In the Water
by Amanda Rex

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Rating: This story contains mature content. Suggested for those over 17 only.

The characters herein are the property of 1013, Fox and Chris Carter. No infringement on their copyright is intended. Their usage here is for entertainment purposes only.

Thanks to: A big thanks to my editor and beta-reader willa and to my husband who also beta-read for me.)

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In The Water

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8:45 a.m. Ideal Futures, Inc.
Sterling, Virginia

This was the second happiest day of her life, second only to the previous day. She'd certainly never been happier to be on her way to work. Her left thumb toyed with the smooth, unfamiliar metal around her ring finger, and she fumbled with her right hand to find the magnetic key hiding in a fold of her pocket. She approached the unmarked, wooden double doors, inserted the key in the locking mechanism, and waited for the small green bulb to light before pulling the handle of the heavy access door. She turned around after entering and waited for the door to close; it was company policy for each employee to verify upon entrance and exit that no one gained unauthorized entrance to the facility. With a smile, she tried to casually wave with her left hand, hoping that Tina, the receptionist, would notice the recent addition to her jewelry collection.

"Good morning, Andrea," she paused, squinting at her. "Hold it! Come on back here and show me your hand!" Andrea smiled to herself. Tina's slight southern accent, which she normally tried to hide, had crept back into her voice. It seemed to return only when she was excited or surprised, and it was back with a vengeance now. There was something about sharing this news, sharing this wonderful mood she was in that made Andrea even happier than she'd been the night before. She went to the desk, holding out her hand for Tina's appraisal.

As she walked down the corridor to her office, she whispered to herself under her breath. "At least now I won't have to tell everyone about my engagement." Tina was a very likable girl, and because everyone talked to her at some point in their day, she was also the hub of the office gossip. Andrea's upcoming wedding would be common knowledge by the end of the day.

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Some time later, down a separate corridor, three men met in a darkened office.

"We have another opportunity," said the man sitting behind the desk. He was clearly the leader of the group, obvious not only because of the cloying way the other two treated him, but also from his demeanor. His narrowed his unforgiving gray eyes, and looked to the man who sat in the chair farthest to his right, silently asking for his appraisal of the situation.

"These opportunities come often, ten or so every year. What makes this one so different," Henricks replied, knowing his superior would judge him based on the accuracy of his assessment. He was wary of being too negative, taking too many liberties with the concerns he expressed.

His superior rotated his chair, facing away from them to admire the view his window provided. "This one is indeed different. We can cultivate control of this situation. The files we've amassed on our employees have now proved themselves invaluable." Turning slightly towards them, he tossed Andrea Price's file onto his desk and continued. "She has a weakness. We've pinpointed embryotoxic factors in her last blood sample, and we can reverse them. This can and will be exploited. Henricks, study the file and make preparations."

Henricks carefully gathered the file and exited through the door which led to a deserted, rarely used set of corridors that would eventually lead him back to his office.

When he was gone, Brooks looked to his leader and spoke. "Is Henricks ready to take charge of the situation?"

"If he wants to avoid taking a more," he paused, searching for just the right word to use, "personal role in the program, then he will not fail us. He understands this is an important turning point. If we can create the situation this woman believes to be impossible, her gratitude would be considerable."

"Perhaps utilizing a woman in her position would be...inadvisable."

The leader swung around in his chair, annoyed at such ignorance. "Using a 'woman in her position' is precisely the intent! Are you having second thoughts? An attack of conscience? If this program proceeds as planned, we will give her something she could never have on her own." His eyes narrowed, examining Brooks for any further hint of disloyalty. "This program was designed to help people like this young woman. Or perhaps you don't believe in it as I'd thought." He let his voice trail off, turning away from him again and waiting for the inevitable, bumbling apology. Brooks stammered, the specific words not as important as the result. His inferior had been reminded of their purpose, and his allegiance had been renewed.

He turned again to his office window, looking over the idyllic view below. His wife had meticulously designed the courtyard. Every detail was hers, from the placement of the trees and flowers down to the color of the stain used on the wooden benches. She had even selected the specific type of grass that had been planted in symmetrical patches that surrounded the central feature of the garden. The centerpiece was the only object he truly treasured, a sculpture in the shape of the company's logo. Their logo represented everything he believed in, a detailed model of the human hand reaching upwards to the sky, symbolic of mankind's pursuit of greatness, the ideal marriage between earth and the heavens. And finally, some of their work, their preparations, would finally come to fruition.

He envied the woman they'd chosen. She would have the perfect child, not the product of a genetic game of chance. A perfect child who could not disappoint with poor grades, inane friends, and a complete lack of motivation and ambition. Rudolph's own son had been a failure at everything he'd ever undertaken -- a failure so complete that Rudolph couldn't even bear to give him a job at IFI. Soon, the human race would be capable of so much more. Rudolph had imagined that future long ago, a world where each generation's greatness would surpass the last. Their journey toward that end had brought with it so many discoveries, abilities that had lain dormant in the human genetic code for millennia. Even the first generation of perfect children would possess some of these abilities.

Someday, his name would appear in history texts, and he would be noted as the man who brought a touch of divinity to the human race. He reflected on IFI's most noble of programs, realizing he may well have found his Virgin Mary.

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Five months later

Andrea anxiously rushed towards Auxiliary Conference Room #3, annoyed at herself for being several minutes late for one of her mandatory status meetings. She'd nearly forgotten about it while arguing on the phone with her caterer about exactly when she'd told them the cake should be delivered to the reception. True to the warnings all of her married friends had given her, she had finally come to the conclusion that it would be a miracle if this event ended up within shouting distance of her original plans. If her supervisor hadn't told her to take a few days of paid leave for the wedding, she wasn't sure how she'd have gotten it all done.

Just one more meeting, a few more hours of work, and then you'll have a week off to take care of the quickly amassing details, she thought. She'd been pleasantly surprised at the flexibility given to her -- the accommodations made for her were much more generous than she had anticipated. During the three years she'd worked at Ideal Futures, she'd noted that there were often great allowances made for employees who had to take care of 'family business'. As a single person, it had often annoyed her. Now that she was about to be married, she found a certain sense of relief in that unofficial, but often used, policy.

She composed her casual, but tidy appearance before entering the conference room. In an effort to open the door silently she slowly turned the knob, trying not to call attention to her tardiness.

"Surprise!" Dozens of her co-workers were cheerily yelling, in dizzying contrast to what she'd expected. They looked to her, expectation and hope evident on their faces, and she realized that they were all waiting for her to say something.

"If this is what I think it is, thank you. My thanks to all of you, for thinking of me." Tina approached her from the right, and gave her shoulders a quick hug. "Hey, who's covering the phones?"

"I got Dan to do it. You know the men around here, cool as a cucumber when they're arguing with the government about funding, but uncomfortable as hell at a bridal shower."

"Although, not all of us feel that way."

Andrea turned, surprised at the sudden sound of a male voice in a roomful of women. She was further shocked to see that it was the president of the company.

"Mr. Rudolph! Hello, sir. Thank you for coming."

"Wouldn't miss it for the world. Every time one of my employees gets married, I feel as though our little IFI family gets a bit bigger." He handed an exquisitely wrapped gift to Andrea, and continued. "I regret that my schedule doesn't permit me to stay for the rest of the party, but I wanted to stop by and give you my best wishes for a long, happy marriage."

"It's not every bridal shower that has Mr. Rudolph on its guest list," Tina whispered in Andrea's ear, as their boss left the room. She raised her voice, now addressing the group. "But enough talk, let's cut that cake."

They indulged in the decadent three-layer chocolate fudge cake, the only dessert that Andrea had indulged in since her first wedding gown fitting. She worried with every bite, the words of the salesgirl ringing in her ears, 'Oh, you do look good in that, but honey, don't you put on a pound. I don't know where you'd put it in that dress.'

When they were finished, Tina led Andrea to the gift table, laden with packages. It seemed that her entire bridal registry sat before her, hidden by thin layers of floral wrapping and shiny ribbon.

Tina handed her the first present, and in her usual efficient fashion, was ready with pen and paper to keep the traditional list that would make Andrea's thank-you note writing simpler.

Andrea removed the ribbon from the first package, carefully and painstakingly trying not to damage the wrapping paper and bow.

"Just rip it open, Annie, so we can all see it!"

Andrea cringed. She hated to be called 'Annie'.

Tina answered for her, giving perhaps the only answer that would upset Andrea more.

"Haven't you read up on your bridal shower trivia, girls? For every ribbon she breaks, she'll have another baby. And if she breaks all of these," she gestured to the gift table, "we'll never see her at work again."

Polite laughter filled the room, but Andrea felt tears coming to her eyes. She lowered her head, pretending to have trouble with the wrapping paper while trying to hide her reaction from the crowd.

She would have been relieved if she'd seen it had gone largely unnoticed, overshadowed as she pulled the first of her gifts from its box. Only one pair of eyes in the room had truly been watching her, filing information away for her report.

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At long last, Andrea had finished thanking all the girls for the surprise shower. They'd helped her load the presents in her car, and the only time Andrea had gotten to herself was the short time it had taken her to re-park her car. A couple of the girls had waited for her, walking her back into the building and pulling all the details of her wedding from her. Ivory dress? That will look wonderful with your complexion! Light pink and yellow flowers? A beautiful choice. Who's your caterer? Oh, I've heard they're just wonderful. Yes, everyone loves Dijon Chicken...

If Andrea heard the word 'wedding' once more, she would scream.

She ducked into the first floor bathroom, half expecting her escorts to follow her inside, but was pleasantly surprised when they didn't. She didn't really have to visit the bathroom, not for biological reasons, anyway. Regardless, she went into a stall, closed the door behind her, and just stood there, relishing the silence.

She apparently wasn't meant to have a moment to herself, she thought, as she heard two women noisily bustle into the room, in the middle of a conversation.

"So we're trying to have another one."

"Really? Where are we ever going to find someone who understands the filing system the way you do?"

"Hopefully you won't have to."

"What do you mean?"

"It's not exactly my idea. It's my husband's. He was an only child, and he doesn't want our little Charlie to grow up all by himself."

"But if you don't want to -- "

"You're assuming I have a choice. Stacey! He looked me right in the eyes and told me he didn't know how he could be happy with just one. How can I deny him that?"

"Did you tell him you don't really want to right now?"

"How can I, when I'm getting it from my mother-in-law, too?"

"Uh-oh."

"Uh-oh is right. That woman can really put on the pressure, I'll tell you. When we were over there last Thanksgiving with Charlie, we were watching him play. She asked me when Charlie was going to get a sister, and I tried to lay our stock excuse on her. 'We're just really happy raising Charlie right now.' She didn't buy it. In front of a roomful of my husband's extended family, she told me I had to get moving, or my eggs were going to dry up."

"She said what?"

"You heard me. How can I take that? It's so much easier just to go through childbirth again."

The women laughed lightly, easily, and it rang in the tiled interior of the rest room, along with the tiny clicks of their lipstick cases, the whooshing of brushes through expertly teased hair.

"Well, if that'll be easier, then I guess I'll wish you good luck."

The water gushed from the faucets as they washed their hands, and Andrea heard the rest room door open, then slowly swing closed again.

She wasn't sure when she'd begun to cry. Part of her was shocked to feel the wetness of the tears that had somehow appeared on her cheeks as she brushed them away.

She tried to put it all out of her mind, annoyed at herself again. This wedding seemed to be turning her into someone she didn't like, emotional, irrational. Her father hadn't raised her that way, crying in the middle of the day when she had work to do. She tried, she tried so hard to forget a similar conversation Bob's mother had started with her, and the look, a mixture of pity and disappointment, she'd been given in return for her frank explanation of her condition. Andrea had tried to tell the woman that she'd come to terms with it long ago, but her soon-to-be mother-in-law had insisted on talking about it, trying to convince herself that she could live without grandchildren and disguising it as consolation. Telling her how they could adopt, how medical science could work miracles these days.

The memory merged with the fragments of that overheard conversation...'How can I deny him that?', and she couldn't be the strong, pragmatic, realistic person she tried so hard to convince the world she was. She buried her face in her hands, her shoulders wracking under the pressure of her tears and her pain. Pain at being inadequate, not being whole. Unfocused anger and resentment, and an unattractive jealousy of every woman who possessed the potential that she did not.

When she returned to her office over a half hour later, Tina was the only one who seemed to notice her red-rimmed eyes.

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8:15 p.m.
Ideal Futures, Inc.

Tina moved through the darkened building, hours after anyone would have expected to see her there. When she reached her destination, she knocked twice, waiting a few moments before entering. She slipped quietly into the room, having anticipated the person she'd come to see wasn't alone. Mr. Rudolph nodded at her, but the other two men who were there continued to talk as if she didn't exist. It was typical of most male executives -- the female administrative staff might as well be invisible.

This had given Tina innumerable opportunities to learn the company's dirty little secrets, which had led to her current association with Mr. Rudolph. Tina was the perfect resource to gather information for the president of the company. Long ago he'd discovered her willingness to share the information with him, the intimate confessions entrusted to her -- the worries and problems of everyone from the janitors to the vice-presidents.

She sat quietly in the corner, waiting for the opportunity to turn over her observations. Rudolph soon dismissed the men, knowing the most important revelations would not come from either of them. When they were gone, Tina told him of the hour Andrea Price had cried on her shoulder, intimating her sorrow over her medical condition. Just as her personnel file had detailed, it was quite likely Andrea would experience multiple miscarriages, perhaps never being able to carry a baby to term. It had led Andrea and her fiancee, Bob, to decide they would actively avoid becoming pregnant at all. They had agonized and fought with themselves and each other over the decision. In the end, one difficult part of Andrea's past had led them to the inevitable conclusion.

Andrea's mother had died due to complications from Andrea's birth, and the guilt of knowing she'd caused her mother's death had followed her throughout her life. Even if more recent medical technology could make Andrea's childbirth attempts safer, neither of them were sure they could make it through the pain of the pregnancies that terminated in miscarriages or still-births.

In the shadow of his high-backed chair, Rudolph knew that they had picked the perfect subject.

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Three months later
Ideal Futures, Inc.

Andrea visited the mini-kitchen closest to her office to refill her water bottle. They'd recently installed a new water filtration unit there -- apparently the Director of Administration had recently read an article that dehydration was a primary factor in reduced workplace productivity. With Tina bugging most of the girls in the office about drinking their eight glasses of water a day, it was simpler just to drink it than to argue with her. She glanced at her watch, discovering she'd have to hurry to avoid being late to her appointment at the company blood drive.

IFI hosted blood drives quarterly, and it was almost an implicit requirement of employment to participate in them. Not that Andrea objected in theory, but she'd been feeling so tired lately she wasn't sure she could spare the blood. Nevertheless, she allowed the attendant to insert the needle, and she waited, thinking about the work still waiting for her upstairs. When they were finished, she spent more time than usual sipping her orange juice, waiting for her lightheadedness to recede.

"Hey, Ms. Price, I haven't seen you for a while!"

Andrea waved at the young man, one of the blood bank volunteers. "It's Mrs. Ritter now. I was on my honeymoon during the last blood drive."

"Wow, congratulations! I didn't know!"

Andrea thanked him, feeling strong enough to get back to work. After she left, he took her blood bag to a small, closed area at the back of the van. He ran a simple test, calling the number he'd been instructed to call when he received the results.

"Rudolph."

"Sir. We have the test results. She's pregnant." The phone line abruptly went dead, leaving the volunteer to wonder if his message had gotten through.

Rudolph turned to Tina to relay the news, wondering if her small part in this experiment gave her the same satisfaction he felt.

"She's pregnant, isn't she?" she said, before he could tell her. "Of course she is. She's been chugging the water you're filling with progesterone and antibiotics for weeks now."

"This child will be a miracle, the antibiotics making it possible to defeat Mrs. Ritter's birth control pills, and the progesterone protecting it from the harshness of her immune system. But this child will be extraordinary in many other ways. I simply need your help with one more thing."

"What is it? What can I do?"

"I need you to organize flu shots for the employees, and encourage Andrea to participate. Then we'll arrange for her to get a special shot. That shot will turn her miracle baby into the next step in human evolution, possessing intelligence and abilities undreamt of until now. So go, take care of it. I have another call to make, to Mrs. Ritter's physician. I have to strongly encourage him to give her some very specific medical advice."

"I'll have the flu shots set up by the end of the week."

"Tina, you've done a wonderful job, and I appreciate your loyalty. You will be rewarded."

Rudolph was well prepared to deal with the next phase of the project -- one way or another, he'd put several of the company's HMO doctors on the IFI payroll. Andrea Ritter's current doctor was one of them, and Rudolph simply ordered him to refer Andrea to Rudolph's selected obstetrician.

He smiled to himself as he reflected on the beautiful complexity of his plan. Certainly, Mrs. Ritter would have to be prevented from ever becoming pregnant again. The ease she'd experience with this pregnancy would be contrary to the warnings she'd received. If she went on to become pregnant again, without IFI's assistance, the inevitable miscarriages would make her uneventful first pregnancy much more suspicious. He made his second call, confirming the next stages of the plan with the obstetrician.

"Dr. Martin? It's Rudolph. You're about to get that referral I told you about. You know what to do." He paused, knowing his next request would come as a surprise. "There's just one more thing. After the child is born, I need you to advise her to have a hysterectomy." The inevitable protestations followed, which he knew he had to quell quickly. "Listen, before you have an attack of conscience, let me remind you of something. This woman was never supposed to become pregnant in the first place. Without our assistance, this would never happen. If it's necessary to do this to preserve the safety of our work, I think we're more than justified, considering what we're giving her in return." The doctor's continued silence was less than reassuring, and Rudolph felt the need to use an alternate form of persuasion. "I wouldn't want to have to bring up that malpractice suit again. The one I took care of for you..." With Martin's assurance that the deed would be done, Rudolph replaced the handset, satisfied that the plan had progressed exactly as he'd intended.

There was even a glorious side-benefit to be gained from this. When Andrea Ritter found herself barren after her only child's birth, her attachment to the child would be even stronger. It could even be useful someday.

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Six years later
Herndon, Virginia
Residence of Andrea and Bob Ritter

As she got out from the passenger side of their borrowed FBI motor pool vehicle, Scully could deny her curiosity no longer.

"Mulder, can you tell me why you're interested in this case? I've asked you at least three times on the way here."

"I wanted you to see the evidence for yourself before you formed an opinion of the case, and I couldn't seem to talk local law enforcement into giving us a copy of the tape."

"You're still avoiding the question...what tape?"

Instead of answering, Mulder just pointed towards the innocent-looking colonial style house, and started up the walkway. His long strides were quickly closing the distance to the house, giving her the familiar choice of jogging after him or falling behind. She had a suspicion he'd equally enjoy seeing her choose either of those, but decided it would be better to just keep up with him. She walked quickly, catching up with him as he reached the steps to the front porch.

He knocked, and a tired-looking young woman answered the door. Her long, dishwater blond hair was pulled back into a messy, careless ponytail at the nape of her neck. The only color to be found on the pale skin of her face was a deep, black circle under each of her green eyes. Her voice, low and small, fell from her mouth, emotionless, as she addressed them.

"Agent Mulder. You've come back."

"Yes, Mrs. Ritter. I've brought my partner to watch the tape you showed me yesterday."

A brief spark of emotion flashed over Andrea's eyes, and Scully recognized it on a visceral, primitive basis.

This woman was frightened on a level few people survive to experience again, an intricate aspect of terror even fewer people can recognize. It was unfortunately as familiar to Scully as her own reflection. She'd experienced this herself, yet she labored to keep any aspect of her empathy from showing on her face.

Mrs. Ritter led them into the living room, retrieved a videocassette from a bookshelf, and handed it to Mulder.

"You'll excuse me if I don't watch it with you. If you have any questions I'll be in the kitchen. If not, please feel free to let yourselves out."

Mulder caught her arm, and the woman visibly cringed.

"We will try to find your daughter, Mrs. Ritter, no matter who has her."

Scully watched for any reaction from the woman, and was chilled to see no evidence of hope, or even comprehension. The fear she'd seen earlier was now gone, replaced with a blank hopelessness, as if this situation was the resolution of a horrifying inevitability.

Mrs. Ritter exited the room and Mulder finally relinquished the case file to Scully. He gestured to the overstuffed couch opposite the television, where she sat as she flipped through the file. It was an account of a seemingly routine kidnapping. Certainly a terrible situation, but she still had no idea what significance this case held for her partner. Mulder had meanwhile inserted the tape into the VCR, and the image of a young girl filled the screen, her visage matching the picture from the case file.

Scully analyzed the image, estimating based on the girl's appearance that the tape had been made recently, probably using an amateur-grade video camera.

On the screen, someone's hand held up a card with a cartoon-like picture of a tree printed on it, the image slightly out of focus due to the card's proximity to the camera. The hand moved the card downwards, revealing the young girl again. She said, "It's a tree, daddy." The hand turned the card so the side that had been facing the girl now faced the camera, and it was blank. The exercise was repeated with dozens of cards and Scully was immediately reminded of the talents they'd observed in Gibson. An odd mixture of dread and curiosity filled her at the memory of the case which had led to the most recent shut- down of their division.

Scully looked to Mulder, presuming he'd made the same connection, and it was for this reason that he'd instituted their involvement in the case.

"Is there any evidence she..."

"According to the mother," he replied, cutting her question short, "she displays the same talents Gibson showed us." He paused, and then continued. "I think it could be assumed she also displays his powers of...communication."

"How did we get this case, Mulder?"

"It came through normal channels. No one recognized the paranormal aspect of the case so they're treating it as a routine kidnapping. Getting the assignment was fairly simple."

"Well, couldn't it be a routine kidnapping?" In response to the incredulous look that passed over her partner's face, she continued. "Or do you think it could be the same people who took Gibson?"

"I can't be sure, but it's the closest thing to a lead we've gotten so far."

"What makes you say that, Mulder?"

"While you were looking in the file, did you happen to see where Mrs. Ritter works?"

Scully consulted the file again, reading aloud the name of the company Mulder had referenced. "Ideal Futures? What is it, some kind of commodities trading firm?"

"No, it's better than that. They're a government contractor. Biotechnology, specializing in the area of genetic research."

"Do you think there's a connection?"

"If there is, it's the kind of thing the local boys won't look into. And if this is a lead," he gestured towards the kitchen, "we're the only hope she's got."

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They sat in the kitchen with Mrs. Ritter, and Mulder sipped the iced tea she'd poured for him. Scully had an instinct that the child's mother would feel more comfortable talking to another woman, and Mulder had remained in the kitchen only to quietly observe.

Scully began the painstaking task of extracting the information they needed, using as much sensitivity as she could.

"Mrs. Ritter. We've read the police report, but it would be helpful if you could recount all of this, from the beginning."

Andrea blinked, then nodded, her face expressionless.

"Three days ago, my daughter Allison disappeared from my company's nursery. The security cameras were malfunctioning that day, but Tina gave her description to the police."

"Who is Tina?"

"Tina Wakeland. She manages IFI's nursery facility. She used to be our receptionist, but she was promoted when IFI started their on-site child care program. I used to think it was a godsend. I could keep my job and still see my child anytime I wanted. But I just put her in harm's way."

Scully reached out, covering Andrea's hand with hers.

"There's no way you could have predicted this."

"IFI is a secured facility, in accordance with our government contracts. Some of our research is done under Secret or Top-Secret processing standards. In retrospect, it seems foolish that I hadn't considered the possibility that this could happen."

"Maybe it wasn't IFI at all. Maybe the kidnapping occurred because of Allison's abilities." Mulder spoke, and instantly regretted having done so. The look that Scully shot him in response to his intrusion was undeniably punitive.

Scully attempted to soften his sentiment. "I believe my partner is curious about the videotape we just watched. Were those abilities common knowledge?"

"No!" Andrea responded, shocked. "Bob and I had always told her it should be our little secret. Allison understood."

"Isn't it possible that someone found out?" Mulder pushed his luck with Scully's anger by asking one more question.

"I suppose so. Do you really think that's why Allison's been kidnapped? That they want to use her?" Andrea's composure finally broke, her voice cracking as she acknowledged the inevitable.

"It's a possibility, Mrs. Ritter." Scully intoned, adjusting the timbre of her voice in an attempt to calm the woman.

"What would they use her for? Do you think they would experiment on her?"

"I couldn't theorize with any certainty, Mrs. Ritter, and I don't want to mislead you. But if Allison was taken because of her abilities, I do think it's logical that they won't let any harm come to her." Scully watched the woman across from her, looking for any sign of hope or belief in this theory. She thought back to a similar conversation she and Mulder had when they'd first encountered Gibson Praise, and was chilled to recall the theory that Gibson had been targeted for death by men who needed to keep their secrets at all costs.

"I wish that were true, Agent Scully."

The combination of the words, the tone of voice, and the facial expression set off an alarm somewhere in Mulder's mind. This woman was hiding something, a secret she'd kept for a long time. Something about Andrea Ritter's demeanor told Mulder that she was hoping they would uncover it. Though he would be risking another glare from Scully, he had to find out.

"Is there something else you want to tell us, Mrs. Ritter?"

She hesitated as she looked them over, obviously evaluating them to see if they deserved her trust.

"I don't know if I can take this..." she said, suddenly dissolving into tears. "I never believed Allison was possible. She was a miracle baby. We were told that it would be very difficult for me to have children, and we had decided not to try. Somehow, Allison squeaked through. I worried through nine months of pregnancy, surprised each time the obstetrician told me that she was developing normally. I was terrified during her delivery, waiting for something to go wrong. But it didn't. She was beautiful from the first moment I laid eyes on her."

Scully watched her, willing herself to remain objective. There was no reason to apply any of Andrea Ritter's experience to her own. Moreover, she knew that it was likely to cloud her judgment. Despite her careful assessment and rationalization of her own initial reaction to the situation, she found her thoughts wandering recklessly to her own barrenness, and to Emily.

Andrea Ritter continued to describe her medical condition, one which caused her immune system to recognize a fetus as foreign tissue and attack it. Other factors, most significantly, a genetic predisposition toward uncontrolled post-delivery hemorrhaging, contributed to the chance that Andrea's own health would be endangered during the delivery. Andrea had been told that she would suffer miscarriage after miscarriage if she tried to become pregnant, but somehow Allison had managed to survive, utterly healthy and without defect. Andrea, on the advice of her doctor and despite the relative ease that both mother and daughter experienced during pregnancy and delivery, had undergone another procedure after Allison's birth.

It was the only thing that overshadowed her elation at Allison's successful birth. Her doctor suggested the hysterectomy, pointing out that Allison had been more than she had hoped for already. With her perfect little baby to raise, she didn't need to tempt fate and risk her health with another pregnancy. She had, after all, the example of what had happened to her own mother. The thought of leaving Allison and Bob alone, of depriving her daughter of a mother, was more than she could bear. She'd appreciated what her father had done, raising her alone, but she knew that she'd missed something, never having known her mother. In a moment of panic, she'd consented to the procedure without seeking a second opinion.

"There is something more. I thought it was nothing at first, but soon, the 'coincidences' became too much to ignore. First, we wondered how Allison had been conceived, despite my birth control pills. I never miss a pill, but we were reminded by my doctor that the pill isn't foolproof. Then, several of my co-workers who were also on birth control pills became pregnant, at around the same time. All of our offices were in the same wing of the building, and we actually joked about it. We used to say there must have been something in the water.

"For all of us, these pregnancies were entirely unplanned. IFI has so many family-friendly policies that most of the girls were ecstatic anyway. I was worried, for obvious reasons that I've already told you. But it seemed that Allison and I both got healthier with every doctor's appointment. I gave birth, and everything was just fine.

I went back to work, and things were going quite well for us. Then Allison's...gift...started to become apparent. We didn't think anyone else knew, we thought she was so clever at hiding it. Then I found something...something I shouldn't have ignored.

"I was working late one night, trying to finish a project before the weekend. My duties include database administration, and I was transitioning some data from an old, legacy system into the new relational database management system IFI had purchased. I found some file-based encryption on one of the databases, the largest of all the files I had to work on that night. I should have waited, found its creator on Monday, and provided them with instructions for performing the transition. But I was told the machine I was pulling the data from needed to be re-loaded and given to another project on Monday morning, so I attempted to break the encryption. I didn't think I was doing anything wrong. I hold a security clearance and I'm specifically cleared to Top Secret levels for all of IFI's projects.

"When I was successful, I was horrified at what I found. The name of that database file was 19931112 -- Allison's birthday. Just moments after I saw the filename, I heard footsteps coming down my hallway. I was so frightened I'd stumbled onto something I wasn't supposed to see that I deleted the unencrypted version and left the original where it had been. When I came in on Monday, the machine was already clean-loaded. Just a week later, Henricks, the man who had assigned me the task of moving the databases, was killed in a car accident. The very day he died, he'd come by my office to ask me if I'd seen anything out of the ordinary while I'd performed the task. I had the oddest feeling he had meant for me to see the information I'd stumbled onto.

"I didn't know what to do. Thinking that IFI might have been involved in Mr. Henricks' death, and after what I'd seen, it made me want to quit my job and get as far away from IFI as possible. Bob convinced me that it must have been a coincidence, and that Henricks' death was just a random tragedy. I felt silly for being so suspicious, but there was always a grain of worry in the back of my mind after that.

"I don't know what relevance that could have, but I really think that someone at IFI might be involved. I don't know who to trust, I don't know what to do." She started to cry, her face in her hands, shoulders shaking violently. Between her tears, she managed to choke out a few more words. "And I should have done something. I let this happen."

A man, whom Scully assumed to be Bob Ritter, appeared in the kitchen's doorway.

"Andrea. Don't." Andrea slowly calmed, wiping the tears from her face, but her expression betrayed her. She was obviously convinced her inaction had brought harm to her daughter.

Mulder tried to find the right words to leave her with. "Mrs. Ritter, I think you've given us enough information to allow us to continue our investigation. I'm sorry we had to trouble you."

"I'll do anything to get my daughter back, Agent Mulder. I'm sorry, I know I'm not much help if I'm falling apart...it won't get her back."

"We'll do everything we can," he told her, as Mr. Ritter started to escort them to the door. When they reached the entryway, Mr. Ritter lowered his voice and spoke to the agents.

"If you find anything even mildly unpleasant, I'd appreciate it if you'd contact me first. If my wife has to hear any bad news, I think it would be best if it came from me." He handed each of them a business card. His expression was calm and determined, nearly enough to mask the evidence of worry and sleepless nights in his recent past.

Scully started through the open front door without waiting for Mulder's response. She was already waiting at the passenger door of the car by the time Mulder had started down the path. He reached the car, as unsure of what to say to Scully as he had been with Mrs. Ritter. As they got in the car, he carefully tested the waters with her, trying to keep the tone of the conversation neutral.

"So, what do you think, I think we should spend some quality time over at IFI." She didn't immediately respond, she just wordlessly buckled her seat belt, adjusting her jacket underneath the strap.

Finally, she favored him with a response, a distracted, distant, "Sure Mulder, that sounds like the next logical step."

"You okay, Scully?"

She glanced towards him, avoiding his eyes, and quickly looked away again.

"Yes. I'm just a little tired today." She paused, bothered by the things Mrs. Ritter had told them.

"No, Scully. What is it?"

"Nothing...it's nothing." She began to think to herself, pouring over Andrea's words in her mind. The hysterectomy. It was so final. There are so many alternatives. The surgery was almost certainly unnecessary. She shook her head slightly, suddenly certain she was too close to this case, that she identified too closely with Andrea Ritter. It was more important to concentrate on the child's disappearance instead.

"If we can verify that some of IFI's overhead costs are covered by government funding, then this kidnapping happened on Federal property. From that point, we shouldn't have any problems establishing jurisdiction."

"Sounds good, Mulder. Need me to take care of the paperwork?"

"No, Scully, I'll do it."

"I don't mind. I need to take care of a few things back at the office, anyway. Why don't you take me back there, and give me a ring when you get the relevant information. It'll be faster, and we don't have any time to waste." He could hardly argue with her on logical grounds, but he had a strange feeling Scully had other reasons for making her suggestion.

------------------------

In their new office, still buried deep within the depths of the FBI building, Scully felt strangely safe. The smell of new paint and disinfectant tickled her nose, but she was glad to be there. She looked over the form she'd just completed, wondering why her every instinct had been telling her to run away from their current case.

She had begun to question her ability to contribute anything of substance to their quest for the truth. She wondered if Mulder had ever stepped back and objectively looked at his life as she found herself doing. Had he ever maintained a neutral perspective long enough to realize that he was trading in any chance he had at a 'normal' life for his uncertain future? As hopeful and determined as she was, she knew their search may ultimately lead to nothing. They might never unlock the secret of the conspiracy they'd stumbled upon, Samantha's fate might forever be lost to them. Yet Mulder was willing to gamble with his life, his sanity, double or nothing on incredibly long odds.

And she had followed him. At first, she'd followed him because their work, although strange, was fascinating. She'd felt she could make a difference, make a contribution. Forensics was often frustrating, perpetually feeling as though you were brought into the process too late to actually help anyone. When the opportunity to work for the FBI came, to use forensic science to prevent crime, she'd felt drawn to it. Now, doubt had crept into her thoughts. What did her contribution amount to now?

Time and again, she'd found herself telling Mulder that he was crazy, that his theories were far-fetched, beyond viability. She'd seen hundreds of things that she couldn't explain, yet she still refused to accept Mulder's unproven explanations as the truth. She had been sent there to block him. And sometimes she had, but not in the way she felt Blevins, and whoever he'd been working for, had originally intended.

Her abductions and her illness had controlled Mulder more effectively than the conspirators could ever have originally intended. Mulder had traded his sister for her. He'd tracked her down countless times, literally to the ends of the earth, and had cried at her bedside when they'd believed she was near death with the cancer that had been inflicted upon her.

All for you, Mulder. It's all been for you. It had taken her a long time to acknowledge it, that she had been used each time only to control Mulder. They didn't fear her contribution to their quest, they sought only to manipulate her partner through the things they'd done to her.

Underestimated. Not a phenomenon she was unfamiliar with.

Dispensable to 'them'. Indispensable only to Mulder. The only value anyone else seemed to place on her was in inadvertently controlling him.

Her will had nearly been broken a thousand times, her energy entirely sapped, only to return again. Somehow, her strength came from a bottomless well, replenishing itself despite everything that had been designed to steal it from her entirely. Somehow, through it all, she had maintained her strength and her faith. The night terrors that had returned after her most recent abduction experience had nearly ceased. Although she lived with the knowledge that she could be abducted again, she had decided long ago that the best hope of freeing herself from that constant threat was to keep fighting on the front lines with Mulder.

There was honestly no point in quitting. If they needed to distract Mulder, they would try to use her to manipulate him, regardless of whether they continued to work together or not. Perhaps her strength was actually in being underestimated. They would never expect her to make a difference in Mulder's fight, and their weakness might lie in that miscalculation of her skills and her will to make a contribution.

To her relief, she had rediscovered the strength to follow him, that they hadn't taken that from her as well. There was only one thing that had been taken that couldn't be returned.

She was barren, just like Andrea Ritter. But there would be no miracle for her. Emily was the closest she'd ever come, only to experience pain and loss when she'd found that the little girl she'd never really known would be taken from her. She shuddered to think that the people responsible for Emily could be trying to engineer another child from her genetic material. If she ever found that to be true, she wasn't sure how she could possibly withstand the pain again. She'd become so bitter at this most personal mutilation, and that bitterness had become her only shield against the pain of it all. Of Emily. Of what had been stolen from her. Of how they had altered her. It was one thing to be controlled and manipulated. It was quite another to find that a fundamental aspect of your biology had been savagely excised from you, then used as a tool in the very project that you're trying to expose. She wanted to bring each and every one of the men to justice, every last person who was responsible for all that they fought against. And there had been doubts she'd had to face. She had to continually question her role, wondering if she had been used only to their benefit, if every step they'd taken towards exposing them had simply been an illusion.

It wasn't enough that they'd seen her as trivial and used her solely to influence Mulder, they'd had to embroil her in their 'project'.

It wasn't enough that they'd created one innocent child who was never supposed to exist. They may have continued down that arrogant road, putting Andrea Ritter in the same agonizing position that Scully had found herself in.

Her phone rang, and she was relieved to be brought out of her thoughts. After answering the call, she had the information she'd been waiting for. A significant portion of IFI's building mortgage was paid for with government funding, technically giving the Bureau jurisdiction over Allison's kidnapping. She called Mulder briefly to let him know he could proceed under the assumption that they could get full control of the investigation, ending the conversation as quickly as she could. Before he could ask her when she'd be joining him in the field.

She started on the paperwork, falling into the trance that came with extreme busywork boredom. It, thankfully, kept her mind off the specifics of their case.

------------------------

Mulder drove the short distance to the Ideal Futures building, trying to place his feeling of uneasiness. After hearing her voice, even as it was filtered through the slightly mechanical sound of his cellular phone, Scully was plainly shaken. He knew he had dragged her into yet another case that exacerbated the injury her experience with Emily had left her with.

He had absolutely no desire to force her to remain in the thick of this case. If she needed to return to the office and bury herself in paperwork to get through this, then that's where she'd stay until Allison was safe with her parents again.

He swung the bureau's car into the parking lot, and finally found the main entrance to the IFI office space within the building on the fourth floor. A pair of nondescript wooden doors, marked only with a sign that said, "Visitors and Deliveries, please ring bell". Mulder pushed the doorbell button, and a moment later, a voice came out of the speaker.

"IFI. Please state the reason for your visit."

"I'm Special Agent Mulder of the FBI. I'm investigating the disappearance of Allison Ritter from this facility, and I'd like to see Tina Wakeland."

He heard a faint beeping noise, followed by the unmistakable 'click' of a lock mechanism opening. He pulled open the doors, crossed to the desk, and flashed his badge at the receptionist. After a hushed telephone consultation, he was asked to wait for Tina Wakeland in the lobby. He signed in and got an IFI guest's badge, suppressing a momentary urge to write 'find out what the Hell is going on' under the 'Purpose for Visit' section of the Visitor's Security Log. After he'd spent a few minutes of perusing a six- month old copy of Navy Times, a young woman entered the lobby and crossed to the black leather couch, holding out her hand to him. He shook it, assuming her to be Tina. She was a petite, good-looking woman. Her large Clairol-yellow curls dwarfed the rest of her face, and her off-the-shoulder, frilly flowered-print dress seemed more appropriate for lounging in a porch swing and sipping lemonade than for a business environment. When she spoke, her southern accent completed the image in his mind's eye.

"You must be the policeman who's come to ask me more questions."

Mulder again showed his badge, correcting her slight misinterpretation.

"Actually, I'm Special Agent Mulder with the FBI."

"Oh, really? I'm just sick over what happened to that little girl, but I had no idea the FBI would be brought in on something like this. Why don't we retire to my office and we can talk about this whole horrible mess. Would you like some coffee?" She gestured toward the door, and she began to lead him away from the lobby, to the elevators. Before she opened the door, she slid a small, black plastic key into a slit in the wall. Something about that bothered him, but he couldn't quite place what it was.

After the main access doors came to a close, the receptionist picked up her phone and made one more call.

"Mr. Rudolph? This is the front desk. You asked to be notified if anyone else came concerning the Allison Ritter situation? Well, an FBI agent just arrived, and he asked to speak with Tina, the head of the child care center. They're heading to her office now, sir."

"Thank you. You're doing your job well." Rudolph hung up his phone, reaching over to flip a switch on the panel on his desk. The monitor in the corner of his office came to life, the image of Tina's office filling the screen.

------------------------

Mulder noticed Tina's open examination of him, and became slightly uncomfortable with the silence. "Due to IFI's status as a federally funded contractor, we're currently working on getting full jurisdiction over this case." The elevator arrived, and they faced the doors as they closed and the compartment started its ascent.

"We? That sounds like a lot of paperwork, Agent Mulder, which you obviously aren't working on right now."

Her question sounded pointed, focused, until Mulder looked from the metal of the doors back to Tina's face. Her blue eyes innocently sparkled at him, betraying only a mild curiosity.

"I have a partner. She's working on the paperwork as we speak." Tina sighed in response.

"Oh, you men. Always leaving the little woman at home."

"Not always, Ms. Wakeland. Sometimes I lose the thumb wrestling match and I have to fill out the forms." His flippant response was rewarded with a smile, and he noticed for the first time that she was trying to flirt with him.

The elevator reached its destination, and Tina led him to a door in a back hallway. She repeated the procedure with her black plastic key as he watched. Again, something about that routine itched at him.

They walked through the entryway, and Mulder noticed a security camera near the ceiling.

"Why wasn't that functioning the day Allison was kidnapped?" he said, pointing to the camera.

"I'm a little embarrassed to tell you, Agent Mulder. We're a little...arrogant about security here. The magnetic locks on the doors were put there simply to meet the guidelines specified by our secret-and-above level projects. I guess we just never considered ourselves a target for something like this."

"Do you think the kidnapping was related to IFI's work?"

"Oh, no. But it would have been nice if we'd had the security measures that are actually in place in operation that day. It may have given you some lead, some information to help you find her."

"So, why do you think IFI is so flippant about security?" Mulder glanced around the facility, the sound of children playing barely audible behind some closed door. Before returning his gaze to Tina, he met the glance of another woman working in the center. There was something in her face, some reaction to the conversation that she'd just overheard, that made him want to talk to her as well.

"I wouldn't say 'flippant', Agent Mulder. We're not a defense contractor, you know. We're mainly involved in medical research...diseases, viruses, that kind of thing. I expect that the locks are mainly there to keep the company secrets in and to keep the spies from the competition out."

They reached Tina's office, and she closed the door behind them. She gestured to a guest chair in front of her desk, and then surprised him by taking a seat in the second guest chair rather than the chair sitting behind her desk.

"Can you tell me what you remember from that afternoon, Ms. Wakeland?"

"The day was perfectly normal until about 1:15 in the afternoon. Our doorbell rang, and I intercommed them to find out who it was. A man's voice answered, and he said that he had a delivery for us. I was expecting a package that day, so I went to sign for it. When I keyed the door open, I realized he wasn't a delivery man. He was holding a gun on me, and he forced his way in." Tina recrossed her legs, brushing her left calf against his leg as she did. She didn't seem to notice, never breaking off from her story. "He headed straight for the play room, and zeroed immediately in on Allison. He scooped her up, holding the gun to her head and threatening to shoot if any of us moved. I felt so helpless, but I didn't really have a choice. Then he was gone. He yelled, as he was leaving, that if any of us tried to follow him, he'd shoot her. I ran to the windows after he left, but I didn't see him in the side of the parking lot that's visible from this part of the building. I'm sorry, but that's all I know."

Mulder reflected for a moment, something about her story wasn't quite right. Something about her rapid-fire delivery made it seem like a carefully constructed fiction.

"Can you think of any reason he targeted Allison? Did he say or do anything while he was here to indicate the reason behind his choice?"

Tina shook her head, her hair unnervingly immobile as she did. Mulder reached for a notepad on her desk, scrawling his cellular number on the top sheet.

"If you remember anything else, anything, call me at this number."

"Certainly, Agent Mulder. Why don't I show you out?"

"Actually, I'd like to speak with some of your staff. Would it be all right if I had a look around?"

"I'm sorry, all visitors must be escorted at all times. I'd be happy to take you to some other employees who were working during the incident, or show you anything you might be interested in." She'd come uncomfortably close to him in the enclosed space of her office, arching her back and rubbing the back of her neck with her right hand as she spoke. It was perhaps the least subtle flirting he'd ever found himself subjected to. Tina was attractive, though, and at a different time in his life, he might have been drawn in by her.

After an uncomfortable silence, Tina led him out of her office, toward the sounds he'd heard earlier. She opened the door, revealing two women and a half-dozen children engaged in some sort of game. Tina addressed the younger of the two women.

"Melissa, you weren't working last Thursday, were you?"

"No Tina, I'm afraid I wasn't."

Tina started to leave the room, and Mulder was about to ask her why she'd bypassed the second woman when he was interrupted.

"Tina? I was working on Thursday."

"Ah. Carla. Of course, I must have forgotten. But you were at lunch during the incident."

"But I did tell you that I thought I saw something on my way in. Don't you remember?"

Tina rubbed her lips together, apparently thinking back and trying to recall the conversation that Carla was referring to.

"No, I'm sorry. I don't recall."

Mulder broke into the conversation, unwilling to rule out anyone's observations as irrelevant. "Carla? I'd like to speak to you, if I could. Anything you might have seen could prove to be helpful, in light of the camera malfunction."

Tina spoke, cutting Carla off before she could reply. "Certainly, Agent Mulder. Why don't we all go back to my office?"

"I'd like to speak with her alone, if you don't mind."

"Of course. Feel free to use my office, I believe you know the way."

Tina watched them disappear down the hallway, wishing there had been some way that she could have kept him from talking to Carla. Rudolph was unquestionably watching from his office, and would not be altogether pleased to find she had been unable to handle the situation.

------------------------

"Carla, why don't you tell me what you saw last Thursday."

The woman looked furtively around the office, nervously clenching and unclenching her fists. She sat in the guest chair where Mulder had sat earlier, and he chose to remain standing.

"I've heard a lot of stories over the past few days, and I'm not sure if they're true or not. All I can tell you is, what I saw, it doesn't match up with the rumors. I feel so terrible, I never should have allowed this to happen."

"Carla, what did you see that day?" Carla's emotional state interfered with her ability to tell her story, directly in contrast to Tina's apparent ease. Mulder instincts told him that Carla's difficulty made her much more believable than Tina had been.

She took a deep, shuddering breath, and looked away from Mulder before she began talking.

"I was on my way back here, after running some errands over my lunch hour. I was in a hurry because I was already fifteen minutes late. Another long line at the bank, then a mix-up at the dry cleaners. The last thing I needed was another blemish on my record, because I really like my job, these kids, the benefits. I was so focused on getting back...I made a terrible mistake."

She glanced quickly at Mulder, then looked back to a random point on the wall in front of her. "I saw Allison that day, wandering in the hallway, by herself. There was no one with her, I'm certain of it. I asked her where she was going, and she told me she had to go downstairs. I thought at the time she meant that she was going down to see her mother, on the Engineering floor. I don't know what I was thinking, but I assumed Tina had given her permission to go. As an afterthought, I went to the elevators to watch the floor readout, make sure she found her mother's floor. I panicked when I saw her elevator reach the lobby without making any stops. By the time I got in the other elevator and got downstairs, all I saw was a big, dark, late-model sedan leaving the parking lot. I don't remember what kind of car, but it had Virginia plates. I don't know how she got out, but there was no one with her when I last saw her."

"Is there anything else you remember?"

"No, but I can tell you one thing. What Tina told you about the cameras, it's all a lie. Those cameras are always on. I should know, I've been caught by them before." She paused, looking nervously around the room. "You see, I'm trying to quit smoking, and I found my first few months very difficult. I was here by myself for a few hours one day, and I needed a cigarette. My hands were shaking, and I couldn't concentrate. I went to the outer lobby, opened the window, and took just a few puffs. Tina confronted me that afternoon with the security camera tape. Those cameras are on, Agent Mulder. Or at least they were, until that day."

"You said before that you didn't know how Allison got out. Why is that?"

"You need a magnetic key for entrance and exit through any of the security doors. The kids here don't have keys, mainly to make it easier for us to keep an eye on them. I should have thought of it that day, realized that she wouldn't have been going to see her mom by herself."

"What were the rumors you heard?"

"That there was a man who got in under false pretenses, flashed around a gun, and took Allison with him. But that's not possible, unless someone with a key let him out the door. But the story I heard made it sound like he didn't let anyone follow him to the door. Tina apparently told everyone that he threatened to kill Allison if anyone came near them as he was leaving. It doesn't fit. The kids don't really understand what's going on, either. They all tell Tina's story, but they get some of the details wrong. I was initially afraid they were still traumatized, so I talked to some of them about it just after it all supposedly happened. The longer you ask them questions, the less sure they are about the details. A few of them have even stopped agreeing with Tina altogether, and they just say Allison got up and walked out of the playroom."

"Thank you, Carla. If I have any follow-up questions for you, I'll be in touch."

"Certainly," she whispered, biting her lower lip in an attempt to stave off the tears that threatened to spill over her cheeks. "Allison is a wonderful, gentle child. Please call if you think there's anything I can do to help you."

Mulder moved to open the door, obscuring the view of the camera he was still unaware of, hidden near a framed print on Tina's office wall.

------------------------

Rudolph continued to watch as the FBI man disappeared from the camera's view. Regarding himself as a man of reflection, he contained his rage and channeled its energy into his plans for damage control. He could easily allow himself to go immediately upstairs to the child care center and take his anger out on its proper target, the ignorant woman who presumed that her petty observations were more important than the grand project that IFI had embarked upon.

He watched as Carla lingered for a moment before she left, quickly brushing tears away from her eyes. One last flare of anger lit within him as he assessed the situation. She would presume to mourn one child, a child who would not be harmed in the least, when IFI was working for the glory of all mankind. Reluctantly, he took a deep breath, an attempt to cleanse away the last of his rancor. He'd felt the momentary impulse to go to her, to take out his rage by strangling the life out of her. She would have to be dealt with, that was certain, but it would have to be taken care of much more subtly.

In any case, Carla's words would certainly intensify the agent's curiosity. The timetable would have to be accelerated. He wondered, as he drove towards the secondary facility, if any attempt to lie to a child with Allison's abilities would be futile.

------------------------

"Come on, Scully. Pick up your phone."

He'd called Scully on her cellular phone. When he'd heard a depressingly familiar, tinny voice telling him the cellular customer wasn't available, he tried her home number. He even tried the bureau switchboard, all to no avail.

As he drove towards Scully's apartment, he began to form the story in his mind. 'I couldn't get in touch with you, Scully, and I needed your help with the case. So I came to your apartment to wait for you.'

His earlier instinct that Scully was trying to duck out of involvement in the case must have been right. In retrospect, he was glad he'd been unable to contact her. He rarely was able to push his way through Scully's barrier of strength to lay bare her personal reactions to a case, yet he'd begun to see this case was a culmination of everything that weighed on her.

She thought he didn't notice, and Mulder knew he'd done an excellent job at convincing her that he'd remained oblivious throughout it all. Occasionally, she'd wordlessly shown him her grief, pain, uncertainty, fear -- but it was rare. In spite of her reluctance, he did see how the things that had been done to her, to both of them, had cut into her.

And Mulder felt responsible.

He knew it was ridiculous, that it was egocentric to take the blame for every danger she'd been subjected to, for each ounce of her hope and idealism that had been drained from her. She was a whole person, responsible and cognizant of her own actions and their possible repercussions.

She'd looked at him, determination and strength burning in her eyes, and said, "If I quit now, they win." And she'd been correct. Knowingly, willingly, she'd stopped following him long ago to take her place by his side.

On their first case he'd confided in her, told her the intimate details of his life that had led him to search for the truth within the world of the paranormal. She'd known so much about him even then, early in their association. Perhaps for the first time, he realized how resistant Scully had been to share with him the personal impact their quest had made on her.

Perhaps it was arrogant for him to believe he had any right to ask her about these intimate details of her life. After the many times that he'd found himself running headlong into yet another wall that she'd constructed around herself, he realized he'd unconsciously accepted it, allowed for it.

And in that, there was danger. If her spirit was broken, her incredible strength sapped, they were lost.

He spoke, the conviction in his voice surprising him as it rang through the car's interior. "I really hate to do this, Scully, but I have no choice. I can't let you carry the burden alone."

------------------------

Rudolph strolled into the farmhouse, trying to clear his thoughts of anything that would alarm the girl. Tina had told him she'd asked Brooks, his current flunky of choice, to keep an eye on her during the day, and Tina herself had been watching her at night. Taking her at such a young age had been a strategic move, but it also required quite a bit of manpower. However, the entire plan hinged on teaching the child the proper loyalty. That was much more easily done at the impressionable age of five, when she was still young enough to learn but also old enough to communicate with them.

As he ascended the stairs, he heard the faint noise of a television. He followed it to its source, wondering idly if the human race had evolved to include a predilection towards the hypnotic addiction to television. It was an unfortunate aspect of the child's personality that he intended to wean from her at the earliest opportunity.

"Brooks!"

There was a shuffling sound within the room, and the sound of the television abruptly ceased. Brooks emerged from behind the door, his suit rumpled, his hair untidy, and five o'clock shadow beginning to darken his chin.

"You're a mess, Brooks. I hope you've done a better job of taking care of the child than you do maintaining your appearance."

Brooks turned to address Allison before closing the door. "I'm going downstairs for a second. Just stay here and read your book. I'll be right back."

"You're ruining her attention span with that drivel. You could be spending your time talking with her, letting her see the wisdom of our project."

"I don't like talking to her, sir."

"I would have thought that even a craven coward such as yourself could manage to engage a five year old in conversation."

"She isn't a five year old, sir. I don't know what she is, but she isn't a child by any stretch of the imagination."

Rudolph's eyes narrowed, re-evaluating the man across from him and finding him a complete disappointment.

"My office, Monday morning, 8:00 a.m. Report for reassignment. You can leave now."

Brooks shrugged, realizing he was now a target for Rudolph's experimental ambitions. He'd worked so hard to insinuate himself into the inner circle at IFI, and he'd given it all away to avoid a five-year-old girl. He sank deeper and deeper into regret as he walked down the stairs, until he recalled his earlier attempts at conversation with her. As the opened the front door, he slowly filled his lungs, breathing deeply the air of his own freedom -- freedom from cowering from Rudolph, doing his errands and dirty work. As he drove away, he realized that the most unsettling thing was that there was nothing that Rudolph could do that would frighten him more than Allison Ritter had.

Before Brooks had even reached the front door, Rudolph had phoned IFI to secure a replacement 'baby-sitter' for Allison. Perhaps the next person to watch over her would be more resistant to the difficult combination of Allison's insight and honesty.

"Tina Wakeland, please." Rudolph told the receptionist impatiently. An eternity of Muzak later, her soft voice filtered through the telephone. For a moment, just a moment, he allowed himself to imagine her voice whispering his name. He'd heard it before, of course, one late night at the IFI offices. His personal assistant had been on vacation, and Tina had filled in. Though he adored his wife, his head had turned at the sight of Tina's young, toned body as they leaned over his worktable studying stacks of reports in preparation for the next day's presentation. After she'd shed her jacket and taken out her businesslike french braid as they worked side by side, he'd found her irresistible.

He gave her credit, she'd never tried to blackmail him, although he'd never really given her reason to. She'd been a team player, and he'd been good to her, arranging raises and promotions until she'd reached a position that was worthy of her intelligence and ambition.

"Mr. Rudolph, what do you need?"

"I need you down here. You know the place."

"I'll be right there. I just need to talk to Melissa and I'll be on my way."

"Don't take your time."

------------------------

Scully, more than she'd ever thought possible, regretted her decision to follow up on this case. She'd managed to duck out and hide under a stack of paperwork, but something had drawn her back into it.

Something like watching Emily die.

These men were using children as pawns in their twisted game. As much as she'd hated them before Emily, and Gibson, and now Allison, her contempt had multiplied hundred- fold. She couldn't stomach the idea that she'd run out on this poor child.

Mulder had called her over a half hour ago. She'd watched the readout on her cellular as his number appeared, and opted not to answer it. She took a deep breath as she dialed his number, ready to apologize for being temporarily unavailable.

"Mulder."

"What do you need me to do? We've been officially granted jurisdiction."

"Where are you?"

"My apartment."

"I'm on my way there now. Why don't I pick you up and we'll take it from there. I want to see Allison's medical files, although my instinct tells me that we may have some difficulty getting them."

"Why are we interested in her medical history?"

"I'll explain on the way." He paused, uncertainty replacing his earlier conviction. "Scully, why didn't you pick up your phone?"

"It isn't important, Mulder. I'm ready to assist in the investigation now."

The determination in her voice sent a clear signal. He heard it almost as clearly as if she'd actually said it. 'I don't want to talk about it, Mulder.'

"I'm about five minutes away."

"I'll be here."

Mulder disconnected, waiting only a second before dialing the Ritter's number.

"Hello."

"I'm looking for Bob Ritter."

"Speaking."

"This is Fox Mulder. I need some information. I'm interested in taking a look at Allison's medical records. Where can I reach your pediatrician?"

"I'll get you the number, it should be right here in my wallet on my HMO card." Shuffling noises came over the line, followed by Bob's quiet, fatigued voice reading the number to Mulder. It was obvious that the strain of the situation had begun to weigh on Mr. Ritter, and Mulder got an uncomfortable flash of his own parents' reactions to Samantha's disappearance.

Mulder wondered, as he thanked the man for his cooperation with automatic, professional-sounding placation, if Andrea's feelings of guilt would tear her away from her husband, poisoning any love they'd ever felt for one another.

How had his father ever explained to his mother that he'd decided to save Samantha by handing her over to men who intended to use her as a building block? Butchers who would cut the humanity away from her, splicing in the material that would make her immune to the colonization they feared was inevitable, but also make her a monster, a nightmarish hybrid between human and inhuman. He recalled being in the back seat of a limousine, receiving not only the means to rescue Scully but also first credible explanation of what had happened to his sister. In his need to find Scully, he'd been able to shelve his feelings about those other revelations, and after the re-institution of the X- files, he'd kept busy enough to ignore them.

But it could be ignored no longer. His throat constricted as the pieces came together into a larger picture. His sister, Emily, and how many others had been made into these hybrids. Samantha, taken from them and grotesquely recreated over and over, clumsy attempts to sew together a Frankenstein's monster that would render some measure of humanity immune to the coming holocaust. And Emily too, a part of Scully that had been forcibly and violently removed not once, but twice. First as the mere potential of an egg, and then as the miracle of a fully realized life -- but a life that was twisted with the horror of their short-sighted plan of sparing humanity. Mulder was still trying to come to terms with the information given to him along with Scully's antidote. How could the human race be saved by tainting it with the introduction of the very essence of that which seeks to destroy us?

And Allison, wherever she fit into this picture, Mulder intended to rescue her from the darkness of these men's misguided intentions. He shuddered as he found himself musing, as his intuition had told him, that Allison had been called to her abduction through a metal implant in her neck. Tagged, as Scully was, as a part of their experiment.

Just another research subject, marked for easy identification, data collection, and quick disposal, should it become necessary. Images of Skyland Mountain played through his mind, and he pushed them away. He tempered his hate, redirecting it into determination as he came to a stop in front of Scully's building.

------------------------

Rudolph sat across from the girl, trying to smile reassuringly at her.

"Those things you want me to do. I won't do them." She crossed her arms over her chest, as if she'd just refused to finish her vegetables or clean her room.

No beating around the bush with this girl, he noted with a certain smug pleasure. Her youth, her candor and innocence, these were the reasons to take her at such a young age.

"What is it you think I want you to do?"

"Bad things."

"Who told you they were bad things?"

"My mommy and daddy did."

"Maybe they just didn't understand. What exactly is this bad thing?"

"Listening to what other people are thinking."

"Didn't you already do that to me?"

"Yes, but you're a bad man."

"How do you know I'm a bad man?"

"Because you won't let me go home."

"Ah, I see, Allison. You don't understand. I'm going to bring them here. As soon as they realize how important you are to what I need to do. I'm glad that you want to be a good girl. That's exactly what I need you to do. Isn't that what your parents want for you too? For you to be a good girl?" He could see that he was starting to convince her already. Her young mind was so pliable.

"Yes," she paused. "What does pliable mean?"

"It means that you're a smart little girl, and that you listen very well. What I'm going to ask you to do, Allison, it's something that's very important. Not just to you, or to your family, but to everyone. You're a very lucky little girl to be able to do this."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"You remember what you said before, that it was okay to listen to me think because I'm a bad man? That's what I need you to do. If I find a bad man, I want you to listen to his thoughts and tell me what he wants to do that's bad. That doesn't sound like a naughty thing, does it?"

"No. I've done that before."

"Can you tell me about it?"

"I'm not supposed to." She was hesitant, but Rudolph nodded at her, and she seemed to decide it was all right to tell him. "My mommy and I were walking out of the mall to our car. There was a big white van next to it, and I heard a man inside there. He was thinking about my mommy, about jumping out and grabbing her while she was putting me in the car. I told her, and she told the security guard at the mall that a man had tried to grab her." She paused again. "It was a fib, but it wasn't a big one. He was really gonna do it. So it was okay she told the fib. The guard went to the car, and they took the bad man away. My mommy said it was okay to listen if it would keep us safe."

"So she'll understand why you've been away. She said it was okay. I need your help to do the same thing, and catch more bad guys."

Allison smiled at him, and he gave her a coloring book to keep her occupied. He heard Tina entering through the front door of the farmhouse, downstairs, and he left the room to express his deep disappointment at her inability to contain Carla earlier.

"Tina?"

"Mr. Rudolph. I'm so sorry. I couldn't stop him."

"Couldn't stop who?" He pushed her back out the door, hopefully far enough away from Allison to avoid her psychic intrusion.

"That FBI agent. He insisted on talking to her...what was I supposed to do?"

"You were supposed to divert him. Keep him away from the center, and from anyone who was working when we took Allison. I really thought you were better equipped to handle men like him."

"I tried. You saw it. I gave him a believable story, the one I thought he was expecting to hear. I flirted with him, and I tried to distract him. But he wasn't buying it. What did Carla tell him?"

"Carla told him what she saw. She contradicted your story in just about every way possible."

"So he's close. We have to do something, or we're gonna get caught."

"We're going to get caught? You're going to get caught. You're the only eyewitness who's lied to the police. I only told them what my trusted employee told me."

"You wouldn't!"

"Only if it's necessary to protect the project, and if you help me, you should be able to help me work around this little problem. So stay here, guard the girl, and don't screw up. I'm going to see if we can still salvage this."

"Yes, sir."

Rudolph paused, his hand on the doorknob of the front door.

"Wait, I've had an idea. There's been a change in plans. I know precisely how we can turn this back to our advantage. Get the girl, and get her ready to go home." He was angry with himself that he hadn't thought of it earlier.

------------------------

Scully heard Mulder's soft rap at her door instead of the sound of his key in her lock. She was thankful that he'd allowed her the courtesy of one last moment to compose herself before re-embarking onto the difficult path that lay ahead of them.

Taking one last breath of freedom, she crossed her living room and opened her front door. In that action, she also knew she was opening the door to this case, to the potential pain it could cause her. She had to steel herself, disallow any of her personal feelings to interfere with her performance. She opened the door, moving aside and wordlessly inviting him in. He looked hesitantly at her, and she took advantage of his silence. She was desperate to keep the subject away from her emotional response to their current case.

"Mulder. I know that my involvement in this case has been...less than exemplary. I'm prepared to remedy that now. I don't want you to be distracted, worrying about me, wondering if you can rely on me. I'm sorry for the delay I've caused you, but I'm ready to work."

He would have been relieved if he really believed anything she had said. The problem was that she believed it, and if he showed any doubt, it would shake the confidence that she had been able to build up. He looked into her eyes, and he could see her fear, her worry that he wouldn't accept her explanation. We're not finished, Scully, he thought. We're not finished here at all. It's just postponed for a little while. Reluctantly, he turned the conversation to the next step of their investigation.

"I've located Allison's physician. I need you to take a look at her records."

Though the drive to the medical center was fairly short, it seemed longer because of the silence that passed between them. Mulder desperately wanted to talk to her, to discuss the things that had driven him to her apartment earlier that day. Scully radiated a thousand complex emotions as Mulder stole looks at her, evaluating her body language and the arrangement of the features of her beautiful face. She was troubled, but she was also strong. What she needed now was something clear cut, some concrete, easily definable problem to lose herself in.

We can run away from this for now, Scully. We can pretend that you're not affected by this, but just until we find Allison. We can't let this go much longer.

Mulder parked the car, and he walked closely, but not too closely, next to his partner as he led them to the office of Allison's pediatrician. They reached a wooden door on the fourth floor, marked with small, metal letters that spelled out the name of Allison's doctor.

Something bothered him. A hunch, intuition, or maybe just pessimism. Something told him that no one was going to show them Allison's records. They'd have to take them.

"Scully, I'm going to need you to be ready to find Allison's file and take it."

Scully's eyes widened, but just for a moment. She answered him by gripping the door handle and turning it, resolutely. In contrast to the apprehension she'd radiated before, she now showed only a narrowly focused intensity. She had a clear mission, if only for the next few minutes, of finding that file.

Scully closed the distance from the door to the registration window quickly, wasting no time getting directly to the point.

"Nurse...Simons," she said, her eyes darting quickly to the nurse's name tag, then back to resume their piercing evaluation of the woman across from her. "I'm Special Agent Dana Scully of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, this is my partner, Special Agent Mulder. We're here to speak with Dr. Wilcox."

The nurse gaped at her, stammering as she tried to find a proper response. Mulder didn't envy her, being an obstacle in the way of Scully's current mission.

"He's with a patient right now. Could I ask you to wait in the lobby until he's finished?"

"Is he examining that patient in his office?"

"Well, no. No, of course not. He's in an examining -- "

"Then we could wait for him in his office, couldn't we? We just need a moment of his time, and I'm sure he'd find it much more convenient to fit us in before his next patient if we're already waiting for him in his office."

Scully was, Mulder realized, pushing to get them inside the facility, where it would be much easier to do a Watergate on Allison's records. By the look on Nurse Simons' face, Scully had scared the hell out of her. In fact, she looked so intimidated that he wondered how she could possibly deny Scully's request.

"I'm sure that would be fine. Let me show you the way."

Nurse Simons let them through the door that separated the inner facility from the waiting room, then led them down the corridor to a small, paneled office. Dr. Wilcox's diplomas hung on the wall, certificates from the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins Medical School.

"Just, uh, wait here. I'll page Dr. Wilcox to let him know that you're waiting for him." Every word that Nurse Simons spoke sounded like a question, as if she was asking Scully's permission. Mulder couldn't blame her. He'd been on the receiving end when Scully was this determined, and he'd had much the same reaction.

After the door was closed behind them, Scully fleshed out the next steps in their plan.

"It looked like most of the records are kept in the cabinets behind the registration desk. All we have to do is wait until the nurse is away from the desk, and I'll just need a second to grab it. I'll get my chance when she escorts the next patient to an examining room. I'll just need you to tie her up on her way back to the desk."

He nodded, and Scully slipped from the room. She left the door ajar, and Mulder casually watched the portion of the hallway he could see through the opening.

Scully had guessed at the layout of the offices, hoping the rooms were laid out in a circular pattern around a main hallway, each direction eventually leading back to the lobby. She turned right as she left Dr. Wilcox's office, away from the path that had brought them there. She was correct, and she was also happy to see a rest room adjacent to the open area of the registration desk. She waited until one of the mothers in the lobby approached the desk, then she entered the rest room to see if she would be able to hear through the door. Clearly, she could make out Nurse Simons explaining that the doctors were behind schedule due to a recent outbreak of the flu at one of the local elementary schools. Scully waited in the small room until she heard the nurse call for the next patient. After the noise of shuffling feet had died down, she knew her opportunity to get the file had come.

Quickly, she left the room, moving to the cabinets and found the drawer marked "Ri - Ru". Her fingers nimbly found Allison's file, and though she would have preferred to look inside for the information they needed and then leave the file behind, time was short. She would have to take the entire file for later study. There would be no way to cover their tracks, and no way to avoid being found out.

She heard Mulder's voice coming from the hallway, annoyance ringing in it as he asked the nurse when Dr. Wilcox would be available. He had detained her long enough for Scully to escape with the file, and she would hopefully be able to move fast enough down the back hallway to rejoin Mulder in the office before anyone discovered her. Scully slipped into the bathroom again, hurriedly undoing her jacket, placing the file into the waistband of her pants, and re-buttoning her jacket to hide it. She looked in the mirror to verify that she'd hidden the file as well as she could, and headed back towards Wilcox's office.

As she approached, she saw Mulder through the inch-wide crack in the door, looking for all the world like an annoyed, inconvenienced federal employee.

"I've got it," she said, slipping back into the chair beside him.

"Let's get out of here, then."

"Aren't we going to talk to -- "

"And ask him about Allison? Ask to see the file that isn't there?"

"Okay, I see your point. Let's go."

They left, telling Nurse Simons they had been called away and that they would return later to speak with Dr. Wilcox.

Scully walked carefully as Mulder led her to the elevator, continuing to hold her upper body so she wouldn't disturb the file or its contents. They finally reached the car, and Scully waited until they were about a mile away from the building before she felt safe enough to remove the file.

Mulder watched out of the corner of his eye as Scully unbuttoned her jacket, then braced her back against the seat behind her, lifting her posterior to straighten out her upper body. She slid the file out from within her clothing, as Mulder internally scolded himself for being momentarily distracted as Scully arched her back.

She immediately leaned over the contents of the file, reading incomprehensible fragments of medical-term laden passages aloud to Mulder, the true significance of the complex lexicon eluding him.

"In English, Scully. What does it say?"

Again, he watched Scully out of the corner of his eye as he continued to drive the car. She held a large piece of x-ray film up to the daylight, and he heard her sharp intake of breath.

"It's not what it says, Mulder. It's what can be seen on this..."

Mulder was grateful for a fortuitously timed red light. He looked to his partner as the car rolled to a stop, and the fears he'd had after speaking with Carla came to fruition.

There, on the x-ray film, clearly labeled with Allison Ritter's name, was the image of the head and neck of a young girl. Clearly visible in the neck region was a small, most probably metallic object. Neither Scully nor Mulder had any doubt what that small, oblong, opaque mark on the film was. Allison carried an implant, probably similar, if not identical, to the one under Scully's own skin.

"You knew this would be there. Why else would you have wanted to see her medical records," Scully breathed, disbelief entwining with her horror.

"I wasn't sure, Scully. I did suspect it, but I didn't want to tell you until I was sure." Mulder steered the car to a nearby parking lot, knowing that the upcoming exchange with Scully would require his undivided concentration. She seemed to find her voice again just as the car came to a stop.

"You didn't want to warn me? You couldn't have prepared me for this?"

"Is there any way you would have been prepared for this?"

"You could have told me before I found out in front of that judge in San Diego!" Her hand covered her mouth, clearly surprised at the words that had escaped from her own lips. Her fingers shook almost imperceptibly, spread apart enough to allow her to take a slow, deep, but shaky breath. She looked away, focusing on the blur of a distant billboard, anywhere but on Mulder.

Mulder needed only a moment to find the path Scully's mind had followed. The implication that Allison was being used, and was perhaps created expressly for, the same nightmarish experiments that had simultaneously given and taken away Emily Sim from Scully -- it had clearly affected her. The revelation that Scully and Allison had something in common, the implant, was the last correlation that she'd needed to become completely, personally and emotionally, and perhaps dangerously connected to the case.

"Scully, I know we're not talking about Allison or her implant any more. I should have told you -- privately -- about the vials I saw."

"It isn't important right now."

"It isn't directly relevant to Allison Ritter, and it won't help us find her. But that doesn't mean it's not important."

"I've already delayed this case, Mulder, and I won't do it again. This..." she fluttered the x- ray at him, "This is what we're up against. Again. And I don't want the Ritters to find their little girl incinerated on the side of some mountain. I don't want her to just disappear without a trace...covered up as just another tragic, but random, abduction."

Emily and Samantha. She'd just described Emily and Samantha. They had an opportunity, another chance to get it right. To honor them by seizing this chance to uncover more of the mystery that surrounded them.

Mulder reached slowly towards her, sliding his hand over hers, gripping it gently. Scully stared downwards, noting every crease in the skin that covered his knuckles, the way his fingers had to curl to squeeze her much smaller hand in his.

It was almost peaceful. She felt his energy, his strength, as if it were something tangible, traveling through their joined hands to recharge her in this moment of difficulty and pain. Although she sometimes failed to understand his actions, deep down, she had no doubts that Mulder had done everything he'd done to protect her.

And then, as it seemed the universe's plan never allowed a moment of rest for them, Mulder's cell phone chirped demandingly from within his pocket. Again, the immediate needs of the world trespassed into their more personal moments.

"Mulder."

"Oh, Mr. Mulder. I have the most wonderful news. I've already called the police, and I told them that I'd give you a call and let you know. Allison's home. She says she got lost, but that she remembered where the IFI building was and went back there. I was at work, trying to take my mind off of...things...and she was escorted in by one of the program assistants. She just rang the doorbell and asked for me. I can't explain it, and I don't care. But she's home, and there's not a scratch on her."

"We're on our way over there now."

"That's not necessary. Fairfax County PD said they'd send an officer to close out the report. I'm so grateful for all your assistance, but I've got my daughter back now, and that's all that matters."

"I'm afraid we'll have to be the ones to close out the report. We were granted jurisdiction over the case earlier today. Really, we'll be right over."

"Certainly, whatever you need to do."

Mulder ended the call, and turned to Scully in disbelief.

"Allison's returned home. No explanation, but she's perfectly fine, and her parents want us just to close out the case. Allison has told them that she just got lost."

"Do you believe that, Mulder?"

"Regardless, I think we have something else to tell them." He pointed at the x-ray sitting in Scully's lap. "We have to tell them -- warn them -- about what will happen if they remove the chip."

"And what could happen if they leave it in."

------------------------

"How did you return her?" Tina whispered to Mr. Rudolph from her office, wondering if her voice retained her carefully crafted mixture of concern and amazement through the intercom line.

"Allison and I had a talk. I convinced her that she should cooperate with me, share her gift to catch all the 'bad men' we could find. She's utterly certain that she's being a good girl, protecting her parents from the bad guys by not telling them about our little plan."

"You work quickly, Mr. Rudolph." Tina allowed a measure of seduction to creep into her voice. Distracting him at this point from her earlier failure to keep Carla away from the FBI agent was paramount on her 'to do' list. Even, she mused, if it required allowing that dinosaur to pin her to his uncomfortably hard desk and allow him to engage in what he apparently believed passed for sex.

"Come up to my office after work, and we'll begin to finalize these alternate plans."

"Thank you, sir. I'd be honored to help." She hung up her phone, leaning back in her chair and giving Rudolph a good view of her legs through his intrusive little monitoring system.

She hadn't been able to tell from the tone of his voice what his plans for her were. Ideally, he would recognize that there had been no way to stop the agent from finding Carla. She could still hope that she could spare herself from enduring yet another fifteen minutes of boredom on her back in Rudolph's sweaty arms. But Lord knows, screwing Brooks earlier certainly hadn't satisfied her. Unfortunately, that too had been a necessity. She needed someone who already knew what was going on to help her before Rudolph fucked up the whole deal, and Brooks' trust was easily purchased with a quick side trip to the back seat of his car. After his all-too-easy seduction it hadn't taken much to convince him that it was his idea to get Allison back and sell her to the highest bidder. Fortunately for them, Tina'd had the foresight to locate an alternate customer for Allison's unique skills several weeks ago. Rudolph's contact certainly wasn't the only buyer for a clairvoyant of this caliber. Taking Allison back would be so simple. She could easily regain Rudolph's trust, and steal her away from him just when he thought he had everything under control.

And since Brooks would be happy to leave the administrative details to her, she could have the money transmitted to a bank account that only she knew about. She'd be out of the country before either of these old fools realized how they'd been played.

Who's in charge now, boys? The thought rang in her ears, the ultimate revenge for all invisible women toiling in administrative Hell.

------------------------

They were greeted warmly at the Ritter's front door. Andrea was a woman transformed by her relief. The color had come back to her face, her voice was lighter, and her eyes now focused brightly on them as they spoke of Allison's miraculous re-appearance.

"I don't know how she survived four nights on the street alone. She doesn't seem to be the worse for wear, though. She's always been a tough little kid, even from the beginning. Of course, you can never be too sure. I've called her doctor, and we have an appointment for her tomorrow afternoon. She's perfect, though, she's just fine. I'm not sure what we'll do for child care in the immediate future, but I have some security issues to discuss with IFI."

"There were some inconsistencies in some of the witness's accounts. Didn't Tina Wakeland report an armed break-in?"

"That's not what my daughter says. I can't tell you why Tina would lie, Agent Mulder, but I can assure you that my daughter is telling the truth. There's been no crime. There's no further reason to investigate. As I said before, we really do appreciate everything you've done on our behalf. I'm sure there are more pressing matters for the FBI to attend to than my daughter and her poor sense of direction."

There was a crack forming in Andrea Ritter's cheerful and restored veneer. Something she was still denying. Mulder was certain of it.

"Agent Scully is a doctor. Would it be okay for her to take a cursory look at your daughter? Make sure she's not malnourished or dehydrated from her ordeal?"

"I...I suppose that would be acceptable. I'll go get her."

Andrea disappeared down the hallway, returning a moment later with her daughter. Scully squatted down, bringing herself to Allison's eye level.

"My name is Dana. I'm a doctor, and I just want to ask you a few questions to make sure you're okay." Allison eyed her suspiciously, pulled on her mother's shirt, and whispered something to her.

"No, sweetie. No needles. She's not going to give you any shots, I promise."

Mulder couldn't help wondering about her apparent fear of needles. Of course, most children felt the same way, but perhaps Allison's fear was residual fear, perhaps because of the procedure that had placed the implant in her neck.

"What about my neck? Are you gonna tell me why it's so itchy?"

Mulder hadn't been prepared for the shock of experiencing Allison's gift firsthand. Scully had apparently also been caught short, remaining silent for a moment before finding a response for the little girl.

"Is your neck itchy? Like you have to scratch it?"

"I tried. But it hurt when I scratched it."

Andrea interrupted, disturbed that this was the first she'd heard of this.

"Sweetie, why didn't you tell mommy about this?"

"You didn't ask me, mommy. You just asked me if anyone hurt me. All I remember is getting sleepy. When I woke up, my neck was itchy."

Scully made momentary eye contact with Andrea, permission to look at the child's neck tacitly asked for and then granted. Scully moved behind Allison, and pulled aside her hair. The inevitability of what she would find there was immaterial. Something inside her needed to see it for herself before she could believe it.

It was tiny, but it was definitely a fresh wound. Could it be possible? Could they possibly have removed the implant from this child, despite the consequences? Was their little experiment over, soon to be terminated by the appearance of a seemingly random disease?

Scully looked back to Andrea, who was horrified at what she'd seen despite being completely unaware of the nightmare that lie before her.

"Hon, why don't you go back to your room and play? Mommy will be there in a minute." Allison complied, loping through the hallway and scratching at the back of her neck. When they heard the door close, Andrea turned away from them and asked the inevitable question, quietly. "What was that mark?"

"It was related to this, Mrs. Ritter." Scully removed the x-ray film from Allison's file, pointing to the implant.

"What is that? This is Allison?" she asked, indicating the image in Scully's hand.

"This is from her file at Dr. Wilcox's office. We have reason to believe that this is an implant, a microchip that's been inserted just below the skin of her neck."

"What does it do?"

Mulder took over at this point in the conversation. He didn't have to be a psychic to know that Scully didn't need to be forced to discuss this particular subject.

"Although we've seen this before, we're not entirely sure what it is. They've been found implanted in several women who developed cancer after they were removed."

"Implanted by whom, and for what purpose?"

"Again, we're not sure. They could be some sort of...homing mechanism. We also have some reason to believe that they may be utilized to bring those who have been implanted to a specific place, at a specific time."

"But that hasn't been proven," Scully interjected, leaving Mulder to wonder if her response was attributable to her tendency for precision or due to a knee-jerk denial of her susceptibility to just such a 'call'.

"That scar...does that mean that...that thing...has been removed from Allison?"

"It is a possibility. It also could have been removed for study, and then later replaced."

"Who would do this?"

"The answer to that question isn't relevant," Bob's voice came from behind Andrea. "The only thing that's important is -- how do we protect our daughter?"

Andrea nodded, but Scully watched the other woman's eyes as they continued to flare in response to what Mulder had told her. She certainly was interested in her daughter's safety, and her thirst to know what had happened to her daughter while she was missing was strong.

"I'm not sure that we can justify round-the-clock surveillance in light of your daughter's account of her missing time. We could probably justify it for a short period of time, but if no threat presented itself we could be forced to break it off." Scully had chosen her words carefully, knowing that they could be interpreted to mean that they had no intention of ensuring the girl's safety. "However, I could hold her in observation at a hospital for much longer, to watch for any after-affects from her extended exposure to the elements. Would that be acceptable?"

"Could I stay there with her? I'm not sure that I could let her out of my sight again, so soon after..." Andrea's sentence trailed off, her meaning already clear.

"That would be fine. Allison is likely to be a little uneasy away from home. She would be much more comfortable with her parents nearby."

"Would you be able to find out if she still has that thing in her neck?"

"I think that would be a wise course of action," Mulder told her, "and you should cancel her doctor's appointment. Immediately. Keep her as far away from them as you can."

"Why? They're our HMO. She's been seeing Dr. Wilcox since she was born."

"That's where we got this x-ray. The clear implication is that Dr. Wilcox knows about the implant. He may even be the person who placed it there." Scully felt guilty for the spark of hope that information gave her, seeing the horror that was Andrea's response to it. Wilcox, though he was probably just a pawn, might have a deeper connection to the implant in Allison's body, and therefore, to her own as well.

Andrea, still in the middle of her worst, unending nightmare, went to her daughter's room to ready her for the trip to the hospital. Once a small bag had been packed, Mulder and Scully drove silently behind the Ritter's car towards the hospital. The hush was broken only once.

After much reflection, Mulder uttered the carefully constructed words that now coursed through his mind. They were completely obvious, but he hoped that they would reinforce Scully's hope, her faith that answers to the most personal questions she'd faced would someday be found.

"If he knows something about those implants, Scully, we're going to find it. Their purpose, their manufacture, anything that can give us more information. About what's been done to you, taken away from you."

------------------------

Ten hours later
Fairfax Hospital, Children's Ward

Andrea wearily wandered down the hallway in search of a vending machine she'd come to think of as utterly mythical. The nurse had told her to go down the first corridor until it dead-ended, then take a right, followed by two immediate lefts...or was it a left, followed by two immediate rights? Andrea had never been at her best while affected by acute lack of sleep, as several poor grades on exams studied for until the wee hours of the morning could attest. It all seemed so far away, now. Those days in college, when she'd longed to complete her degree and start her life. An eternity of worry later, she already felt as if she'd lived several lifetimes.

Time keeps marching on, and eventually you realize it's marching right over you.

Her feet shuffling an uneven rhythm over the linoleum, she prayed as she rounded the next corner that it would lead her to the sugar and caffeine she so desperately needed to continue her vigil over her daughter. It led her, instead, into a lounge, depressingly free of vending machines, coffee makers, or any other appliance that could possibly help her. She turned, frustrated, and yelped as she nearly collided with a figure who had been standing an uncomfortably short distance behind her. She struggled to focus her eyes, her mind slow to assess this new stimulus.

"Mrs. Ritter. I hope I haven't frightened you."

"Mr. Rudolph? What are you doing here?"

"I've come to warn you. I've been contacted by the people who took your daughter. I want to help you."

"But, she disappeared. No one -- "

"Surely you didn't believe the story of that poor, confused woman who thought she saw your daughter walk out of the IFI building on her own. I only wish we'd found her problem earlier, so we could have helped her before she gave such misleading information to the FBI."

"Helped her?"

"I had been told, confidentially, she was battling a nicotine addiction that was threatening to interfere with her ability to do her job. It had been noted on her last personnel review. But as distressed as Tina was to catch her smoking in close proximity to the children, she was also adamant that we should try to help her overcome her problem. Sadly, it seems her addiction problems ran deeper than we'd suspected."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Rudolph. I don't think I follow you. What does this have to do with Allison?"

"I'm terribly sorry to say that Carla was found in her apartment earlier today. Cocaine overdose. She slipped away, and none of us understood her cries for help. She must have been hallucinating that day, when your daughter was kidnapped."

"But Allison says she just got lost."

"Denial. Your daughter must be so frightened that she's simply rejecting the truth and latching onto the most convenient story that makes her feel safe. And I need you to listen to me, because we haven't much time." Andrea looked at him, the overload of information piercing the fog of her fatigue. "The implant that was put inside your daughter...do you know about it?" Rudolph expected the look of surprise that ran across Andrea's face. Surely, she would believe that the only way he could know about the implant was if he'd been contacted by the kidnappers. Thankfully, she would never assume that Wilcox had called him the moment he discovered the file missing.

"How...?"

"They told me about it. It's their bargaining chip. They put that thing in her, and her body now needs the implant's presence in order to survive. When they took her, they took the implant out, and then they returned her to you. Those bastards gave you your daughter back only to use her later as a bargaining chip."

"But when was it put there?"

"I'm not sure, but after they explained it to me, they faxed me this." He offered her a piece of paper, the image hauntingly familiar. It was identical to the film the FBI agents had shown her earlier that day.

"Why did they contact you?"

"Because there's something I have that they want. They're willing to trade it for the implant." Rudolph felt a little silly, telling this melodramatic story. He hoped he sounded more credible than he felt.

"What is it?"

"Information and hardware -- technology developed by IFI. I was warned there could be no involvement by any law enforcement agency, or they would simply destroy the implant she needs. I'm going to hand all of it over, Andrea. I feel responsible, that girl was taken from my building, targeted in part due to the work we do. It's my responsibility to guarantee her safety."

"Mr. Rudolph, I don't know what to say."

"Say you'll do what I tell you. I assure you, Allison's safety depends on it."

"What do we have to do?"

"First, we have to get her out of here. They know where she is. That's how I knew where to find you. She isn't safe here, I don't care how many people are guarding her."

------------------------

Agent Jackson sat listlessly in the hard, uncomfortable chair in the young girl's room. The favor Agent Mulder had asked of him was getting worse every minute. Watching a little blond girl sleep was hardly the kind of excitement he'd pictured, finding himself working with Spooky Mulder.

The girl's mother walked in, gesturing to the agent to follow her out of the room. She led him a few paces too far away from the door, and Jackson interrupted her before she pulled him out of surveillance range.

"Ma'am, what did you need?"

"I need to talk with you, and we need to get a few more feet away from my daughter. I don't want to frighten her."

Ah, that's right. Mulder's crazy story about the girl being able to read people's minds. Apparently, the mother believed it as well. He humored her, keeping the door within sight, but farther away than he would have liked.

"Agent...?"

"Jackson," he supplied.

"Agent Jackson. My daughter can read your thoughts. I'm not sure you were thoroughly briefed on her abilities, so there's just a few things I want to ask of you."

It was all he could do to avoid rolling his eyes. "Yes, ma'am. Go right ahead."

As he became more distracted, Andrea shuffled in a slow, half circle, putting Agent Jackson's back to the door of her daughter's room. She watched as Rudolph entered the room, emerging a moment later with her daughter, leading her in the direction of the elevators. It would be a miracle if he managed to get her past the nurses, but Allison's safety depended on it.

She droned on, trying to distract him. "So it's imperative you keep any negative thoughts you have to a minimum. You may also find it uncomfortable to linger on any thoughts of a highly personal nature. Allison is young and inquisitive, and you may find her interviewing you about something you wouldn't normally discuss with a five-year-old."

"Certainly, ma'am. Thanks for the warning." He turned, finally indulging his desire to roll his eyes in disbelief. He turned to say good-bye to the woman, to reassure her that nothing was going to get past him into the room...

"She's gone..." he whispered. "That's strange."

Some superstitious part of him panicked as he walked back towards the room, anxiousness filling him at the idea of going back in the little girl's room. He didn't believe this ridiculous story, of course, but you never could be too careful. He pulled over a bright blue plastic chair, placed it in front of the door, and sat outside the room instead. Certainly, no one would get in or out of this room without his knowledge.

------------------------

Andrea and Rudolph ran from the hospital towards the parking lot, Allison in tow. Rudolph led them to his car, a long, black sedan. Andrea's heart pounded. As frightened as she'd been diverting the FBI agent's attention, she knew that obstacle was nothing compared to the people they would need to deal with now. Andrea got in the passenger side of the car, clutching her daughter on her lap.

"Mr. Rudolph...the technology they're demanding, what is it? Is it dangerous? What are you planning to do?" While Allison had been missing, the pain had been so overwhelming she didn't have the strength to feel the panic that threatened to overtake her now.

"It's very advanced research, but it isn't directly related to anything that could be considered dangerous. Please understand if I don't go into specifics. Now that the information has been targeted, I fear for the personal safety of anyone with knowledge of this project. In fact, I'm not sure if your daughter is a random target or if she was selected. You have access to our entire database system, and it's possible they may have selected you specifically. You'll need to remain with me. I'll protect you and your daughter until we can give these men what they're after."

Perhaps he should have been an actor. He was almost convincing himself of this cover story.

"So you are going to turn it over?"

"I don't see how any of my employees will be safe if I refuse. I've already sent away the people who work on this project, told them to remain out of town and out of sight until I contact them."

Reluctantly, Andrea asked him the question for which she would truly need to hear an answer before she could trust him completely.

"Sir, there's something I need to know."

"Anything, Andrea. If you've noticed something, it could be important."

"Well, I feel just terrible, but it's been weighing so heavily on my mind, even though I know it couldn't be what I thought it was. Some time ago, I was doing some work and came across an encrypted database. The name of the file was Allison's birthday. Why would that be?"

Not a moment passed before he casually asked, "When exactly is your birthday, Allison?"

"November twelfth."

"So you just had a birthday! And how old are you?"

Allison proudly held up her hand with all of the fingers extended.

"Five?"

Allison nodded affirmatively.

"So...that would be...1993. And November is just after the end of the fiscal year for government spending. If I remember correctly, we delivered our research regarding an alternate flu vaccine around that time. Probably on a Friday..."

"November twelfth, 1993. That was a Friday. I'll never forget a thing about the day my little girl was born."

"Well, Andrea, if I was forced to make a guess, I'd say that database had something to do with that project's delivery date, not your daughter's."

"But why would a database about a flu injection be encrypted?"

"Well, we were without your talents at the time -- you were a little busy that day having Allison. I assume that whoever took your place while you were on maternity leave didn't quite know what they were doing. The encryption was probably due to a mistake, or a miscommunication."

Things had become so complicated. She was no longer sure who she could trust, she had no idea what the truth was anymore. Why were there terrorists after her daughter? She can't give them the information they're after. Why not target an employee? Why did it have to be her daughter? Her mind raced, a combination of desperation, confusion, and fear. She forced the last of her uncertainty from her mind, unable to handle the details any longer, unwilling to try to separate the lies from the truth. He had to be right, she decided. She was too exhausted to question any of this anymore. It just had to be over, and soon.

"Oh, Mr. Rudolph, what can I say? I'm so sorry I ever let any doubt come to my mind about that file. I don't know what I can do to thank you for helping us." Andrea held her little girl's hand, stroking it in an effort to comfort her. Andrea wondered how her daughter could be holding up so well. She was certainly a strong little girl, but her composure was unbelievable.

She looked down, into her daughter's face, and found a surprising calmness there.

"Sweetie, are you okay?"

"Don't worry, mommy. Everything's going to be just fine."

If Andrea had been calmer, if she'd had any energy to spare to analyze the situation, she would have noticed the glance that momentarily connected her daughter and Rudolph. If she wasn't blind with fear and concern for her daughter, she might have seen the folly in leaving out the police and the FBI and taking on these mysterious men on their own.

The car sped on, towards the farmhouse where Allison had been kept during her first 'kidnapping'. Allison saw a picture of it in the mind's eye of the man who drove the car. She wondered when she would get to help the adults find all the bad guys, when she'd be able to make her mommy proud of her.

------------------------

"Mulder, I'm not sure this is a good idea."

"Why shouldn't we pay another visit to Dr. Wilcox? We've got the girl safe now, maybe we can scare him into giving us more information about those implants." He continued his thoughts internally, acknowledging that he had his own selfish reasons for their return trip to Dr. Wilcox's office. As if he could speak to her telepathically, he let the words he wished he had the courage to say to her ring through his mind. Do you know, Scully, how much I want to unlock the secret behind that metal in your neck? The chip that's both saved and endangered your life? Don't you know if there's even the slightest chance this Dr. Wilcox has information which will allow me to keep you safe, I'll beat it out of him if I have to?

"Mulder, I'm not even sure where this case is going anymore. Who are we protecting that girl from? She still hasn't varied her account of her missing time."

"Humor me, Scully. How else are we going to find out who's behind this if we don't continue to pursue the best suspects we have?" Before Scully could point out that before you have a suspect, you have to have a crime, he continued. "If Allison was called away from the child care center with that implant, shouldn't we talk to the person who probably put that implant in her neck?"

Scully didn't want to admit it, but she wasn't sure she was ready to get any new information about the chip. She'd come to the grudging conclusion that she had a higher probability of mortality without the chip than with it. It wasn't a comforting thought, to consider again the possibilities for manipulation that were possible as long as she allowed it to exist within her. She sat, quietly, in the passenger seat of Mulder's car, her head turned away from him as she rested her chin on the back of her hand, leaning towards the window.

"Scully, you okay?"

"Yes," she lied. This case disturbed her on so many levels. She knew Mulder was aware of each detail that had special significance to her, and she admired the restraint he'd shown thus far, refraining from confronting her too personally. It was odd. Sometimes Mulder seemed to look right past her vulnerabilities, stumbling and trampling inadvertently over them, and sometimes he seemed to know if something was troubling her even before she did. Right now, he fairly crackled with awareness of her, and she, in turn, felt naked, raw every time she found him looking at her. There were times it seemed he could see directly into her, and she didn't know whether she should acknowledge her weakness or try to hide it from him.

"Scully?" She turned towards him, and he read so much of her state of mind through her eyes. She was upset, but hopeful. Frightened, but strong. Worried, above all else. The worry was perhaps the one thing he could help her with.

"Yes, Mulder?"

"Scully, what is it about this case that worries you?"

She responded only with a change in expression, surprise and dismay coloring her features.

"Is it Emily?" He cursed himself, that it took moments like this, when they were under the strain of a case, for him to talk, really talk, to her. How many months had passed without a word, both of them pretending their lives held some passing resemblance to normality?

"It...it's a lot of things, Mulder. But they won't have any effect on this case. You're right, let's talk to Wilcox and see if he has any information."

He burned, ached, to tell her he wasn't just concerned about the effect her worries were having on the case. He had become so proficient at the heroic rescue, so accustomed to relief when Scully simply continued to draw breath, he had forgotten how to deal with a Scully who wasn't kidnapped, not dying, in a coma, missing, or presumed dead. He could rescue her from harm, but not from suffering. And it was there that he had failed her.

Carefully, out of the corner of his eye, he observed her. Stoic. Detached. He took a chance, and let his right hand slide from the wheel, towards her. Gently, he covered her left hand with his palm, feeling the delicate bones under her soft skin. She turned her hand over, clasping their palms together. He was fully expecting her to squeeze his hand quickly and pull away, but she didn't move. They had held hands earlier that day, an oddly intimate gesture, usually bringing with it echoes of grade-school love affairs. It was again the only way for Mulder to show her she could look to him for support without completely tearing her down, without breaking the calm professionalism she always managed to maintain.

As they pulled into the parking lot of the medical center, he took one last moment to look at her before he opened his door. Anyone else looking at her would see her strength, the intelligence that gave her gaze depth. Perhaps only Mulder could see the cloud of worry hovering in the background, deep in her thoughts, where she thought she'd hidden it from the world.

Their hands fell away from each other, and he immediately missed the warmth of her skin on his. His thoughts shifted to the implants, the tie that bound his partner to Allison, and he started determinedly towards Wilcox's office.

They took the elevator to the fourth floor, walking to the door they'd found earlier. When they reached the door, they saw the gold letters had been pried away, only the fading of the wood and some small nail holes betraying they'd ever been there.

They shared a look, shocked that the entire practice had been removed so quickly. Scully went immediately into action, ducking into the nearest office and inquiring with the admitting nurse about the abrupt exodus of their neighbors.

"It was the darndest thing. We heard a ruckus in the hallway, and I got in there just in time to see them moving out the filing cabinets. Doctors Wilcox and Green were apparently kicked out of the HMO, and I've heard there's going to be charges brought against them." She lowered her voice unnecessarily to a whisper. "Billing fraud." She shook her head, her voice returning to normal volume. "There's no higher crime in an HMO than billing fraud. You could probably get away with some pretty flagrant malpractice, but Lord help you if you try to take some of their money out from underneath them. It's the darndest thing, I tell you."

"Who gave you this information?" Mulder asked her.

"The guy from building maintenance. They find out about everything weeks before any of the rest of us do."

They tracked down the maintenance worker, who genuinely seemed to believe the billing fraud story, completely killing any lead they had on the implants.

"What do we do now, Mulder?"

"Let's head back to the hospital to relieve Agent Jackson. Then I want to check out IFI again."

"Why?"

"Maybe we can find out something about Allison's abrupt re-appearance. I spoke to some of the employees who work in IFI's child care center...we can check in with them again."

Scully shrugged her shoulders, which Mulder interpreted as assent. As they walked to the car, he dialed IFI's main number, asking to be transferred to the child care center as soon as the receptionist answered.

"I'm sorry, sir. That section has been temporarily closed."

"Could I speak to Tina Wakeland? This is FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder, I was there recently, investigating the disappearance of Allison Ritter."

"Tina Wakeland is on administrative leave while the center is closed. Would you like to leave her voice mail?"

"No, no. There's another woman who works there...Carla. I need to speak to both of them. Is there any way you can get me the numbers where they can be reached? And why has the center been closed?"

There was an uncomfortable pause.

"Sir, I'm afraid that Carla's passed away of a drug overdose. The center has been closed to re-assess security and employee screening procedures. After the break-in, and after they discovered one of the center's employees was addicted to cocaine, well, that's when they shut it down."

Mulder took a deep breath, assimilating each piece of new information, before responding. "Perhaps I could get a number for Tina Wakeland, then?" The receptionist read him a telephone number, and he thanked her, ending the call quickly. Carla's abrupt death was incredibly suspicious. Something, perhaps, to look into after he had a chance to get Scully settled in at the hospital to watch Allison. He dialed Tina's number, frustrated as he listened to ring after ring before he finally gave up.

------------------------

Rudolph drove along the farmhouse's dirt driveway, parking in front of the dilapidated staircase.

"I'm sorry. I know it doesn't look like much, but it's safe. No one can trace this place back to IFI."

Before they got out of the car, Rudolph's thoughts drifted momentarily to the gun in the glove compartment. He shouldn't need it -- there was another in the farmhouse he could use if he had to. When he saw Allison's quizzical look, he realized she'd sensed his intentions. When the girl wasn't intent on her mother, his thoughts were fair game, he'd found.

He smiled at her as her mother pulled her from the car, carrying her towards the front door. He thought, as clearly as he could, a message that would reassure her. It's almost time for you to start helping me protect your mommy. I'm so glad you're here to help me.

The girl smiled back at him, over her mother's shoulder. She put her index finger up to her mouth, indicating that she knew it was a secret.

You're a good girl, Allison. Your mother is going to be proud of you.

As they entered the house, Rudolph told the girl to go upstairs and play. He carefully gave her directions to the room, trying not to betray that she already knew the way. When she'd disappeared up the stairs, he turned to Andrea and began to weave the rest of his tale.

"They'll call me on my cellular when they believe they've given me enough time to set up the deal. It shouldn't be long now. I have the information they want here with me, and I'll go to make the drop. I won't leave without getting the implant back."

"Won't we be here alone, once you're gone?"

"You'll be safe. I told you, they couldn't connect this place to me or to IFI. If you lock yourselves in a room upstairs, you'll both be safe while I give them the file. The drop is miles away from here. Don't worry."

Andrea looked frightened, but convinced enough of the logic of his plan to go along with it. He needed her to be terrified, the perfect distraction to divert her attention away from the weaker points of the scenario he'd painted for her.

"Why don't you go relax upstairs, with your daughter? You'll also find the bathroom up the stairs and to the left, if you'd like to freshen up."

Andrea's world swirled around her, a morass of confusion, concern, and fear. Of course, she should go freshen up. Splash some water on her face, smooth down her hair. It seemed like an orderly thing to do. Robotically, she ascended the stairs, now following each suggestion Rudolph gave her as if her life depended on it. She didn't have to think anymore, and for that she was grateful. Rudolph had saved her, and he had everything under control. All she had to do was wait, and it would all be over. Every lingering doubt she'd had about IFI, her fears about the file which had been labeled with Allison's birth date, she gave all of them up in exchange for the blind hope Rudolph had given her. The promise that everything would soon be all right.

Outside, another car followed in the fresh tracks made by Rudolph's tires. Tina made her way towards the house, delighted when she saw the dark sedan already parked there. She quietly parked the car, farther away from the house than Rudolph's. She needed to be inside the house before Rudolph saw her for this stage of her plan to work. If he intercepted her outside, he could conceivably order her to leave before Andrea realized she was there.

She turned her key in the lock, counting it as a strike of luck that Rudolph wasn't near the entryway. She made some unnecessary noise in the entryway, causing Andrea to come, terrified, to the landing of the staircase.

"Tina! I was afraid you were..."

"No, no one's going to hurt you or your daughter here. You're safe here with Mr. Rudolph."

"How did you know we were here?"

"Mr. Rudolph called me. Another pair of eyes, you know. He knows I still feel so guilty about Allison being taken from the center. I think this was his way of giving me a chance to help you keep her safe."

Rudolph had come to the foyer just in time to hear most of Andrea and Tina's exchange, and he was livid that Tina would show up out of the blue like this. He composed himself, coming from the doorway into their view.

"Yes, Andrea. Why don't you go back to your daughter. Tina and I can keep watch down here. Why don't I bring you some tea? Perhaps a soft drink?" His tone wasn't so much suggestive, as it was insistent.

"Tea would be fine."

Rudolph went to the small kitchen, located in the back of the farmhouse, far from the room where Andrea and Allison were. He'd gestured for Tina to follow him, and he somehow managed to contain his anger until they reached their destination.

"What are you doing here!" he hissed at her.

"I...I thought you'd need some help."

"Do you realize your presence could make Andrea suspicious? You were the only adult witness to Allison's kidnapping, and now, all of a sudden, you show up here at the safehouse? You weren't supposed to know about any of this, not as far as Andrea was concerned!"

Tina allowed her eyes to well with tears. "I'm...I'm so sorry, Mr. Rudolph. I knew Brooks had let you down, I just wanted to make sure this went smoothly. And now I've ruined everything."

"I think we covered your appearance adequately. But don't do anything else until I order you to do it."

"Of course, Mr. Rudolph. I won't forget again."

Rudolph thrust a teapot at Tina, and she filled it, placing it on the burner. Rudolph pulled a pill case from the pocket of his jacket, opening it to reveal a large number of small, white capsules. He took one, and broke it apart as Tina poured the hot water into a cup. She reached for a tea bag, and Rudolph poured the contents of the capsule into the water as Tina steeped the tea. He set the case on the counter, next to his cellular phone, and gave Tina her final instructions before sending her upstairs.

"That should put her to sleep. It'll be the only way we can get her daughter out of here. Take this to her, and make sure she drinks it. All of it."

"Yes, sir."

Rudolph turned and left the room, and Tina exhaled sharply. She'd hoped he was caught up in his carefully constructed drama, and she'd been correct. He hadn't been able to resist making a theatrical exit. In the solitude of the kitchen, it was laughably easy for her to take the pill case and the phone and hide them inside her clothes. She hummed, low and seductive as left the kitchen, knowing how easily Rudolph's thoughts could turn to sexual conquest. He'd be hers to manipulate as soon as she returned downstairs.

------------------------

Mulder walked next to Scully as she led the way back to Allison's room. He was so easily disoriented in hospitals, their off-white walls blending together until the correct route was indistinguishable from the dead ends. Scully could cut through the hallways of any hospital they found themselves in as if she'd worked every day of her life there, leaving Mulder to wonder if this was one of the mysterious topics they covered in medical school.

Scully turned the last corner before they reached Allison's room, which Mulder recognized only because he saw Agent Jackson sitting just outside the door.

"Everything quiet here while we were gone?" Mulder asked him.

"Yeah, no one's been in or out for a while. I think the mother finally went home to get some sleep. She left about four hours ago."

Scully turned to Mulder, trying to find some reason to check on the girl. "I'd just like to get a quick look at her chart. See how she's coming along."

"Sure, Scully. I'll go get us something to drink."

Scully entered the room, expecting to see a tousle of blond hair on the pillow, reminding her of Emily. Instead, she saw nothing. No one. She quickly checked the attached rest room, finding it empty as well. The room was on the interior of the hospital, no windows and no way in or out that didn't go past the agent assigned to watch the door. She was livid as she turned to berate the incompetent they'd trusted with that duty.

"Jackson! The girl is missing! When is the last time you looked in on her?"

"What? There's no way." He pushed past Scully, looking into the room. He got on his hands and knees to check under the bed, and turned to face Scully only when he also had exhausted the room of every potential hiding place.

"Agent Scully, I...I don't know. I can't explain..."

Scully left him, as he stammered incoherently in the doorway of the empty room. Wasting no time in trying to find Mulder, she pulled out her cellphone and called him directly. She barely waited for him to answer before she began to speak.

"She's gone, Mulder. Again, this time from right under our noses."

"I'll be right there, Scully."

She whirled back towards Agent Jackson, hoping he could give her some details.

"When was the last time you saw the girl or her parents?"

"It...it was hours ago. Her mother, she gave me a lecture about being careful around her. Not scaring her. Some crazy thing about her being able to read minds, or something. She disappeared after that. Come to think of it, she disappeared pretty abruptly."

Mulder reappeared from the corridor. "Anything?"

"Nothing. She's gone. Her mother may be gone too."

"Maybe she ran? Thought her girl wasn't safe here?"

Yet again, each lead fell from their grasp, with a familiarity that had become disturbing.

------------------------

Tina walked carefully up the stairs, trying not to spill the hot tea down her arms. Rudolph's cellular and pill case were inside the arm of her jacket, and although it was difficult to keep them there without jostling the cup, they were the key to the next step of her plan.

Tina rounded the corner into the bedroom, instantly changing into the very picture of concern.

"Tina, I'm not sure what's going on here, but I think it's kind of dangerous. Maybe you should go. I'd hate to think you were involved just out of a feeling of guilt."

"No, hon. I'm not just here out of a feeling of guilt. I really want to make sure things turn out for the best."

Allison really didn't like Ms. Wakeland. She usually was thinking something nasty about someone else, or wishing the children in the center weren't so loud. She listened to what Ms. Wakeland thought as she spoke, and was surprised when she found out she was telling the truth.

"Tina, I don't know what to say. I don't know how I'd be handling this without you and Mr. Rudolph."

"I think I speak for all of us when I say that I hope this is over as soon as possible."

Allison squinted at Ms. Wakeland, trying to figure out if she was fibbing. She wasn't. Maybe she really did want to help her find all the bad men, just like Mr. Rudolph.

"But there's something I think you should know." Tina looked over her shoulder, worried, and then turned back to Andrea. "It's Mr. Rudolph. I think he's in on it. I don't think you should trust him."

"No, no. You're wrong. He's the only one who's trying to help me out of this. He's about to make a huge sacrifice to guarantee Allison's safety."

"Then why did he drug this tea and then ask me to bring it to you and see that you drank it?" Andrea looked at her in disbelief. Her expression changed to horror when Tina produced the pill case from her jacket sleeve and opened it to show her the capsules inside.

"What are they?"

"I don't know, but I bet they're produced by IFI. And I don't think they're pep pills. He seemed to think it would put you to sleep."

Andrea's stomach dropped, her nightmare morphing and beginning anew.

Allison was shocked that the nasty woman was telling the truth, but she was. "Mommy, she's right. Don't drink it."

"What am I going to do?"

Tina put her hand on Andrea's wrist, strongly, but she was careful not to cause pain. "No. I won't let you go through this alone. Not after what that man's taken from me, too."

"What are you talking about?" Andrea sensed Tina was about to tell her something very difficult. She addressed her daughter, "Sweetie, why don't you watch the television in the corner for a little while?"

Allison knew what her mother was really asking her to do. Watching television meant she wasn't supposed to listen to anything anyone was saying or thinking for a little while. Her mother had told her there are things in the world she wasn't supposed to know until she was older. Mostly, she understood, but sometimes it made her feel lonely. She nodded, moving to the other side of the room.

Tina whispered, "I'm so ashamed to tell you. I...I slept with him a few years ago. He kept telling me that was the only way I'd move up in the company. Times were so tight I was barely paying the bills. The promise of a big raise and a chance to have more responsibility was just too good to turn down. So, I went to his office after work one night, and I allowed him..." It was so difficult to keep up the ruse, but so vital. She'd prepared this story so long ago, when she'd considered filing sexual harassment charges against Rudolph. But there was nothing to gain from that. Maybe a cash settlement, but nothing like the deal she'd put together for the brat. She bit down on the inside of her cheek, harder and harder, until she could taste the blood in her mouth. Involuntary tears came to her eyes, making her oh-so-believable. Not that fooling Andrea had ever been a challenge. She almost felt sorry for her. Almost, until she pictured herself lounging on a beach in the Caribbean, never wanting for another thing.

Andrea gripped Tina's hand, breaking Tina out of her thoughts. "You don't have to say it. I understand what happened."

Oh, but you do need to hear it, Tina thought. If you don't hear this little story, you won't really believe me.

"He was sick, grabbing me, manhandling me. I was bruised for days, all up and down my arms, on my legs, even my neck. It was the most terrible experience of my entire life. When the promotion came a month later, I felt so filthy I almost didn't accept it. I thought things couldn't get any worse. Then one morning, I discovered I was pregnant."

Andrea's face fell, devastated at the implication of Tina's words.

"I was so afraid to tell him what had happened, but I finally got the nerve together. His face didn't even change after I told him. He just asked me why I wasn't on the pill, and then he picked up the telephone to call a doctor. He got me an appointment that afternoon. He arranged for a cab to take me there, and then home afterwards. He never spoke of it again. I've never even told anyone about this before."

"Tina..."

"No, no. Don't stop me. I might not get through this." She paused, taking a few deep breaths, then continued. "Then he promoted me again. It was his sick joke, putting me in charge of the children. Every time I looked at them, I thought of what had happened, what he had taken from me. I won't let him take your daughter from you." Not when I could profit by doing it myself, she thought.

Andrea stroked Tina's shoulder, trying to offer some small gesture of comfort. "What do we do next?"

"First, you pretend you drank this cup of tea. Feign sleep, about a half hour from now. He has to think all the little pieces of his plan are falling right into place. Hopefully, the police will have arrived by then. If not, then I'll have to use my gun."

"You're going to shoot him?"

"Only if I have no other choice. I won't let him take her."

"How are you going to get in touch with the police?"

"On this." She indicated the phone she also had stashed in the arm of her jacket.

"Why don't we call them now?"

"Certainly." Tina started to dial a number, but Andrea stopped her.

"No, call this man." She fumbled in her purse for the number. "Fox Mulder. He's FBI."

Tina tried not to let her exasperation show on her face, extraordinarily angry at herself for being so smug and stupid, causing this possible exposure of her plan. She was caught. She'd planned to call her buyer and pretend she was talking to the police, but she'd have a much more difficult time feigning a conversation with someone Andrea had already been working with. She'd have to shuffle some things around, but she should be able to clear out of here with the kid before the cavalry arrived.

She dialed the number, Andrea watching carefully over her shoulder, and tried to think of some way out of this little problem as she listened to the phone ring.

"Mulder."

"Agent Mulder. Perhaps you'll remember me. Tina Wakeland, we spoke at IFI."

"Yes, Ms. Wakeland. Do you have any new information for me?"

"Yes. I can't talk long. Mr. Rudolph, the President of IFI, is holding Andrea and Allison hostage, getting ready to turn them over to...someone...I'm not sure who. But I'm sure it's not good. We need your help. We're at an abandoned farmhouse on the outskirts of Chantilly."

"Damn. We're at Fairfax Hospital. It'll take us a good half hour to get to you."

"Get here as quickly as you can, Agent Mulder." Tina gave him quick directions, and was forced to make them accurate because Andrea had probably paid at least a modicum of attention during her trip to the house.

She finished the call, and turned to Andrea. "Remember...you need to be 'asleep' sometime within the half hour."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to go back downstairs, see if there's some way I can slow Rudolph down. It will take some time for anyone to get here to help us."

"Be careful, Tina."

"I will."

Tina made her way down the staircase again, and back towards the kitchen. A man with Rudolph's flair for the dramatic would have planned a celebration...ah, yes. There it was, in the back of the refrigerator. A bottle of champagne. She opened the cupboard, delighted when she saw that the sparse collection of plates and glasses didn't have two matching glasses -- all the easier to distinguish her glass from Rudolph's. She placed the powder from four of the capsules in the bottom of the thinner glass and poured a small amount of champagne carefully on top of the powder. She poured the second glass for herself, and after hiding the phone in the back of a drawer, she followed the noise of shuffling paper into the living room.

Rudolph sat at the rustic table, looking utterly out of place in his three piece business suit. She raised her glass to him, offering him the spiked glass.

"A toast? A little premature, I know, but your plan is so brilliant I think we can afford to be a little presumptuous."

"I'm still not impressed with your surprise entrance."

"I'd like to make that up to you."

His eyes glazed slightly, early signs of his arousal. Her contempt for him tripled as she realized how easily manipulated he was. He hadn't even presented a challenge for her. How utterly disappointing. Such an unworthy adversary would make her ultimate victory much less sweet. He took the glass she offered, just as she knew he would. She was dismayed a second later, as he placed it on the table in front of them.

"First, why don't we have a different celebration." He hands roughly found her hips, pulling her tightly to him. His erect penis pressed against her, and she immediately had to quell the urge to vomit. Somehow, she managed to smile at him.

"Someone might come downstairs, sir."

"I like it dangerous, Ms. Wakeland." He pushed her towards the table, and she obliged him fully, lying back and spreading her thighs to allow him to stand in-between them. Some part of her was intrigued at the idea of having sex with a man she was about to kill, and practically speaking, it was probably the only thing that would allow her to bring her plan to fruition.

He reached under her skirt, tearing at her pantyhose, ripping into them just enough to give him access to her panties. His callused fingers rubbed over the silk and lace just for a moment, looking for a weak place to yank on. He found what he searched for, and savagely ripped the lace on both sides of her hips. He growled ridiculously as he removed the remnants of fabric from her, shoving the material of her skirt towards her waist and revealing her to the chill of the room.

His fingers were inside her before she had a moment to prepare herself, and he looked at her, the look on his face disturbingly like he was chiding an errant child.

"You're not quite ready for me, are you? We'll have to do something about that."

In every romance novel Tina had ever read, if the hero performed oral sex on the heroine, it was because he was unselfish. If that ever occurred in real life, Rudolph was completely unaware of the phenomenon. The few times it had been necessary to have sex with him, he'd always insisted on it, and the implication had always been clear. It was a power game for him, perhaps the most fulfilling part of sex for a man like him. He could make Tina orgasm, and remain completely unaffected. Or so he thought, since he was completely incapable of discerning a faked orgasm. The smug look on his face after she'd 'recovered' gave away the only reason he enjoyed sex, having complete power over another person.

His hands held her solidly, almost painfully open to him, and he brought his mouth to her skin. The only arousal she could muster was in her thoughts of the near future, picturing him as he drank the drugged champagne. She'd be rich. She'd have the means to get anything else she could ever want if she could just hold out a little longer. She did have to speed this along, she realized, as she pictured the tall, handsome FBI agent streaking towards the farmhouse to rescue them.

His teeth bit violently into her, soon finding her clitoris and sending a shooting pain through her. She cried out involuntarily, trying to shade the sound with desire. She wrapped her hands through his hair, expertly faking passionate reactions to what he was doing, whimpering softly through her teeth.

"Yes," she said, over and over, feeling ridiculous but keeping up the facade anyway. He was so gullible, believing such a trite caricature of passion. His mouth lifted, and she wondered if he was his customary fifteen seconds from his climax.

She panicked as she felt liquid running through her, where his mouth had been. She realized as she felt him pouring more of it over her that it was the champagne. Relief came only when she noticed it was her glass, not his, in his hand.

"Ahh, ah...no peeking." She stared back at the ceiling as he eagerly lapped the champagne from her, pushing his tongue clumsily against her, insinuating into her much more than was necessary to remove the alcohol from her. He apparently expected her to resume her ascension towards orgasm, so she picked up where she'd left off. Senseless murmurs, carefully crafted to sound as if she was just barely suppressing a desire to scream out too loudly. She allowed her voice to rise in pitch, becoming a frantic melody composed only to give him the impression he had conquered her. Her triumph over him was complete when she heard him pull on his zipper, then felt as he rammed himself into her all of three times before he was finished. He collapsed onto her, his weight uncomfortable on her stomach. She was practically gasping for breath, barely resisting the urge to shove him away.

"Someone might have heard us. They shouldn't find us like this." She whispered into his ear.

Thankfully, he straightened, carefully tucking his shirt back in, zipping his pants, and straightening his tie.

"Why don't we have another little toast, Ms. Wakeland. You didn't get to join me in the last one."

She quickly took her half-full glass of champagne from the table next to her, smoothing down the material of her skirt to hide the carnage he'd made of her underwear. He picked up the remaining, drugged glass, and Tina barely suppressed the satisfaction of a smirk as he raised it toward his lips.

"To victory. To the glory of mankind."

"To victory." She echoed aloud. Mine, she thought, as she clinked glasses with him.

Like the glutton she knew him to be, he downed his glass in one gulp. She idly wondered if a dose four times the size he'd attempted to use on Andrea would actually kill him, or just put him to sleep more quickly.

When he began clutching at his throat and foaming at the mouth about thirty seconds later, she had her answer. She walked slowly from the room as she heard him fall to the floor, allowing herself the luxury of one moment to savor her final victory over him.

Her practical side soon won out, forcing her to continue with her plan and move past the complete feeling of satisfaction she'd gotten from killing Rudolph. Some little part of her was disturbed that she enjoyed it so much, but she pushed those feelings away, dismissing them as irrelevant to her current goal. She needed to call her buyer, who should conveniently be waiting just a mile or so down the road. He needed to beat the FBI agents there, so she could finish that part of the deal without any unwanted law enforcement entanglements.

She dialed the number she'd been given, and heard the voice of her buyer on the other end of the line.

"Send the thug. It's Plan B, you have to make it look like another kidnapping. If you want to shoot the mother, go ahead. It might be cleaner that way. You'll have to get here quickly and clear out even faster. I think we've got some boy scouts on the way. I'm calling the bank next, and if you haven't transferred the funds, I'm shooting your man before he even gets out from behind the wheel."

The man took a drag from his cigarette, then signaled to the driver of the car sitting beside him. First, indicating the way the drop would go down, then, he tapped his watch to show him that time was of the essence. The driver nodded, started the car, and drove towards the house. They needed the Ritter girl, just as they'd needed Praise. Time was running short.

------------------------

After making a rather satisfying call to the bank, Tina made her way upstairs. She needed to get the girl outside where the transfer would happen.

"Andrea...Andrea!" she whispered as she peeked through the doorway. Andrea got up from her pretended nap.

"What is it?"

"I need to get Allison downstairs. It'll expose everything if I don't. I'm sorry, I really am. I won't let them leave with her."

Andrea turned to her daughter. "Sweetie, I want you to go with Tina. Mommy has to stay here, but you'll be back here with me soon. Stay with Tina if you can, okay Sweetie?"

"Okay, mommy." Allison took Tina's hand, trying again to see if she was telling the truth or not. She didn't get the feeling that anything she'd said was wrong, so she did what she'd been told.

Tina led her downstairs, then out to the porch. A few minutes later, a car drove up, and Allison immediately focused on the man behind the wheel. He was concentrating on her as he steered the car. He was bad, very bad, and it made her want to run back into the house and hide.

"Ms. Wakeland. He's a bad man. We have to..." she stopped mid-sentence, suddenly turning her attention to the woman who was now gripping her hand so tightly that it stung. She knew he was bad already. And she was happy to see him.

"Ms. Wakeland, you're hurting my hand."

"Shut up, kid. You'll be away from me before you know it."

She knew she had to run away, but there wasn't anywhere to run to. The man in the car had a gun, and he intended to use it if he had to. She couldn't run to her mother, or she might get hurt. The only person he was supposed to be careful with was...her.

She'd known it was bad, but she'd listened earlier as Ms. Wakeland had called the policeman. She'd heard he was going to be here soon, and she knew she had to hide somewhere until he was here to protect her mom.

But she didn't know what to do, and as she tried to pull away from Ms. Wakeland's grip, he got closer to them. Closer to the house, where her mom was.

------------------------

"Mulder, what did she say?"

"We have to get there, Scully, as quickly as we can."

"We're almost there, Mulder. What are we going to find there?"

"Rudolph. Mrs. Ritter, and her daughter. There could be others."

"I think you're supposed to turn down this dirt road," she said, as she consulted the map Mulder had hurriedly drawn from Tina Wakeland's directions.

"Mulder, we should call for backup."

"And how will we know who our 'backup' is really working for?"

The car's back tires kicked up dust and gravel as Mulder turned from the pavement to the dirt access road that would lead them to Allison Ritter. Scully tried to dismiss the feeling she had that they'd be too late, opting instead to mentally prepare herself for the upcoming conflict.

------------------------

The man took Allison's hand roughly from Tina's.

"You got your money, huh?"

"It's all progressed according to plan. Pleasure doing business with you."

He led the girl towards his car, planning to lock her inside and then go back to the house to dispose of Wakeland and the mother, on the orders he'd been given. A lot of good all that money would do her when she's a corpse, he thought, but he wasn't surprised to see that she didn't seem to expect it at all. She was clearly a small-timer, out of her league and dealing with men who didn't normally like to leave any witnesses to their activities.

Allison saw the image of the man going into the house to kill Ms. Wakeland and her mom, knowing finally that she had to do something. She sensed also that he couldn't do anything until he'd secured her, so she did the only thing she could. She broke from his grip and ran away from him. He was big, and he would be able to grab her quickly unless she got somewhere he couldn't get to. She ran to Mr. Rudolph's car, pulling at the big door, jumping in, and locking the door behind her. She'd caught him by surprise, and he hadn't been able to stop her.

"Hey, you little brat. Open this door." He waved the gun at her, hoping to scare her into following his orders.

"You won't do anything to me. They'll kill you if you do."

He started to aim the gun at the window, and she realized he was going to make a hole in it and then get into the car to get her.

His finger squeezed the trigger, making a mark, but not a hole, in the glass. Goddamn paranoid businessmen with their bulletproof windows.

Once Allison realized he couldn't get into the car, she knew she had to keep him there somehow. The image of the gun in Mr. Rudolph's mind came to her, and she crawled to the front seat. She opened the glove compartment and took it out, pointing it towards herself.

"Kid, you don't know how to use that."

"You'll be in big trouble if I do." She had to yell so loudly for the man to hear her, and she felt guilty. Her mom had told her never to yell at anyone, no matter how angry she was.

Tina ran from the porch, insanely angry at the little brat screwing up her plan. "You get out of that car, or I'll make sure your mother dies a long, painful death." Tina yelled at her, enraged.

"He's gonna kill you, too. I heard him."

Tina's mind raced to comprehend what the girl had just said, and realized she probably wasn't lying. Of course, they'd kill her. She felt stupid again, raging against herself for trusting that these men would keep an honest deal.

He turned the gun on Tina, deciding he needed to get some information. If he screwed this up, he might as well shoot himself in the head to save his employers the trouble of finding him and eliminating him.

"Why was I told we were in a hurry?"

"The cops are on the way. FBI."

He rolled his eyes. Figured. Stupid chick couldn't even keep the feds away.

"Go get me the keys. We'll figure something out."

As Tina started to walk towards the house, Allison panicked.

"Where is she going? Stay away from my mom!"

"What are you going to do? Are you gonna shoot yourself? Go ahead. But if you do, I'll kill your mom."

Allison sat in the car, confused and frightened. He wasn't lying.

The standoff continued for only a moment before it was interrupted by the sound of another car coming up the drive. Tina knew immediately they had run out of time, and wasn't happy when the man her buyer had sent turned and walked menacingly toward her.

"Who's that? The Feds?"

"Probably," she said, trying to hold up her chin and look him in the eye.

Allison wondered if it was a good thing there were people arriving that Ms. Wakeland and the mean man were both afraid of. She could only hope they would help them get away. She shut her eyes for a second, wishing her mom could be there with her. She didn't want her to get hurt, but it was all so scary, and her mom had always promised to protect her from all the scary stuff.

And as if her mother had heard her wish, she appeared in the doorway of the house. "No, mommy, no!" Allison yelled, before she could stop herself. It was all her fault.

"Allison!" her mother screamed, running towards the car.

Before Allison could yell again, the man had grabbed her mother's wrist. He used his superior strength to get his arm around her neck and her back pressed tightly up against his chest. The gun he carried was pressed tightly against her temple.

"You gonna stop screwing around now, kid? You get out of that car, I let her go. You stay there, and I blow her brains out and then go lookin' for your dad. You got me?" He was already in a great deal of trouble. This drop had not gone according to plan. This was supposed to be kept quiet, and he was supposed to keep the kid calm. He was probably already dead, but he still might be able to salvage this if he could scare her into giving herself up.

Mulder drove towards the scene, and it was already obvious the situation was completely out of control. He saw Mrs. Ritter being held at gunpoint, and he thought he could see a figure inside the car in the drive. He stopped the car a few feet from the scene, leaving his gun in its holster to avoid endangering Mrs. Ritter. Scully joined him at the hood of the car, and they moved carefully towards him.

"Put the gun down and we can negotiate," Mulder began.

"No. Why don't you two put down those guns you've got hidden, and then I'll tell you what's going to happen." At their hesitation to give up their weapons, he added the trump card. "Or the lovely lady gets a hole in her head."

"What do you want?" Scully asked him as she placed her pistol carefully on the dirt in front of her feet.

"I'm taking the girl, and I'm walking out of here. Kick the guns over." They complied, and watched as their guns skidded across the dirt towards him.

"No! Don't let him take my baby. Let him shoot, but don't let him touch my little girl!" Andrea looked at Scully, pleading with her to listen.

"You can all shut up now, cause I'm calling the shots. Kid, you better put that gun down, or I start shooting. I'm hurtin' the G-Lady first, and then I ice her partner. Then your mom's next. I'm gonna start shootin' 'em one by one unless you start cooperating. So it'd be all your fault."

"No! Not until you let my mommy go!" Allison yelled at him from the interior of the car.

The gunman wrenched Andrea's arm tighter behind her back, and he whispered into her ear. "You get her to put that gun down, or I swear to God, I'll torture her as soon as I get my hands on her. You get her to come out of the car, and nothin' happens to her."

"I'll never let her go with you," she retorted.

"Bitch."

Scully tried again to defuse the current standoff. "Let the woman go. Then we'll talk."

"Nobody talks about anything. I want the girl out of that car. Wakeland, you get in the house and find the keys to this car." Tina hesitated, so he decided to give her a little encouragement. He tightened his grip around the woman's neck, and pointed the gun quickly towards Tina's feet. One shot, uncomfortably close to her, caused her to move towards the farmhouse.

"You're gonna hurt her no matter what, aren't you?" Andrea's head whipped back towards the car as she heard her daughter's voice ringing clearly through the air.

"Get back in the car, honey. Get back!"

"Answer me!" she yelled at the man. "You're gonna hurt her anyway!"

"Yeah. I am. I'm here to get you, and to kill both of these ladies," he sneered at her. He hated having to negotiate with a snot-nosed little five year old.

"You let her go, and I'll come with you. But only if you promise to leave my mom alone. I can tell if you're lying. If you lie to me, you're gonna be in big trouble."

He considered the deal she offered him. He lets the mother live, and he gets to deliver the girl and probably save his skin. He wouldn't win any popularity contests for not finishing the job completely, but he'd probably save himself from getting a bullet lodged in his brain.

"You got a deal, kid. Come here, and take your mom's place. I promise she won't have a scratch on her when we leave, but you gotta come with me without a fight." He looked directly at the kid, wondering if she could really see he was telling the truth.

"No, sweetie. Don't do this." Tears were streaming down Andrea's face. "You don't know what they're going to do to you."

Allison halted, looking at her mom and wondering what she meant. She reached into her mom's mind, and saw all of her fears. They were fuzzy and unclear, but there were clearer images coming to Allison from another direction. When she realized where the images were coming from, she turned toward the man and woman who had come to rescue them.

The woman was thinking about another little girl, but she was more afraid that some very mean men were going to use her to hurt people. The men would make her do things, make her tell them things that would kill lots of people. The man who had come with her was thinking the same thing. There were monsters in his head, monsters they'd force her to control so the men could use them to hurt people. Allison had to know what it all meant.

"How will they make me do it?"

Mulder started when he realized she was addressing him. Despite the ugliness of the truth, lying to her would be futile, he realized.

"I don't know how they'll make you do it. But they will. It could kill us all. Everyone on this planet."

And it was true, she knew it. She turned to the woman, to ask her the question her thoughts already seemed to answer.

"What do you mean, I'm not supposed to be here, either? You think those men made me so I could do those bad things? Is that true?"

Scully couldn't bring herself to tell that innocent child she had been created only to serve the interests of men who intended to endanger the future of the human race. She couldn't form the words, she simply couldn't do it.

Allison turned back to Mulder, somehow certain he would be able to tell her the final thing she needed to know.

"Can I stop them?"

Mulder had no idea what to say. Gibson's whereabouts were unknown, but he doubted the Project had him, solely due to their desperate pursuit of Allison. If she could deny her skills to them, it might well be a blow to their progress.

Allison heard him, and knew the answer. Tears streamed down her face as she turned back to her mother.

"Mulder, we can't let her..." Scully whispered to Mulder, and he quieted her with a single glance.

"Scully, we can't stop her." Grief had already begun to pull at his features, and he watched as tears began to gather in his partner's eyes.

Regardless of his words, Scully found herself screaming to Allison inside her mind. Screaming for her to stop and reconsider.

"I love you, mommy."

When the shot rang out through the crisp chill of the late afternoon, none of them were prepared for the gravity of the girl's decision. Scully ran forward, forgetting for a moment the gun held by the man who had come for Allison, forgetting also all the medical training which told her there was no way Allison's body could withstand the damage from the shot and still survive. What she could never forget, what would later haunt her, was the image of that precisely placed bullet which had taken the little girl from this world to the next.

One voice rose in the air, a sound of pure desperation and sorrow filtered through terrified disbelief. Andrea's pain found temporary focus only in anger, as she rammed her elbow into the stomach of the man who held her. The gunman released her in surprise, falling a moment later, victim of a bullet from a high-powered rifle held by a man who had observed the entire scene from afar. He had failed, and it was important that his punishment be swift and irrevocable.

Scully was still numbly trying to perform CPR when Mulder pulled her away.

------------------------

"I'm sorry to have to ask you to do this. I don't know what else to do." Mr. Ritter's voice was strong, focused. For a man whose life had just disintegrated around him, he was presenting an almost believable facade of stability.

Scully wished she could offer him something other than the empty words which couldn't possibly begin to take away his pain. She knew there were things he wanted to know, things he would be curious about, but they were things he would be better off never having known. He didn't really want to know what his daughter's last words were, how strange the weapon looked in her tiny hand, how noble her concern for her mother had been. He didn't want to know whether she had died instantly upon the impact of the bullet or if she'd lingered through the pain as her life's blood stained the ground beneath her. Scully had longed for that ignorance after Emily's death, and she hoped Bob Ritter would understand the gift he'd been given. Without the memory of the specifics of his daughter's death, he could remember Allison in her happiest moments.

"No, if there's anything I can do to help your wife, I'd like to do it." She paused for a moment, uncertain, before continuing with the most sincere condolence she could offer him, "I'm so sorry for your loss."

"Thank you," he answered, mechanically. "Please," he gestured towards the door in front of them, "make her understand." He turned, and walked slowly away, leaving Scully to gather her thoughts.

She knocked quietly on the door, hoping she wouldn't startle Andrea. There was no answer, not that she had truly expected one. She opened the door slowly, carefully, trying not to alarm the room's occupant.

Once she was inside, she realized she needn't have worried. Andrea seemed completely unaware of her presence. Scully sat in the chair opposite the hospital bed, winning Andrea's notice only for a moment.

The room was filled with the sound of Andrea's voice, tunelessly humming. The melody was haphazard, rising and falling, shuffling randomly from note to note. Occasionally, she would stop and look at a blank area of the room. And she would address her daughter.

"No, sweetie. Go back to bed. There's no monsters in your closet, I promise."

It felt cruel, to try to pull this woman away from the madness that seemed to be her only refuge, but Scully felt she needed to hear the truth. It was perhaps the only weapon any of them had to use against the self-recrimination and pain which had driven Andrea away from her sanity.

"Nothing that happened was your fault, Andrea." The humming continued, slightly louder. "Everything you did, you did to protect her. You did the best you could. It was the men who were intent on using her that caused her to be hurt. She loved you very much, Andrea. She wouldn't want this to happen. She would never have wanted this to destroy you. She wanted to save you. Perhaps save us all."

Andrea looked towards Scully, as if Scully had spoken in a language Andrea didn't understand. Complete incomprehension, disbelief. The moment was fleeting, a brush with clarity she wasn't able to bear. The pain the truth brought with it was a larger strain than she could withstand. She quickly resumed her earlier state, her humming again resonating throughout the room. Scully quickly glanced at the camera in the corner of the room, grateful they had placed the woman on suicide watch.

"I lost someone myself, Andrea," she began. Suddenly the feeling of the words escaping though her lips seemed foreign, the sound of her own voice strange. "I've lost so many people, actually, but one of them was an innocent, just like Allison was. Her name was Emily, Andrea. She was my daughter, but I never knew her, not until just before she was taken from me. You'll always have your memories of Allison, of her childhood. Hang onto them, Andrea. Keep fighting. You have to hold onto her memory, honor it." Scully's voice had become strained, breaking as she held back the tears that threatened at the edges of her eyes.

"I still don't understand why they're doing this. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to understand. It's so terrible, so incomprehensible. I remember, Andrea, what I felt after Emily was gone. I wanted so badly to give up, because it was the only way I could try to forget. I couldn't give up though, it was too important I didn't. But I found another way to run away from it. I buried myself in anything that came along, every case, every problem, engrossing myself in the minute details of anything but what I'd lost. It was the best of both worlds. I felt I was doing something constructive, but I'd still managed to avoid the pain, shelve it, forget about it. But it's still there, it's all still there. I can't make your pain go away, Andrea, because I couldn't make mine go away either. Even when we get those bastards, it'll still be there. But I refuse to just quit, Andrea. And you shouldn't either. You should remember her, because you were all she had that was real." She cleared her throat, needing to tell Andrea one last thing.

"I'll fight for them, Andrea. I won't stop until I find out why they did this to us -- why they used our children this way. And when I do, I will see that Emily and Allison and everyone else gets the justice they're entitled to. Then we can remember them without fear. The pain will be there, but we'll know they didn't die for nothing."

Scully slowly edged away from the bed, monitoring Andrea for any sign that she had gotten through to her, but she was ultimately discouraged.

Mulder met her at the door, and Scully knew without asking him that he had watched them from the monitoring room. He put his hand gently on her shoulder, and Scully walked just a bit closer to him than she normally would have. She longed to collapse into his chest, beat against it with her fists until he could tell her how this could have happened. She was self-conscious, at what she'd said, what he'd heard as he'd watched from afar.

They had driven to the hospital separately, but Scully wasn't surprised to see Mulder's car following hers on the highway long past his exit. Part of her longed for privacy, to scream and cry for everyone who had been sacrificed before them, for the innocent and for the guilty. But she sensed there was something Mulder needed from her, and she instinctively knew it was something she needed as well.

She parked in front of her building, not waiting for Mulder before she headed to her apartment. She stood awkwardly in her living room until he appeared in the doorway, the look on his face hesitant, but intense.

"I got a call on the way over here, Scully. They've been questioning Tina Wakeland. They've gotten some information out of her. She confessed to the murder of her boss, a Mr. Edwin Rudolph -- his body was discovered in the farmhouse during the wrap-up of the crime scene. Nothing else she's said has checked out. She's given up a buyer, someone who had wanted to purchase Allison Ritter for her abilities, but the contact information has come up blank. She gave us a phone number, but that number hasn't been assigned to anyone in over a year. She gave us a bank account number where a payment for her services was supposed to have been made, but the account doesn't exist either. It's just a bunch of dead ends."

"Do you think she's lying?"

"No, I think she's telling the truth. I also think her buyers are well connected enough to get their tracks covered up. Maybe they'll get something out of her that checks out, but I doubt it."

"Mulder, once we discovered the paranormal aspect of the case we weren't supposed to be pursuing it. It should have been turned over to Agent Spender."

"When has that stopped us before, Scully? He's probably working with the person who covered it all up after the deal went sour."

"You didn't let me finish, Mulder. I'm glad we didn't. I'm sick of trying to play by the rules. From now on, let's just do our best to stay out of Kersh's way while we do our own investigations. This is too important to trust to anyone else."

"We were the Ritter's only chance of getting their daughter back."

"Was she really their daughter? Or was she created by someone else?"

"I don't know the answer to that. Andrea Ritter gave birth to her. And they raised her." He paused, wondering how he should cross into Scully's true line of thought. "But that's not what you're really asking me."

"What am I asking you?" She crossed her arms in front of her, trying to look angry with him to cover her fear.

"I don't know how to explain it and I don't know how to justify it, but Emily was yours." Scully looked down abruptly, and guilt tore at him. "You didn't have her, and you didn't raise her. But she was yours, Scully. I knew that the first moment I looked into her eyes."

He took a step towards her, the room suddenly feeling enormous around them. Every inch between them seemed to make his words more difficult, to add to her pain as he spoke. She refused to look at him, making him certain she'd already begun to cry.

"She wasn't supposed to be here, Mulder." She whispered, her voice low and quiet through her tears.

"Neither was Allison, but it doesn't make her mother's loss any less real. It doesn't take away the pain." He took another step forward, now just barely within arm's length of her.

"Mulder, I'm...I'm tired. Please. Let's take care of this tomorrow. We're in enough trouble already."

"Scully, look up at me." Her face remained lowered, her hair falling forward and blocking her further from his view. "Just look up at me, tell me you're okay, and I'll go." He hated doing this to her, but he had no choice. He knew she'd try to do it, and he hoped she'd fail. Perhaps then she'd let him take some of the pain away from her, the pain she carried alone, silently.

She tried to lift her head, tried to square her eyes with his, but stopped somewhere around his upper chest. The tears were evident on her face, and she needed to try to explain them away.

"I admit, I am upset." She choked out, startled to hear the raspiness of her voice. "Losing Allison that way, it wasn't right. But I'll be just fine, Mulder. I -- "

She'd almost made it, almost talked her way through the excuses she'd prepared in her mind.

"Scully, tell me you need to be alone."

She was fighting for every moment of calm, her breathing ragged with the effort. She managed to deliver one word without shattering the last remnants of her composure. "Why?"

"I can't leave you until I know that's what you really want. I don't think that's what you want, Scully. And I don't want to be alone, either." He longed to take that final step towards her, pulling her into his arms. But he couldn't do it. The last step had to be hers, or she would never truly accept his help. Or his love.

"Mulder, I -- "

He waited, his breathing still as he considered for the first time that she might turn him away. He stood, unmoving, preparing to hear the words he'd asked for to fall from her mouth.

"Don't go." She looked into his eyes, finally, and he longed again to pull her the final distance toward him. He resisted, knowing her business with him was still unfinished.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

She didn't need to clarify. He knew what she was referring to, the vials he'd seen and kept secret.

"I didn't know how. I didn't know how to tell you that this thing, this thing I got you involved in, had hurt you yet again. That it was my fault. It was selfish, Scully. I didn't tell you because I wasn't strong enough to do it."

"It wasn't your fault. What they did."

"Yes, Scully, it was. If you'd never been caught up in this -- "

"So I have no free will? I couldn't leave you if I'd wanted to?"

He just stared back at her, shocked into silence.

"When you carry the burden on your own, you don't give me credit for my own actions. I've stayed because I wanted to. It isn't just about you anymore, Mulder. You're not the only person who's been hurt. It's about a lot of people. Gibson, Samantha, Allison, Emily. It's about them, and about so many other people too. And it's about me."

Mulder was astounded at her strength. He'd come here to try to help her, and he was the one whose eyes had been opened.

"You're looking at me as if you're seeing me for the first time. Did I finally get through your thick skull?"

He had no idea how to categorize the emotions within him, or what he saw when he looked into her eyes. Sorrow, fear, anger, they all fell short, lost in the shadow of the significance of the moment they now shared. Finally, Scully did the one thing that could lead them from this darkness. She took a single step forward. Her body, maddeningly hovering just inches from his, just short of contact with his.

She's done her part, he thought. It's time to do yours.

His hands found her chin, cupping it gently as his thumbs raked over the soft skin that covered the strong, determined curve of her jaw. Her head fell back, and she finally released the tears that remained. Mulder pulled her closer as she cried, and he cried with her. She visited the dark corners of her memory, finally acknowledging the grief and pain that still lingered. The terror of the abductions, the missing time. The anger at her cancer. Her fears for Mulder's life. The grief of losing Emily. When her sorrow had been overcome by fatigue, Mulder finally spoke again.

"Please, don't try to do this alone."

"I could say the same to you."

He smiled, just a little, to let her know he understood. When a moment had passed in silence, she leaned forward, slowly and gently touching her lips to his. Despite the caution of the kiss, he was immediately drawn into it, utterly lost. It was only the product of years of rational denial of his feelings for her which allowed him to break the contact.

"We shouldn't," he said, "it's too dangerous."

Scully looked at him as he wondered what her response would be. He really didn't want to push her away in one of the rare moments when she'd displayed a break in her composure. She was vulnerable, fragile, and he was frantic he'd caused her to close off to him again. When he thought she was about to speak, no one was more surprised than Mulder when she simply leaned forward and kissed him again.

Just this once, she thought. Just this once, I need to know what this would feel like, to lose myself in him.

Her lips played over his, deeper, more seriously than they had before. Her actions said everything she'd never been able to tell him before, placing all of it before him, a truth only he could understand. He met each movement she made, his mouth moving ardently over hers, his intensity growing with hers. His hands moved from her chin to the back of her head, gently supporting her as he deepened the kiss further, each contact of their lips growing longer. His tongue found its way slowly to hers as their heads turned in desperation, each of them frantic to find a way to bring the other closer.

Her hands, still at her sides, finally found their way into his jacket to his chest. Mulder's quick intake of breath caused him to break his mouth from hers momentarily. His feeling of loss was immediate. He brought his hands lower, into her jacket, around her waist, and pulled her more closely to him. Her hands slid to his shoulders, trying to push the sleeves down his arms. He broke his mouth away from hers, just long enough to speak.

"It's futile. I can't let you go, not even long enough to take my jacket off."

She tugged at the shoulders of the jacket, silently making it clear that she intended to overrule him. He leaned down, nibbling at the skin of her earlobe, then finding the sensitive skin just below it. He stopped again, just long enough to speak.

"Maybe you're right. Just this once." He dropped his hands back, allowing her to slide the material from his arms, hearing it pool at the floor behind him. He mimicked her actions, finding the material of the silk shirt she wore cool against his hands as her jacket also fell to the floor. She stepped backward, and his hands slipped over the smooth fabric, falling away from her. She reached up, pulling at the knot of his tie, slipping it from the collar of his shirt, and tossed it onto the couch. He found the buttons of her shirt, trying to control the shaking of his hands long enough to unfasten them, when she pushed him gently away.

She took a step back, her hands finding the top button of her shirt, but then paused. She looked at him, her eyes dropping to the collar of his shirt. He understood, and he started to work the first button of his own shirt free. Her hands mirrored his actions, and they both continued downward, quick glimpses of skin visible as they worked. She pulled her shirttails from her waistband, and he again followed each movement she made. When the buttons were dealt with, both shirts fluttered to the hardwood floor.

His chest was bare, his muscles shadowed in the dim, waning light of the setting sun coming through the window. Scully reached around her back, carefully unfastening the hooks of her bra. Her shoulders pulled forward, the slim satin straps sliding down her arms, then to the floor.

Words were meaningless as he saw the vision before him. There was a spell over them which allowed them this refuge, and he instinctively knew any sound he made would threaten to break it. Although he longed to go to her, feel the weight of her breasts in his hands, taste her already aroused nipples, and then carry her away to where they could both find salvation, he waited.

Every inch of her body excited him, he realized, as he drank her in, his eyes seeking out and finding every detail. Her lips were swollen from his kisses, her eyes almost glowing with desire. Her breathing was deep and quick, and each exhalation which escaped from her mouth drove Mulder further away from his ability to control himself. As erotic as the anticipation was, he wasn't sure how much longer he could keep himself from touching the brilliance of the body she was slowly revealing to him.

Scully forced her hands to find the button on the waistband of her pants, waiting to unbutton it until Mulder mirrored her movements. Mulder quickly removed his shoes and socks as well, leaving only the barrier of his boxers. The room had darkened as they revealed themselves to each other. Her eyes found his remaining piece of clothing, the strength of his desire for her evident as moonlight now washed over the room.

It feels like a dream, she thought, wondering how they'd come to this precipice. The potency of her grief had made her vulnerable, unable to deny her need for him. The urgency of her feelings had surprised her, but their existence hadn't been a secret to her for some time. As frantic as she felt, as much as she wanted to rush to him, she knew they would never again have these moments, the first, and perhaps the only, time they gave themselves to each other.

Her hands found the top of her pantyhose as she stepped out of her shoes, and she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Without looking up, she spoke just long enough to stay him.

"Wait. I need to watch."

Mulder's breath grew impossibly ragged as her voice flowed over him, through him, around him. Desire rang in the low, raspy tones as each inflection caressed him.

Her hands slowly pushed the nylon down the slight swell of her hips, then over the strong curves of her legs. She straightened, her eyes even darker, her cheeks flushed with longing. Silently, her eyes found his, falling down his chest, finally finding the final piece of his clothing that separated them.

Mulder took the elastic into his hands, slipping the fabric carefully over himself and allowing it to fall downwards. Scully was openly staring at him, but Mulder found her gaze directed into his eyes. He had lain himself open to her, and he knew she would follow him.

As she did, they crossed another boundary, another carefully built barrier of denial fell away. She straightened, and they gave themselves a moment to see each other, truly see each other for the first time. Tears welled, burning Scully's eyes as she drank him in.

And again, Mulder waited for Scully to take the step that would close the distance between them. His hands found their earlier place underneath her hair as they began their kiss again. Her arms wound around his neck, pulling their bodies close. The shock of sensory overload rolled through her as her nipples dragged along the taut skin of his chest, and she weakened as she felt him pressing against her stomach, hard and powerful.

His hands slipped from her head, brushing the sensitive spots on her neck as they traveled downward. His mouth followed, finding the hollow beneath her earlobe and exploring it. Scully's hands skimmed his shoulders, then turned to brush his nipples. She felt rewarded with the low murmur that resonated from his lips directly into her skin, further exciting the sensitive nerves he'd discovered.

Despite the maddening beauty of his movements, she pulled her head away, now finding his nipple with her tongue. She circled, slowly at first, quickening only after her teeth had nibbled at the delicate fold of skin. She was given a second groan, which she returned as she felt his hands find her breasts.

Her skin was warm under his hands, her elegant curves filling his palms. His fingers found the darkened circles they sought, already impossibly tightened with desire. He circled, mimicking her again, varying gentleness with strength. Just like his Scully -- gentle, but strong.

She broke away from him, leading him through the hallway to her bed. They kissed again when they reached the bedroom, and he lowered her gently downwards, his mouth never leaving hers. Side by side, they remained. Kissing, exploring the world which now opened before them.

Her hands ventured lower now, gently finding and taking him into her hands. He pulsed strongly against her, and a sudden desperation to connect with him nearly overtook her. Her fingers moved slowly, finding each area of sensitivity, trying to give him everything he had given her, his touch, his words, his trust. Her hands moved, allowing him to fill her hands as she'd felt her breasts filling his. His mouth never left hers, but she felt the need to find his ear with her mouth, first kissing, then breaking the silence again.

"I need you, Mulder."

His stomach tightened with hunger for her, using his last scrap of restraint to continue the seduction.

"Not yet, Scully."

His hands moved down her body again, brushing the surface of her smooth stomach as they found the warmth that awaited him. His finger slipped gently inside her, leaving his thumb free to manipulate the fold of skin above. Her hands abandoned him as the sensations overcame her, a loss he would receive back a hundred fold as his desire grew with hers. He began a slow, ancient rhythm, insinuating into her, pulling away, as his thumb circled unrelentingly. Her breathing was labored, but it was the two whispered syllables of his name, interrupting her gasps that nearly caused him to bury himself within her. He watched her, memorizing every detail. Her skin was glowing in the moonlight that illuminated her body, her chin inclining as she abandoned herself to the waves of pleasure that rolled sensuously over her. For one moment, the entire universe was made up of the pressure of Mulder's hand on her body, her only thoughts were of him, this gift he was giving to her. For one moment, her grief and fear receded completely, the apex of her passion consuming her, then leading her to the serene perfection of complete tranquillity.

Mulder rested beside her, his own heart beating impossibly quickly, dizzied after the experience he'd shared with her. He nearly forgot the immediacy of his own need, laying his head on Scully's shoulder, watching as her breathing became more regular, as her features relaxed.

Scully opened her eyes, kissing him again, this man who had given himself to her unselfishly. Desire returned to her as she remembered the feeling of him within her, and she longed to experience it again. She pushed gently at his shoulder, and he rolled to his back. She moved to half-cover him, her hand running slowly down his stomach, tracing the lines of his muscles before she moved to straddle his waist. Her hands found his, clasping them tightly as she leaned down to kiss him again. Her tongue moved along the line of his lips before she broke the contact to lean upwards. He was so close to her now, slipping just next to her, centimeters from her core. She braced her hands on his shoulders, giving her the leverage to find him, pausing just before she guided him inside her with one sure, slow movement of her hips.

He felt her, hot and tight around him, and he closed his eyes to savor and memorize her completely. When he opened his eyes, he reached upwards, running one finger down her cheek in appreciation and awe of her beauty. When she began to move over him, he was nearly lost. Every nerve ached in response to the friction as she slowly slipped over him. Their eyes locked, and he saw his own feelings of fulfillment reflected back, contentment crossed with need. Her speed accelerated, slowly, as if she meant to savor every aspect of the passion that grew within them, between them.

Mulder tried to steel his resolve, hoping to share his complete abandon with her, and was rewarded as he watched her approach her climax again. He grasped her hands again, that final contact pushing them both over the edge, joining in body and spirit as neither of them had ever experienced before. They moved hungrily together, each movement threatening to sap the last of their strength, until exhaustion overtook them.

Scully moved to lie beside him, her head on his shoulder, his arms circling protectively around her. They slept, their bodies tightly fitted together, too tired and sated to worry about the monumental change they'd just begun.

------------------------

Scully sat near the bed, watching as Mulder slept, and wondering if he had any concept of the terrible error they'd just made. Water ran down the side of her face from her hair, still dripping from her shower, and she finally looked away from him to towel it dry.

"If this wasn't my apartment, Mulder, I'd probably try to sneak out," she whispered to herself quietly enough to avoid waking him.

"And you think I'd let you go?" He opened one eye, obviously wide awake and merely pretending to sleep.

"What are you doing?"

"Watching you. Watching you watching me. Hoping you'd take that robe off so I could get another look at you."

"This isn't funny, Mulder," she began, annoyed with him for his ignorance of the danger they'd put each other in, but more annoyed at herself for allowing it to happen in the first place.

"What are you talking about?" Mulder sat up. Although his smile was fading, just enough of it remained on his face, as if he knew she was serious, but was still hoping she was joking.

"This. This was a mistake." His face hardened, his features now unreadable. It was impossible for Scully to discern if he was angry, or hurt, or just confused.

"It was? Are you telling me you didn't want this?"

Scully knew all she had to do was agree with him, and he'd leave. Hopefully they could put their working relationship back together, and perhaps this experience would even excise the sexual tension which had always existed between them. But as she looked at him, the intensity in his eyes stole any chance she'd had of lying to him.

"No. That's not what I'm saying. But I am saying it was inadvisable."

"Inadvisable? That's all you can say?"

"No, that's not all I can say. I could say a lot of things, but it doesn't change the fact that it was a mistake."

"Scully, I love you, and that isn't a mistake. And I know you love me. Just try and tell me you don't."

She had to look away from him, down at the floor of her bedroom, studying the grain of the wood as she tried to regain the strength to follow through on what she knew had to be done. Before she could stop herself, the words tore from her. Selfishly, she needed him to know the truth, even if just for a moment before they faced the inevitable.

"I do. I do love you."

"Then what is it, Scully? Come here and tell me. Whatever it is, we can fix it."

"Can we? Can we fix Andrea Ritter, or Bob, or Allison?"

Silence followed, stretching longer and longer until Scully couldn't withstand another second of it.

"Don't you understand, Mulder? We have so few tools to use, and we just threw one of them away. Our judgment, Mulder. Do you think it will ever be the same? Can you still send me into danger and take the chance that I might get killed? And what about the distraction? One more second spent like last night could be the distraction they need to get us killed. Can you guarantee it won't happen?"

"No. I can't."

"So you see what I'm trying to tell -- "

"But I can also tell you it's already happened. We can't stop what we've already begun. And we're stronger together than apart, despite the weaknesses you see."

"That's ridiculous, Mulder."

"No, it's not. Shouldn't we both have been dead a thousand times over? You, of cancer, or in Antarctica, or during a dozen different routine cases? And me, how many times have you saved me?"

"I don't see what your point is, Mulder."

"We've been so blind to it, Scully, I don't blame you for missing it now. This...this," he grabbed her hand for emphasis, his grip tight as he delivered his impromptu, impassioned speech, "is one of our strengths. The most formidable of them all. Why do you think I chased you down in Antarctica? I flew thousands of miles, fought off hypothermia, exhaustion. I risked my life to get you out of that ship. Do you think I'd do that for just anyone? That isn't part of the normal partnership package, Scully. I found the strength to follow you, but only because I love you."

"Mulder -- "

"No, wait. You've had time to think about this, so let me finish making my case."

"All right."

"Scully, do you lie to Congress for just anyone?"

Unwillingly, she smiled at the memory -- such a strange reaction, some part of her noted. "No, Mulder. Just for you."

"I seem to remember you followed me to the Arctic a few years back."

"Yes, I did."

"And you saved my life by bullying the doctors around."

"You could put it that way."

"Why did you order me out of the building in Dallas?"

"Because SAC Machaud had ordered both of us to -- "

"No, Scully. I'm not buying it. You knew as well as I did that Machaud was ignoring regulations. Someone should have stayed there with him, but you wouldn't let me do it. I seem to recall that you screamed at me on the steps of that building when it looked like I might go back in."

"Someone has to save you from yourself."

"And it's always you."

"Well, not always." She paused, merely for dramatic effect, a luxury she rarely indulged in. "Sometimes you get us in so much trouble that someone has to come along to rescue both of us."

"Scully. You have to know...if this is going to ruin us, it's already unavoidable."

She sat on the edge of the bed, half-facing him as she realized his arguments were wearing down hers. "So, we're doomed, huh?"

"Same as always." He smiled at her again, taking her chin into his palm and stroking her chin with his thumb. He was finally completely relieved when her face relaxed, her lips just barely easing into the shape he'd come to know as her smile. It was usually so subtle, so easily missed by anyone who wasn't looking for it.

"They will try to use it against us, Mulder."

"They already have. And they can try to do it again, but I'll be damned if they'll get past me, because I'm not going to let you out of my sight very easily. And if they succeed, I'll find you. Again and again and again, if I have to. And I'm going to need someone to watch my back, too."

Scully's face turned serious as she looked into his eyes. "They underestimate me, Mulder. They only use me as a pawn to control you, and that's how we'll win. You distract them, and I'll stab them in the back."

"I've underestimated you too," he said, looking down at the comforter.

"I know," she answered quietly, resisting the urge to make excuses for him. She needed to know the answer to her implied question.

"I don't know why, Scully. I guess it just seemed safer to leave you out of it all, as much as I could. I don't like to think about the pain this has caused you and the jeopardy I've put you in." He cleared his throat, the gesture somehow making it easier to change the direction of his thoughts. "But that's a mistake. It endangers both of us, and it's a disservice to your skills and intelligence. I want you there, fighting right beside me."

"No more running off on your own when you get a lead?"

"That's gonna be a hard habit to break, Scully." She cocked an eyebrow at him, prompting him to continue. "But I'll try."

She turned serious again, needing one more answer from him before she could accept anything further. "Mulder, if anything ever happens to me -- "

"Don't say that, Scully." He pulled her closer to him on the bed.

"I have to say this, Mulder. I need to know." His silence indicated to her that she should begin again. "If something happens to me, I need to know you'll go on. If we haven't finished this thing yet, if there are still men who have gone blameless for what they've done, I need to know you'll keep going. For both of us."

"Scully..."

"Mulder, don't. Don't try to say something you think I'll believe. Say something you'll believe. I want to believe you too much, and I can't let you fool us both."

"I will, Scully. I'll go on until they've all been brought to justice."

"If it comes to it, Mulder, I'll do the same for you."

"So then they'll have to get us both to stop us. And I don't believe they can do that."

"Everything I've said lately about playing by the rules, I take it all back. We're just wasting time. Every day we don't spend chasing them down, they're one step closer to their goal. No one is safe from them, there are no innocents in their eyes. I want them, Mulder, and I don't want to wait a day longer than we have to."

"We don't have to. We'll ignore them. I've got a hunch they won't try to reassign either of us again. We'll just continue to give them so many problems that they'll have to keep us both nearby just to keep an eye on us. We're so close, Scully, I can feel it."

------------------------

The man walked past the guard, glaring at him at the precise moment the young man started to ask him to put out his cigarette.

"ID, sir," the young, uniformed guard stammered.

"One nine one, alpha theta omega three delta," he answered, pausing to take a long, luxurious drag on his Morley, then directing his exhalation at the guard's face.

"Go ahead, sir. Sorry to trouble you." The guard winced. It was his job to know on sight each of the men who were authorized access to the facility. Once he'd heard the man's voice, he recognized him, but his incompetence at failing to recognize his face wasn't likely to be overlooked. It had been so long since this particular man had come, he'd nearly forgotten his soulless eyes, the wrinkles that lined his face, and his long, thin fingers, always clutching a cigarette. He dialed the code into the keypad in front of him, momentarily opening the magnetically sealed door that led to the main floor of the facility. The man disappeared inside, leaving the guard to continue his lonely surveillance.

He took another drag on his cigarette, winding his way through hallway after hallway, up one staircase, down another. When he finally reached it, the door to the cold storage section was heavy under his hands, blocking the chill from the surrounding rooms.

Cold storage was deserted, which wasn't surprising. The usefulness of this arm of the project had been called into question as of late, and most of the researchers had been temporarily reassigned to work on the vaccine. Thanks to Mulder, they'd recently had an inadvertent trial of the state-of-the-art vaccine, and it had appeared to work. The speculation was that it would only work within the 72-hour window after infection, with no effect if it was administered prior to infection, and those problems were the current focus of the research. Increasing this window of effectiveness was obviously the key to defeating the virus. In a full-scale, surprise epidemic, it was unlikely they could organize to inoculate enough of the human race in such a short time-frame. Their trials with the bees had shown that at least a week would be necessary, even with the unbelievably enormous swarms of bees that would be available to them.

Most distressingly, they'd recently been deprived of two subjects who could help them read the intentions of the invaders. The only two they'd found who possessed the power to track them and divine the timetable from them, and they'd both been eliminated. There was still a chance Gibson was out there, but Allison was certainly gone -- he'd witnessed that personally. A shame really, an utter waste. Of course, Ideal Futures was now up for grabs, now that Rudolph was gone. Their work, oddly similar to that of the Project, could now be taken over with the strategic purchase of the company. It wasn't a complete waste, but the time and effort that could have been saved by starting with a five-year-old subject would have been substantial.

Another drag on the cigarette, the smoke comfortingly warm in his mouth in contrast to the chill of the room. Certainly, the entire mess should have been handled differently, but he hadn't called the shots. The orders to play along with the woman's kidnapping scheme had been determined to be the best way to maintain plausible deniability. Unfortunately, that plausible deniability had been necessary. The doctors had been buried, the woman set up to take the fall, none of the information she would try to turn over the authorities would check out. And it was all for nothing. They still worked in the dark, waiting for the day when they'd all find out the process had begun. Perhaps the process would begin, and they wouldn't be ready. The human race would cease to exist, and the original inhabitants of Earth would resume their dominance. Perhaps even keeping some of us as pets.

Unless Mulder could...no, that could never happen.

It was his secret wish, that the project would be revealed, and the governments of the world would somehow have to try to deal with the problem. They might be able to do it, probably through releasing the men they'd jailed, only to continue their work. He'd thought to himself many times that this might be the only way they'd succeed, through accidental exposure. Or deliberate exposure. Perhaps the only way to win would be to hand Mulder what he wanted. He, himself, would be a dead man, certainly. But perhaps that's the way it was meant to be. It would be poetic justice if he died at Mulder's hands. This feeling of his had caused him to throw a bone to the boy occasionally, letting him see just enough to keep him on the right track, but he always pulled away at the last second, saving his own neck. In the end, it was too risky, trusting the fate of the entire human race to the global governments. He hoped for a miracle, but pragmatically, he realized the possibility that the leaders of the world were far too ignorant to realize the scope of the threat before it was too late.

One more corridor, he thought to himself as his hands began to go numb from the chill. His circulation wasn't what it used to be. All of them were growing old, starting to entertain ideas of passing the project on to the next generation.

Wouldn't it be ironic to see Mulder finishing the work his father had begun? The idea was tantalizing, as it had always been. And perhaps Mulder would bring his charming little partner with him. It wouldn't be surprising. He certainly seemed to be attached to her.

He turned the corner, entering the storage area, and grabbed a heavy-duty pair of gloves from the nearby desk. He finished his cigarette, flicking it carelessly to the ground and grinding it out with one of his immaculately shined shoes. He put the gloves on and walked purposefully to the cabinet he'd come to see. Hundreds of drawers stretched before him, each of them with code numbers stamped into their doors. He knew the number by heart -- he'd visited it several times before.

Perhaps it was time to try again.

He reached the cabinet, and kneeled to the drawer second from the bottom. He turned the lever to the side, releasing the catch, and pulled it towards him. It rolled heavily and noisily from the casing, billows of steam escaping from the drawer as the freezing cold air in the cabinet came into contact with the comparatively warmer air of the room. After it dissipated, he reached into the drawer, pulling a vial from the shadows. He examined it briefly, and allowed himself to reflect for a moment.

"Is this what you're missing, Agent Scully? We were so close to creating what we needed before. It was too bad you discovered her and made it necessary to terminate the experiment. But I think it's time to begin again."

He started towards the lab, intending to pull one of the researchers from his current work to try again. If they couldn't find what they needed, they'd make what they needed. The data had been gathered from the IFI facility, and hopefully they could duplicate the findings.

"Only from the best stock, Agent Scully. You should be honored."

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end

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