
  "Are you saying someone tampered with her pregnancy?  That her baby
  isn't normal?  She said he was fine.  Healthy.  She said he was a
  miracle." 
  
  "He was.  He is.  Her miracle.  And-" he started, then said, "And you
  can't just take him."
  
  Her gaze moved slowly from Mulder to her daughter's bed, then back to
  Mulder and her dozing grandson. 
  
  "I can't deal with this right now, Fox.   I can't.  Not right now.  My
  daughter is missing.  She could be dead-" 
  
  "She's not dead," he said quickly. "She's out there.  Somewhere."
  
  "Then give the baby to me and go find her," she said angrily, struggling
  to hold back tears. 
  
  A polite knock at the front door interrupted before he could respond. 
  Silently, Mulder handed William to her, and motioned for them to go to
  the back of the apartment as he picked up his gun, just in case.  As
  soon as he saw the trio of faces on the other side of the peephole,
  though, Mulder lowered the Glock and gestured for Mrs. Scully to return.
  
  "Something's wrong with your cellular phone," Byers informed him as
  Mulder opened the door. "It isn't working.  If it was damaged when the
  UFO passed overhead, I'd like to examine it." He put down his briefcase
  and unrolled a large map across Scully's coffee table, preparing for
  battle.
  
  Langly followed, carrying a backpack and an open laptop computer, typing
  with one hand. "I'm gonna need a DSL connection," he said in greeting. 
  
  Frohike was last, zipped into a furry vest and bearing bags of take-out
  containers.
  
  "Hey, boys," Mulder said tiredly. "Come on in.  Have you met Mrs.
  Scully?" he asked.
  
  "We met at your funeral. It's good to see you again, Mrs. Scully.  I'm
  so sorry about Dana.  We're going to do everything we can to find her."
  
  "Thank you, Mr. Byers," she said politely. "Ringo.  Melvin," she added.
  "I appreciate that."
  
  Niceties over, The Gunmen hijacked Scully's computer and Internet
  connection, propped a US map open on the coffee table with two cartons
  of sweet & sour chicken, and made themselves at home.  Frohike manned
  Scully's computer while Langly patched his laptop into a few gadgets
  Mulder didn't recognize, then resumed his staccato, two-fingered typing. 
  
  
  "Why are they here?  And what are they doing?" Mrs. Scully whispered to
  Mulder, holding William against her shoulder.
  
  "It's not a good idea to ask, but it gets results."
   
  "Mulder, you're gonna wanna see this," Frohike said as blurry satellite
  photo appeared the monitor.
  
  "Is that her?" Mrs. Scully asked, quickly going to the computer. "Dana? 
  Is that the, the ship that took her?  Where is it?"
  
  Frohike shifted uncomfortably. "This is where the ship was at five-
  twenty this morning, when Dana was abducted.  We're not sure where it is
  now."
  
  Mrs. Scully stepped back, nodding slightly as she patted the baby's
  back.
  
  "We're looking," Frohike added, trying to sound encouraging.
  
  "If anyone can find her, they can," Mulder promised, but she didn't look
  comforted.
  
  She watched for a bit, then wrapped a thick blanket around William and
  picked up the diaper bag again, moving with the same efficiency her
  daughter had when she was trying not to think about something terrible.
  "Come see him anytime," she said softly, for Mulder's ears alone.
  "You'll be welcome."
  
  "I can take care of him.  I can."
  
  "You can't take care of him and find my daughter at the same time."
  
  Mulder looked down, studying his dirty boots.  There was an hourglass
  inside him, and he felt the last grains of sand slowly slipping away,
  leaving him empty. "Mrs. Scully-"
  
  "Just find Dana," she repeated softly. "Then the two of you can work
  this out."
  
  Five minutes later, he watched from the living room window as Mrs.
  Scully buckled William into the backseat of her Honda.
  
  Any minute now, Scully.
  
  "She'll take good care of him," Frohike said sympathetically, from
  behind him.
  
  "Yeah.  Good call, dude," Langly offered. "You can't save the world
  while wearing a Snugli."
  
  Mulder turned, a dull headache beginning to build behind his eyes. 
  Whether he'd make the mature, best-for-the-baby decision or not, he
  couldn't help feeling like a war had just been averted, but he'd gotten
  screwed in the peace talks.
  
  "What?" Mulder said tersely. "What the hell does that mean?"
  
  "I dunno.  I read it on-line somewhere," Langly added awkwardly. "What? 
  What'd I say?"
  
  "Shut up and hack, Michael Bolton," Frohike suggested.
  
  ****
  
  Scully was gone.  Again.  The X-files were gone.  Again.  William was
  with Grandma for an unspecified period, pending his mother's return or
  DNA testing and a custody hearing. Mulder was alone, unemployed, undead,
  far too tired to sleep, and the gash in his arm hurt like hell. Some
  days seemed to be sponsored by the letters F and U.  Murphy's law
  crossed paths with the cosmic G-spot, and it felt like the entire
  universe was crashing down on him.
  
  And some things made it bearable.  Not good, but bearable enough to keep
  him in motion, and to keep the barrel of his gun pointed somewhere
  besides at the roof of his mouth.  Instant cappuccino from an all-night
  convenience store, bought to wash down a double dose of Advil.  Finding
  a pair of earrings and an Eagles CD Scully had stowed in the center
  console of the car a few mornings ago, then never come back to retrieve. 
  Somehow managing to hit every green light between Georgetown and
  Baltimore.  And seeing Scully's son turn his head toward his voice and
  then reach up, splaying his tiny fingers when he woke to find Mulder
  leaning over his crib.
  
  "Hey, buddy," he whispered again. "How are you doing?  Is Grandma taking
  good care of you?" 
  
  He leaned closer, and sleepy blue eyes the exact color of Scully's
  focused on his face.  When he smiled, the baby smiled back with her
  mouth, and Mulder's arm and heart ached a little less.
  
  "I brought Snuffy." Mulder made the stuffed animal waddle along the edge
  of the crib, then sniff the baby's toes with his fabric snout. "Did you
  miss Snuffy?  I'm real.  Yes, I am," he narrated for the morose stuffed
  animal. "And I'm not an unhealthy, depressed projection of Big Bird's
  psyche.  Mommy's just a big, skeptical, stick in the mud, isn't she?"
  
  William gurgled excitedly and flailed his arms like a delighted seal.
  
  "Oh, you like that?" He tucked the stuffed animal under his arm long
  enough to pick up the baby. "Mommy put up Pooh wallpaper, like Pooh
  Corner is some hotbed of mental health," he continued in his sad Snuffy
  voice, making the stuffed animal mope across William's belly. "But
  Mulder buys one Mr. Snuffy and she-"
  
  A gun cocked behind him, and Mulder froze, cradling William in the crook
  of his arm.
  
  "Put him down.  Put him down and get away from him," Mrs. Scully
  ordered. "Who are you?  What are you doing here?"
  
  "It's me.  Just Mulder.  Fox Mulder.  You said anytime -- that I could
  come by anytime."
  
  He heard her exhale. "Fox.  You scared me half to death.  I thought
  someone was after the baby.  How did you get in?"
  
  Mulder turned and saw Mrs. Scully was wearing a long nightgown and
  holding a pistol in her hand.  He had no doubt that she knew how to use
  it.  Like mother, like daughter.  He wasn't sure she wouldn't shoot him
  just for the hell of it.
  
  "I picked the lock.  It's late; I didn't want to wake you by knocking. 
  I was just, uh, bringing William his Snuffaluffagus."
  
  It was hard to see in the dim living room, but he thought she rolled her
  eyes as she lowered the gun.  She disappeared into the back of the house
  for a few minutes, and then returned wearing a bathrobe. As Mulder
  settled the baby against his shoulder and sat on the sofa, Mrs. Scully
  sat in an armchair opposite him, rubbing her hands uncomfortably over
  her terrycloth lap.
  
  "There's no news of Dana," he said before she could ask. "In a few
  hours, she'll be listed as a missing person, but otherwise, there's no
  news."
  
  "What about the ship?  The one that took her?"
  
  "After five-twenty this morning, there's no sign of it.  The Gunmen have
  done everything short of taking over the Hubble Telescope; the ship
  isn't on any military satellite, not at any known pick-up point, and
  there were no other reported abductions in the last twenty-four hours. 
  They're looking, though."
  
  She looked down, adjusting a slipcover on the arm of the chair that
  wasn't really out of place.  
  
  "Ophiuchus -- the cult leader -- died on the operating table this
  afternoon before he could be questioned," he continued. "The FBI's
  questioning of the rest of the cult members has been less than
  profitable, and they'll be released soon.  Agent Doggett is stable, and
  the doctors are hoping he'll be conscious tomorrow."
  
  He stopped, having run out of disheartening news and nervous energy.
  
  "The Hostage Rescue Team is adamant that what they saw in the sky wasn't
  a UFO," he continued finally, as William began to doze. "They're saying
  it was one helicopter crashing into the other.  They're saying people
  died because of my incorrect assessment of the situation: that if the
  FBI had taken more time to prepare and had negotiated with Ophiuchus..."
  
  He dropped his head against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes,
  feeling William's warm cheek safe against the base of his neck. "There's
  no consortium left," he said. "All the original members are dead or
  dying.  And the cloning and hybrid experiments: those died with them."
  
  "I don't understand."
  
  "Those were men.  Men performed the experiments on Scully, on the
  others: tagging them, taking them, using them as guinea pigs.  Now,
  there are no more men," he explained. "I can find men; I can stop men. 
  I can't stop the universe-at-large.  I can't fight Armageddon with a
  plastic bow and arrow. And I can't find Scully if I don't even know
  where to look."
  
  She didn't respond and he didn't open his eyes.  
  
  A grandfather clock chimed, marking four a.m.
  
  "Is he asleep?" she asked, and the armchair shifted as she stood. "Do
  you want me to put him down?"
  
  "I will in a minute," Mulder mumbled, half asleep himself. "I hafta go
  in a minute..." He felt hands gently guiding him down onto the throw
  pillows at one end of the sofa. A baby blanket covered William, and,
  after a moment, the weight of another lay across Mulder's legs. "I hafta
  go in a minute..." he repeated. "Just bringing William his Snuffy. 
  Can't expect him to sleep without his Snuffy."
  
  "All right," she agreed softly, her voice barely breeching the edges of
  his consciousness. 
  
  ****
  
  Immense was too small a word for the desert sky, and infinite was an
  understatement. Above him, the black canopy stretched across the
  heavens, sprinkled with fairy dust and bisected by the silver river of
  the Milky Way.  A small fire crackled, warming one side of his face, and
  the wind whistled against the mountains, but otherwise, the night was
  still.
  
  Scully sat nearby, wearing a long nightshirt and holding her hands up to
  a campfire.  She smiled when she noticed he was awake -- that hint of an
  honest, relaxed smile that took years of practice to be able to detect. 
  
  "There you are.  Finally," she said, like he'd kept her waiting for eons
  and she'd started to worry.
  
  As he pushed the edge of the oversize sleeping bag down and rolled onto
  his side, the skin on his bare shoulders prickled in the cool air. "I
  was hoping you'd be here," Mulder said softly.  
  
  She fed a few sticks to the fire, stoking it to last until dawn, then
  rose and casually walked toward him.  The breeze blew her hair across
  her face and her nightshirt against her body, outlining one hip and
  breast in blue cotton.
  
  "Where else did you expect me to be?"
  
  "I- I don't know.  Are you all right?"
  
  "A little cold.  A little lonely.  Do you have room for two in there?"  
  
  He stared at her for a nanosecond while her words computed in his brain,
  then folded the top of the sleeping bag farther down, scooted back, and
  patted the warm space his body had just left.  She slid in, pausing to
  pull her nightshirt off before she lay down and zipped up, cocooning
  them in a safe world of flannel lining and goose down fill. 
  
  Her head was warm and heavy against his shoulder, as was her arm on his
  chest and her smooth leg across his.  She surrounded him, smelling of
  Ivory soap and heavy-duty sunscreen and a hint of mesquite smoke. The
  campfire reflected against her fair skin, making it glow the color of
  moonbeams and old pearls.
  
  She wasn't real; he understood that.  The desert, the campfire, the
  sleeping bag built for two: none of it was real.  Just as he'd come to
  her during his abduction, seeking refuge in her dreams, she came to him. 
  This was a place she'd created in her mind: a fantasy, a memory, or a
  page from the L.L. Bean catalog. It was a psychic link, astral
  projection, hypnagogia, lucid dreaming, mutual dreaming: his soul had
  found hers for a few moments, and when he woke, the link would be
  broken. 
  
  He spent several minutes just trying not to wake. 
  
  He stroked her hair, then ran his fingers through it, gently working out
  the tangles.  Her hand caressed his shoulder, rose and fell over his
  chest, then tracked the line of dark hair down his stomach.
  
  "Are you all right?  Are They hurting you?" he whispered finally, afraid
  to hear the answer.
  
  "I'm with you.  They can't hurt me here."   
  
  "Where are you?" he tried. "Tell me where you are."
  
  "With you.  I need to be with you," she answered. "It's nice here.  I
  can't- I can't be there," she added, her voice tightening as the soap
  bubble universe began to quiver, threatening to pop.
  
  "Okay.  It's okay.  I'll find you," he promised. "It's gonna be all
  right.  Don't think about being there.  Just stay here with me."
  
  She nodded silently, her hair sliding against his shoulder like raw
  silk.     
  
  He swallowed, then exhaled and looked up at the cloudless sky for a long
  time.  It seemed to go on forever, stretching back to the beginning of
  time.  So many stars: old souls, traveling through space, searching for
  new homes; kindred spirits trying to find each other. Samantha was
  there.  His parents.  Scully's sister and father.  And, if the ship that
  took Scully was one of those pinpricks of light, she was there now, too.
  
  "How many did you say are out there?" he asked eventually. "Four hundred
  billion stars?"
  
  "Between two and five hundred billion in the Milky Way," she corrected,
  sounding like Scully again. "In the visible universe, there are about
  five billion trillion stars."
  
  "Tell me about one of them," he requested softly, caressing her bare
  shoulder.
   
  She shifted, rolling slightly away and folding one arm behind her head.
  "You see Betelgeuse?" she asked, pointing vaguely at the vast sky.
  
  "The movie Beetlejuice?"
  
  Her sigh indicated that wasn't the correct answer. 
  "It's in Orion: his right shoulder is a star called Betelgeuse. Find it,
  then find Alderbaran just above Orion's bow; that's eye of the bull in
  Taurus.  Orion's aiming his bow at Taurus.  See it?"
  
  Mulder nodded as he scanned the sky.  So far, he'd located Orion's Belt
  and the Big Dipper.
  
  "No, you're looking too high.  Just above Orion's head," she instructed.
  "Those are the bull's horns.  Alderbaran is the eye of the bull and
  those two stars are the tips of his horns.  Now, look just below the
  right horn.  Have you found it?"
  
  "I'm trying." Five billion trillion stars and he was supposed to find
  one speck just above some bull's right horn. "What am I seeing?"
  
  "Now, to the naked eye, nothing-"
    
  "That would explain why I don't see it."
  
  "But in 1054 AD, Chinese astronomers recorded an extra star that
  appeared in Taurus, just above the bull's right horn," she continued.
  "The Anasazi Indians saw it, too.  It grew brighter than Venus, then so
  bright that it was visible during the day for almost a month.  They
  watched the new star for 653 nights, until, suddenly, it was gone."
  
  "A UFO?" he guessed.
  
  "No, a star going supernova.  All that remains now is the Crab Nebula,
  which we'd need a telescope to see, but a thousand years ago, that empty
  space you are looking at was a giant, dying star."
  
  "That is very cool.  Do they count it?"
  
  "Do who count what?" she asked, turning her head to look at him.
  
  "In the five billion trillion stars.  Is that supernova included, or is
  it really five billion trillion stars, minus one?"
  
  She propped her head on her elbow, studying him as if she wasn't sure if
  he was joking or not. "Five billion trillion is a current estimate,
  Mulder."
  
  "Right." He nodded. "And there's nothing about Michael Keaton or the
  real Beetlejuice in this story, is there?" he asked, managing to keep a
  straight face. "Because he was great in that movie."
  
  "The star in Orion is the real Betelgeuse.  It's a red giant formed
  during the birth of our universe. It predates Michael Keaton's acting
  career by about fifteen billion years."
  
  "Right," he said again, as his deadpan facade began to fail. "And
  they're sure it was a supernova?  Not a UFO?"
  
  "Yes, they're sure," she said, starting to sound like she was sorry she
  ever started the story. "The Crab Nebula is the remnants of the star
  that went supernova in 1054 AD.  It's Messier object number one.  M1. 
  It's been studied for-"
  
  "The Anasazi Indians, the Incans -- many ancient cultures reported
  contact with beings from the sky.  There are theories that the Egyptian
  pyramids were built by extra-terrestrials.  Maybe-" he started before
  her frustrated expression got the better of him and he started laughing.
  
  She glared at him, her forehead wrinkling, then flopped down on her back
  and announced they were no longer on speaking terms.
  
  "Right.  No more talking," he agreed, pressing his lips to the hollow of
  her neck, preparing to work his way down.
  
  "...the real Betelgeuse," he heard her mumble under her breath as she
  relaxed.
  
  "I'm the ghost with the most, babe," he quoted, then resumed his
  appreciation of her left breast.
  
  A coyote howled in the distance, adding its voice to the night, then
  vanished, returning the desert to pristine stillness.  Cereus, primrose,
  and desert lilies scented the breeze, and the campfire popped softly as
  the mesquite wood burned.
  
  She hummed appreciatively as he blew across her wet nipple, watching it
  harden in response.  He moved on to the right breast, sucking gently as
  he slid his hand down her flat belly and between her legs, to the warm
  nest of hair.
  
  Making love to her had always been the easy part.  It was the minor
  things -- the morning after, the rest of their lives, the aliens, the
  on-going government conspiracy, and the end of the world -- that tripped
  them up.  If they could do a John and Yoko, and save the world from bed,
  they'd be fine.
  
  "Ithildin," he whispered, pausing to watch the way her wet skin
  shimmered in the firelight. "That's what you are."
  
  "Ithildin?"
  
  "In Lord of the Rings, the Gates of Moria are made of a substance called
  ithildin: visible only by moonlight and starlight, and only when touched
  by one who speaks the secret words."
  
  She smiled tolerantly, reaching up to stroke his jaw. "Somehow, I don't
  think that one's on the periodic table."
  
  "Ithildin.  Right now, by moonlight, I can see you perfectly.  I know
  you.  I know me.  I know us.  But by day..."
  
  She rolled so they were face to face, with her head on his outstretched
  arm and her top leg over his hip. "Maybe you need the secret words?"
  
  He cupped her cheek with his hand, his lips poised over hers. "I wish I
  knew them.  Those are long forgotten in Middle-Earth," he whispered
  before he kissed her.
  
  ****
  
  He heard a thump as a newspaper landed on the porch, then, a little
  later, the gas burner whoosh off as a teakettle prepared to whistle.  A
  baby fussed, feet in soft-soled slippers moved across a hard floor, and
  a telephone got off half a ring before someone picked it up, answering
  with a hesitant "hello?"  
  
  Mulder listened to the woman's muffled voice talking to the caller,
  waiting to see if consciousness would go away.  It didn't.  Somewhere in
  the real world, it was morning again, and, likely, people would be
  expecting him to play along like he belonged among the living.
  
  He looked around the dim room as he tried to figure out where he was. 
  An unfamiliar sofa creaked as he sat up, moaning unhappily. "Shit," he
  mumbled under his breath.
  
  "You're awake," Mrs. Scully's voice said as a portable phone beeped off.
  "I was trying to keep William quiet but the telephone rang.  I'm sorry."
  
  A small female form in a robe was silhouetted in the living room
  doorway, backlit by the soft light from the kitchen.  She held a baby,
  and he stared at her for a second, half-awake, wanting her to be someone
  she wasn't.
  
  Mrs. Scully's house.  Baltimore.  Mr. Snuffy.  The baby.  Late night
  breaking and entering.  Getting the traditional greeting of the Mulder-
  Scully clan: a loaded 9mm -- when you care enough to brandish the very
  best.
  
  "Oh, God.  Did I fall asleep?" Mulder tilted his stiff neck and started
  to roll his left shoulder before he decided against it.  He licked his
  cracked lips and said, "What time it is?"
  
  "After six.  I don't think you fell asleep so much as you collapsed.  Do
  you want coffee?  Or tea?"
  
  She'd taken the baby from him.  Mulder had been holding the baby, but
  she must have taken William the second he fell asleep. And he must have
  let her. 
  
  "No.  No, I should- I hafta to go."
  
  "Mr. Skinner just called.  He wanted to tell me Agent Doggett is awake,
  but there's no news about Dana.  He asked if I'd seen you, but I didn't
  know whether to tell him you were here or not.  I wasn't sure- I wasn't
  sure of the circumstances," she said judiciously. "So I told him I
  didn't know."
  
  "Skinner's at the hospital?" Mulder asked, standing up. "With Doggett?"
  
  She nodded. "I think so.  Fox-"
  
  "I have to go.  I didn't mean to- To inconvenience you.  I-" 
  
  Mulder ran his fingers through his hair.  He was still wearing his boots
  and jacket, so except for a case of bedhead, he was as presentable as
  he'd been when he arrived.
  
  He noticed his reflection in the mirror over the sofa, and paused to
  watch the hollow-eyed, scruffy looking stranger who stared back.  A new
  pattern of small blisters ran down the right side of his face, but the
  sleepy eyes, the funny nose, the too full lower lip and the too angular
  jaw: it was all the same.  It looked like him, but it wasn't.  It was
  like the exoskeleton left behind after an insect molted: a form with
  nothing inside.
  
  In Scully's fantasies, though, he still laughed.  He still remembered
  how.
  
  "Fox?"
  
  "Yes?" he answered in his distant, "yes, I'd like cream and sugar,
  please" voice.
  
  "If Mr. Skinner calls again, what should I tell him?" Mrs. Scully asked,
  tilting William's bottle as the baby drained it.
  
  "Tell him I'm on my way to the hospital," he responded tersely, zipping
  his jacket and fishing the car keys out of his pocket. "And that Doggett
  better have some answers by the time I get there."
  
  He waited, hoping for some clue that she agreed, that she thought he was
  doing the right thing.  Mrs. Scully just looked tired, like this was a
  drama she'd witnessed one too many times.  Not sure what else to do, he
  stroked William's cheek with his thumb and promised he'd call later.
  
  A fine layer of snow had fallen, covering his car and dusting the
  neighborhood silvery-white.  A cold sliver of moon was waxing as night
  held fast against the dawn for a little longer.  Betelgeuse had set, but
  Vega was there.  And Ophiuchus.  And the Big Dipper, pointing to
  Polaris.  The North Star.  Find that, and Scully had assured him even he
  could find his way home again.
  
  Mulder opened the front door, then stopped, letting the cold air in.
  "She's alive," he assured Mrs. Scully. "I can't explain how I know, but
  I do."
  
  "There's a spare key under the flowerpot on the porch," she responded.
  
  ****
  
  It started with "Agent Who?" and spiraled downward from there.  
  
  I've had a partner, Mulder.  He's above reproach, Mulder.  Agent Doggett
  is being maneuvered.  I feel like I'm deserting Agent Doggett just to
  ensure the health and safety of my unborn baby, Mulder.  I have to do
  three-hour autopsies at thirty-nine weeks pregnant to help find Agent
  Doggett.  Because Agent Doggett is my partner, Mulder.  There's no one
  else to go undercover with Agent Doggett, Mulder.
  
  Agent Doggett didn't have to do anything; Mulder could hate the man,
  sight unseen, just on principle. Valid concern for Scully's safety and
  professional territoriality; insecurity and misdirected rage -- po-tay-
  toe; pa-tah-toe.
  
  There were two agents guarding the hospital room, and two at the nurses'
  station.  Another at the entrance to the stairs, and one at the
  elevator.  Skinner was pacing the hall, forehead creased, hands on his
  hips, doing his unhappy dance.  He glanced up as footsteps approached,
  then, seeing who it was, raised his hands, ordering Mulder to cool his
  heels.
  
  "Is he awake?  Is he?  I want to talk to him," Mulder demanded loudly,
  stalking toward him. 
  
  Skinner moved sideways, blocking access to Doggett's room. "Where the
  hell have you been?  I've been trying to call you since yesterday.  You
  took the baby and disappeared, Mulder.  Just vanished.  No one knew
  where you were.  Not me.  Not Scully's mother-"
  
  "I want to talk to that son-of-a-bitch," he interrupted, pointing at the
  hospital bed.
  
  "Not now, not like this," Skinner said sternly as the agents edged
  closer, hands on their weapons. "Calm down, Mulder.  Don't make us take
  you down."
  
  Mulder considered trying to wrestle the Assistant Director out of the
  way, then decided against it.  He'd had a long, slippery drive from
  Baltimore to work up a full head of steam, but no real plan for what to
  do with it.  Killing Doggett wouldn't bring Scully back.
  
  Hurting him would make Mulder feel slightly better, though.
  
  Through the doorway, he saw Agent Reyes sitting beside the hospital bed,
  holding Doggett's hand as he slept.  Monitors beeped and IV lines
  dripped, and she stroked his face, whispering comforting words Mulder
  couldn't hear.
  
  "I want to talk to him," he repeated a little more calmly. "I want some
  answers."
  
  "I have answers.  Some of them, at least.  Sit," Skinner suggested and
  gestured to a pair of chairs across the hall. "Have a seat," he
  reiterated.
  
  Mulder started to argue, then just sat, sighing tiredly.  He rested his
  elbows on his knees, focusing on the doorway. "All right."
  
  "Agent Doggett said Ophiuchus wasn't the one who shot him."
  
  Mulder turned his head, looking at Skinner's profile. "Then who did?"
  
  "He claims it was a member of the Hostage Rescue Team.  He's not sure
  which one, though." Skinner reached in his coat pocket and produced an
  evidence bag containing a mangled bullet. "It's not the caliber
  Ophiuchus was using, and he was the only cult member firing."
  
  "What's the HRT saying?  An accident?  A ricochet?"
  
  "The Hostage Rescue Team isn't saying much of anything." After a moment,
  Skinner folded the plastic bag containing the slug and dropped it in his
  pocket. "Doggett said he never requested Agent Scully undercover," he
  continued. "That he never even mentioned having a wife."
  
  "Then how did she get there?"
  
  "Kersh.  I'd read the file and been briefed on the investigation, but it
  was Kersh who made the decision to send her in.  He was running the
  show.  It looked legitimate, Mulder.  I swear it did.  Safe.  In and
  out.  One afternoon."
  
  "Why Scully, though?  Of all the female agents in the Bureau, why did it
  have to be her?  Didn't that seem suspicious?"
  
  Skinner worried his lower lip, then leaned forward, mimicking Mulder's
  posture. "In the reports I received, when Agent Dogget had described his
  wife to Ophiuchus, he'd described Agent Scully: her hair color, her
  build, her medical background..."
  
  Mulder's mouth moved a few times, but no words managed to find their way
  out.
  
  "She was his partner.  You were gone a long time, Mulder.  She was
  alone, pregnant, grieving.  John Doggett is a good agent, but he isn't
  made of stone.  Working with her, day after day... Yes, I thought it was
  possible he had feelings for his partner.  And that in creating an
  undercover persona, talking off-the-cuff, maybe his imagination got the
  better of him.  I thought it was unwise and unprofessional, and I
  planned to rip him a new one, but I didn't question the report at the
  time.
  
  Mulder sat back, crossing his arms and clenching his molars until his
  jaw started to ache.
  
  "Obviously, the report was false," Skinner added tiredly. "A ruse to get
  her undercover."
  
  In the hospital room across the hall, Agent Reyes continued holding
  Doggett's hand and stroking his face, soothing away the hurt.
  
  Scully had done that so many times.  The darkness would recede, the fog
  of unconsciousness would lift, and he'd wake to her hand in his.  It
  would all be over.  He'd open his eyes and she'd be there, smiling sadly
  and welcoming him back. Watching them, Mulder felt the dull ache spread
  from his jaw to the rest of his body, like he was being drawn and
  quartered in slow motion.
  
  Mulder closed his eyes and rubbed his eyelids until he saw stars. "It
  was a set-up from the beginning," he mumbled. "I'm out of the Bureau. 
  Abduct Scully, kill Doggett, make Agent Reyes look incompetent, and the
  X-files are closed for good.  Kersh finally gets what he wants."
  
  "You're forgetting someone."
  
  He looked up. "Who?"
  
  "I will have to explain myself to the Office of Professional Conduct
  next week," Skinner responded, then took off his glasses and rubbed them
  with his handkerchief. "And then, probably, to a Senate review panel."
  
  "That pretty much covers all the bases."
  
  "Pretty much," Skinner agreed, still polishing the spotless lenses of
  his glasses.
  
  "Why abduct Scully?" Mulder asked after a little thought. "If They
  wanted rid of her, why not just shoot her?"
  
  "I think that was Kersh's plan: get her undercover, knowing the
  situation was unstable, and, in the confusion of the raid, shoot her and
  Agent Doggett and blame it on Ophiuchus.  But someone or something else
  interfered."
  
  "Why?" Mulder asked.
  
  "That's the question.  And that's what I was hoping you could tell me."
  
  ****
  
  Even as a kid, he'd gravitated toward telescopes, Hardy Boys books, and
  plastic phasers, but he'd had his share of toy cars.  He remembered one
  kind in particular: wind its metal insides up with a little key, holding
  the rear wheels still, and then set it down and let it race pell-mell
  across the kitchen floor.  Under-wind it and it stops after half a foot;
  over-wind it, though, and its insides jam permanently and it can't go
  anywhere.
  
  That was how he felt now, sorting through the Gunmen's endless files:
  like a metal coil was twisting dangerously tighter and tighter inside
  him.  All wound up with no place to go and no clue how to get there.
  
  Byers had conked out at about two, his arms arranged neatly on his desk
  and his head on his hands, like a first grader at quiet time.  Langly
  was still at it, his mouse clicking as he worked his way through the UFO
  newsgroups, searching for any tidbit of useful information.
  
  The long table in the center of the Gunmen's lair was littered with
  files, photos, and old soda cups, and Frohike had to clear a place to
  prop his elbow.  He scratched the stubble on his chin before asking
  hopefully, "Mulder?  You wanna make a run for the border, man?  Get some
  air?"
  
  Mulder shook his head without looking up.  He set one stack of papers
  aside and picked up another, rubbing his eyes before he tried to focus
  on the miniscule type.  The clock on the wall read three-thirty a.m. 
  Scully had been gone almost forty-eight hours.
  
  He knew the statistics -- for terrestrial abductions, anyway.  Twenty-
  four hours after a kidnaping, with no contact with the kidnappers, the
  chances of a hostage being found or returned alive started dropping;
  after forty-eight hours, the chances fell to almost non-existent.  When
  Scully had been taken to Antarctica, he'd been able to reach her with
  the vaccine in less than forty-eight hours.  When he was abducted, she
  said the ship had lingered in the Arizona desert, but only for a few
  days.
  
  The clock ticked, and that metal coil inside him wound a little tighter. 
  
  "No one's going to deliver this time of night, but I could stick a
  frozen pizza in the oven," Frohike offered. "We have pepperoni."
  
  "I could do pizza," Langly responded, then yawned.
  
  "Did you check the flight schedules to and from Antarctica?  And New
  Zealand?"
  
  "Not in the last hour," Langly said grudgingly.
  
  "Check them," Mulder ordered. "And then check the satellite photos for a
  plane that didn't file a flight plan.  Check the payloads for anything
  that sounds odd, anything that could be them transporting Scully.  And
  then check the geothermic scans. If the ship that took Scully went to
  Antarctica, it'll show up on the scans when it lands on the ice."  
  
  "Dude, we've been at this since noon.  I need to be caffeinated."
  
  "And William needs his mother," he barked, then added raggedly, "And I
  need Scully.  Keep looking."
  
  Cowed, Langly frowned, adjusted his glasses, and went back to his
  fruitless hunting and pecking.
  
  "Where are the data from the European Remote Sensing Satellite?" Mulder
  asked, putting the papers aside and looking through the manila folders. 
  NASA, DOD, ERS-2, CIA, FBI, NORAD, SETI -- if it had an acronym and
  government funding, The Gunmen had a file on it.
  
  MUFON.  CUFON.  CUFOS.  NICAP.  NARCAP.  UFOCAT.  
  
  Projects Sign, Grudge, Twinkle, Blue Book.  MJ-12.  
  
  Men in Black.  The Philadelphia Experiment.  The Manhattan Project. 
  Crop circles.  Cloning.  Black helicopters.  731.  Paperclip.
  
  Roswell.  Tunguska. 
  
  Abductions.  Abductees.  Rousch Pharmaceuticals.  Zeus Genetics.  The
  Litchfield Experiment.
  
  Super-soldiers.  Black oil.
  
  Bees.
  
  It was like someone had spread the last decade of his life across the
  table and said, "Here are your answers, hotshot.  Now find the truth."
  
  The clock on the wall ticked loudly.
  
  The truth was that Scully was gone, and he didn't even know why or where
  to start searching for her, let alone how to get her back.
  
  "Frohike," he repeated. "The ERS-2 data?" 
  
  "There weren't any transmission errors.  Byers checked already."
  
  Mulder glanced up, his eyes stinging and his head protesting the lack of
  sleep. "Let me look."
  
  "He already checked them," Frohike objected as Mulder rummaged through
  another stack of files.
  
  "Let me look.  Which folder is it?"
  
  "There are no errors.  What are you looking for?"
  
  "I'm looking for Scully, damn it!" Mulder snapped, slamming the files
  down. "I'm looking for a ship."
  
  "It isn't on there.  She isn't on there," Frohike snapped back. "The
  ship's gone.  She's gone."
  
  Mulder opened his mouth to yell back, then closed it and pressed his
  forehead hard against his palms, trying not to go crazy.
  
  "There's nothing out there," Frohike said. "No ship.  Not in the desert. 
  Not in Oregon.  Or Skyland Mountain.  Or Antarctica." His voice
  softened. "She's gone, just like you were gone."
  
  "So what am I supposed to do?" he asked, his voice cracking. "Just wait? 
  Just wait to find a body? Go out and scream at the sky? I can't just do
  nothing."
  
  Langly stopped his two-fingered typing, and Frohike cleared his throat
  uncomfortably.  Byers raised his head, looking around sleepily, trying
  to determine the source of the commotion.
  
  "I can't just do nothing," Mulder repeated emptily.
  
  Frohike exhaled. "Why don't you go see your son," he suggested finally.
  
  ****
  
  "To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three
  parts dead."
  
  It was a line from some book he'd read as an undergrad, but Mulder was
  too tired to recall the author or even the context of the quote.
  
  Three parts dead; that still left one part alive and accountable.
  
  He sat on the rug in front of Mrs. Scully's floral sofa, his legs bent
  slightly, with William on his thighs.  In the darkness, William slept
  soundly, his lips moving as he nursed in his dreams.
  
  He wondered how different it would have been if he hadn't been abducted. 
  If he'd been with Scully from the day she found out about the baby, if
  he'd gone to the doctor's visits and seen the ultrasounds, if he'd had
  more than a few weeks to acquaint himself with the idea of her being
  pregnant.  Perhaps he could have drafted off her sense of wonder and
  certainty instead of feeling an auger boring its way through his gut
  each time he'd looked at her belly.
  
  She'd never had any doubts: that her baby was normal and that she could
  take care of it.
  
  He'd had nothing but doubts.
  
  Mulder wondered how he'd answer, on some random afternoon in the future,
  when William asked the circumstances of his birth. "I wanted you for
  your mother," wasn't going to cut it. "I love you because you're part of
  her." "I took care of you because I promised Scully that I would."
  
  He felt a sense of protectiveness and duty.  And he felt a kind of love:
  a gentle connection and warmth inside his chest when William looked at
  him.  He tried to will himself to feel more -- to feel the fierce,
  instinctive bond that Scully seemed to have with her son, but there
  wasn't any emotion left inside him to force out.
  
  He just sat, resting the baby against his knees, and stroked one tiny
  flannel foot as William slept.
  
  Three parts dead.
  
  It was Bertrand Russell, he finally remembered; the book had been
  Marriage and Morals, published in 1929. Russell had scandalized society
  by criticizing the sexuality morality of the day.  He'd questioned the
  need to establish a child's paternity, saying it benefitted the father's
  ego, not the child's well-being.  Even in the roaring twenties, Russell
  had raised eyebrows by viewing marriage as optional   and something to
  be considered only after a couple had a child.  Seventy years later, Dr.
  Dana Scully had agreed   at least when it came to Mulder   and Mr.
  Anonymous had gone along.
  
  Having an excellent memory wasn't a good thing, sometimes.  He would
  have settled for just remembering the quote.
  
  "Fox?" Maggie's voice whispered, as her slippers padded down the hall
  toward them. "Is that you?"
  
  "Yeah," he answered, then cleared his throat. "Yes.  I was just watching
  him.  He's asleep."
  
  She stopped a few feet away, tying the sash of her bathrobe, and then
  pushed her disheveled hair back. "You can come visit during the day."
  
  "I know.  I was in the neighborhood."
  
  "Do you need anything?"
  
  "No," he answered softly. "I just wanted to see him.  He's so peaceful."
  
  She nodded slightly. "Do you want a blanket?"
  
  "There's one in the crib."
  
  "For you.  If you're going to spend another night on the sofa, you'll
  need a blanket."
  
  He continued stroking the sole of William's foot. "I'm going in a
  minute.  I just wanted to see him.  Make sure he's okay.  Safe.  Not
  colicky or cold or anything..." he said, trailing off.
  
  "I'll get one, just in case."
  
  He didn't have the energy to argue.  She disappeared down the dark
  hallway, then returned carrying two blankets and a pillow, which she put
  on the arm of the sofa. "There are more in the linen closet, if you need
  them."
  
  "Thank you," he mumbled.
  
  When he looked up, she seemed uncomfortable, as if she wasn't sure if
  she should stay or go.
  
  "Don't put your dirty boots on my sofa again," she said finally,
  sounding maternal. "Take them off."
  
  "I will," he promised.
  
  She hesitated again, then said, "You can't sleep with William on your
  chest.  Not on the sofa.  It isn't safe.  He could get wedged between
  you and the cushions and smother.  Or, if you let go of him while you're
  asleep, he could fall."
  
  "Oh.  Okay."
  
  He'd skimmed "What to Expect When You're Expecting," but nothing past
  that point.  When it came to taking care of William, he just did what
  Scully told him.
  
  Scully hadn't told him what to do if she never came home again.
  
  "Goodnight," Maggie said awkwardly, and turned, her footsteps fading
  down the hallway.
  
  He watched William a little longer, then dragged a blanket off the sofa,
  unfolded it on the floor, and arranged himself and the baby on it.  He
  put one hand under his head as a pillow, and one on the baby as a frail
  shield against all the evil in the world, and, exhaling, closed his
  eyes.
  
  ****
  
  She was twenty-eight years old the first time she'd intruded into his
  fortress of paranoid solitude: five-foot nothing of red hair, blue eyes,
  and skepticism, ready to right the world in her frumpy suits and fuck-me
  shoes.
  
  He'd loved the juxtaposition from day one.  
  
  Scully was an elegant contradiction: a conformist with a rebellious
  streak just beneath her cool surface.  She was brilliant, dependable,
  and more predictable than she liked to believe.  She was fiercely loyal,
  bull-headedly obstinate, and just as dangerous as she seemed at first
  glance.  And she was beautiful.  Quietly, hazardously, fatally so.
  
  The dress she was wearing should have had a warning label: slow,
  dangerous curves ahead.  It was made to fit a woman, not a teenage girl:
  sensuous without being slutty and elegant without a hint of stuffiness. 
  The front was held up by two thin straps, then fell into a long silk
  sheath that bared her back and caressed her breasts and hips.  Her hair
  was pulled high in that magical 'do that women did: like it had been
  picked up and set atop her crown, defying gravity except for a few
  curls.
  
  He paused unseen, watching her, trying to memorize every detail.  The
  hollow where her neck sloped into her shoulder and the tilt of her head
  when she was deep in thought.  The way she moved, spoke, laughed.  The
  gestures, the nuances, the fluid beauty of her.
  
  When she noticed him in the doorway, she smiled invitingly, and he
  smoothed his tuxedo jacket and stepped into the empty ballroom. 
  Candelabras lined the walls, and an unseen band played something slow
  and smoky.  The tall windows were open, and the breath of a new spring
  evening made the gauzy curtains flutter and brought the scent of a
  hidden rose garden. In the center of the room stood Scully, alone,
  lovely, and waiting patiently for him in the surreal borderland between
  his consciousness and hers.
  
  "Just us?" he asked, stopping in front of her.
  
  "Just us," she promised, then licked her crimson lips as she put her
  arms around his neck.
  
  "I'm searching for you," he couldn't help saying.
  
  She nodded, and then closed her eyes as he kissed her.  Her skin and
  hair smelled faintly of an exotic perfume, and her mouth tasted like
  champagne.  It opened, inviting him in.
  
  He tried to relax his mind, to let the dream sweep over him and become
  reality for a little bit.  He needed it as much as she did: this fantasy
  universe she created for the two of them.
  
  "I'm not having much success," he admitted as their lips parted, her
  arms still around him.  He stroked her bare shoulder blade and hesitated
  before he said, "Scully, I need you to tell me where you are."
  
  "I'm here," she whispered into his ear. "Right here.  Dance with me,
  Mulder."
  
  She stepped backward as if expecting him to lead, but his feet stayed
  rooted to the polished floor.
  
  "I will.  I will, but you have to talk to me first.  I need to know
  where you are, Scully.  I need to know what They're doing to you."
  
  "I don't know."
  
  "You have to know," he insisted. "You're an FBI agent; you have to be
  able to tell me something.  Where are you?  What do you see?  Hear?  How
  long did it take you to get there?  Just try, Scully.  Please try.  I
  need you.  William needs you."  
  
  She let go of his hand and stepped away, regarding him sadly.  He
  reached out, grabbing her wrist and pulling her back before she could
  get away.
  
  This was maddening, and it was making him insane.  Every knock at the
  door and every ring of the phone was Scully; every petite woman on the
  sidewalk and every redhead in front of him at a stoplight was Scully. 
  In a crowd, his gaze moved from face to face, searching for hers.  Her
  presence haunted his every waking moment, and when he closed his eyes,
  she was there: in his arms, beautiful, but still just out of reach.
  
  "Then tell me what to do, Scully," he pleaded. "If you can't tell me how
  to help you, tell me what to do with William until I find you.  William:
  your son," he repeated when she looked at him blankly. "You have a son. 
  We had a baby.  And you went off and left him, and never told me what to
  do.  I don't know what to do with him, Scully," he said, one word
  tripping over the next. "I don't know what you expect.  I don't know
  what I am to you.  Or to him."
  
  His hand shook as it clutched her wrist, and his forehead wrinkled
  painfully.  
  
  "You're his father.  Take care of him," she said softly. "Keep him safe. 
  Love him."
  
  "I'm trying," he answered hoarsely. "It's so hard.  I'm just afraid..."
  
  "You can do this." She stroked his cheek, trying to comfort him. "I know
  you can. I love you." She moved closer, brushing her slick lips over
  his, then asked again, "Dance with me, Mulder."
  
  He nodded, willing his feet to move. The band played softly, the candles
  flickered, and they danced, moving in a stationary circle in the middle
  of the dim ballroom, his arms around her for as long as the song and the
  dream lasted.
  
  ****
  
  Mulder was the media scapegoat -- the rogue ex-profiler, the reckless
  FBI agent who'd chased space aliens -- for the deaths at The Church of
  the 13th Sign, but Walter Skinner was the one the Bureau could punish. 
  The Office of Professional Conduct was already building the gallows. 
  The formal hearing was in two days, but formality had little to do with
  it.  The truth was an outlying variable, blame was the name of the game,
  and the ending was a foregone conclusion.
  
  As he motioned Mulder into his apartment, Skinner's shoulders were bent,
  his jaw was set, and his face was creased with weary stoicism.  The
  collar of his shirt was open and the sleeves were rolled up past his
  forearms.  His suit coat was draped carelessly askew over a chair, and a
  tumbler of scotch sat on the coffee table, the ice just beginning to
  melt into the amber liquid.
  
  "You said you had something for me to look at," Skinner said, skipping
  the pointless fine-how-are-you formalities.
  
  Mulder handed over the file, then waited, leaning against the cool wall
  in the foyer and resting his eyes. He'd gotten a few hours sleep on Mrs.
  Scully's living room floor the previous night, but that did little to
  rest his mind.  He was tired from the inside out: an emptiness no catnap
  or cup of coffee was going to touch.
   
  "Autopsy reports?" Skinner's voice asked as he leafed through the file,
  sounding puzzled.
  
  "Autopsy reports on the fourteen cult members and three FBI agents
  killed during the raid," Mulder responded, blinking awake. "All done at
  Quantico and signed off on by the same Bureau pathologist.  Two of the
  agents were pilots who died in the chopper crashes; the third and all
  the cult members were found to have died of gunshot wounds:
  specifically, bullets from Ophiuchus' rifle."
  
  Skinner nodded. "Right.  I've seen these.  Do I want to know how and
  where you got them?"
  
  "Probably not.  You'll see where two bodies were released to funeral
  homes for burial," he continued, "The two pilots.  The body of the third
  agent, Randy Hodges, hasn't been released, nor have those of any of the
  cult members."
  
  Skinner shook his head slightly. "I don't follow."
  
  "There were seventeen corpses, not counting Ophiuchus: fourteen cult
  members and three FBI agents.  Where are the other fifteen bodies?"
  
  "Probably still at Quantico."
  
  "No, they're not.  Not according to FBI records.  The autopsies have
  been completed, the causes of death have been established; the bodies
  should have been released, yet there's no record of anyone requesting or
  receiving them.  No funeral home.  No family member.  They should still
  be at Quantico, but they aren't."
  
  Skinner adjusted his glasses. "So where are they?"
  
  "My guess?  They never arrived at Quantico in the first place.  And no
  autopsies were ever done.  My guess is, except for the two chopper
  pilots, after the corpses were tagged, bagged, and loaded into the vans,
  the 'bodies' got up and walked away."
  
  "Bodies don't to that, Agent Mulder," Skinner responded, habitually
  using his old title. "Not as a general rule."
  
  "We've seen ones that do.  We've seen something that could take a dive
  off the roof of the Hoover Building, get crushed in the back of a
  garbage truck, and walk out of the morgue the next morning."
  
  Skinner frowned and adjusted his glasses again.
  
  "Don't you find it odd that none of the cult members suffered minor
  wounds?  That none, except Ophiuchus, needed medical treatment?" Mulder
  asked. "They were all pronounced dead at the scene.  All the wounded
  were FBI agents, including Doggett, who claims he was shot by a someone
  on the Hostage Rescue Team."
  
  "You're saying the cult members were super-soldiers?  Are super-
  soldiers?  All of them?  Including the children?"
  
  "And one FBI Agent: the one who shot Doggett.  Randy Hodges.  Check his
  weapon.  Dollars to doughnuts its signature matches the bullet the
  doctors cut out of John Doggett."
  
  "Dollars to doughnuts?"
  
  Mulder nodded slowly.
  
  "I'd have to prove intent," Skinner said. "Even if Ballistics matches
  the bullet, it could still have been accidental.  If Agent Hodges and
  the cultists were super-soldiers, I'd need a way to prove that.  A
  medical exam or-" 
  
  Mulder produced a videotape that had been tucked under his arm. 
  
  "What do you have, Mulder?"
  
  He walked past Skinner and slid the tape into the VCR in the living
  room, fumbling a bit to find the play button.  The television screen
  went blue, then grainy, choppy footage of a row of cars, some stairs,
  and an elevator appeared. 
  
  "This is a captured feed from the security camera in the FBI parking
  garage, lower level, twelve hours after Scully was abducted," he
  explained.  On the film, one figure emerged from the stairs as another
  stepped out of the shadows. "That's Deputy Director Kersh.  The man
  talking to him: Special Agent Randy Hodges.  He's the member of the
  Hostage Rescue Team whose body seems to have vanished from Quantico."
  
  Skinner leaned against the back of a recliner and stared at the jerky
  black and white images on the screen. 
  
  Mulder pushed pause, stopping the tape at a point where Hodges' face was
  most visible. "He's the agent who gave me a hard time during the
  briefing.  I thought I recognized him, but the room was dark and I
  couldn't remember when or where I'd met him."
  
  "When or where did you meet him?"
  
  "Last May, in Bellefleur, Oregon.  Special Agent Randy Hodges used to be
  Deputy Ray Hoese."
  
  "Why do I know that name?"
  
  "Because he and his wife, Teresa, were abducted by the same ship that
  took me.  Teresa was returned, but Ray's body was never recovered."
  Mulder tapped the TV screen. "That's Ray.  Or at least, it was."
  
  Skinner gave him a "holy shit, batman" look.  There was no question the
  investigation into the cult had been a sham and a set-up; the problem
  was proving it.  On the television screen, courtesy of Langly's hacking
  skills, was the proof, with a paper trail to back it up.  Deputy Ray
  Hoese had vanished from Bellefleur, only to return as Agent Hodges, die
  in a raid on The Church of the 13th Sign, and be resurrected on an FBI
  security camera talking to Deputy Director Kersh less than a day later.
  
  "That's Ray," Mulder repeated. "The Gunmen are comparing photos of the
  cult members to missing person's reports involving abductees.  They'll
  have matches for you by tomorrow morning.  I'm betting, since Ophiuchus
  seems human, if the pathologist checks, his body will have implants and
  the type of scaring associated with multiple abductions.  If the
  pathologist isn't sure what to look for, have him review Duane Barry's
  file."
  
  Skinner exhaled slowly, still looking at the image on the TV screen. "My
  God, Mulder."
  
  "No, just 'Mulder,'" he said. "I'm not a deity." 
  
  On the television, Deputy Ray Hoese's face was frozen in time, his
  expression as flat as death.  Mulder remembered Billy Miles calling,
  saying Ray had disappeared.  He and Scully had been in the Hoese's home;
  Scully had held their baby as Teresa explained that Ray was a multiple
  abductee - that he loved his family and wouldn't have just left, despite
  what the police were claiming.
  
  According to Scully, Teresa had been subjected to the same type of
  torture as Mulder, then returned near death.  Jeremiah Smith had healed
  her but been abducted before he could heal Mulder.  Or anyone else.  The
  Montana cult hadn't been there to find Ray Hoese's body, and Scully
  hadn't been there to dig him up and administer anti-virals.
  
  "Did Teresa get her baby back?" Mulder asked. "I remember Social
  Services coming for it after Teresa vanished.  Scully said that after
  Teresa's return and recovery, Teresa was petitioning the court to get it
  back.  Did that ever happened?"
  
  "I'm not sure," Skinner answered. "I can check."
  
  "I hope she did." Mulder looked at the screen again. "I'll call her. 
  She deserves to know what happened to her husband." He zipped up his
  jacket and put a hand on the doorknob.  If he broke a few traffic laws,
  he could be in Baltimore before William's bedtime. "Goodnight."
  
  "That won't happen to Scully," Skinner said quickly, catching up with
  Mulder's train of thought. "We'll find her; we'll help her."
  
  Mulder paused and studied his shoes, then the smooth wood of Skinner's
  apartment door.
  
  "We have her records of how she treated you," Skinner continued,
  lecturing the back of Mulder's head. "We know what to do.  And you're
  assuming the worst.  We don't know who took her or why.  We will find
  her.  One way or another."
  
  "One way or another," Mulder agreed, as he left.
  
  ****
  
  The days were just days, one blurring into another: hours falling into
  days, days into weeks, and weeks into months.  The gray January faded,
  Valentine's Day passed unmarked, and March arrived like a lion, covering
  DC in icy dampness.  Bare tree branches weathered the storms like black
  skeletons, thrashing angrily and helplessly at the sky. Winter
  eventually retreated, then came sulking back one last time before
  beginning to thaw.
  
  William learned to roll over, to suck his toes, and to do mini pushups. 
  He babbled something that sounded like "mama," then grinned coquettishly
  and refused to cooperate when Mulder tried to get him to say it again.
  
  Maggie Scully left a pillow and blanket for Mulder on the sofa when she
  went to bed, and about half the time, found him asleep in her living
  room early the next morning, with the coffee table pushed aside and the
  portable crib right beside him.  She never invited him to stay, but the
  spare key was always under the flowerpot on the porch.
  
  The dreams of Scully continued, coming to him like a trout nibbling on
  the end of a fishing line.  She came as night fell -- talking,
  embracing, making love, and making him feel alive -- and when he woke,
  another morning was broken without her.
  
  After allegations of corruption came to light, Kersh resigned rather
  than testify.  Several high bureau officials resigned as well, and about
  half the agents assigned to the task force investigating the cult
  vanished under mysterious circumstances.  As the dust settled, various
  names were tossed around to be the next Deputy Director of the FBI. 
  Walter Skinner's was one of them. 
  
  Ophiuchus rose high in the sky, moving west, then faded into the dawn,
  just as the followers of The Church of The 13th Sign disappeared into
  the woodwork.  They were always there, though, somewhere, just beyond
  the horizon.  Waiting.
  
  Venus came from the east, just before sunrise, a brilliant light in the
  lower heavens.  As his fruitless search for Scully continued, Orion the
  Hunter dominated the cold winter sky, then began sliding sideways into
  the horizon, signaling the arrival of another spring.
  
  ****
  
  He was failing her in increments.
  
  No lights came on when he flipped the switch, which meant he'd forgotten
  to pay Scully's electric bill again.  Without heat or air conditioning,
  the apartment had the warm, stale smell of a cat's fur.  The last of her
  potted plants had succumbed to dehydration and, when he checked her
  mail, the folks at Citibank were feeling neglected as well.
  
  When he opened the refrigerator, one last sigh of cool air escaped,
  indicating the power hadn't been off more than a few days.  The shelves
  were empty except for an out of date cup of yogurt, two damp bottles of
  salad dressing, and some Chinese take-out about three months past its
  prime.  He transferred the lot to the kitchen trash but, when his
  stomach started to roll, elected to leave the contents of the crisper in
  hopes it would someday grow a salad.
  
  The nursery was still a cheerful yellow, with the inhabitants of Pooh
  Corner cavorting on the walls.  The crib was empty, and the miniature
  clothes in the dresser no longer fit William.  Mulder stood in the
  doorway for a few minutes, then turned away.
  
  In the bedroom, Scully's clothes hung neatly in the closet: a collection
  of blue, black, and beige suits, their collars still smelling like her
  skin.  The same laundry was in the hamper, and the same sheets were on
  the bed, now wrinkled and far from Downy fresh.  The clock on the
  nightstand was still set to go off at seven a.m. -- "Plenty of time,"
  she'd said that last night before her meeting with Skinner, though
  William woke them at five.  She'd slept in her robe that night, too
  tired to get up and change into pajamas.  He'd slept with his arms
  around her and his cheek against her damp hair.
  
  He pulled off his shoes and sweatshirt and lay across the bed in his t-
  shirt and jeans, staring at the ceiling, letting the not-so-distant
  memories wash over him like the tide.  For once, he couldn't pretend she
  was in the next room or had just run to the store.  Her presence was
  gone, leaving the musty apartment silent and still.  Tomblike.
  
  He rolled slightly, pulling open the top drawer of the nightstand. 
  Among the pens and notepads and to-be-read issues of JAMA was an
  unassuming journal he'd first found in an Allentown hospital years ago. 
  He'd re-discovered it in February, about a month after her abduction,
  but had yet to open it.
  
  He traced the cover with his thumb, wondering what answers might be
  inside.  Wondering if she'd written about him.  Or to him, as she had
  during her cancer.  Wondering if she'd put the journal in the drawer for
  him to find, wanting him to read the words she couldn't bring herself to
  tell him aloud.
  
  After a moment, he put the journal back and shoved the drawer closed,
  then let his head fall back onto the stale pillow.
  
  Not yet.
  
  ****
  
  There were theories purporting that time and space could be bent,
  allowing one universe to overlap with another.  According to Scully,
  physicists called these hypotheses "string theory," and argued endless
  about the possible permutations and implications.    
  
  To the ancients, the mystical pleats in the fabric of space-time were
  called "ley lines" -- powerful channels of energy that flowed over the
  Earth and, where they crossed, created doorways between the dimensions.
  To the Vikings, they were "spokenwegen," and to the Neolithic
  inhabitants of Great Britain, they were the "cursuses:" the walkways of
  the dead.  The routes the spirits traveled between one world and the
  next.
  
  There were the Chacoan roads in the New Mexican desert built by the
  Anasazi Indians sometime before memory, and the Mayan "sacbeob" of the
  Yucatan peninsula.  Monuments like Stonehenge marked the intersection of
  ley lines.  There were the Nasca geoglyphs in Peru, the Avebury circles
  in Wessex, and in the middle of the American heartland there was the
  Mystic Pizza Hut.
  
  He'd always suspected that place merited further investigation.
  
  When he pushed open the door, Dr. Zaius, the blonde ape from Planet of
  the Apes, was at her post behind the register.  Don Henley sang "The End
  of the Innocence" on the old jukebox, his voice pumiced smooth by time
  and tide.  As always, the cool interior of the restaurant was dim and
  deserted, the floor was rough and uneven, and the air was thick with the
  scent of yeast and malt.  It could have been any time between the late
  1980's and yesterday.  There were no posters advertising the newest
  pizza and pasta permutations, no $9.99 special offer banners, no
  calendars or newspapers -- nothing he could use to establish a date. 
  Inside the Mystic Pizza Hut, nothing ever changed and nothing ever
  would.  It was the franchise that time forgot. 
  
  "You want the usual?" Dr. Zauis asked impassively as the door eased
  closed behind him.  When he nodded, the old woman disappeared into the
  kitchen to bang some pots and pans, leaving him alone.
  
  The rhythm of the song was like a slow heartbeat, and Mulder nodded
  along as he leaned on the jukebox, scanning the tables and booths for
  Scully.  After a few minutes, he slid into the first booth, sitting so
  he could see the door.  As he waited for her to arrive, he drummed his
  fingers on the tabletop and looked out the window.  Night was falling
  over the Midwest, casting long shadows across the fields.  Outside the
  restaurant there was a single stretch of pavement, flanked by tall rows
  of corn, continuing until it vanished into the distance.  
  
  He jumped as Dr. Zauis set a plastic cup, a plate, and a fork on the
  table, then turned to return to the kitchen.
  
  "Wait," he called after her. "We need two.  There's someone else coming. 
  A woman.  She's... Ma'am-"
  
  She didn't seem to hear him as she walked away.
  
  He looked at the single cup, watching the ice melt into the soda, then
  got up and looked around the restaurant again.  Don Henley played
  softly, the oven door squeaked, and the jukebox lights glowed violet and
  crimson in time with the backbeat.
  
  In the dreams, Scully was always there first, setting the stage, waiting
  patiently for him at the edge of night.  He'd never had to wait or
  search for her, and he'd never had a night or a nap pass without her
  coming.  Sometimes to talk, to walk with him or dance or stargaze, and
  sometimes just seeking physical solace in his arms, but she always came.
  
  Growing increasingly uneasy, he went to the register, leaning over the
  counter and calling "Ma'am" loudly until Dr. Zauis reappeared, wiping
  her hands on a dishtowel.
  
  "There's a woman.  The woman who's always with me-" he started.
  
  "She's not here."
  
  "I know she's not here," he said in annoyance. "I see that.  It's my
  dream.  But she's-"
  
  "She's not coming," Zauis interrupted impassively.
  
  "She always comes.  She has to come," he insisted, but Dr. Zauis only
  stared at him blankly. "She'll come," he repeated adamantly.
  
  "No."
  
  "Where is she?  What have you done with her?" he demanded. "I'll find
  her.  I swear to God I will.  Scully," he called, pushing off the
  counter and scanning the restaurant again.
  
  The aging jukebox, the empty booths, two tiny bathrooms, a payphone, and
  a PacMan game so old it belonged in the Smithsonian.  His soda cup was
  gathering condensation on a table at the far side of the room, and a
  dusty FBI-issue blue Ford Taurus was parked outside the window.  The
  jukebox went dark as the song ended, then whirred as it switched tracks. 
  After a moment, Joe Cocker's worn voice replaced Don Henley's, and the
  lights and backbeat restarted. "Hold on," Joe requested softly, then
  promised someone, "I'll be back for you; it won't be long."
  
  When the night comes.
  
  He felt a cold prickling sensation began at the base of his skull and
  trickled down his spine like a lazy ice cube.
  
  "Don't look too hard," Zauis said cryptically, from behind him. "You
  might not like what you find."
  
  "Shut up," he snapped, then turned and stalked out of the restaurant,
  shoving the door open so hard that it banged against the side of the
  building.  
  
  "Scully," he called loudly, turning in a circle in the parking lot.
  "Where are you?  Talk to me."
  
  The wind whistled across the fields, bending the cornstalks and rustling
  the leaves so they sounded like whispers from the shadows.  He listened,
  but there was no response.  There were no people.  No cars passing. 
  There was only an old restaurant beside a narrow road that stretched
  between two darkening horizons.
  
  "Scully!" he screamed again, his voice breaking and heard only the
  silence answering.
  
  ****
  
  He told himself that the dreams weren't real.  That they'd never been
  real. That it wasn't Scully coming to him, her soul reaching out to his
  for comfort, but merely his subconscious at play.  They were just
  fantasies fueled by loneliness and testosterone.  Or delusions brought
  on by sleep deprivation, fear, and suggestibility.  And they didn't mean
  anything.
  
  That afternoon, he cleaned the rotted carrots and cantaloupe out of the
  crisper in Scully's fridge, threw away the pots of dirt that used to be
  houseplants, and took out the kitchen trash.  He washed the bed sheets
  and the dirty clothes in the hamper, and, while they dried, reset her
  clocks to Daylight Savings Time and replaced the battery in the smoke
  alarm.
  
  He put one check in the mail to the electric company to get the power
  back on and another to Visa before Scully's credit rating started to
  slip.
  
  He went to see William that evening and played a few rounds of "Mulder's
  gonna eat your toes" while Mrs. Scully tried not to look like she was
  hovering.
   
  And, ninety-three days after Scully was abducted from The Church of the
  13th Sign, Mulder stopped looking for a ship and started looking for a
  body.
  
  ****
  
  Valid anger and laying blame where it was due; fear, guilt, and impotent
  rage -- po-tay-toe; pa-tah-toe.  
  All things being equal, he'd rather tongue kiss Roseanne Barr.  Or be
  subjected to a three-day Golden Girls marathon.  Or chaperon a herd of
  Kindergarteners to see Disney on Ice.  Or be stripped naked, covered in
  honey, and devoured by ravenous fire ants. 
  
  Unfortunately, the tenacious Agent Reyes refused to take "no way in
  hell" for an answer.  After months of ignoring e-mail and phone messages
  from John Doggett, Mulder emerged from the Richmond morgue late one
  night to find Monica Reyes leaning against the bumper of the Volvo,
  waiting.
  
  "It's not her," he said, before she could speak. "It's not Scully.  You
  can tell your partner he was right not to waste a trip."
  
  "He'll be glad.  That it's not her, I mean," Reyes corrected. "You're a
  hard man to track down."
  
  "Places to go, bodies to ID," he responded tersely, avoiding eye contact
  as he fished his car keys out of his jacket pocket.
  
  "This woman wasn't even close, though, Mulder.  Are you planning to
  investigate every redheaded female corpse entered into the NCIC?  Just
  keep looking until you go insane?"
  
  He gave her as sarcastic a grin as he could manage. "That is the plan,
  yes."
  
  "It's not a very good one."
  
  He sighed tiredly, otherwise ignoring her.
  
  He'd left DC as soon as the woman's description had been entered into
  the FBI's NCIC database as an unidentified corpse in Richmond, setting
  off The Gunmen's bells and whistles.  It wasn't an exact match to
  Scully, but it was something.  A hope.  A possibility.  Better than
  nothing.  Something to do besides wait.  
  
  That had been two hours, three cups of coffee, and a hundred or so miles
  ago.  Now, it was four in the morning, his forehead pounded from lack of
  sleep, his shoulders ached, and his skin smelled like yet another
  morgue. 
  
  The Jane Doe in the steel drawer had been someone's daughter.  Before
  her death, she'd been someone's friend and neighbor and coworker. 
  Perhaps she'd even been someone's wife or mother or lover, but she
  hadn't been Dana Scully.
  
  "You won't find her this way, Mulder," Reyes persisted. "You're looking
  in the wrong place."
  
  He turned, his car keys in his hand, and asked irritably, "And where do
  you suggest I look?"
  
  "Jungians believe in the collective unconscious, that if we look inside
  ourselves, the answers are there, waiting.  Unless you're afraid to
  look.  Or unless you're so blinded by anger and darkness that you look,
  but can't see."
  
  He stared at her for a second, then muttered an annoyed, "Oh, shit,"
  under his breath and shoved the key into the lock.  On a good day, he
  found Agent Reyes interesting and quirky; on a bad day he found her
  annoying as hell.
  
  He hadn't had a good day in a long time. 
  
  Instead of moving, she leaned against the fender of his car, crossing
  her arms. "I've been reviewing your case files.  Dana's been abducted
  before, in 1994.  According to your report, she was one of a group of
  women subjected to experiments that left them sterile.  Yet,
  miraculously, last March, just before your abduction, she conceived a
  healthy son."
  
  "Alert the Vatican," he said, but with less sarcasm. "Look, I need to
  get back.  I'm-"
  
  "Your son," she added. "Whom the super-soldiers came for, but then left. 
  You're assuming Dana's abduction was to make her a super-soldier, but
  what if it wasn't?  What if there was another purpose?"
  
  "Which would be what, Agent Reyes?"
  
  "To harvest ova again.  To create the baby They'd hoped William would
  be.  The ova have to be there for Dana to have conceived.  All it would
  take is genetic material from you, and They could create and implant
  fetuses in unsuspecting women.  Just as They have before, according to
  your files."
  
  He rolled his shoulders and glanced at his watch as if he had better
  things to do than listen to Reyes' encyclopedic ignorance on the
  subjects of super-soldiers and genetic experiments.
  
  "Corrupt forces in the government wanted John and Dana dead, and the X-
  files closed," she persisted earnestly. "That's what the setup at The
  Church of the 13th Sign was about. But the UFO interfered. I saw it,
  Mulder.  You saw it.  That ship took Dana before Ophiuchus or Agent
  Hodges could shoot her.  There has to be a reason for that."
  
  "What does Agent Doggett think of your theory?"
  
  "He thinks I've been reading way too many of your X-files and that I
  need my head examined."
  
  Mulder hesitated, then put his keys back in his pocket. "All right; I'm
  listening."
  
  In truth, all that was waiting from him in DC was either Mrs. Scully's
  or the Gunmen's sofa.  It was a cold, foggy Saturday night that promised
  to become a dreary, gray Sunday morning.  There would be leads to
  follow-up on, phone calls to make, and piles of data to sift through. 
  And, by dusk, he'd be no closer to finding Scully than he'd been in
  January.
  
  Agent Reyes produced a pack of Morley's, taking one before she passed
  them and a lighter to him as a peace offering.  After a second, he took
  both, not bothering to feel guilty.  Hell, the worst it could do was
  kill him.
  
  "I'm still trying to quit," she informed him half-heartedly. "Really."
  
  He tilted his head to light his cigarette, cupping the flame to protect
  it. "It looks like it's going well."
  
  He inhaled, coughing gently as his lungs protested, then he settled
  against the Volvo's fender, getting the butt of his jeans wet.  
  
  "I read the file on Emily Sim, the child Dana's ovum was used to create. 
  You weren't Emily's biological father, though," Reyes said, then paused
  for a drag. "Not according to the DNA profiles.  And I wondered if the
  in vitro procedures Dana underwent were a sham -- that the true purpose
  was to obtain semen from you.  Except that the clinic burned to the
  ground, destroying any samples They had."
  
  He exhaled, watching the first cloud of smoke dissipate slowly into the
  wet night.
  
  "I know there are a few pieces missing from the puzzle, but I just have
  a feeling that I'm on the right track," she continued. "That William is
  the key -- or rather, William's parents: both abductees, both humans who
  survived exposure to the alien virus.  When William was born, those
  super-soldiers thought he was their messiah, but he wasn't.  Not quite. 
  So They left him and now they're trying to create another child."
  
  A black, windowless medical examiner's van pulled into the parking lot,
  then turned and backed up the ramp to the morgue.  The headlights died,
  and an attendant emerged from the building to help the driver unload the
  body.  It was a morbid dance he'd seen a thousand times: a homicide, a
  suicide, an overdose, a car accident, and the ME got the late night
  call.  The body would be weighed, measured, and examined.  Photographs
  would be taken; reports would be written and distributed.
  
  "It's not so bad," he said softly, exhaling another smoky breath.  Reyes
  turned her head, watching him. "Being dead.  The hard part is the dying. 
  And the people you leave behind.  But death..." He looked up, studying
  the overcast sky. "It's not so bad."
  
  "Why are you so sure Dana's dead?"
  
  He took another drag, the tip of his cigarette glowing orange in the
  darkness. "I didn't say she was."
  
  "But you think she is," she responded. "I can feel it.  You're going
  through the motions, but you don't really believe you're going to find
  her after this long.  Not alive.  Not in any condition that you'll be
  able to bring her back."
  
  "You think I'm giving up?  Does it look like I'm giving up?  I'll never
  give up on Scully."
  
  "That's not what I said."
  
  Reyes moved as if to put a hand on his arm, but seemed to decide against
  it and put it in her pocket instead.
  
  "She doesn't come anymore," he said to the cloud of smoke in front of
  his face. "In my dreams.  She did, but now, when I close my eyes,
  there's just nothing.  And when I open them, there's still nothing."
  
  Anyone else would have hauled him to the nearest ER for a CT scan and a
  Thorazine drip, but Reyes nodded in understanding. "There's William."
  
  "Yeah," he agreed softly.
  
  They leaned against the gray Volvo, not looking at each other as the
  thick mist became a slow drizzle.  They could walk thirty feet and stand
  under the eaves of the morgue, but neither suggested it.
  
  "It's like when you're shot," he said after a minute. "It's like that
  first second afterward when you realize what's happened but before you
  can feel anything.  You know how bad it is and how much it's going to
  hurt but time slows and you just wait.  That's what I feel: that empty,
  drifting lack of sensation before the pain sets in."
  
  "I'm sorry," she said softly, awkwardly.
  
  He tossed the half-smoked cigarette down and then ground it out with the
  toe of his boot.  Across the wet parking lot, the men had the body
  unloaded, and the steel gurney rattled was they wheeled it up the ramp
  and into the morgue.
  
  "On the ship," he said, still not looking at her. "The missing piece of
  the puzzle: where They got my DNA.  Semen.  Whatever.  On the ship. 
  When I was abducted."
  
  "The report Dana filed doesn't mention that."
  
  "No, it doesn't," he agreed.
  
  "That's because you didn't tell her," Reyes guessed, and he didn't
  respond.
  
  The morgue doors swung closed, and the sound of the gurney's clattering
  wheels faded, replaced by the pattering of the rain.
  
  "I'm sorry," she said again, after a moment.
  
  "Yeah." He found his keys again, and fitted the key into the wet lock,
  still not looking at her.
  
  "Mulder-" she started worriedly, but he was already in the driver's
  seat, reaching to close the door.
  
  "Thanks for the smoke."
  
  ****
  
  Half an hour later, he stopped at a rest area beside the interstate,
  parking among the tractor-trailers and RV's stabled there for the night. 
  He got out, shoving his hands on his pockets and hunching his shoulders
  against the rain as he crossed the dark parking lot.
  
  A search of his pockets yielded ninety-eight cents in change and some
  lint, so he fed a crumpled dollar into the coffee machine.  It rejected
  it the first two times, then, after some smoothing and coaxing,
  swallowed the bill with a mechanical gulp.  He pushed the button for
  black coffee, large, then leaned against the machine, temples throbbing,
  and waited for the cup to drop and be filled.
  
  When nothing happened, he pushed the button again, cursing impatiently. 
  He tried a third time, slamming it hard with his palm, but no paper cup
  fell.  The machine remained silent, smugly blinking for him to insert
  his money and make a selection.
  
  He stood in the partially enclosed shelter between the public restrooms
  staring at the uncooperative coffee machine.  The vending machines on
  either side of it offered overpriced bottles of soda and an array of
  chips and candy bars, but that had been the last of his dollar bills. 
  He wasn't risking giving it a five, and shooting it seemed a little
  extreme, even for him.
  
  He hit the button again, and, getting increasingly angry, shoved the
  machine, managing to jostle it a little.  Encouraged, he shoved it
  again, then gave it a hard kick.
  
  The digital display continued blinking for him to insert $1.00 and
  select a hot, crappy beverage.
  
  "Stupid, fucking, idiot machine," he yelled at it, his words echoing
  inside the shelter and through the quiet rest stop. "Goddamn it!"
  
  He shoved it one last time, sending it squeaking back an inch on its
  metal legs, then sat on a bench outside the men's room, exhaling like an
  angry bull.  Mulder balled his fingers into fists, wanting to hit
  something, and felt a lump rising in his throat.
  
  He sniffed and swallowed, swearing to himself that he wasn't going to
  cry.  He was forty-one years old and he wasn't going to sit at a rest
  stop in the middle of the night and cry about an inane cup of bad
  coffee.  He was tired and irritable and alone, and he just needed to get
  a grip.  
  
  And some caffeine.  And maybe some sleep.  And Scully.  And then he'd be
  okay.
  
  The memory of a woman's face flashed in his mind: the auburn-haired Jane
  Doe in the Richmond morgue, her delicate features slack and her pale
  skin tinged bluish gray.  He'd watched expressionlessly as the Medical
  Examiner folded the sheet back, not sure if he was praying it was Scully
  or praying it wasn't.
  
  He hated Them: the grays, the super-soldiers, and the impeccably dressed
  men who tried to play God from the shadows.  He hated Them not just for
  what they'd done to him but for what they'd taken away: months of his
  life.  Time with Scully while she was pregnant with William.  Time to
  talk things out, to work things out, instead of having life, love, and
  fatherhood crash over him like a tidal wave.  He hated Scully for all
  the things she'd left unsaid and unresolved.  And he hated himself for
  letting her leave them unsaid and unresolved.  He hated Them for
  abducting her and her for getting herself abducted.
  
  His forehead wrinkled painfully, and his nose continued to drip.  He
  wrapped his arms around his body and hunched his shoulders, trying to
  protect himself as he began to shake.  The dark sky wept with him,
  raining down on the sidewalk and drumming against the thin roof of the
  shelter.
  
  Any minute now, Scully.
  
  ****
  
  The scruffy clerk behind the desk at the motel didn't look up from his
  skin magazine as he swiped Mulder's credit card and slid a key across
  the counter.  As Mulder walked across the parking lot, the windows of
  the other rooms were dark, their curtains drawn.  It would be dawn in
  another few hours, but the last of night still held firm to the black
  horizon.  The rain had slacked off, leaving a layer of ghostly fog
  drifting over the wet pavement.
  
  Room 455 was in the far building, up the metal stairs, and around back. 
  Mulder opened the squeaky door, flipped on the lamp, and dropped his
  duffle bag on the low bed.  In the dim light, the mirror over the
  dresser reflected a tired stranger with red-rimmed eyes and rain-
  dampened hair.  He frowned at the image as he turned the television on,
  then sat on the lumpy mattress and stared at the mirror for a few
  minutes until he motivated himself enough to reach for the phone.
  
  "You're in Fredericksburg," Frohike said tersely, instead of hello. "I
  thought you were going to Richmond.  What are you doing at a motel? 
  What's happening?"
  
  "It wasn't her," Mulder responded, cradling the receiver against his
  shoulder as he untied his boots. "The body in the morgue.  You were
  right; it wasn't Scully.  Just another wild goose chase.  I'm just- I'm
  just gonna stay here tonight.  I'm too tired to be driving."
  
  He pulled the bedspread down, piled one cheap pillow atop the other, and
  leaned back, clicking the remote control tiredly.  The motel television
  offered infomercials, cable news, and a variety of soft core porn --
  some he'd seen before and none he wanted to pay to see again.
  
  "Are you still there, Mulder?"
  
  "Yeah.  I'm still here."
  
  "We got a report of a UFO sighting earlier tonight in Pennsylvania. 
  We're looking into it."
  
  "Okay," Mulder mumbled, not really listening.  His shirt and socks were
  clammy, like he'd taken them out of the dryer too soon, but he didn't
  have the energy to sit up and take them off. "You remember the Lombard
  Research Facility?"
  
  "The fertility clinic with the clones?" Frohike answered. "Yeah.  You
  want the file on it?"
  
  "I want you to find it -- or whatever its present incarnation is."
  
  "You think that's where They're holding Scully?"
  
  "Maybe," Mulder answered noncommittally.
  
  "We'll get right on it," Frohike promised.
  
  "When you find it, let Agent Reyes know.  And Agent Doggett," he added.
  
  Frohike cleared his throat in disapproval, but he didn't argue.
  
  Mulder continued to flip through the channels, stopping at an old film
  featuring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck that he'd watched once with
  Scully.  He disliked the movie, but it was one of her favorites: a tale
  of star-crossed lovers and a romance that was never meant to be. "The
  best love stories don't have happy endings," she'd told him that
  November afternoon, in her pragmatic way.
  
  "Mulder?" Frohike's voice said, reminding him he was still holding the
  telephone. "Are you okay?"
  
  "Yeah," he lied, and then asked. "Did you guys do a drive-by tonight? 
  Check on everybody?"
  
  "Byers did.  He said it looked like William was up at one, but he and
  Mrs. Scully have been asleep since then.  If you're not going to make it
  back tonight, we'll check again in a few hours."
  
  "Okay.  Thanks." Mulder paused, watching the movie on the television
  screen, and then added, "You were right: she takes good care of him.  Of
  William.  Mrs. Scully does."
  
  "She seems to," Frohike agreed.
  
  "She does," he repeated absently.  
  
  He twisted and fished his wallet out of his back pocket, slipping the
  photographs from their little plastic sleeves and examining them. 
  
  Mrs. Scully was personally supporting J.C. Penny's Portrait Studio, and
  the latest photo shoot featured William in a sailor suit and hat,
  showing off the beginnings of his first two teeth as he grinned for the
  camera.  Except for the shape of his eyes and the dark hair, his
  features echoed Scully's more than Mulder's.  It didn't seem possible
  that her baby was almost five months old.  That their baby was almost
  five months old.
  
  Behind the new photo of William were the two of Scully, creased where
  he'd folded them and worn at the edges.  Both were black and white,
  taken by a crime scene photographer two years ago and, on a whim,
  pilfered from the evidence room by a wayward FBI Agent.  In the first,
  he and Scully were nose to nose, their trench coats flapping and their
  lips parted as they gestured over a body.  That was Agents Mulder and
  Scully: standing in some farmer's muddy field, debating some fragment of
  evidence, neither willing to budge an inch.  In the second picture, he
  was stalking away in disgust, but Scully was looking slightly to the
  side, as though something in the distance had caught her attention. Her
  features were soft and vulnerable, and her intelligent eyes were far
  away.  That second image, a fleeting expression captured by an anonymous
  camera lens while she was unawares, was Dana Scully.
  
  If Agent Reyes was right, They were harvesting more ova to make more
  Emilys.  Or more Williams, to be specific.  Thousands of them.  More
  children born conceived by medical rape, born in a test tube, and
  destined to die for an agenda.  If Agent Reyes was right, Scully wasn't
  coming back.  Not mostly-dead, not as a super-soldier, not at all.
  
  "Are you sure you're okay?" Frohike asked again. "You're kind of... I
  don't know.  You're worrying me, Mulder."
  
  "I'm just tired," he responded, laying the pictures aside.
  
  "You sound tired.  Get some sleep," he suggested. "Check in with us in
  the morning."
  
  Mulder mumbled something and hung up the telephone, then stared at the
  water-spotted ceiling as the movie droned in the background.  In the
  bathroom, a leaky faucet dripped slowly.
  
  His gun was in his duffle bag at the foot of the bed, and he raised his
  head, looking at the bag and wondering if the dark thoughts that prowled
  the edges of his brain were pragmatism or cowardice.  Unable to decide
  and too exhausted to care, he turned the TV off and closed his eyes,
  listening to the faucet and letting his mind drift away from harsh
  reality and into the battlefield of the warrior-poets.
  
  ****
  
  This time, it was his dream: the old one of the boy and the beach and
  the elaborate ship they built and rebuilt endlessly on the shore.  
  
  It was a peaceful, innocent place from his childhood, not far from his
  parents' summer home.  He and Samantha used to ride their bikes to
  Squibnocket Beach, spending long afternoons playing in the warm sand and
  searching for pirate treasure among the dunes.  
  
  After Sam was taken, he'd returned to the same empty beach again and
  again, always alone.  He'd sit on the rocks for hours, watching the tide
  and waiting for Samantha to return.  Dusk came eventually, but she never
  did, leaving him alone beneath the indifferent heavens as night fell
  over the ocean.
  
  It wasn't until he was an adult that the boy and the beach began to
  creep into his dreams, a roughhewn Eden amid the nightmares he saw
  everyday on the X-files.  Perhaps it symbolized restoration of an
  innocence lost or backtracking to a path not taken.  Or a cop-out, a
  coward's refuge -- a longing for a simpler, easier life that he wasn't
  destined to have.  Memory and desire swirling together in his
  subconscious: both of them seductive liars.
  
  Regardless, the dream hadn't come in years.  Not since before his
  abduction, not since Cancerman had invaded his brain with electrodes and
  scalpels, polluting Mulder's thoughts with his hissing voice.
  
  He sat on a flat, weathered rock, waiting, looking at the sea and
  feeling the salty wind caress his skin and ruffle his hair like an old
  friend.
  
  Far down the meandering shore, seagulls squawked and scattered, and he
  spotted two figures approaching: a woman and the boy, backlit by the
  molten sunset.  Scully and the boy.  The wind whistled through the
  dunes, blowing her auburn hair and whipping her long skirt.  The boy was
  five, perhaps, with his chestnut hair tousled and his round cheeks pink
  from a day in the sun.
  
  Spotting him, the boy let go of Scully's hand and ran toward Mulder,
  laughing excitedly, his tennis shoes sending the sand flying.  Scully
  followed at a more sedate pace, calling half-a-dozen directions that the
  boy didn't listen to.
   
  Mulder's watched, the hair on the back of his neck prickling as the boy
  approached.
  
  "William," his lips moved in recognition as he got to his feet. He'd
  seen the boy in a thousand dreams, yet never questioned who he was. "Oh
  my God."
  
  Instead of a tiny baby, there was a five-year old boy laughing and
  playing and wanting to share some wondrous new discovery with his
  father. 
  
  "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy," the boy requested, and Mulder almost looked
  behind him to see if someone else was being addressed. "You have to come
  see."
  
  "What- What is it?" he asked uncertainly.
  
  The boy skidded to a stop in front of him, panting. "A ship.  You have
  to see."
  
  "There's a ship?  A pirate ship?"
  
  "No." William grabbed his hand, tugging impatiently. "Come see," he
  repeated. "Hurry.  It's hu-mungous."
  
  He stared at the boy, dumbstruck, trying to accustom himself to this new
  role.  He glanced at Scully, who seemed faintly amused as she caught up
  with her son. 
  
  "This is William?"
  
  She nodded.
  
  "Oh my God," he repeated. "He's wonderful."
  
  She smiled, pushing back her hair as the breeze blew it across her face
  again. "He's you."
  
  "We really did this?"
  
  "We really did." She came closer, tiptoeing to press her mouth to his,
  and for a second, in his dream, he could taste eternity on her lips. "I
  love you."
  
  "Daddy," the boy pleaded, tugging harder on Mulder's hand. "Come on."
  
  "I gotta go see this ship," Mulder informed her in mock seriousness,
  feeling a little giddy as he stepped back. "It's humungous."
  
  "Go," she responded, smiling.
  
  "I love you.  We'll come back," he promised, then turned and let William
  pull him down the beach, their feet pounding and sliding against the
  sand.
  
  When he looked back, Scully waved, watching them go.
  
  "It's here," William urged, then let go of his hand to scurry up a pile
  of slippery rocks.  Mulder followed, helping the boy climb.  When they
  reached the top, he saw it in the distance: an elaborate space ship
  built of sand.  It sat on an isolated stretch of beach and the tide had
  just reached it, starting to nibble away at one edge.
  
  "There," William said, and pointed one Band-aid wrapped finger. "A
  ship."
  
  He looked up, wanting reassurance, and Mulder nodded. 
  
  "I found it."
  
  "You did," Mulder confirmed.
  
  They stood on top of the rocks, the wind blowing their shirts and the
  sun's dying rays buttering their skin in orange light.  He put his hand
  on William's shoulder as they looked at the ship.
  
  "It's getting washed away," the boy said worriedly.
  
  "We can build it again," Mulder promised. "We can always rebuild it." He
  rubbed William's shoulder. "Tomorrow.  Okay, buddy?  We'll come back
  tomorrow."
  
  The long fingers of dusk were beginning to take hold of the shore, and
  the chill in the air made him shiver.
  
  "Okay," William agreed.  He rested his head against Mulder's leg
  trustingly, watching the sea and shadows overtake the ship.
  
  As he stroked the boy's disheveled hair, Mulder glanced over his
  shoulder and, in the distance, saw Scully watching them.  Her skirt
  whipped wildly against her legs as she raised her hand, waving.
  
  She was smiling.
  
  ****
  
  He practiced saying it in the hazy motel mirror as he shaved, as he
  drove to Baltimore, then as he parked, got out, and made his way up the
  sidewalk.  Plastic Easter eggs hung from the tree branches in the front
  yard, and a cheerful ceramic bunny perched on the porch, holding out a
  basket hopefully.
  
  Instead of letting himself in, he knocked and took a deep breath,
  studying the floor of the porch as he waited.  He shoved his hands in
  the pockets of his jeans, then took them out again and wiped his damp
  palms on his thighs.
  
  "I want my son," he said as soon as the door opened, before he looked
  up.
  
  Mrs. Scully had on a tailored pink suit and was holding William on her
  hip and her purse and the diaper bag in her hand, ready to walk out the
  door. 
  
  "Fox?" she said like she might have misheard. "I wasn't expecting you. 
  We- William and I were just leaving for Mass."
  
  "I- I-" he stuttered, trying to say it again. "I think he should live
  with me."
  
  "With you?"
  
  "I'm his father.  He should live with me," he managed to repeat. "I can
  take care of him."
  
  She stared at him in disbelief and stepped back, gesturing for him to
  come inside before they gave the neighbors something to talk about.
  
  "I can," he repeated.
  
  She laid her purse on the end table and shifted William to her other
  hip. "You can come by and see him anytime.  You know you're welcome-"
  
  He shook his head. "He's mine.  He should live with me.  And you can
  come by and see him anytime."
  
  She walked around the sofa and sat down, holding William on her lap.
  "Fox-" she started tolerantly, soothing him like this was some
  adolescent whim.
  
  "He's mine," Mulder insisted. "We can do DNA testing, but you already
  know that he is."
  
  "Genetically, maybe, but you-"
  
  "No, not just genetically.  And not 'maybe.' He's mine.  I know that's
  not what you want to hear, but it's true.  The last time Dana tried in
  vitro was two years ago.  You can check her medical records.  Check the
  dates.  You can watch the videotape-"
  
  "Tell me you don't have a videotape of you and my daughter," she
  requested evenly.
  
  "It's one she made for William.  While she was pregnant and I was gone.
  It's a tape for William, about me.  Why would she do that unless she
  wanted him to know who I was? I love her. And I love him."
  
  Mrs. Scully was quiet a long time while the baby squirmed on her lap,
  wrinkling her skirt.  She turned her head, looking through the front
  window.  In the yard, the morning breeze rustled the leaves and made the
  plastic eggs suspended from the dogwood tree bang together randomly.
  
  "They why didn't you marry her?"
  
  "I asked her," he answered. "She said 'no.'"
   
  Mulder waited, uncomfortable and not sure what else to do or say.  After
  a few more seconds of silence, he smoothed his palms over his legs again
  and started chewing the inside of his lower lip.  He had all his verbal
  ammunition ready for a showdown at the Scully Corral, but her non-
  response was more unsettling than outright refusal.
  
  "Why now?" Mrs. Scully asked, patting William's back absently. "You
  never came to the hospital after he was born.  Sometimes you go days
  without seeing him, without even calling.  Why, after all these months-"
  
  "I gave him to you so I could find Dana-" he started to defend himself.
  
  "And now," she continued quietly, still looking out the window, "When
  you can't find her, you want her son."
  
  "He's my son, too," he answered, though his words didn't seem to
  register with Mrs. Scully.
  
  At the house across the street, a normal family was leaving for Easter
  services, everyone dressed in their new outfits and scrubbed squeaky
  clean.  The father started the minivan while the mother buckled a pastel
  bouquet of little girls into the back, spacing them out among the seats
  to avoid wrinkling and squabbling.
  
  "Dana's not coming back, is she?" she asked, her voice eerily soft, like
  the calm before the storm. "Not this time."
  
  "I'm sorry," he said after a moment, as if it made a difference. "I'm
  not giving up.  We'll keep looking, but..." He caught his lip between
  his teeth again, biting hard.  When the coppery taste of blood began to
  seep into his mouth, he exhaled and said, "I promised Dana I would take
  care of him.  Of William.  Keep him safe.  And I can.  And I intend to."
  
  He waited for Mrs. Scully to argue, but she just sat, looking through
  the window as the blue minivan backed out of the driveway, passing the
  white picket fence, and headed for church.
  
  ****
  
  Like a modern-day urban nomad, his life had been condensed into a duffle
  bag in the trunk of his car: a jacket, a change of clothes, his shaving
  kit, some extra bullets, a checkbook, and a box of old X-files.  His
  wallet and keys stayed in his pockets, his boots on his feet, and his
  gun within arms reach.  The Gunmen let him use their shower and Mrs.
  Scully offered her washer and dryer occasionally, so there was little
  need for Mulder to return to his apartment in Alexandria.  Mr. Pao, the
  old Chinese man across the hall, fed his fish, collected his mail, and
  poked around his apartment a little -- an arrangement that dated back to
  1995 and the first time Mulder died.
  
  When he opened the door, a cool breath of memories wafted out: old books
  and worn leather and too many nights alone.  A fine layer of dust had
  accumulated, and Mr. Pao had piled a month's worth of newspapers on the
  coffee table.
  
  He shifted William to his other hip and went to the window, opening the
  blinds and letting the sun in for the first time since January.  The
  light on his answering machine flashed red, pleading for relief, but he
  ignored it.  There were baskets of laundry in the bedroom, but he no
  longer remembered which were the clean clothes and which were the dirty. 
  The sheets and comforter clung to the foot of the bed, and one pillow
  had slid to the floor, joining the November 2000 issue of Penthouse, a
  copy of "What to Expect When You're Expecting," and a resume he'd been
  half-heartedly updating.
  
  The lease and paperwork for the Volvo were still on the kitchen counter
  beside the price tag he'd torn off the ear of a Snuffaluffagus.  Except
  for a few cans of soup, the cupboards were bare, as was the
  refrigerator.  The potatoes in the vegetable bin beside the stove had
  put off shoots and mutinied until the onions caved in, turning an odd
  blackish-green.  The sink held a few dirty dishes and mugs submerged in
  a pan of murky water, and a flyer for the pizza place down the block was
  taped to the cabinet, the paper curled at the edges and the colors faded
  a bit with age.   
  
  It was like returning to a stranger's life: walking through his high
  school or visiting his childhood home.  It was a person he used to be
  but now only dimly recognized.  This was the Fox Mulder Museum, exhibit
  1, circa October-December 2000.
  
  "Pretty crappy, isn't it?" he asked William, who was clutching Mulder's
  sweatshirt and looking around uncertainly.  He would put the baby down,
  but there was no place to put him.
  
  He flipped through the mail, sorting the bills from the ads one-handed.
  "Toys-R-Us is having a sale," he noted, showing William the circular.
  "We could go get a crib.  A swing.  Some toys."
  
  Bottles, bibs, formula, diapers, groceries, Pledge, Lysol, Tide, and
  some sort of life without Scully.
  
  William let go of Mulder's shirt and reached for the shiny paper,
  crumpling one corner with his wet fist.
  
  "You like that idea?" He walked through the musty apartment again,
  stopping beside the rumpled bed.  It didn't seem like more than a year
  had passed since that night, but it had.
  
  "We can do this," he promised.  He bounced William gently, trying to
  sound more certain than he felt. "You and me, buddy: saving the world. 
  Or, at least, what's left of it."
  
  ****
  
  There wasn't much to taking care of a baby -- as long as he didn't want
  to sleep or shower or do anything else with his life.  The park was
  three blocks from his apartment, but NASA could launch the shuttle with
  less drama and preparation than it took him to leave the house at a set
  time with William.
  
  "I thought something might have come up," Skinner said as Mulder arrived
  pushing a jogging stroller, twenty minutes late. "Or you'd changed your
  mind."
  
  "No, just running behind." 
  
  "You're packing," Skinner commented as Mulder lifted William from the
  stroller, his jacket shifting to reveal the holster on the waistband of
  his jeans.
  
  "A bottle, a spare pacifier, and a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson," he
  responded, sighing and sitting on the park bench. "There's an apocalypse
  and an afternoon nap on the way, and I believe in being prepared." 
   
  Skinner chuckled half-heartedly, then leaned back, loosening his tie.
  "It's good to see you, Mulder.  How are you these days?"
  
  "Incomplete," Mulder answered, rubbing the bottom of William's sock
  foot. "But in motion.  You know me: no set destination, but making
  fairly good time."
  
  Skinner nodded, understanding. "With a passenger," he said, gesturing to
  William. "I didn't realize he was living with you until I talked to Mrs.
  Scully."
  
  "Yeah.  For about a week now.  We're the dynamic duo, aren't we, buddy?" 
  
  William answered by laying his head against Mulder's chest and chewing
  his fist as he watched Skinner. His belly was full, but his gums were
  bothering him, making it hard for him to fall asleep.
  
  "He's getting big.  I only saw him the one time, before everything went
  down with the cult, but he's really growing."
  
  "He is a chub scout," Mulder answered, stroking the chestnut wisps that
  covered William's skull. "He's crawling.  And babbling a little.  Most
  babies don't do those things until they're about six months old, at the
  earliest, but he can do them now."
  
  "Maybe he's just ahead of the curve."
  
  "Maybe."
  
  He continued stroking.  William's blue eyes grew heavy and, after a few
  blinks, closed as Morpheus took him, guiding him safely to the land of
  dreams.  The baby's hand slipped from his mouth, leaving a small, wet
  handprint on Mulder's shirt.
  
  "He looks like her," Skinner said carefully, as if telling some family
  secret.
  
  "Yeah," Mulder answered softly. "He does." He looked up, watching the
  children playing on the monkey bars on the other side of the park. "I
  talked to Mrs. Scully, too.  Is there any paperwork?  Anything I need to
  clean out of the office?  I'd rather Mrs. Scully didn't have to do it."
  
  "Agent Reyes packed everything up.  I don't think Agent Doggett could
  bring himself to do it." Skinner gestured to the blue Gap shopping bag
  beside his feet, then reached inside the lapel of his suit coat and
  pulled out a familiar black rectangle. "By rights, I guess this should
  go to Mrs. Scully, but I thought you'd like to have it."
  
  "Thanks," Mulder said quietly, taking it.  The leather was eerily warm,
  like the sidewalk after the remains of the day had passed.  He held it
  for a second, fingering one worn edge, and then slipped Scully's badge
  into the side pocket of the diaper bag, unopened.
  
  "Her disappearance is still an open investigation," Skinner reminded
  him, trying to sound convincing. "I'm just giving that to you for
  safekeeping."
  
  "I'll take good care of it."
  
  Skinner leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and interlacing
  his fingers.  He watched the children playing, looking sadly thoughtful.
  The sun sifted down through the tree branches above them, and the air
  carried the smell of newly cut grass: the first mowing of the year.
  
  "Kersh offered to reinstate you on the X-files," he said after a few
  minutes. "To Scully, in January. They must have had a deal: if she'd
  cooperate with the undercover assignment for one afternoon so Doggett
  didn't blow his credibility with Ophiuchus, you would be reinstated. 
  Kersh must have said something to her while I was out of the room.  I
  didn't know until Agent Doggett told me."
  
  "And how does Doggett know?"
  
  "He and Scully talked that night, before the raid on the compound.  She
  told Doggett once Ophiuchus found the bug and she realized they were in
  trouble."
  
  Mulder swallowed and resumed stroking William's head slowly as a shish
  kabob skewer pierced most of his major internal organs.  He looked down,
  biting his lip and watching the baby's peaceful face.  
  
  The Volvo and the Snuffaluffagus must not have been as convincing as
  he'd anticipated they would be.
  
  "Did she tell Agent Doggett anything else?" he asked eventually.
  
  "Not that he has mentioned to me," Skinner answered. "If you would
  answer Agent Doggett's phone calls, you could ask him yourself."
  
  "True," Mulder said noncommittally, and let the topic drop.
  
  "I'll have the paperwork couriered to you tomorrow," Skinner said. "Her
  401K, tax forms -- things like that."
  
  "Okay."
  
  "The life insurance policy..." Skinner started hesitantly, like it was
  another topic he wasn't sure how to approach. "The death benefit is a
  pretty hefty chunk of change, and William is the primary beneficiary.  I
  know it's been a long time since you were on the FBI's payroll,
  Mulder..."
  
  "William's fine."
  
  "She wouldn't touch yours, either."
  
  The baby shifted against Mulder, settling firmly into sleep.
  
  "Have you given any thought to coming back to the Bureau, now that Kersh
  is gone?"
  
  "You mean in the five seconds a day when I'm not changing William,
  feeding William, burping William, and looking over my shoulder for the
  latest alien or government menace to William?" He nodded to the baby
  against his chest. "Besides, I have a fulltime job." 
  
  Skinner smiled like it was a skill he'd almost forgotten. "They must be
  great.  Kids."
  
  "They are.  And depending what you feed them, you can pretty much make
  them poop any color you want."
   
  Skinner looked at William uncertainly, as if unsure if that was a joke
  or not, then cleared his throat and went back to watching the
  playground. "I have two agents on the X-files already," he said after a
  several seconds of silence. "But I can put you back at the Investigative
  Support Unit.  You could work part-time at ISU, doing a few profiles a
  week. All consults -- no travel.  Full benefits for you and the baby.
  And we'll try to send all the paranormal cases your way," he promised.
  "Including Agent Scully's abduction.  Are you interested?"
  
  "I was fired.  Clean out my desk, turn in my badge and parking pass, and
  get the hell out of the FBI, fired.  Can you do that?"
    
  Skinner tilted his head slightly and pursed his lips. "As of this
  morning, I'm the Deputy Director of the FBI.  I can do whatever I damn
  well please.  And it's really not a full workweek unless I can chew your
  ass, Agent Mulder."
  
  ****
  
  He fumbled in the darkness for the phone, knocking over an empty baby
  bottle and a glass of water before he got the receiver to his ear.
  
  "Yeah," he mumbled, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and squinting at his
  watch.  Two a.m. "Mulder.  Agent Mulder," he corrected.
  
  Skinner had said there would be no travel; there'd been no promise
  against middle-of-the-night phone calls from overzealous field agents
  wanting to fax information about their cases so Mulder could render an
  opinion by dawn.  This was the third call of the week; he and Skinner
  needed to renegotiate his contract a little.
  
  Or it could be Mrs. Scully calling with some urgent tidbit of parenting
  wisdom she worried he might not realize on his own -- like not to let
  children under three use power tools without the proper safety
  equipment.  Anything smaller than a beach ball was a potential choking
  hazard.  And was he keeping the baby's teething rings in the freezer? 
  Because she could come over right that instant and show him the proper
  way to use a freezer, if he needed her to. 
  
  "She's in Allentown," Frohike's voice informed him, catching him off-
  guard. "Allentown General."
  
  For several long seconds, he sat on the edge of the bed, trying to put
  the words and breath together to respond. "A Jane Doe?" he asked
  eventually, as his heart thudded inside his bare chest.  
  
  "It's her this time, Mulder.  Skinner's gonna be calling you in about
  two minutes."
  
  "Okay." 
  
  "She's alive," Frohike added. "She's been in the hospital for almost two
  weeks.  I'm not sure why she wasn't entered into the NCIC database when
  she was admitted, but she wasn't.  I'm still trying to get some
  information on her condition, but she's alive."
  
  His heart faltered, skipping a beat as the demons whispered to him from
  the shadows: 
  
  That The Gunmen and the hospital were wrong and it wasn't really her.
  
  That it was Scully, but not -- that it was too late and a mindless thing
  had taken her place.
  
  That he'd finally found her only to watch her die.
  
  That he'd finally found her only to watch her take her son and walk
  away.
  
  "Are you still there, Mulder?" Frohike asked uncertainly. "Mulder?"
  
  "Yeah.  I'm here.  I'm leaving right now.  Give me a few minutes' head
  start, then call Mrs. Scully."
  
  He replaced the receiver, his hand shaking.  He pulled the previous
  day's suit and shirt on, shoved his feet into his loafers, and grabbed
  his wallet, keys, gun, badge, and the diaper bag.  William was asleep
  and didn't wake as Mulder picked him up, and, a few minutes later,
  settled him into the car seat.
  
  Alexandria was silent, its windows dark and its pavement scrubbed clean
  by the street sweepers, ready for morning.  The car's headlights came on
  automatically when he started the engine, breaking the stillness.  He
  put the Volvo in gear, pulled away from the curb, and headed toward
  Allentown, Pennsylvania.
  
  ****
  
  "Dana Scully?" Mulder demanded at the hospital's security desk three
  hours later, shifting William to one arm so he could flash his badge.
  "I'm Agent Mulder, FBI.  Special Agent Dana Scully -- is she here? 
  Where is she?  What room?"
  
  The night-duty guard looked at him blearily, not seeming to comprehend
  that the entire universe hinged on his immediate response.
  
  "Now!" Mulder barked, waking the baby. "Where is she?  The ICU?"
  
  A newspaper and two coffee-stained magazines fell to the floor as the
  guard scrambled to reach the computer keyboard. 
  
  "The ICU?" Mulder repeated impatiently, then, while the guard struggled
  with the computer, headed for the elevator, not needing to ask
  directions.  It said something about his life, or lack thereof: in most
  hospitals in the continental United States, and two in Alaska, Mulder
  could locate the morgue and the Intensive Care Unit while blindfolded.
  
  "Agent Mulder, FBI," he informed a woman as he passed the nurses'
  station, waving his badge in her general direction. "I'm looking for a
  patient named Dana Scully.  Where is she?  What's her condition?"
  
  The nurse chased after him as he stalked through the unit, his gaze
  moving rapidly from bed to bed, trying to match the body beneath the
  gauze and tubing and machines with the woman in his memory.
  
  "Where is she?" he repeated loudly, over William's sleepy whimpers. "Dr.
  Dana Scully.  She's an FBI Agent and she's been exposed to a retrovirus. 
  She needs anti-virals.  Tell her doctor to discontinue life support-"
  
  "Agent Mulder-"
  
  "And lower her body temperature," he continued as though she hadn't
  spoken. "It slows the growth of the virus.  And-"
  
  "Agent Mulder, we don't have a Dana Scully up here.  She's been
  transferred.  You need to calm down."
  
  He whirled around, looming over her. "Where is she?  Who took her?  What
  have you done with her?"
  
  "I-I-I'll have to check," the nurse stammered, stepping back. "She
  wasn't my patient."
  
  "Check," he ordered, pointing to the computer at the nurses' station
  with his free hand. "Now."
  
  He bounced William nervously while the woman pecked at the computer.
  After what seemed like an eternity, she announced, "Room 7142. 
  Neurology.  Take the elevator to the seventh floor, then turn left and-"
  
  He was already in the stairwell, his feet pounding up the metal steps. 
  The bar on the door to the seventh floor didn't work the first time he
  pushed it, so he shoved it again, cursing.  When it opened finally, he
  stepped into the empty hallway and looked around, searching for a
  direction.
  
  His heart thundered and his footsteps echoed through the hall as he
  walked, rushing past room 7136, then 7138 and 7140.  The wide wooden
  door to 7142 was closed, and he took a breath, his hand shaking as he
  pushed the latch and stepped into the dim room.
  
  There was an auburn-haired woman in the bed, her face turned away from
  him and toward the window.
  
  Mulder stopped, feeling a strange lightness of being. "Scully?" he said
  uncertainly.
  
  After a few seconds, she turned her head, looking at him sleepily.  It
  was Scully; he could feel her presence the same way he felt the amniotic
  pull of the ocean.
   
  "Oh my God," he murmured, half in relief, half in prayer. "Scully-
  Dana... Hi." He exhaled shakily.
  
  "Hello," she responded carefully, as she pushed herself higher in the
  bed. "I was asleep."
  
  There was an awkward pause.  He was afraid to move, as though if he
  blinked or looked away the spell would be broken and she would vanish.
  Time stretched out like a patient anesthetized on an operating table,
  and he tried to remember to breathe.
  
  He wanted to touch her, to put his arms around her and reassure himself,
  but he didn't.  He wanted to put his mouth on hers and melt into her
  like hot wax, but he didn't.  He wanted to put William in her arms and
  have all be right with the world, but he didn't.  He bounced the unhappy
  baby again, trying to think of something to say.  His brain was filled
  with a sea of words and his heart was overflowing, but his mouth wasn't
  cooperating.
  
  She pulled the blanket higher, then pushed her hair back from her face
  self-consciously, trying to make herself presentable.  She pressed a
  button on the bed and the soft yellow light above her headboard came on,
  pushing back the darkness.
  
  "Your mother's coming," he offered for lack of anything else. "I had
  someone call her.  She'll be here in an hour."
  
  She nodded uneasily, giving him the polite smile she reserved for
  strangers. "Thank you."
  
  He waited for her to show sign of recognition, but she didn't. "Scully-"
  he started. "It's Mulder.  Do- Do you know who I am?" he asked
  hesitantly.
  
  "Agent Mulder," she answered. "The profiler.  I read your monograph on
  Monty Props a few years ago.  It was excellent," she added. "Spooky,
  even."
  
  He stared at her, still waiting for the punch line.  If she was paying
  him back, the joke wasn't funny.  
  
  She tried to smile, but really didn't, and his heart started to pound
  again.  Monty Props.  He'd written that profile in 1988, years before
  Scully had been assigned as his partner.
  
  Her smile was more genuine as she shifted her gaze to William, who was
  still squirming and whimpering unhappily. "Is this your son, Agent
  Mulder?"
  
  "Yes," he heard himself answer.
  
  ****
   
  End: Book III