By Amanda Finch
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Disclaimers, etc. w/ first part.

St. Joseph's Hospital
Phoenix, AZ
7:49 PM

I froze at the directory marquee outside the elevator. Children's Ward. Those
words would never sit the same with me again, not without the punctuation of
that hydraulic door and the subsequent screams. I stopped the shudder before
it hit my shoulders and pushed the button for the eighth floor. They weren't
going to let me go anywhere near her room or even near the hallway where her
room was. So I just found an open-air break area that veered off the lobby
and sat under the shot bulb on the left side of the door. The faint streaks
of purple on the skylight had been swallowed up by total darkness.

Twenty minutes later, I heard the clanging and thudding coming down the
corridor. A blonde girl, braces wound around her legs and a walker in front
of her, was guided outside by a nurse. The nurse wanted her to make steps
without the benefit of the walker, and the very thought made the girl cry
desperately real tears. She did walk a bit without it, but the pain was so
excruciating that the rage of powerlessness seemed to rise off of her in
waves.

"Oh, Kim..." said the nurse when the sobbing started. "Now Kim..."

All of the facts I put into the search fields - Kimberly Jonson, age seven,
spinobifida - sprang to three-dimensional life. I rolled the soda I bought at
the vending machine unopened between my hands, pretending that I wasn't
watching. Her father couldn't be far behind.

But minutes later, I was impatient to act. All it involved was me flashing
that badge, or, hell, admitting myself for treatment. The nurses kept looking
at me like I'd snuck out of my room, especially when the coughing started.
But if Jonson so much as heard the letters FBI or my name, he was up and
running. For good reason, too.

It wasn't long after that when he walked out. I held my mouth open and
breathed through it to helm the coughing. But he didn't notice me. He moved
over to the railing, looked down and dug cigarettes out of his jacket. I
couldn't remember if he had smoked before or not. The lighter's flame
trembled in one hand and the cigarette shook in the other. Two nurses on
their Diet Coke break pointedly and flirtatiously tried to engage him. I
don't think he even saw them. Good, because I was waiting for them to leave.

Their quarter-hour break was up. Jonson hadn't strayed from the edge. His
badass attitude was nowhere in sight except maybe in the square of his
shoulders. I envisioned myself coming up behind him, my gun drawn, jamming it
into his side like I was trying to deflate him. Before I had even unsnapped
the holster, he turned around and looked directly at me. My hand froze.

The cigarette fell out of his fingers, but not from surprise. His hands were
just shaking so badly that he couldn't hold it any longer. "Not - " He swept
the area with his eyes. "Not here."
I thought about dashing his head against the wall several hundred times.

I had thought about that *a lot* actually.

"I saw you out there - in the lobby." Sheer panic had control of him now. "I
know why you're here, and I'm going... I'm going, but - " He fought for some
leadership over his hands, over his voice, but it was long gone. "I just...
needed to - "

"Get your story right?"

A little anger now underneath the fear. Good. "My story *is* right. It's been
right."

"I would hope so," I said coldly. "You've had ten days to fabricate one."

"I can explain everyth - "

"They always say that," I intoned boredly. "And they never can."

He couldn't stay in the answering role for long, and struck out like a kicked
snake. "You want to hear the fucking story or not?"

For a moment, I suspected I might have clenched my teeth so hard that my jaw
was locked permanently. "Sure." I stood and motioned to the edge. "Let's talk
over there."

Putting his hand on the rail, he stopped to sigh into the night air. Before
he even had a chance to inhale his breath, I slammed him face first into the
metal handrail. "Not a *sound*!"

He howled deep in his own throat and started coughing. I didn't have his
bulk, but he didn't have a gun. That was all that made this possible. On a
bad day, he could've kicked my ass.

"Let it be *me* who tells *you* the story." I yanked his face back and pushed
him into a chair. "McGrath, Scully, me - we went to the library and left you
watching Madeline Roark from the Jeep. And you did. But you saw him there,
didn't you? Krycek. Hell, maybe you *knew* him from the very start, I don't
know. I don't imagine you would've mentioned to Senator Matheson that you
were a member of the Black Ops - "

"Now wait a minute - "

I held the gun steady now. "You saw him and he cut you some kind of deal for
Scully, right? Twenty thousand dollars, just to make sure she got where he
wanted her. Only I was supposed to be on that plane, too." I laughed
bitterly. "I can't believe this. McGrath *warned* me about you - "

Sudden hurt filled his angry face. "He what?"

I tried to tell myself this could be a manipulated emotion. They could all be
manipulated, but something about how this alone overwhelmed him cast a doubt.
"What?"

"Ray warned you about me?"

"Not vehemently enough, obviously."

He shook his head as if he were trying to lull himself. "Jesus, it's finally
happened. I've been set up." He blinked incredulously. "They're fucking
setting me up."

I lowered the gun, almost in disgust. "Ten days to sit here and think about
it, and that's all you can come up with?"

He waved one hand dismissively, as if erasing the moment. "Look, I never saw
Krycek. Not once. You can shoot me, you can beat the shit out of me, you can
leave me in that desert with the crows but I am *not* going to cop to that."
For a second, he appeared to be genuinely nauseated. "If he so much as showed
up around the corner or - I would've shot him on sight. That was my *job.*"

I yanked a chair out from under the table and straddled it as people passed
by the doorway, veiling the gun with my trenchcoat. "Convince me then. Tell
me I'm wrong."

"You've only got two things right." He held the corresponding fingers up like
it took all his strength to do so. "Yeah, someone approached me while I was
on watch at Roark's place." His middle finger went down. "Yeah, that same guy
offered me twenty thousand dollars to task for them, but I was given *no*
reason to suspect that the task involved Agent Scully."

"What guy?"

"He, uh, uh - " Jonson tried to tap out the name with one finger on the
plastic table, almost panting. "He uh - "

"Breathe, okay? Breathe. Did he give you a name?"

"Maynard," he said quickly and took a deep breath. "John Maynard."

"What about him?"

"He came up to me, right? He said I was parked where he usually parked. He
noticed the duffel case on the seat. He said, You a sharpshooter? I said,
Hell yeah, D.C. Tactical Squad, answerable to the President in times of
crisis." He smiled briefly and it died at the sight of my face. "He said he
did some rooftop surveillance with the Secret Service when he first started
out. We talked a little, you know. Said he worked with, he didn't actually
say. I'm guessing CIA. Had the *look* you know."

If my impatience had been any more apparent, it would've given him a
flashburn on the side of the face.

"Right. Anyway, he told me he'd been looking for someone to do an odd job for
him. Just to deliver some documents. I got kinda pissed off then - I ain't a
fucking courier. They got the little pantywaists g-men who just courier stuff
back in forth in their stupid little pouches. But he said this wasn't just
any courier detail, that it was twenty-k per confirmed delivery. 20-k. Shit,
you know. I - " He shook his head violently. "But I told him I, that I had to
watch this house. He just gave me this ...like he was saying, Your loss, you
know. Told me I could park there and went back to his car."

"He left then?"

"He left right after that."

"But you must have seen him again. When?"

He swallowed. "At the airport, waiting for the next flight out to Minot. He
was sitting there too. Scully had left to go get something. He was sitting a
few seats down and I recognized him when he put his newspaper down. He asked
where I was going and I told him. He asked me if I remembered what we talked
about. And then he told me that he could arrange for someone to meet me in
Minot, and it wouldn't take but ten minutes. I told him I was in charge of
Scully, and he said he could plan for her to stay with me while I - " He saw
my face. "What?"

I glowered, holding my temper only loosely in check. Of course he'd arranged
for the charge. The charge being who he was after. "Continue."

"He handed me two boarding passes and I told him we weren't getting on a
plane. He said we'd used them just to get *to* the plane, but not get on the
plane. I would hand the guy the package, the guy would hand me the other 10
thou. Done deal."

"And you told Scully about this?"

"I uh - " He surveyed the back of his hand. "I didn't tell her anything until
we were in Minot. After the flight came in early and Ray went into the house
to find you - "

"Wait, wait. Back up. McGrath did what?"

"We told you there was two more hours till the flight, but it came in on
time. I didn't know if Scully had heard them announce it, so I called Ray and
told him. He said the two of you wouldn't be able to make it, but that it was
about time for you to be done searching the woman's house. So he went in
there to find you."

"What time was that?"

"It was - " He looked at his watch now as if this would help. "I can't
remember."

"Try."

"A few minutes after eight maybe. Eight-thirty."

Unfortunately, that was about right. "What did Scully say about us not being
able to make it?"

He shrugged. "She wasn't all that surprised."

In other words, she thought I'd ditched her again. "And what did she say
about your little project once you were in Minot?"

He cast his eyes down. "She just assumed I was doing something you asked me
to do."

"She assumed or you told her that?"

"She assumed, and I didn't say otherwise."

I raised the gun again. "Then what?"

He made this sound, like a sob canceled in mid-breath. "Then everything fell
apart."

"Who's got her, Jonson?" I asked fiercely. "Where is she?"

It was like he hadn't even heard me. I was no longer integral to the story.
"We landed and I told her she would have to come with me. She knew that. She
didn't say anything. I had to leave my guns and permits at the front so we
could go through security to get to the gate. They put the package through
the metal detector and told us to go ahead. So I gave the woman the boarding
passes and told Scully to wait. She waited right there at the opening of the
gate enclosure. There were these two guys at the door of the plane. Like
guards. I told them I had a pouch they were expecting. They moved aside and
this woman stepped out from between them to talk to me - "

"Wait. A woman?"

"Yeah, it surprised me, too."

I leaned forward. "No, no - what did she look like?"

"Short curly hair. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Plain, average height. But she was
beat up really bad, like she'd been just...severely ass-kicked you know and
that's - " He sniffed. "Then she and the guard both looked over my shoulder.
Scully looked over at about the same time and the woman tried to walk out,
but the guards held her back. She knew Scully's name, and was screaming for
help. Scully came out and - "

"Spit it out, Jonson."

"They pushed right past me and they *took* her." The words came out in a
rapid flow, as if he wanted them out of his system. "One of them hit me in
the stomach, hard, and I just slid down the wall. That's - " He caught
himself with his hands up, still sliding down that wall somewhere in his
memory. "I got up and they were closing the gate. The plane jerked back and I
fell out of the gate enclosure and hit the ground. I... blacked out."

Because Scully's last impression of Madeline Roark was of a woman who had
been beaten severely in her kitchen, the ruse had worked. Never mind that my
sister didn't know me, but Scully knew her. No way in hell she would've
questioned running to help her. And Jonson had never seen the woman he'd been
surveilling. He didn't know that there was a hoax until they'd knocked the
wind out of him. But who the fuck was Maynard?

No.

"Maynard, Jonson. What did Maynard look like?"

He held his head in his hands. "Our age, maybe. Short brownish hair, our age
but...like he was trying to look older. Prematurely gray, real... dark
eyes..."

("That's just going to ruin my year.") Him, the Doctor.

I gritted my teeth. "The kind of face that might inspire one to spill his
life story?"

He froze. "Sometimes when someone acts like they want to hear it, it's easy
to tell it."

It all came together. Maynard outside the Roark house with Jonson. Maynard
with a direct line to Krycek, Krycek inside the house with -

My sister?

(Quit calling her that! She's not Samantha. Not anymore.)

Oh shit. She *knew* Krycek was inside the house. He was inside the house when
we were there, like Scully had suggested. She rushed us out for that very
reason. She knew he was the man driving Pam Wyeth, her supposed *friend*, to
insanity, and she didn't do a damn thing. Well, of course she didn't. As far
as she knew, Krycek was another colleague. As she should've *expected* from
the sort of company she kept, he walked towards her one day, dollar signs
flashing, and played her like a fucking wild card.

I looked up, slowly. "And you - you!"

I pushed the table away and I knocked him to the ground.

"Mulder!"

"You took the money and you ran, you stupid motherfucker! Twenty thousand
dollars!" I kicked him hard in the side, and I didn't care who came running
now.

"Ten!" he wheezed. He was instantly sorry for saying so.

"What?"

"I never got the other half," he said resentfully, holding his side, trying
to sit up and away. "You think they slipped it in my pocket before they
kicked my ass or something?"

"This is supposed to make me feel better?" I aimed my foot at him again and
he waited for the blow with his eyes squeezed shut. I kicked a chair instead.
"Ten thousand dollars for Agent Scully's life? Did that sound like a good
price to you?"

"She's - " If he hadn't feared for his life before, he did now. "She's dead?"

"You'd better *pray* to whatever it is you believe in that she isn't, or I'm
offering you up." I kicked him again. "You hear me?" In the doorway, three
people in scrubs stood and I started towards them threateningly. "You can
have him when I'm done. Move!" They beat a retreat down the hall and I turned
to Jonson again. "The man you so eagerly went into business with already has
two casualties to his credit, and I'm not handing him anymore." I stalked
around the tables again. "However, he's welcome to you. I'll carry your dead,
sorry ass right to his fucking door. How that's for courier detail?"

He was off in his own little world for a minute, keeping the blood out of his
nose. He drew his hand back with the blood, and as if effected by a different
set of principles for the speed of sound, finally heard my words.
"Casualties?" He went pale. "Who died?"

He didn't know. Dammit. "Pam Wyeth." I walked around the table, trying to
catch my breath. And the speed of pain chose that moment to sneak up on me
like the bad news had Jonson. "Ray's dead, Jonson."

The man who'd walked out here with some degree of repentance, who was willing
to be taken out to the desert and shot, was no more.

"Ray's dead," he said carefully.

Nodding, I sank into the most immediately available chair. I couldn't think
of a part of my body right now that *didn't* hurt.

"How?" Jonson asked.

"A bullet to the back."
"Who?"

I answered that the simplest way I knew how without advancing my theory of
the government's covert alien-human hybridization project. Jonson would've
killed me after the first sentence. "That woman you saw on the plane."

His jaw fell like he was going to rise up and bite. "And who the *fuck* is
she?"

I stopped wincing long enough to stare him dead in the face. "She's my
sister."

Glacial formations had been warmer than his speculative question, thrown out
like it was casual, but spoken like the wail before a bombstrike. "And you're
looking for her?"

"I'm looking for Scully." I sat up as straight as I could. "You were the last
one who saw her. What was on that plane? Were there passengers? Cargo? What?"

"I didn't *see* anyone else."

"Meaning?"

"I did a brief stint in the Persian Gulf." His look assured me that the story
had a point. "I would ride back and forth on the medical planes - the
surgical transports... these dignitaries, anyone else who was anyone in the
political world... they'd wanna get their little photo op among the carnage,
right? 'Here I am fighting for America.' *Whatever.* But that's... that's
what this was."

"A medical transport?"

"Made like one, with the harnesses in the walls where they'd have the gurneys
tethered to it. The tread on the floor so they wouldn't roll around so bad.
But I didn't see any gurneys. I just heard people screaming. That's - that's
the first thing that I knew was wrong, and then that woman - your sister -
she called Scully's name."

"Screaming." Any hope I had drained out into my stomach and died there.
"People screaming?"

"Women screaming."

I picked myself up. "I'm wasting time. I have to go find her." I straightened
my coat and my clothes, as if this would somehow make me look less like one
of hell's messengers.

"Mulder." He fought to get to his feet. "Mulder! Wait!"

"I've got everything I need from you." He didn't even seem worth kicking now.
"I hope that ten grand did some good for your daughter, because that's about
as far as it goes."

He grabbed my arm, and I anticipated a fist in the face that didn't arrive.
"It maybe paid for today, Mulder. Look, I'm sorry. I don't expect you to
accept it. I'd hit you for accepting it. I - She's going through this
physical therapy bullshit now. Sometimes I think it'd be better if we just
let her live the rest of her life in a wheelchair, because ever since we
started with these fucking braces on her legs, it's one thing after another.
You know what it is this week? A kidney infection. She's on dialysis, they're
trying to walk her through the halls. You know what it costs? $5,372 a *day,*
and before you ask, that's after insurance. So no...what I did isn't going to
save any fucking body."

I smarted at the price, which was about five hundred bucks shy of what he
made in a month working for me. "How are you covering that?"

He dug his cigarettes out again, mouth twisting around the filter as he lit
up. "My wife is fucking her boss." He exhaled the smoke and watched the wind
carry it away. "He's very generous."

Speechless, I just cursed to myself. He was letting one happy life, one happy
marriage, go by - to save his daughter. But he sold my partner, regardless of
how unwittingly, into that same slavery. Anything standing outside the realm
of that singular goal had dried up and died.

(Sound familiar?)

I jerked at the realization. "I've gotta go."

He held the smoke in for a moment, and let it go. It burned my nostrils and
felt like it was working its way behind my eyes. "You're going to need a gun
on you, Mulder."

"Jonson - " I glanced down the hospital corridor in front of me. "No. I'm not
going to let you."

"What the hell good am I doing here?" He shrugged both shoulders at the night
sky. "It's been done without my help or my support for a long time." Under
his shoe, he flattened the half-smoked cigarette. "You're going to need a
gun."

I scoffed, holding onto the glass door's handle. "Not pointed at my back, I'm
not."

"I'm not the one shootin' people in the back." He lifted his chin at me
defiantly. "Am I?"

Slouching down before I could even stop myself, I stared into the harsh
fluorescent lights as if it were the entrance back into the larger world. I
held the door open and waited for him.

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