By Amanda Finch
[email protected]

Disclaimers, etc. w/ first part.

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Lone Gunmen office
10:37 AM

"Drake? Mulder. Listen, there was an e-mail I sent you over a year ago about
putting the chip back in. Depending on the number of people on your list, I
need you to tell those who are safe for the moment to take the chip out. I'm
convinced it's not what I previously believed it was, and that its presence
is no longer beneficial.

I hated voicemail, but I flagged this one as urgent.

Byers looked up from the pages I'd given him. "Is this all you have?"

It was the hard file that Scully and Agent Pendrell had compiled back when
she'd first discovered the implant. There might have been more information on
her computer at the apartment, but I'd been lucky enough to show up while
none of her family were present. Like Pam Wyeth's neighborhood, it was a
no-fly zone. The Scullys in one, the NSA in the other.

I sat straight in the backless chair across from them, feet still touching
the floor. I held onto the brackets under the table to steady myself, to hide
the fact that it was necessary to hold on. "I'm not sure how much help it's
going to be - it was for the previous chip, not the one she's implanted with
now."

Spreading the pages like a deck of cards, Langly, highlighter in hand, picked
out manufacturing information and encoding data that might later be used to
access what I hoped was a database. Capping the marker, he pushed his hair
behind his ears once again. "You're talking about a needle in a haystack."

"Actually a microchip," I offered drily. "Smaller than a needle."

Frohike stared at me through the mounted magnifying lens, serious expression
almost amusing on his suddenly gargantuan head. "And something a lot more
involved than a haystack."

"We're searching the federal databases first, right?" Byers asked.

"I want you to start with NeuroMast before you do anything else. Then the
federal databases, and whatever you can springboard into from there."

"Dedicated mainframe or open?" Langly prodded.

"Nothing's dedicated anymore," Frohike replied, yanking the glass from in
front of his face. "Not if we can trap someone's user I.D. and password."

Trying to understand their geekese even contextually was making my head
hurt. "Dedicated... means you can't access it from the outside, right? No
dial-up modems you can tap into, no link-ups? In other words, what we don't
want."

"He *has* been listening when we talk," Frohike muttered.

"But we're dealing with a microchip that acts as a transmitter," Byers began.
"You know what that means. Satellite, radar. We just trap the signal and --
what?"

He was staring at me. I realized I was shaking my head. "I don't... think
this is moving cargo."

The room was silent for a moment. Half of the noise I'd attributed to their
office was actually droning through my head. Byers spoke up first. "You said
you thought she was being moved via transportation. Planes and trains."

"I do. But there's also the possibility that she's at one stationary
location, and only scanned. My point is, I don't know if this microchip is
supposed to be a sort of cataloging device, a transmitter or both. If she
*can't* run or move, what's the point of having her..." I couldn't finish.

"In case she *did* move," Frohike asserted stubbornly. "Do you have the
original microchip?"

"It was destroyed," I said wearily. "In the first inspection."

"Just accidentally, I'm sure," Langly retorted.

I raised my face from my hands now. "As a matter of fact, yes. Look, I know I
don't understand precisely what it is I'm asking for, but if it's a tracking
system that logs these women being scanned or a radar, finding it is the only
key to finding her. I'm just having a hard time imagining her as... a parcel,
or a blip on a screen, that's all."

It was such a blessing at the time, wasn't it? One moment, metastasis. Her
skin had paled so terribly that I thought she was dying from the outside in,
even though I knew the opposite to be true. I heard the urgency and
desperation in my voice, diluted now with time, begging her to waive her
black-and-white science for just a millisecond.

("Put the chip back in, Scully. Even if it's not the cure, what harm could it
do?")

I winced at the memory. Putting the chip in and getting the assurance of no
reaction was much greater than not putting it in and never knowing its
purposes, I'd reasoned. What was that, my own distorted version of the Pascal
Theory? Goddammit, how could I have been so wrong?

(I thought she was dying. It was the only human reaction.)

I'd been all too human lately. The three of them carried on without me, and
they might as well have been speaking Chinese. My eyes faded from focusing
and their faces swam together, only to all flash back into frame clearly as
my cell phone rang.

Drake was talking almost before I could get my name out. "How close are you
to East Regional Medical?"

What? I thought about where the office was, a dozen other questions and
possibilities running through my mind. "About twenty minutes away. Why? Was
someone else taken?"

"No, no." He sounded as if he had been kicked in the chest. "Someone has been
returned! Someone on the list. Can you get down here? Seventh floor, west
wing."

"I'm on my way." I hung up. "About the chip. If you could get one that
belonged to another abductee, would that help?"

The wave of technical jargon crashed and Byers looked up, "It couldn't hurt.
Anything else you need us to do?"

"No," I answered absently, thinking better of it as I pulled my trenchcoat
on. "Wait. There's a name. I'm sure it's just an alias, but I'd like you to
run a check on it." I grabbed a pen off the desk, and scrawled the name on a
notepad. "John Maynard. Again, start with NeuroMast first and then try any
other agencies. I've already checked FBI, but that doesn't mean he's not
involved in some unlisted capacity, if he exists."

I'd show the bastard WANNA PLAY. I'd show him a *game*.

x

Northeast Georgetown Medical Center
11:26 AM

*This* hospital, I thought. Five years ago, Scully had been returned here, a
miracle wrapped up in a disaster. I careened down the hall from the elevator,
found the arrow that pointed to the east wing and simply stood in the lobby
area and waited.

It only took a second before Drake stood. He was, all at once, younger and
older than I had expected. The hard, glacial cast of his blue eyes behind the
wire-framed glasses and his rod-straight posture reeked of boot camp or
strict discipline. But his dark hair was a little too long, jerked behind his
ears and touching his collar in the back. His sneakers were bright blue and
suede. So the disciplinarian had either loosened up or died. My guess was the
latter. But a ghost remained in his voice as he extended his hand and
introduced himself. Not just Drake Fischer, but Drake Fischer *sir*. The
tailoring of his words gave him the illusion of age, but their delivery was
young.

Briefly noting the various bruises and wounds, he decided it was none of his
business and sat down again. "I didn't get a chance to e-mail the list to
you, but I have it with me." From the Day Runner at his side came two sheets
of paper, stapled together. It was folded four ways, and I waited for him to
hand me the rest. He didn't.

"You're not going to find many survivors of the cancer, Agent Mulder.
Excluding the women who may not have recollection of an abduction experience,
these remain."

I felt sick to my stomach. "You get my voicemail?"

"Yeah," he said quietly. "As you can see, there was no real need to tell most
of them it couldn't cure the cancer. I made arrangements for all the women on
the list to be alerted about the chip."

"How many are missing?"

"Of the eighteen on that list, ten."

I unfolded the paper. "I should've been more thorough."

"Sir?"

"I thought I was giving MUFON the good news... about putting the chip back
in. " I flattened the page on my knee. "But I've only endangered the lives of
the survivors."

"I can't imagine you would've neglected to tell us," Drake remarked
helpfully.

No time for that. "You said one of these women was returned. Which one?"

"The woman listed as number twelve." He pointed to her name. "Lori Maciver,
28. She's been here for three days, but authorities just identified her from
a missing persons report this morning. Her local chapter just called me an
hour ago. I can't go in and see her though. All they'll say is she's
unconscious."

I read the abduction data next to her name. On January second, Lori Maciver
had gone to a doctor's appointment, standard oncology check-up to make sure
all things in remission stayed that way. She never arrived at the
appointment, but had stopped at a convenience store, to tell the people who
worked inside that she was being followed by a black sedan. They called the
police, but when the police arrived, Lori was gone. Her car remained. The
Minnesota --

"Wait." I looked up from the words. "Minnesota highway patrol? This woman is
from Minnesota?"

"First thing I thought was odd, too."

What in the hell was she doing here? I smirked, testing Drake. "You think the
aliens misread the directions?"

Drake wasn't smiling. "Who said anything about aliens?"

"Good," I said firmly. "Then we're on the same page."

"I don't hold my mother's view on extraterrestrials." He anxiously dragged
the zipper on the Day Runner back and forth. "I don't think I ever did."

"This is as inside as inside jobs get." I saw Scully's name, fourteen on the
list, and looked away. "How is your mother by the way?"

"She's dead," he answered flatly. "Five months ago."

I shrank back. No wonder he didn't need to be reminded that the chip didn't
work. Dammit. "I'm sorry, Drake."

He wouldn't look at me. "I hope your partner's okay."

Saying nothing, I remembered sitting here five years ago. Dr. Daly, Mrs.
Scully and Melissa had just left the room to pull the chord on a parachute
that wasn't going to open for Scully. I stayed in there for awhile, and I
felt it happening. A switch coming on, not bringing any light or realization,
but telling me that breaking down and falling apart was imminent. A voice in
my head begged me to let go, and let the disintegration start. I felt the
switch turn on now, as if an almost intangible manifestation of pain had all
the control. My eyes were heavy and my bones felt stung. Good God, not here.

(bite down, tense up, will it away)

"Look." Drake tapped my arm. "Where are all those nurses going?"

I stood with him, and he peered around the corner down the corridor, watching
them go into one of the rooms. "It's her room. She's either just woke up or
--"

However the sentence ended, I blocked it out, getting my badge out of my
pocket.

x

1:32 PM

Lori Maciver was awake.

I tried to suppress any hope this may have granted in me. I knew what it
meant -- that maybe she could remember something, could give us even a vague
location description to go on.

The doctors had waited an hour before conceding that she was up to answering
a few questions. As Drake remained standing, I pushed a chair next to the
bed. Her blonde hair was flattened away from her face with sweat, eyes a thin
ring of blue around dilated pupils. I told her my name, and Drake's, and it
sounded as if someone else said the words. I let her pick the right time to
speak, cursing what had to be the fair warning alarm for a migraine.

Pulling the thin blanket up protectively, she scrutinized my face carefully.
"Were you in the car with me when it crashed?"

I kept my expression and tone neutral, but my heart sank. "Is that what
happened, Lori?"

"You all keep saying that," she whispered, pulling the blanket up more.

"We all keep asking you what happened?"

"Well, yes." She seemed to notice Drake for the first time, and watched him
as if he were poised to attack her at any moment. "And calling me that name."

(Oh God. Oh no...)

The room was freezing. The chill crawled down my neck and seemed to saturate
me. I knew hospital rooms were cold, but this was insane. "What name should
we call you?"

I thought she was going to cry. She didn't, but her hands were new to her
now. Holding them up, she noticed how her left hand had a strip of skin where
the ring had been, paler than the rest of her hand. Her voice was level with
shock. "I don't know. I can't remember."

Stay calm, I warned myself. The droning sensation in my head grew louder. It
was the drugs, I told myself. Stress, Scully's voice confirmed, just drugs
wearing off. "You don't remember anything at all?"

Focused hard on me, her pupils became pinpoints. I reacted to the change
before I could catch myself. Stunned, I sat back. The door to the room
opened. The doctor and nurse said something that I understood without
hearing, and Drake was leading me away past two small, blonde children and a
red-eyed man with a beatific smile on his face. "Honey?"

I stalled there at the nurse's shoulder as the children gently laid siege to
their mother's bedside. She stared on blankly, over their heads. Her
husband's smile faded to match her expression. The untouched children grew
discontent. The moment froze and solidified, as if the doctor's mouth would
open and the names of the long-fighting dead would be announced.

The nurse finally pushed us out, but not before Lori Maciver had turned to
the doctor and, in a voice as flinty and precise as a knife blade, asked,
"What are the children doing out of the ward?"

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