By Amanda Finch
[email protected]

Disclaimers, etc. w/ first part.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It was... the strangest feeling.

Happiness. Completion. I smiled down into her face. She smiled back. The blue
of her eyes made it almost impossible to look anywhere else. We stood against
a flat pane of glass, almost as large as the wall it was set in. Outside, the
ocean arched against the rocks and sand, making the hum and fury of the water
seem like silence. I couldn't see any other signs of land. And I didn't care.

But she was looking away, around my arm. Like the ocean, I couldn't see an
end of the room in sight. But that didn't immediately concern me either. Not
as much as the snake in the room with us, curled on the floor. I told her it
was okay, that *this* snake only devoured itself. We were in no danger. I
pushed her behind me anyway, and I stood. Go ahead, I ordered it without
words. Take me. I'll go.

It loosed long, curved fangs out of its flesh, and hissed, bonelessly jerking
to peer at us with one eye, then the other, then head on and -

"Agent Mulder!"

And bonelessly, I aimed my Sig Sauer at Skinner, waking up slowly. Bits fell
into place as I blinked. I had been asleep, the snake thing was only a dream,
I was holding my gun on an assistant director and I was in my old office. At
FBI headquarters. I let that be absorbed. What the hell? I glanced at my
watch for a moment. 5:38 AM? I shook my head in disbelief, only dimly
remembering how I'd gotten here, recalling the sparse expressway traffic. But
that could've been any early morning commute from Dulles. What was in this
shit Wexford had given me anyway? Codeine?

Skinner stood in front of the desk, only mildly fazed. "You can put the gun
down, Agent Mulder."

I did, and sat back. I remembered sitting here, dealing Spender in just to
deal him out. Permanently. The sun was just beginning to rise through the
high basement window. Even then, running through these halls, playing the
game. It was *easier* than this.

Taking a chair, Skinner sat down. "I was going to let this whole health leave
violation thing go, but you don't even look like you're supposed to be
alive." He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "What are
you doing here? This isn't your office anymore."

Spender was dead, Diana had tearfully resigned. "It's no one's office."

"It was my third guess," he said, and the words died in the dry basement air.
"You want to fill me in?"

I looked up defiantly. "Fill you in on what?"

"Don't jerk me around, Mulder," he growled, rolling the chair closer to the
desk's edge, any similarity to Spender ending there. "Maybe start by telling
me why I got a call at 4 AM about one of my agents being celled in Customs
down at Dulles, or why when I got there, the place was swarming with federal
SRT guys, all suited up like they were going to church?"

Of course he meant Jonson, the only "genuine" FBI agent in detainment. I
tried to remember if Jonson had seen me pick the locker and shove the box in
it, or if he knew which locker. I couldn't, it was all so blurry. "What's he
saying?"

"He saying that you can corroborate his story. He's leaning hard on you."
Skinner waited. "I'm not sure you realize the immensity of that."

I put my thumb in my eye, pressed down hard, trying to wake up so all my
words didn't slur. "Pam Wyeth, Jonson - that's FBI. McGrath - that's the
Pentagon. McGrath's wife - ATF. And the NSA, telling you not to do anything
about it." My vision cleared as I glanced up. "Unless someone's cheating on
their income tax, I'd say that covers it."

"That's the abbreviated version," he said gruffly. "All four of my phone
lines have been burning red for the past three days, so maybe you'd like to
enlighten me on what you're doing."

"You *know* what it is we're - what we were doing." I tried to focus my eyes
on the desk calendar under my spread fingers, and only got a jolt to the back
of my head when I strained to see what day it was now. "You handed us this
case - "

"I'd rather you kept your voice down about that." He ignored my glare. "And I
sent you to find Krycek. What you came back with was a possible security
breach."

Muldergate, I thought bleakly. I'd always wanted a National Incident named
after me. "Why did you give us this? Why did you want us to find him?"

"You're saying you wouldn't have gone to find him on your own?"

"No. I'm just trying to put *this* together, too. Had to be a reason, right?"

"The reason was that it crossed my desk, and then promptly *un-crossed* my
desk. I knew it would be covered-up, so I made copies of everything and gave
them to you. I just passed it on."

I smiled faintly. "Just another innocent courier."

He jerked his chair closer to the desk. "Sure, Mulder. I gave you a case and
put you out in Nebraska so I could sit here, now, with my ass on the line for
going over Kersh's head. Because I *wanted* this huge wad of red tape that
you've brought in with you. That makes sense. You think I want Agent Scully
missing? You think I want you sitting there, shaking like a psych dismissal
waiting to happen - "

Shaking? I was shaking? Dammit.

" - or Krycek on the loose? Or Agent Jonson drawn up on murder charges?" His
voice was flat, disgusted. "Not everyone has an ulterior motive. Not everyone
is out to get you. Maybe if you could make that distinction, you could find
Agent Scully."

As if I'd been brass-knuckled in the spinal column, I snapped upright. I
remembered listening to S.C. McGrath talk about wanting to find his son's
killer. It was unimaginable that I didn't innately sense this paternal
treason. No alarms had gone off with him, so the silence of my instincts now
only made Skinner's motives more clouded than they already seemed.

"I have no idea what it is you want, Sir," I admitted quietly.

"Who really killed those two?"

"Krycek killed Pam Wyeth."

"And Ray McGrath?"

The walls were bare. It had just registered with me. The place was cleaned
out and sanitized. I bet the filing cabinets were empty too. It all felt like
an empty shell now.

"Mulder?" He prodded. "Ray McGrath?"

"I'd rather not answer that."

He sighed tiredly. "Was it Jonson?"

"No," I said firmly. "Proof would bear that out. Not that this investigation,
if you choose to call it that, is concerned about the evidence." My laugh
sounded harsh and sad all at once. "What's the goddamn point?"

Skinner leaned in, as paranoid of the purported listening parties as ever.
"This case is going to dissolve in one of two ways. One, Jonson's going to
swing for killing S.C. McGrath's son. Two, it's all going to be filed away
and gag-ordered and we'll never hear about it again. And there's only one way
you can botch both plans."

"Find the real killer?" I asked bitterly.

"You have any other ideas?"

Jesus Christ, he was greener than Griffin if he believed that. "Sir, Scully
is *missing.*"

"Yes, I know that. The entire Bureau knows that. But I also know that you
didn't find her the first time, and I don't think you'll find her this time
either."

"You think I can't?" I took the dare, clenched my teeth. "Really?"

"No, I think you can. I think you will. But I also think that won't happen
unless they want it to." He moved back now, just out of my range. "Do you
understand what I'm saying?"

Loud and clear. "And just sit on my hands and wait until she turns up dead in
some ditch somewhere, impossible to identify, dumped out in some Potter's
Field somewhere because I gave up the chase."

He dropped his voice to its lowest pitch. "Jonson told me what was in the
box."

"Fuck." I brought my hand down on the top of the desk, pushing my chair into
the shelves as I got up. The sting in my palm was the first valid physical
sensation I'd had since we left Sheehan. I let it crawl up my arm as I paced,
and felt the pain dissipate when it met the codeine. "I'm going to kill him.
I hope they *do* cover this up and say nothing about it. Just so I can kill
him."

"He only said this to me."

"What's your point?"

"I'm the only one who heard him say it."

I stopped mid-pace, scoffing incredulously. "Do you *really* believe that?"

"How do you know Agent Scully's still alive?"

"How do you know she isn't?"

"Answer the question, Mulder."

I shook my head.

"Everything Agent Jonson told me... only points to the fact that it's
possible she's dead. Or like you said, impossible to identify." He spoke to
my back now as I stood under the window. "So how do you know?"

I turned. "Because I would know."

"Don't confuse wishful thinking with instinct."

"Wishful thinking?" I strode back towards him. "Wishful thinking is me
believing - hoping - that the tests they're doing on her are only mildly
annoying and not excruciatingly painful." I let all the air out of my lungs
and, leaning against one of the filing cabinets when the floor started to
spin. "I think it's just a matter of getting to her in time."

"Before they kill her?"

(Before she gives up on me and loses hold. She wants to die. She wants to die
and she's waiting to hear that there's a reason to do otherwise.) Oh God.
Where had *that* come from? I swallowed hard, not budging from leaning there.
"I got a letter."

"A what?"

I made my way back to the chair, picking the portfolio up from the floor
where I'd either left it (*that* was brilliant) or where it had fallen. If it
wasn't there, I was going to - there it was. I took the envelope out, pulling
the letter free by the corner. "Try not to touch it."

He let the paper fall in front of him onto the desk, and used his ink pen to
keep it flat. When he was finished, he cleared his throat. "This is Scully?
This is her handwriting?"

Lifting my face from my hands, I mumbled, "Think so."

"But you're not sure?"

I found my voice and bearings again. "The first time she was returned, she
didn't remember much more than a few vague details, nothing concrete. I can
only
assume - " I was fading out again. "Some pharmaceutical assistance. Which I'm
sure would impact her writing and impede her motor functions. Even if this
was written during a lucid moment."

His eyes dropped from my face to the scrawled, sprawling lines. "Who do you
think sent it to you?"

I spoke through my hands. "Unmarked envelope, addressed to me. Plain dark
manila. Privately-paid postage, with a number on the front, right under the
label. I thought it was the results of my primary physical - the one I had
right after I came back, but there's no reason it should've or would've come
to Scully's address. Just yanking my chain, Sir."

"And you're letting them."

I threw his previous question back at him. "You have any other ideas?"

He pushed the letter towards me again with his ink pen. "Yeah, I do. You give
me this letter and I'll run a very tight, very discreet forensics test on it."

"No. The letter stays with me."

"You've got the box." He folded his hands on the desk, voice almost
inaudible.

"It doesn't prove she's alive," I pointed out.

"Neither does the letter unless you let me help you." He hadn't moved his pen
from the page. "I *did* hand you this case - "

"Yeah. Thanks for that."

Ignoring it, he forged on. "Let me do some of the work. Let me take some
responsibility."

"Ask me again when I'm not medicated." I carefully edged the paper from under
the pen, found an evidence bag in the side drawer of the desk, and put the
letter in it. "The fewer people I drag into this, the better."

"I'm not being dragged in. I'm asking you to trust me."

"You're asking a lot."

"Were you planning on having it analyzed by the labs?"

I closed my eyes, wanting desperately to go back to sleep. "Not a Bureau lab."

"Then it would be inadmissible." He leaned back in the chair. "And, since
you're on a health leave, and off-duty entries aren't permitted, you would
have to have it entered through an active agent."

(Who ya gonna call?) I groaned inwardly. "Alright. You take it. Have it
analyzed. You stay with it during the entire duration of the analysis. You do
not tell anyone else about it, especially S.C. McGrath. I'm just as certain
that you shouldn't trust him as you're certain I should trust you."

Skinner frowned, and I realized I'd just given him a direct order, in the
appropriate "direct order voice." He took the evidence bag from my fingers.
"You're telling me he had his own son killed?"

"He may as well have." I thought about the letter leaving the room with
Skinner, and all the factors and variables that I couldn't control. "He knows
who really did it. Admitted to me outright. If we hadn't gotten out of
Nebraska when we did, we'd be dead right now. He's who I came here to see."

"Good luck," Skinner said dryly. "He's canceled all his meetings for the next
month. And he's only got two months left before he retires. And if he's the
problem you say he is now, he's only going to be more of one in two months."
He paused. "He's an acting Senator. You heard Richard Matheson died, right?"

I went entirely cold. Fading out again as I stared down at the desk, I didn't
notice that he hadn't moved from where he was standing. Senator Joe McGrath.
Sounded strangely similar to Senator Joe McCarthy.

Skinner slipped the letter inside his jacket. "Listen, Mulder."

I raised my face.

"I know it's a lot to ask. I know the X-Files have always been a search for
you. But you can't treat this case like a pilgrimage, no matter how badly you
want to find Agent Scully." He walked slowly to the door. "Regardless of the
people involved, this is a criminal investigation. Start running it like one."

x

Those words were still ringing through my ears more than two hours later.
Back to basics with the Quantico textbooks I had scanned into memory a
decade... no, thirteen years ago. I paused to think about that for a moment.
Thirteen years. How ominous that milestone sounded.

I stood in Quantico now, passing a glassed-in corridor that ran parallel to
the track. A few go-getters ran for their lives, bundled up in sweats and
sneakers, stopping to time themselves. Hell, it'd been two years since I
tried to run a six-minute mile. Of course, in my current condition, it would
probably take half an hour to lope the full distance with a leg that might
never be the same again. I emptily promised myself that I would give it a try
once I was better, and things were back on an even keel.

In an hour or so, these hallways would be deluged with cadets, teachers and
reserves, so I hit the communal showers fast, relieved to be the only one
there. After Skinner had left, I planted myself next to a coffee maker in the
VCU bullpen, empty except for the cleaning people and one devoted soul who
ignored me as he worked. I called the D.C. MUFON chapter, left a message and
drank a pot and a half of stolen coffee. Of course, my nerves had been dead
and it was just now dawning on me that I hadn't let it cool off. The inside
of my mouth felt cauterized. In the same fashion, I stood under the scalding
water in the shower until I could actually feel it on my skin. The codeine
had to go. Like Scully had months before, I stood over a toilet and watched
the pills get sucked down into the blue water and disappear. The antibiotics
would have to do.

I stood in front of one of the mirrors and splashed cold water on my face. I
didn't look *as* bad as I remembered. Half of my neck was still dark purple
and the skin was so cut and bruised around my hairline that it looked like
someone had tried to scalp me. The inside of my lower lip was still split. I
pressed my tongue into it. It tasted raw and open.

After I struggled into change of clothes, I replaced my bandages with new
ones pilfered from a first aid cabinet, pulling the thick elastic nylon over
the gauze. I barely made it out one of the back entrances of the training
academy before someone arrested me in fear.

As I stood outside the Bureau mailroom almost an hour later, it was
debatable whether or not the drugs had worn off. The coffee was working
though, winding through my system like high-octane gasoline.

I was studying the envelope the letter had arrived in when my phone rang. It
startled me at first. I'd forgotten it was there. "Mulder."

"Agent Mulder, Drake Fischer - from MUFON. You left a message on the machine."

This sounded much more polished than my calls to MUFON in the past, when a
kid would pick up the phone and yell to their mom that someone was calling
"about the aliens." Drake Fischer had been one of those kids. "Drake, I need
a favor."

"Name it."

"Are you on a database where you can talk to the other MUFON chapters?"

"More or less," he answered. "We don't have all the bugs worked out yet. But
we're online. We all know how to contact one another."

"How hard would it be to compile a list of women who have been reported
missing for the past two weeks or so from all the chapters?"

"Depends on the criteria."

I'd made the list in my head, but had forgotten to write it down. "All repeat
abductees, all taken at least once before, all reported missing from late
January to the present."

He was typing it in. "That'll narrow it down. We're still talking about a
long list. We have chapters overseas now."

This wasn't said with pride, but resignation. Necessity had bred expansion.
"My guess is that these women are going to be those who are in remission from
the cancer."

No typing now, just silence. "You probably just shortened the list
considerably."

"I know," I said hollowly.

"I should have a list of names and descriptions for you tonight, and I can
call you if anything comes up." The typing stopped. "I sent it to all the
other chapters. That all?"

"I'd report a missing person to you, just like I would to the police. Right?"

"Yeah. You're reporting someone?"

"It's Scully," I said shortly. Don't make me tell the story, I silently
pleaded.

Drake's voice lost some of its public relations polish. "All I need is hair,
eyes, height, weight, full name and blood type if you have it. Also, where
she was last seen."

Like I had to the Bureau, and to the police in D.C., Sheehan and Minot, I
reeled off the wanted information and hung up. It sounded so basic, so
routine, until I gave her full name. I hung up a minute after he had gone to
task on making the report.

It was a few minutes after eight. There was no reason the damn mailroom
shouldn't have been open.

Not that I could much blame them. Like Domestic Terrorism and General
Assignment, the Mailroom and the other bland FBI functions were the Bureau
equivalent to being handed a toothbrush and told to buff the latrines. The
expression on the face of the female agent who eventually showed up didn't
refute this. She was pale, ash blonde hair fading to white, probably in her
fifties. By putting her here, they almost guaranteed she would retire like
they'd suggested she should. Like a lot of them, though, she had a few months
to a couple of years left until pension.

I tried to look friendly, but gave up soon enough.

"Bomb squad," she guessed tonelessly.

"Not after yesterday," I said wryly. "Can you look at something for me?"

"The staff doc works on the next floor up."

"An envelope."

She unlocked the door and snapped all the lights on. As she fished her
glasses out of her pocket, I noticed her gun strapped to her side. Just in
case someone tried to steal the interoffice mail. But it felt wrong to not
snap the holster on in the mornings. It was habit. She didn't offer me a seat
and I didn't take one as she sat down behind her desk. "Alright."

I handed her the envelope. "I know you probably see millions of these
everyday, but I'm interested in the number on the front."

She turned it over in her hands once, then again. "Why? You get something
threatening in it?"

"Something strange."

She handed it back. "Then tell Security. It's not my department."

I absently ran the frayed edge of the torn flap across my palm. "Could
Security tell me where the envelope came from?"

"They couldn't even tell you where their own mothers are."

That was reassuring. "So what you're saying - " I glanced at her wood grain
name plaque. " - Agent Dade, is that I should hand the envelope over to
Security, so Security, with their mother-finding problems, can subsequently
hand it over to you. So you can answer this query maybe a week from now while
I wait a couple of months for them to get back to me on what you told them."
I smiled vaguely and stared.

Sighing noisily, she held her hand out. "Give me the envelope, smartass."

Flattening it out on her desk blotter, she typed the number string into the
computer in front of her and three beeps later, tapped her fingers on the
wrist rest. "It's what I thought it was. Just a generic number sequence.
There's about five hundred of them. It's just an accounting reference."

"So it's not from this office?"

"Why would we send bulk mail to our own office?" She concurred bluntly.
"Besides, it didn't come through us at all if it went straight to your
residence."

Etiquette be damned, I sat down. "In other words, it would've come from
anywhere but here."

"Smarter than you look."

I let that pass. "And there's no way you can track the shipment."

"That would be the company's doing."

"Who's the company?"

"I don't know."

If this maddening bullshit didn't stop quickly, she was going to have to call
the Bomb Squad to come and defuse me. "Can I see a new envelope like this
one?"

Opening a desk drawer, she produced one identical to what I held. I turned it
over in my fingers, nudged the flap up. There was a piece of peel-away white
tape underneath. Self-adhesive, goddammit. No possibility of a DNA hit on the
flap. "So you're telling me that any field office flunkie from Customs to the
DEA could send us death threats and ransom notes, and we wouldn't be able to
tell where they came from?"

"Don't complain to me," she said wearily. "It's all departmentalized - "

I laughed mirthlessly and threw the new envelope down. "If they ever learn
how to build a bomb the size of a form letter, we're going to be
departmentalized into flaming bits and pieces over a ten-mile radius."

"Look." Finally, she understood that I wasn't going to back down. One hand
danced deftly over the number pad and she twisted the monitor around so I
could see. "A package we can track. A letter we can track. A bulk letter we
can't. That's all I know to tell you."

"The bulk mail is sent how?"

"In bundles. Banded together. When there's that many."

I swiveled around to face a wide sliding door that seemed to open out into an
unloading area where several people sorted through packages. "And the
bundles? How are they sent?"

She knew where I was going with that. "In a big vat made out of hard plastic,
not a box."

She picked up an unused package, turned it over and showed me a piece of
translucent white tape on the side. Lifting one edge of the tape with her
thumbnail, she yanked the tape up and away. "See that? If it doesn't have the
barcode on it, we can't track it. I don't know where you got this idea about
tracking devices. We're the ones who have to scan each number in."

It stuck to my fingers when I took it. I scowled. The brief, vague memory of
Alex Krycek's face made my muscles tense. A tracking device.

Like a microchip.

xxxxxxxxxx

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16

Feedback

Back to Fanfic Index

Home