by Justin Glasser
Somewhere in the Antarctic
Day Six
0432 hours
She heard the door slide open before she noticed the change in light. She hadn't expected it so soon, but she curled the end of the towel around her hand. If he tried to get near Mulder . . . She had never strangled anyone in her entire life, never been responsible for someone else's death except through the impersonal distance of her gun, but if this man approached her partner, she would strangle him.
And hopefully break his neck in the process.
"Agent Scully," the man whispered. "Agent Scully?"
She slid off the chair silently, squinting to see the man in the void.
"I can see you, Agent Scully. I'm here to help."
Damn, she thought. Damn it.
"Stay away from us," she said.
The man shut the door behind him. "Put these on," he said, shoving clothes into her hands. "How is he?"
"Awake," Mulder said, from off to her right, voice groggy from sleep. "Who are you?"
"Shut up, Agent Mulder. Put these on." She heard the soft thump of clothes landing on the bed.
"What's going on?" she asked, feeling the smooth slipperiness of gortex under her fingers.
"This is going to go a lot faster if you keep your mouth shut and your ass moving," the man said.
*****
I felt rather than heard Scully's resentment of this asshole, but she kept her mouth shut because she knew the same thing I knew.
We were getting out.
I struggled into the parka and snow pants, yanking on the boots without doing the laces. After we were dressed he opened the door again, peering out into the dimly lit hallway before swinging it wide and letting us through.
"Come on," he said. "Move!"
He was military, that much was clear from the way he hustled us through the hallways, stopping at each intersection with his back to wall and peering around the corner to make sure it was clear before moving on. He had on a black ski mask and standard fatigues. I figured him for about five or ten years older than I was, but I don't know why. Maybe because of his voice, thick and gravelly, and used to being listened to. Enlisted, I thought, but I couldn't explain it.
The hallways followed, one after the other like a rabbit's warren, one leading to the next. There were no signs, no markings on the walls. Every hall we turned down looked just like the last.
Then the lights went out, and the halls were filled with blood.
*
**** Scully, who was right behind the man, heard the soft exclamation.
"Shit."
"What happened?" she demanded, grabbing his arm. In the strange flood of the red lights, his face looked like the mask of a demon.
"They know you're gone. I can't take you any farther," the man gasped. "I've got to get back. They'll be tracing me once they find out I'm missing."
"Who are you?" Scully asked, zipping up her coat.
"It doesn't matter who I am. Take this hallway until it dead-ends, about fifty meters, see?" He pointed. Scully followed his finger and nodded. "Take the left hall, then take an immediate right."
"You're him, the soldier who told us what was--"
"SHUT UP!" he hissed. "If you look close you'll see the outline of a door about ten meters down on the right side. Slide this in about where the doorknob would be." He pressed a flat card into her palm. "Good luck."
"Wait, where do we go after that?" Mulder whispered, but the man didn't stop edging away, glancing uneasily down at the box on his belt. "Wait!" Mulder's voice was a harsh demand.
The man disappeared around a corner and was gone.
*****
They ran.
Down the hall until it ended, then to left, and then the right. Scully stopped, running her fingers over the wall in the red light, searching for a door she couldn't see.
"Scully," Mulder said. She turned.
He was still at the corner, pressed flat against the wall.
"I can hear them," he murmured. She could see his chest heaving, even under the heavy coat. She hoped this door went somewhere good, because Mulder wasn't going to get very far on adrenaline alone.
"Tell me when they get close enough to matter," she hissed, still feeling for the door. The pads of her fingers caught on something and in the bloody light of the reserve lamps she finally saw it, a thin black outline of escape. She slid the card into the line.
Nothing happened.
"Damn!"
"Gettin' closer," Mulder whispered.
She turned the card on its side and swiped it like a credit card. The door hummed and the line widened. She slipped the card into one of the huge pockets of the parka. She could feel the door's thin edge, only raised a quarter of an inch from the wall. She bent her fingers around it and pulled. The line widened again, half an inch, three quarters, an inch and a half, two, and she felt the slip of air from one room to the next. She squeezed her fingers into the opening and pulled. It didn't budge.
"Scully," he hissed in warning.
"Mulder, come here," she hissed back.
She took his hand and slid it into the crack between the door and the wall above her own. "You're going to have to help me," she whispered.
"This is a hell of a time for me to have to play He- Man," he said.
"Shut up and pull, Mulder," she answered, and counted to three.
The door moved so slowly it was almost painful. Her blood pounded in her head, and Mulder's breath rasped over her ears. The rhythmic beat of boots on the floor crept closer and closer.
"Come on," she wheezed, straining against it.
"Go, Scully, go," Mulder groaned. She could feel him trembling with the effort.
"Can you hold it?"
"Go!" He kicked at her, and she went, squeezing herself through the opening. She propped herself in the opening, bracing herself with one leg against the wall. Mulder slid in, pressing against her, chest to chest.
"Remind me," he said as they slipped through the opening and fell to the floor, "to escape military complexes in the middle of the Antarctic with braless women more often."
Scully watched as the door eased shut behind them, sealing off all light. "I'm wearing a parka, Mulder."
"It's the thought that counts, Scully."
"Where do you think we go from here?"
"I'm guessing away from the door," he said, grabbing her hand and tugging her to her feet.
They ran.
*****
It only took us ten minutes to reach the other side of the room or corridor, or where ever the hell we were. I ran my hands over the wall, feeling nothing but the chill. If there was a door around here, it probably went to the outside.
"Mulder, look," my partner said, and I knew she was pointing, but she didn't need to. Down near the floor a red dot glowed faintly.
"You still have that--" the key was slapped into my outstretched hand. I knelt, found the opening with my fingers, and pushed the card in. "Scully, if this works . . ."
"We're going to be out in the middle of Antarctica alone without supplies. I know, Mulder."
I waited.
"I'd rather freeze to death than watch you get another one of those injections."
"You sure?"
"You didn't see yourself, Mulder. You . . ." she paused, "you *wet* yourself. I'm sure."
"Jeez, Scully. You sure know how to send a guy off."
I felt her hand in my hair, then on the back of my neck. It lingered there for a moment, and I leaned my cheek against her thigh, and closed my eyes for a second. Just a second.
"Let's go," she said.
I pulled the card from the slot, the light turned green, and the door opened onto the barren wasteland that would surely be our graveyard.
*****
She had known it would be cold, but the pleasure of the crisp bitter breeze still caught her by surprise. She was happy to see daylight again--real daylight inching across the horizon, not light canned and programmed to change every twelve hours like some sick parody of the sun, but real light, fresh and glinting off the snow. She struggled into her gloves and zipped her parka all the way up so that she peered out from a tunnel of fur. Mulder did the same. Behind them, the door slipped shut, and when she turned she saw that it had vanished, camouflaged perfectly by its color and the blowing snow.
Mulder pointed. A hundred or a hundred and fifty yards away, figures trotted back and forth on the snow, vanishing suddenly, rabbits into holes. None of them appeared to notice the two awkward strangers standing off to the far side of the camp. Mulder hooked his arm over her shoulders and they began to walk away, into nothingness.
*****
They managed to go on for almost an hour, until all traces of the camp had faded behind them and Scully felt both frozen and slick with sweat. Her legs trembled. Mulder had already stumbled twice.
"Mulder," she said, raising her voice to be heard through the layers of cloth that muffled her. "I need to stop."
He led her to a snow drift raised by the wind and sat down. She fell next to him, against his arm.
"How do you feel?" she asked, turning her whole body to see his face. He looked pale and bleary beneath his parka.
"Shaky," he said. "I don't think I can get back up, Scully."
"Neither do I, Mulder."
"So this is it, then."
"Barring the sudden appearance of the calvary, I guess so."
They sat in silence for a while, and Scully found herself enjoying the day, the bright glare of sun on the snow, the light breeze. It was lovely. She could just take a nap here, and when she woke up everything would be fine.
"You cold?" Mulder asked.
"Not too bad. You?"
"A little. I'm getting sleepy, if you can believe that."
"I can. It's a standard symptom." She noticed he didn't ask of what. "You gonna go to sleep?"
"I think so."
"Okay."
He was fiddling with his jacket, his zipper. He got it eventually, and pulled his coat wide open, shocking her with his audacity.
"Mulder, what are you--"
"Are you coming in, Scully? 'Cause, in case you haven't noticed, it's fucking cold out here." He grinned at her. She found herself grinning back, and then she found herself pressed once again against Mulder's slim chest, sitting across his lap, her arms wrapped around him. He smelled like sweat and laundry detergent and he was warm, so warm that she unzipped her own parka enough rest her cheek against his collarbone.
"Would you really have left?" he asked, and his voice rustled beneath her. She remembered that sound from a hundred different midnight phone calls.
"I might have left the X-files, Mulder," she said. Here, at this moment she felt she could admit anything, say everything. There was no point in sparing his feelings now, she thought, and that thought made her squeeze him closer.
"Mm hmm," he said.
"I might have, Mulder, but you're not the X-files."
"You'd never leave me."
"I'd never leave you, Mulder." She didn't so much hear as feel the steady thudding of his heart under her cheek.
"Never, hmm?" he asked, leaning down and she tipped her head to look up at him.
"Never," she said, knowing that it was the truth. It was now, anyway, and later didn't look like it was going to matter much.
"And look where that's gotten you." He squeezed her.
She smiled up at him, tilted her face in, kissed his cheek. "No, Mulder, this is because you wouldn't leave me."
He laughed then, a real laugh that shook through his body, and she dozed off on the tail of it.
*****
I don't want to die. No matter how many stupid things I've done, no matter how many risks I've taken, this has never been my intention. Not my death, and not hers. But if this is the way it's going to be, if I am going to be the cause of her death, then I need to go as soon as possible after her, because I sure as hell couldn't do it without her, brave words to the contrary.
I always thought I could die happy with Scully in my arms. I just never thought I'd have empirical proof.
*****end 9/10*****
