By Amanda Finch
[email protected]

Disclaimers, etc. w/ first part.

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I'd never thought much about it before: the way formaldehyde acted as ice,
preserving anything submerged. Like cryology, it suspended animation. The
liquid buoyed the tattoo up, and the skin floated to the top as if it still
moved of its own volition. I'd sat in on enough autopsies to know when to
turn the nausea off and just focus on the information being presented. But
this wasn't a corpse uncovered on a cold metal table. This wasn't an autopsy,
unless the clothes could make three-dimensional the story of a woman's last -

(No!) I dropped the cylinder in with her things, and it sloshed faintly
against the soft bundles. Hurriedly, I tucked the flaps down, and Essary
handed me the evidence log that I'd left out. The wind blew it out of my
fingers, and it landed print-side down a few feet away from me. On the back,
penned neatly with a fountain pen and smudged by rain, formaldehyde or
fingers were two words.

WANNA PLAY?

For several minutes, the world didn't make a sound.

They didn't see the page. It wasn't meant for them. But they asked their
questions. I can't be sure that I answered them. Biological evidence, I think
I said, when they asked. Jonson wasn't entirely assured of what had just
happened, but I think even he knew, federal employee or not, that Pam Wyeth
hadn't had an FBI field jacket.

That box couldn't have been more meant for me if it had To: Fox Mulder
printed across the top flap. I closed it like I was trapping what was inside.
Still they asked questions. They knew I'd be out here eventually. They knew
I'd find Essary and Griffin, or that they'd find -

I woke up mentally now, and Griffin jumped back at my unholstered gun like
he'd been sliced through the middle. Essary barely kept himself from falling.

The box was clenched tightly to my side like a football. "Anyone want to
modify their stories while they have a chance?"

"We're telling you the truth," Essary said hollowly. "The God's honest truth."

"This box contains Agent Scully's belongings." I let that sink in. "S.C.
McGrath might've asked for it, but he didn't get it. There's a note in here,
meant specifically for me. I was supposed to come here and find this box. All
I can assume is that my location was somehow known beforehand."

Beside me, Jonson shook his head. "I would've been the first one to notice if
someone was tracking us, Mulder. Especially if it was these two right here."

I cocked the gun to include him in its range. "Bad idea, because that leaves
you."

Only his adam's apple moved before he spoke. "You told me how you found Kim.
How hard could it be to find you?"

Okay. Think. We'd done nothing trackable. Since M.F. Luder had unwittingly
destroyed a hotel room in Pasadena and George Hale had committed criminal
trespass in Arecibo, Frohike had refused to hack me anymore fake credentials,
so I carried lots of cash. The tracking would've only been accomplished
manually, on site. Even then, that put the box ahead of us, waiting here for
me to find it.

I'd given S.C. McGrath no reason to believe I was staying in D.C. He asked me
if the room was "secure" when he was probably wearing a wire the whole time.
If he knew, so did the NSA. If they knew, so did the doctor. He knew first,
didn't he? This was *his* game. Like any predator, he wasn't content to just
kill his prey outright. He wanted to play a bit first.

That meant McGrath and the NSA both wanted this box. I suddenly regarded the
woods with a fearful respect and put the gun away. "Then we're all moving
targets." I thought of piano wire pressing into my skin, feeling the cord
tighten around my constricted throat as the blood dripped down in response.
My breathing mocked the sensation now. "McGrath sent you here to die. He sent
me here to die, too. All of us."

"He wants to pin Ray's murder on me," Jonson argued.

"A dead scapegoat's as good as any," I contested bitterly. "Dead scapegoats
can't talk."

I'd caught something in Griffin's face -- a bit of shame that had passed over
his sharp features as Essary had announced he worked in Fraud. I recognized
it because I'd felt the same indignity myself. But now I knew he'd kill to be
sitting at that table again, headset too tight, transcribing that wiretap
surveillance. He looked from Essary to me. "So how are we gonna get out of
here? Where are we gonna go?"

"First, we have to get out of the woods." Jonson spat on the ground. "No way
I can surveil in the fucking trees. You know a path out?"

"I *made* a path out," I answered flatly. "The sooner we get close to bright
light and conspicuous locations, the better."

"Assuming we get that far," Essary said dully.

I hitched the box even closer to my side. I would die for that box. It was my
only link to her now, my only means of finding her. "You boys wearing your
Kevlar?"

They both nodded.

"Keep your guns at the ready and be prepared to hit the ground." I returned
Griffin's gun to him and Jonson gave up Essary's. "This is all we've got."

"What then?" Griffin asked.

"Then we fly back to D.C. and stand in McGrath's office like the four
horsemen of his personal apocalypse." I primed the trigger, and in the
silence it sounded like a bone snapping. "You game?"

As they nodded, I remembered the note. WANNA PLAY?

It was play or die.

x

Flight 1229, Gate A12
Lincoln-Alliance Airport
10:43 PM

Let the three of them breathe their sigh of relief. We hadn't made it yet.

We'd picked up my trail about fifty yards from the west fence of NeuroMast. I
wondered if there was still evidence of my having been there, bled there. But
the experience, made more vital and vivid by the four missing days of
decontamination that had preceded it, was still real enough. I didn't need a
refresher.

I had half-expected there to be a blood trail, too. I'd lost enough blood to
make one, for sure. We diverged from the path three-quarters of the way to
avoid Pam Wyeth's neighborhood, probably crawling with NSA lackies,
manufacturing evidence. I thought of how ironic it would be if I died here,
in these woods. Like maybe I had come back to do just that.

We ended up on a two-lane road that seemed to be warring with the woods. It
was more gravel than asphalt, and weeds poked through the cracks. Jonson
moved in a circle around us, a prowler in his natural element. Essary had
acquired something itchy and poisonous, and every snap of a twig made Griffin
bolt out of his skin and hide. I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was
better than running, which I wasn't sure I could do if I tried.

If there was one thing Nebraska had in abundance, it was truck stops. When we
finally found a road, the three of us had ducked into one while Jonson caught
a cab back to the hotel to get the car and make four changes of clothes out
of what the two of us had in our suitcases. We might've been the most
clean-shaven individuals in the place, but I was still the only one who
looked like a pit bull's missed meal. I forced a sandwich on my system that I
didn't pause to taste. Griffin and Essary sat on their side of the booth and
shakily discussed the basketball players' strike and what might or might not
have gone on under the president's desk as if desperately trying to lend
something, anything, familiar to the weirdness of the night.

They were discussing much of the same on the plane as I sat there clutching
the box. I might as well have had a target painted on my shirt.

Essary sat directly in front of Griffin, who had the window seat next to my
place in the aisle. If they were going to talk, they might as well have sat
beside one another, but it was too late to make everyone play musical chairs
now. Jonson sat a couple of rows back, watching everyone. Every minute that
the flight didn't take off as scheduled was another level appended to my
fear. I dimly recalled a movie where a shot had been fired inside the cabin
of an airplane, and had taken a large piece of the craft's hull with it. I
wasn't going to feel any relief until we were airborne, and it was probably
still premature relief at that.

I realized, after years of traveling with Scully, that I was spoiled. Scully
and I hardly said a word to one another on airplanes, and only because the
boredom lent itself to strange conversations that ended up either nauseating
or frightening nearby passengers. And if we were slightly turned towards one
another after the seatbelt light went off, talking or not, it cut down on
those who would attempt to save our souls or sell us something. Finally the
engines roared and the cabin vibrated with the hum.

And while I didn't think Griffin was going to talk Jesus or cheap land in
Iowa, he wanted to talk nonetheless. I caught Essary's glance towards me, and
the slight smile was simple. ("YOU deal with him, man.")

"I heard you use to be in ISU."

Here we go. I closed my eyes. "That was a while ago."

"What'd you have to do to get in there?"

I sighed heavily. Could I be sending *more* nonverbal "fuck off" cues? "Well,
first I had to be interviewed, then I had to display a talent for it. After
that, it was just a matter of making the cut in the swimsuit competition."

"I'm just thinking it might be a place I want to work someday," Griffin said
over Essary's chortling. "I think I'd be good at that sort of thing."

"He's read _Mindhunter_ three times," Essary taunted, turning around in his
seat. "Think he's ready?"

While they squabbled back and forth, I retrieved my portfolio from between my
feet. It was treated black leather, old now. Scully had gotten it from her
parents as a graduation gift when she finished med school. It smelled faintly
of happier times. I'd found it when I was moving in, and sort of took it over
and made it mine. Hoping that wasn't a metaphor for anything else, I pulled a
wad of papers and mail out of it, hoping the preoccupation would make me
immune to Griffin's idle chatter.

Bills, bills. More bills. A card. Couple or not, "in this thing together" or
not, I wasn't going to open her mail. I guess I could still brag about my
sensitivity towards her privacy when the utilities were cut off. (Like this
matters.) I swallowed, wondering when something mundane like handing her the
mail had become so far-fetched an action.

I stuffed the stack of it back in when I realized the letter-sized manila
envelope on top was actually addressed to me. At first I thought it must be
the results from my initial physical with the Bureau. Then I remembered I had
my mail sent to a post-office box.

I slipped my thumb under the flap, dragging it across quickly. It looked like
federal mail. But the paper didn't have the sharp scent of a dot-matrix
printout.

It was a sheet of copier paper, folded in thirds at odd angles. What was
this? Another cryptic evidence log?

I unfolded it by the ends, afraid to commit to it by touching it. Black ink
had skipped across the page in a misled hand that was familiar and unfamiliar
all at once.

My hands started shaking, and the words hit me in small doses, making no
sense in their fragments. I felt the cough building in my chest, tasted the
blood in my throat.

"they let me do it finally I remember your name and I remember your face I
remember my name and I know why I'm here but I only have five minutes and
maybe not even that and I cant write it down or they're going to give me the
treatment again so I know I know I know please help me please"

The words hit a snag and plunged down, like the same half-thought sung
through her brain over and over again.

(It is her, isn't it? Is this her?)

At the bottom, the round cursive straightened itself out again, lucidity and
subconsciousness winding together, in and out of one another.

"come soon I don't know how long these things can go on"

Images hit me, rapid-fire. Scully in their gowns, eyes bloodshot, drained
from crying, throat sore from screaming. They had bandaged the new, bleeding
skin left from where the Ouroboros was removed, or maybe they hadn't. It
wasn't just a vivid bloody patch on her lower back now, but a hole in her
side. I fought the image, tried pushing it away, but she simply stood there,
and the hole in her side went straight through. I was looking straight
through her, and the aperture grew. Even now as I wrapped my arms around her,
it grew.

I started to open my eyes wide, and realized they'd never been closed. A
sharp pain passed like ice across the back of my neck. I'd seen it all like a
neural firing, spilling chaotically across my vision.

If Griffin or Essary tried to talk to me, I didn't hear it. Physical pain was
now pale in comparison to an unidentifiable ache that couldn't be traced or
alleviated. It had moved, taken over, whipping through every nerve and cell.
My eyes felt hard-boiled in the stale, pressurized air. Skin crawled at the
small of my back, a somatic call to action. And I was stuck on the plane.

x

Dulles Airport
Washington, D.C.
2:35 AM

"You know what we need to do?"

My head snapped up. Who was talking? Jonson. That was when it occurred to me
that I was standing in an airport concourse. I didn't even remember getting
off the plane. What was the question again?

He didn't wait for an answer. "That Lt. Quinlan guy -- we could put the fear
of God into him. We could. He'd cough up some airport security footage in a
hurry. We'd get the tail numbers off the plane, do a little tracking --"

I walked quickly, stiffly, to keep pace with him, while Griffin and Essary,
who no doubt thought they'd never see a Starbucks again, made a beeline
towards the smell of espresso and baklava. "What makes you think it *has*
tail numbers?"

"It would make sense, wouldn't it?"

"No, actually, it wouldn't make any sense at all." I caught myself with my
arm tucked in and self-consciously dropped it to my side. "And even if it
did, I'm sure they abandoned it, or changed the tail numbers. At any rate,
the FAA is not at my beck and call for tail-tracing on cargo planes."

"But if you could trace that one, even if you only traced it to where it was
last
logged --"

"It wasn't logged in Minot. What makes you think it was logged anywhere else?"

"They have to log to refuel, don't they?" Jonson continued doggedly. "Look,
we trace the path they took from one plane to another --"

"Okay, now they're running the operation from the air," I muttered irritably
as Griffin and Essary rejoined us, now caffeinated.

Jonson exhaled angrily. "They have to fill up those other beds. They gotta
fly to do that."

"Beds?" I asked, shaking my head as Griffin thrust a covered Starbucks cup
under my nose.

"Nothing fancy," he said kindly. "Black, nothin' in it. Like you ordered it
at the truck stop. "

I took it now. "Thank you." I turned back to Jonson. "What do you mean, beds?"

He waved his hand dismissively. "Not beds. Meant gurneys. You know, the
medical bays inside the plane... or the places where they could hook one up."

Okay, I was listening. "What if they hadn't made all their stops yet?"

"Right," he agreed, almost relieved. "That's what I'm saying."

"How many medical bays are we talking about here? Ballpark estimate."

"It's about as big as the ones I flew on." He squinted, humming under his
breath. "They gotta have enough room to roll the crash carts and the
equipment in and around 'em, so they're not close together or anything. Six
along each side of the plane, with a sort of emergency room set up in the
back of that plane that holds two. If I'm remembering."

You'd better be, I thought. "So the screams you heard... how many women on
the plane?"

"You're asking me about stuff that happened right before I fell out of the
airplane gate and hit the pad on my ass," he complained.

"And I'll fix the margin of error accordingly, so how many women?"

"Three." He furrowed his brow, looking down. "Or four."

"Maybe five?" I prodded wryly.

"Well... no." Absently, he yanked at his shirt, the way a poker player might
clear his throat or touch his earlobe. "Not until... uhm. You know."

"Scully makes five," I confirmed, mostly to myself.

("Mulder... I'm starting to believe hell is an airport.")

("Not really in the Jesuit doctrine, is it?")

("It should be. People waiting for flights that are never going to come, or
that they're never going to make. Or worse, that they *do* make. Only to be
shot through the air to *another* airport, just as bland and mechanical as
this one.")

("And Satan is the air-traffic controller.")

Idle chat. Up for forty hours straight without a solid lead or a good meal to
our names chat. That tired smile on her face...

("Satan is whoever lost my luggage in Dallas.")

("So what's heaven, Scully?")

("Home, in my bed.")

("I'll drink to *that*.")

("Sleeping, Mulder. In my bed, sleeping.")

I smiled, in spite of myself, at the hazy vividness of the words, of her
face. Best now not to think about what hell was or could be. I caught up with
the three of them.

Essary waved casually at a small knot of men in suits. "Harper, what's
happening?"

Harper, the fortyish man in question, blanched considerably and averted his
face. He had something silver in his hand. Handcuffs, and he was just holding
them in his hand. The group dropped any seeming nonchalance and pushed
through the crowd towards us.

Oh, shit. The closer they got, the more the truth became apparent, with the
presence of every hand-held radio, the vague unsnapping of their holsters,
the hands reaching blandly into the insides of their suits. The first muzzle
to show itself plainly in the light called up the hue and cry of panic from
the people spilling by us, who scattered like frightened birds.

"Run!" I shouted to no one in particular, backing up. Griffin's coffee hit
the floor and he spun out and away from me. Jonson had hauled ass in a hurry,
and I couldn't even see him now. I jerked Griffin in another direction,
opposite me. Six of them, four of us. Let them work for it, I growled
silently. Essary was the problem, Essary who just stood there dumbfounded
holding his coffee with his _Washington Post_ tucked under his arm. The
bastard -- he was in on it too! But he turned to watch Griffin disappear, to
look at the puddle of coffee where his partner had once stood. His eyes were
glazed, horrified, and moments later he was yanked upright, and a gun was
pressed into his side.

Fuck! I couldn't just run out now, and Griffin, glancing over his shoulder,
had stopped dead at the sight of Essary.

The man who held the gun to Essary said, coldly and plainly. "Ask him to come
here, Calvin."

Not worth his last name, I noted angrily. Not worth his title. Calling him
Calvin like he was just a schoolboy, disrupting class from the back row.
Essary swallowed. "Come on, Griff. Griff?"

The helpless, trapped look on Griffin's face showed his age. Twenty four,
twenty five. Not even on his second year at the Bureau. His green eyes teared
up. His arms rose dutifully as he walked towards his makeshift partner, the
guy he'd been forced to run with through the wilds of Nebraska. No one was
supposed to know this much of the truth so young. I was sure of it.

"What can you charge us with?" I demanded.

A brown-jacketed arm grabbed Griffin as he came close, pulled him next to
Essary. An anonymous buzz of one of the radios sent two of the agents
spilling off in the direction Jonson had taken. No one answered me.

"What are the fucking charges?" I realized now that I stood there, unstopped,
unchecked. No one had *me* by the arms. No one had a gun in my side.

"Should we be charging you with something, Agent Mulder?" asked Essary's
captor. "Besides the commendation for apprehending three wanted fugitives, I
mean?"

Griffin stared like he'd never seen me before in his life.

"This is a Bureau matter," I said quietly, discreetly. "Fugitives are people
who don't have a damn federal badge. Let them go. Let OPR take care of this."
I looked from the four remaining faces, to Essary and Griffin. "They're good
for it. They won't run. Let 'em go."

"Fugitives?" Essary asked, voice weak. The word prodded him to action. "What
in the *fuck* do you mean? We're not fugitives! We're federal agents! We did
what they told us to!"

The man stabbed hm with the muzzle of the gun, and as he wheezed in shock,
the man looked at me in confusion. He didn't understand how I would care if
the gun wasn't on me. "Actually, these two men aren't federal agents. Omaha
clued us in after their names lit up the alert."

But he'd just *called* them by their names.

"Harper!" Essary yelled, kicking and pushing against the man who held him,
pushing against Griffin to see the still-pale man who stood behind him. "I
know Harper. C'mon Harper! We worked the Cheney investigation together! All
those rapes in Northampton! You remember! We spent three months on that case!
I'm not impersonating anyone! Griff...he isn't either!" Essary laughed,
maniacally, straining against the cuffs digging in his back. "This is a
fucking joke, right?" He looked at me, licked his lip. "It's all about that
fucking box!"

The box. Dammit! I backed away.

"The... box?" asked one of the men carefully, innocuously. The key to the
locker I'd rented dug into my side, as if I was afraid they could make out
the shape of it through the pocket of my jeans. "What do you know about a
box, Agent Mulder?"

I ran too. I got the fuck out of there.

It scared me more that no one attempted to catch me.

xxxxxxxxxx

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