Disclaimers, etc. w/ first part.

9/12

7:38 PM

Within minutes, we were on the road. Any other time, I found McGrath's driving highly objectionable, but now it was appreciated. As he pointed out, he was trained to drive foreign dignitaries through random sprays of gunfire. As I argued, in America, driving like that would get him shot out on the highway. But I got in, sat down and kept my mouth closed. We had no time. Jonson's maneuvering skills made McGrath look like a grandma in comparison, and we quickly lost sight of the Saturn's tail lights in the growing darkness.

I remembered Scully's words. "I'm sorry about overreacting back there."

"Hey, you were pissed. I don't care. I understand that. And Jonson'll get over it soon enough."

Okay, enough said then. McGrath didn't like to hear apologies nearly as much as I seemed to enjoy making them. He turned up the radio after that until it shook the seats. Drums kept the same staccato as my headache. "Everyone must have the sickness," growled the singer. "'Cause everyone's looking for the cure." The words circled in my head. I decided that concentration was useless and abandoned it.

I barely heard my phone ring a few minutes later. Scully at the ticket counter already? I doubted it. Any other ring besides hers, so far, had meant the plan had to be altered. I turned the radio down. "Mulder."

"He's here again." It would be a prank call voice if it wasn't familiar by now. "I just saw him again."

"Pam." I switched ears, sighing to myself. "He's on a plane to North Dakota. We're on our way to catch him there. He's not here now."

"Then why did I just see him?"

"You didn't see him, Pam. He's on a plane." I looked out the front glass and understood how easy it would be for shadows to become assailants. The sun had gone down and the darkness could trick the eye, could twist the silhoette of a tree into an approaching wraith.

"I'm telling you I saw him." She must've been trembling, because her voice trembled with her. "I just need you to look around. Please. *Please*, Agent Mulder. I can't leave, I can't stay."

Goddammit. I put my hand over the mouthpiece. "A quick look around Pam Wyeth's house and then back out on the road. How long would it take?"

"Too long," McGrath said.

(I can't leave, I can't stay.)

"Pam, we can't. Call the Captain. He'll send someone down."

"He's *here*, Agent Mulder." Her voice was now so raspy that it was almost inaudible against the wind wheezing into the Jeep.

I stared plaintively at McGrath.

"Fifteen minutes," he answered without being asked. "If I haul ass."

"We'll be there in fifteen minutes," I said and hung up. "Shit, I *know* he's not there."

McGrath chuckled. "You ever said 'No' to a woman in your life, Mulder?"

"Lots of times." I was hoping he wouldn't ask for some examples, because frankly, none came to mind.

Scully answered on the second ring, compensating for the howl of the road with her voice. "What?"

"We're going to go check out Pam's house one last time and get back out on the road to you." I spilled all of the bad news at once. "What did you find out?"

"Well, I called the airline, and there's not another flight out to North Dakota for two hours, and it's not to Minot, so the security in Minot's airport seems to think we're rushing to a plane for nothing."

"Nothing is all they know," I said. "Alright. Let me get this out of the way and we should be there in...what?"

"Forty-five minutes," McGrath answered.

"Forty-five minutes." With the typical farewell of "Call me if you find anything," I hung up.

"You are *so* henpecked," McGrath teased.

"Last time I checked, you were the one who was married." I turned up the radio before he could return the insult. After the U-turn he took across the highway practically unseated me, I actually fell asleep.

*

"Wake your ass up," McGrath ordered, accompanied by a punch in the arm like one I'd given him hours before. Had it only been hours? Had all of this only been a day? "How can you sleep at a time like this?"

Maybe I had just been unconscious again. It felt like there was sand in my arms as I fought to get the feeling back in the right side of my body. I got out of the car. "A quick flashlight search and I'm gone."

To think I had ever seriously considered myself paranoid. My caution had never taken on such a disabling guise of helplessness and technology. Here I was to tell Pam Wyeth that the monster under the bed was a figment only. I didn't even bother to knock. McGrath's mere presence in the yard had set off an alarm inside the house earlier, and mine would too.

But no one came to the door. I looked back at the Jeep, and McGrath was playing air guitar off in his own little world. I was sick of people not coming to the door. That should only happen one time a day.

"Pam, it's me." Could I just tell the soothing bedtime story from here? There was no *time* dammit. None. "Pam! Open the damn door!"

Alright. My personnel file was shot. Coming back to a job Monday would be a miracle in of itself. The Academy Group would take one look at all that yellow between white evaluation pages and laugh their heads off if I applied. What was one more damaged property complaint? Not much. I jimmied the lock with my pick. I guess she didn't have that fingerprint identification program Byers had talked about, because she wasn't coming.

Four locks picked later, and only the deadbolt held the door. I kicked it in and had to catch myself when it easily gave way under the pressure.

On the floor. What was that on the floor?

"Pam?" At first I thought she'd just passed out, or was laying there in a fetal position. I was surprised at the blood on my hand. It didn't show up in the low light on her black sweater, but my hand was red like I'd dipped it in paint. "Shit. Pam!"

I put two fingers to the pulse that should've been under her ear when I felt the presence behind me. "McGrath, call 911, she's --"

All I heard was a click, and a barrel dug into the skin behind my left ear. "You're supposed to be at the fucking airport, on your way to North Dakota."

Under the scratches and gouges that I hoped were made by my sister's fingers was Alex Krycek's face.

"You killed her," I said weakly. "She wasn't even involved in this."

"Like hell she wasn't." I didn't think it was possible for the barrel to be pushed even harder into my skull, but he did. "The whole world is involved. And it was almost too perfect to pass up. You're always looking down. If it's not the napkin on the floor, it's the dead, bleeding girl."

I told her she wasn't in danger. I told her he wasn't even in the state. I told her ...a lot of bullshit and lies. She'd hung up that phone and waited for me, and there he'd been standing. Point-blank range.

"Oh, please," Krycek mocked with a laugh, reading my expression. "You see this bitch's bedroom? That bank of monitors in the bracket? Christ, she was begging me to die. She just didn't know it. She would've never felt safe in this world. She was sort of like you that way."

I was trying to think of a way to get to my gun without him noticing. My hands were both in the open though, one between the stiff bend of her head to her shoulder, and one directly in front of me on the floor. My back was starting to hurt in this position, and before I could even think of a way to get to my holster, I felt the weight of it being removed from my side. Shit shit shit. Sharp, bitten fingernails snapped at the skin of my ankle.

"Where's the other one?" He demanded. He checked the other ankle. "Where is it?"

"I'm not wearing it."

He pushed me roughly into a sitting position, and my hands involuntarily went up of their own accord. The Nokia was under me, and he pulled it towards him with the prosthesis. "When does she expect to hear from you?"

"She?" I asked coldly.

The hand with the gun in it swung back, and I very suddenly wasn't sitting anymore. I couldn't feel my face. The darkness that had been threatening to swallow me since this trip began now exerted a deceptively calming force and I let myself be drawn in. Pain was too bright a light, and shut it all out. I closed my eyes.

"Sit up, goddammit!" The muzzle of the gun pressed into my chin, pointed like suicide towards my tongue as he fought to bring me up with his working arm. The plastic slap against my face was nothing in comparison to the seering pain of now open flesh, and he knew it. I was upright again. Only one eye would open.

"When does Scully expect to hear from you?" He lowered the gun and aimed it at my face. "The more forthcoming you are with the answers, the less I'm going to hurt you. Understand?"

"Forty-five minutes," I said, and the words just sounded like a the blood that was spilling out of my mouth, but he seemed to understand.

"Oh. Never mind, then." The gun didn't waver. "It won't matter then."

Why? Why won't it matter? Not like he would've answered. "Why did you set us up?"

"To get you the fuck out of here." He lowered himself into a sitting position, annoyed by Pam's arm as it stuck out and got caught under him. He flung it to the side and pushed her away with one booted foot. A maroon smear of blood followed her across the cream-colored carpet. I thought I might throw up, though since I hadn't eaten, there wasn't much chance of that.

"Scrutiny follows the two of you everywhere." He rubbed a bit of blood and tissue that clung to the toe of his boot on a table edge and folded his leg back in and away from me. "There's no such thing as low-profile with you guys, is there? I knew that if you were here, the Syndicate would be watching you, and they'd see me in the process. So now I have to deal with your sorry ass on top of everything else. You just can't listen, can you? The last thing I was expecting was for the stupid bitch to *call* you."

"Where's my sister?"

"You had one question to ask and cashed it in. That's all you get."

"She really did see you." I swallowed the blood and it burned my throat. "She saw you on every one of these cameras."

"Of course she did. The house has eyes."

Eyes, eyes. I saw them everywhere, deliriously. My own eyes were burning, and my tongue was swelling up. What in the hell was going on? "Then how do you know there aren't eyes...more eyes...looking in?"

Like McGrath's, I thought. C'mon McGrath. I waited for him to crash through something. Waited for him walk in with guns blazing. I'm sure the time had lapsed on a "quick run-through the house." I'm sure he would've seen that there was no flashlight beam moving through the rooms past the windows. Any minute now...Shit, my eyes felt like they were on fire, and I couldn't feel my hands.

"What in the fuck is going on?" Krycek asked no one in particular.

Come on, McGrath. Get in here.

"My eyes! Shit!" The gun fell to the floor as he clawed at them. "What's happening? What in the hell is happening?"

If I could see where the gun had landed, I might've reached for it, but I couldn't see a damn thing. My tongue was so thick I couldn't keep my mouth closed, and the numbness spread like the stinging rush of blood. Chaos. My heart beat against my ribs like it wanted out. I felt for the gun. I only found a girl's bloody chest, and fell into convulsions.

I couldn't speak, or I would've screamed. McGrath! It's been too long! Help me!

Like an earthquake trapped inside a man, Krycek shook like he was going to fall apart. Where was the gun?

I heard breaking glass behind me, and the hard kick that followed hadn't been directed to the wall like I thought, but to the side of my head.

McGrath, you motherfucker.

The darkness had no dam now, and it flooded me. McGrath, I thought, making an assumed last breath count. You turned on me.

Scully?

And nothing.

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