By Amanda Finch
[email protected]

Disclaimers, etc. w/ first part.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I dropped into consciousness the same way I'd dropped out of it: kicking and
fighting.

My first breath felt like it was flooding my lungs with scalding water. I
tried to thrash my way out, but my arms and shoulders were pinned.

(Not demons. *Not* demons. Doctors. It's just doctors.)

(There are those kinds of doctors...)

I pushed at all points of resistance as the room fell into place. The
brown-haired nurse with her knee unpleasantly dug into my thigh, the doctor's
thumbnail yanking my eyelid up, the other doctor a few feet behind him,
priming the hypodermic needle...

"No! I'm fine! No!" I knocked the doctor's hand away from my face, attempted
to pull my leg free. The nurse wouldn't move. "Get *off* me. I'm okay!"

The room stilled its spinning, a little. The nurse arose. The doctor held the
needle, unconvinced. The whole ward was gun-shy now, afraid that yet another
person was going to start that infernal screaming that blanketed the ward
like an unnamed disease.

"I'm okay," I repeated angrily. "Move."

The hand that pulled me up by my arm and to my feet belonged to Drake. I
shrugged away from his help anyway. The brown-haired nurse touched the side
of my neck, and I shrank back as if fearing deactivation. There was blood on
the tips of her gloved fingers. It hadn't been an hallucination: my ear *had*
bled, and continued to bleed. I pulled the receiver up by its tangled chord,
peering at the drops of blood trapped in the hard, perforated plastic of the
earpiece. Thinking better of hanging it up, I left it on the front desk,
afraid to raise it to my head. I had the sneaking suspicion that the staccato
bleating of the disconnected line would've closely approximated the droning
pain trapped in my skull. I didn't want to find out.

"What's his name?"

"Mulder."

"Mr. Mulder - "

I was headed for the exit doors at the end of the hall, freezing there when I
couldn't think of a reason why.

"Mr. Mulder, your ear - "

Drake had seized the floor in front of me, as if blocking my path. "You
could've ruptured an eardrum. Or worse. C'mon, let them shine a light and
take a look." Desperation now. "Come on, it won't take them but a minute."

"The third is at peace." My voice was raw, unfiltered.

"What? The third *what*?"

Another hand on my arm now. A doctor. I shook loose again, going into the
designated room. From the beginning, my body had declared war against all
initiative to act. Now it had obviously moved on to the mortar fire.

I sunk into a chair. The doctor stood in the doorway, gauged the distance
from the chair to the exit at the end of the hallway, and looking back,
suggested hopefully, "Stay."

Shrugging with one shoulder, I held my hand to my ear.

"Alright," Drake replied, once the door had clicked closed behind him. "What
in *the hell* was that all about?"

"The voice, on the phone." I squinted, hand raised involuntarily to my
forehead. "The first is... no, no... 'One can't forget, one can't - '" I
shook my head dismissive. "That's not right either. One can't remember, one
can't forget and the third is at peace."

"The voice said that? There was a voice?"

"Loosely speaking - a computer manufactured voice..." The blood pulsing
loudly between my ears reminded me of a bomb clock, ticking away the seconds.
"But it was... like feedback. Input colliding with input."

"You're telling me a *noise* just punctured your eardrum?"

I glared at him, as coldly as I knew how.

He backed away. "Shit. Sorry - "

"No, you have a point. Someone should be here to make that argument." Just
not you, I added silently.

"Well... okay, but what does that mean? One can't remember - ?"

"Lori Maciver."

He resented his own confusion. "What?"

"Lori Maciver can't remember. Cindi Baron can't forget. The third, whoever
she is, is at peace." I raised my eyes now. "At peace. Dead, right?"

Paling now, he conceded with a nod. "Usually."

If only Lori Maciver's memory loss didn't seem to have been replaced by
something more ominous. Cindi Baron's brand of remembering was true and
harshly lit, absent of reprieve. I imagined her bent forward, unanesthetized.
Before, I'd always thought that having them returned, wiped of these
memories, was dishonest. And it was, but there was something to be said for
mercy, even the unintentional kind.

I hadn't received any calls prior to *their* returns, so why now?

If only the answer wasn't so apparent.

Drake protested as I walked out, the doctors even more so. I ignored them
all, moving for the sake of moving, trying to quiet this new reminder in my
brain that the mechanical voice hadn't said the third *would be* at peace -

But that it was already done.

x

Office of "The Lone Gunmen"
1:39 PM

Frohike twirled the glass vial between his thumb and index finger, sending
the black speck inside sliding soundlessly from one end to the other.
Suspicious eyes locked with Drake's, he suddenly stopped the motion. "You say
you found this in the pocket of her blue jeans?"

It was hard to tell, under the circumstances, but I was pretty sure Frohike
had asked this question twice before now... or I was caught in a nightmare
loop. The first time, it was just interest. The second time, annoying. Now,
Frohike had apparently made his choice. Drake looked to me, for some
brilliant legal defense. I couldn't keep my eyes dry, and their voices
sounded scratchy and distant, like interference dulling a clear radio signal.
He was going to have to handle this one on his own.

"Drake's not in this. I am." Was that me? I suddenly couldn't remember if I'd
just spoken or not, and the uncertainty floored me until I caught the
collective stare, caught myself on the edge of a wheeled projector table.

(Chrissakes, hold yourself together, dammit.)

"You are?" Byers asked carefully, as if coddling a child.

Infuriated, I forced my head to at least keen into one train of thought and
stay there. Lucidity resisted. I felt like I was doing a systems check for a
rocket launch, not just attempting to explain myself. "I don't think this is
a global conspiracy anymore." They waited. "This is a personal vendetta."

I willed them all to be quiet for a moment. "I'm not saying the global
conspiracy doesn't exist anymore. I'm saying - the letter, the box, and now,
that telephone call. Someone in this is out for *me*. The focus has shifted.
I'm being followed, I know that much. At first I suspected Griffin or Essary,
Jonson especially. But they spent at least enough time in holding for Skinner
to have talked to Jonson at length. If that's what they were doing, they
would've never let the three be apprehended. Right?"

(Do you even hear the damn words I'm saying?)

Frohike jiggled the vial again at Drake. "In her jeans pocket, huh?"

"Shut *up*, Frohike," I ordered angrily, before Drake could open his mouth in
edgewise. "Look, what's more obvious than the fact that I don't have a clue
what's going on here? I haven't had a whole lead since the beginning. As far
as I know, Scully's airplane taxied down the runway into fucking oblivion, so
why the crackdown on *me*? I knew something was wrong when neither the FBI or
the NSA had the first clue about that box. There's a third party, working
independently."

"What kind of vendetta?" Langly asked. "Someone you put in jail? I could call
up your files -"

"Have you found the tracking database for these implants yet?"

"Not yet."

"Then keep all your operations online until you do." I absently turned my
hands out and cracked my knuckles. "It's not a lead, but it's still the best
chance. And I can just go through some of my files at work and - "

Drake cleared his throat. "Mulder - "

I stopped, laughing uneasily, remembering. "Oh. Right. I'm afraid you lost
your federal insider. I resigned today."

The glass vial fell out of Frohike's hands, and he caught it right before it
would've hit the floor. "You mean you quit?"

"Well, yeah." I shrugged guardedly. "It was that or get a psychiatric
dismissal. That's really not the kind of thing I want on my career record,
such as it is. Couldn't get some place to stay the hell away from here,
couldn't buy a gun. So I quit."

"What are you wanting with a gun?" Frohike's question was too loud, too
sharp, taking on the cadences of outrage.

I kept my mouth steady, but my hands still shook. "I guess April *could*
help, if it was only to go through my files and see if anyone I may have
helped incarcerate just got paroled." I put my hands into the sleeves of my
trenchcoat just as the phone rang and I jumped in spite of myself, sending it
skidding across the floor to where Byers stood. I made no move to take it
from him.

Byers knelt to retrieve it.

"Don't answer it," I warned. "Anyone I need to talk to, I can call them
myself."

"I won't put it to my ear." He pushed the answer key. When no voice came, he
placed it to his ear. "It sounds like..." Langly leaned in. "Television
static. Could just be your service going off-line."

I wasn't about to play the game of trial and error required to prove this
theory. One ear buzzing like a pinned wasp was enough. Standing up,
discarding my jacket on the chair, I approached the phone, trying to figure
out which sensations were my own and which were being cued by the noise.

First, the slow chill, sweeping my neck horizontally.

(That was it! That was one of them!)

(Don't go closer!)

Next, what felt like... a thickening. Only, I could *hear* it, happening.

The ear that had stopped bleeding rang like glass shattering against glass. I
backed away a full six feet. "That's... that's the sound."

"You're sure?"

I nodded.

"I want to try something," Byers mused, still holding the receiver up. He
turned to Frohike. "Trap that phone line on a short frequency. I'm going to
patch it in to the amplifier."

Langly snorted, commandeering the amplifier in question. "You couldn't even
patch your socks. Hold."

"Got it," Frohike responded.

Byers held the phone almost fearfully in his fingers. He winced, moving the
amp towards him. "This is gonna smart for a second, but I need you to tell me
if - "

I hit the floor on my knees before he'd even finished talking, as the
discordant howl flooded the room. "Turn it off! Turn it off!" I repeated the
words over and over, unable to hear myself say them, but feeling my mouth
strain.

Yanking the cell phone away, Byers stood staring at it in horrified
fascination.

"Jesus!" Frohike shook the ringing out of his ears. "That came out of a
*phone*?"

"It was unpleasant for us, but it almost knocked Mulder out," Byers thought
out loud, looking up. "How did you describe it again?"

"Input..." I couldn't get my teeth to stop rattling as I picked myself up.
"Input, colliding with input. Out- Output. Whatever. Feedback."

The three of them exchanged glances, slowing sharing a nod of agreement.
Langly reached over, lifting the glass vial from Frohike's work area, holding
it up to the light. "Shit."

"You *are* being spied on," Byers announced.

Drake stood up, indignant, ready to defend himself.

"No," said Byers, reassuringly. "Mulder's being trailed by his own *neck.*"

(Oh god - ) I rubbed my hand against it, thinking of that slow blaze of cold
that ripped its way across the skin. Of course. For someone, I'd been moving
around the same radar screen as Scully.

"So when could someone have just ganged up on him and put this thing in his
neck?" Drake asked, relieved that the harsh spotlight of paranoia had been
removed from him, at least temporarily.

"I was in a decontamination chamber for four days. They had ample
opportunity."

Drake sank down into the other chair. "This is insane."

Byers still couldn't quite believe it. "And the frequency was fashioned just
to clash with the implant. That's the only way there would be feedback. Even
what occurs with some older models of hearing aids is a mild version of
that."

"Maybe have someone screen your calls," Langly suggested. "Until this all
blows over."

The bitter, hostile sound of my own laughter startled me. "Blows over? You
think it will?" I took my cell phone back from Byers, abruptly. "I guess I'll
be calling *you* then."

When Drake and I walked out, the rain had stopped. The sun caught its own
reflection in the pothole pools of the rundown parking lot, throwing back
crinkled waves of bright heat that drew the eye like flashing sirens. I told
Drake, without any room for negotiation, to drive me back to the hospital and
let me get in my own car again.

"Mulder," he began in exasperation. "You're in no condition to drive. You
could get yourself killed -"

He said more. I tuned it out. Was "killed" really an effective threat
anymore?

They had my sister. And they could keep her.

They had the truth, assuming it had ever existed in the first place.

They had my job.

As close as I held a hope that Scully was still alive, as fervently as I
wanted to believe it...

The light that had gone off inside me, days ago, said otherwise.

But they needed her, didn't they? And that meant alive.

(They need her the way they *don't* need you.)

I held the passenger door open, glancing around at the windows. There were a
million chance places for a man to be standing with a gun, waiting. Like
McGrath had once waited for Spender. Like I had once waited for Spender's
father. That's what the doctor had said to me in Pam Wyeth's house: Now it
was I, not Scully, who was considered dispensable. Like the Smoking Man, and
the dozens of nondescript players and button-pushers who stood behind, I was
a dead man courting a bullet.

I wished they'd hurry up.

xxxxxxxxxx

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