Subcutaneous 5 of 8
Disclaimers, etc, in part 1

He watched for a bit. One man dressed in a lab coat drove one of
the cars away. Probably going out for an early lunch...there wouldn't
be a better time.

"Okay," he whispered to himself. "Okay, okay, okay." He drove up
to the back of the warehouse, where his car wouldn't be seen if the 
man came back, and moved to a door in the back of the warehouse,
a small side door.

His senses had sharpened, completely focused on the wood of the door
beneath his hand, the metal of the lock underneath his fingers. He
knew from some distant place that his pulse was beating faster than
normal, that he was on an adrenaline high.

He entered the warehouse carefully, half-expecting to be clubbed
from behind. But no one challenged him, or came to kill him. <What is
with these people, Scully? Half the time, I'm able to wander around
without anyone noticing. You'd think that an international conspiracy
would guard itself better.> <And the other half of the time, you get
your ass kicked before you even get there. You can think about it
later. Now, get your butt in gear.> <Yes, ma'am.>

He walked carefully and quietly through the open first floor, around
boxes and carts, before he heard voices from a small office.

"Do you want to call him or should I?"

"He gives me the creeps. You call him. I'm going to head home. It's
Sunday. My wife likes me to spend time with the kids."

"Everything all set upstairs?"

"Yep."

"All right. Take off, then. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Bright and early."

He peered from behind a stack of boxes as another man left the office
and strode quickly through the warehouse, whistling "The Rain in 
Spain."

What a guy. Performed experiments on human test subjects for alien
colonizers on weekdays and enjoyed show tunes on weekends. Bastard. 

Upstairs, then. 

Upstairs was...not a warehouse like any he'd seen, but was set up
like a laboratory. Computers, monitors, four medical gurneys with 
restraints. The overhead lights were off, now, but he'd bet they 
would shed powerful light. 

Goddamn song was running through his head. The rain in Spain stayed
mainly on the plain, which could not be explained.

There was a small room, with a metal, locked door, in one corner of
the second floor, and he got out his lock pick again, fumbling with
it this time, keeping an ear open for the man downstairs and for
any movement within this room. 

He was terrified.  

Please.

The door gave way unexpectedly, and he stumbled a half-step into
complete darkness, holding onto the doorknob for balance.

Empty. God *damn* it.

He took one more step inside, letting go of the door, and was
unprepared when the edge of the door swung heavily and suddenly into
his side, knocking him off balance. Then there were hands on his back, 
twisting him around and pushing his face against the wall roughly, and 
something hard kicked his feet out from under him. Face pressed 
against the wall, on his knees, he heard his own harsh breathing
and that of the person who had felled him, felt the thin edge of 
something knife-sharp and cold touch the back of his neck, and was 
flooded by an almost immeasurable joy.

"Scully?" he whispered tentatively.

There was a sharp, indrawn breath, and then he felt a hand run, not
gently, down his back, to his holster, taking his gun. The steel 
stayed at his neck the whole time. Then there was the soft sound of 
footsteps (so softly that the person must be wearing socks, or
barefoot) walking backwards.

"Turn around. Slowly." The command was whispered, the voice 
unrecognizable and hoarse, and he felt his certainty suddenly falter.

"Turn *around.*" The voice was so quiet, he had to strain to hear,
but he could hear the click of the gun cocking distinctly.

He turned and rose in one swift motion, reaching for his gun in
his ankle holster as he did so, half-expecting to hear a gunshot as
he did so.

They faced each other, guns held ready.

"Scully?" he said again, softly, and heard his own voice crack in
disbelief or fear. He blinked, but the vision before him remained
the same, Scully in hospital scrubs, feet bare and white against
the floor, hair limp and tangled around her white, strained face.

Her eyes were wild, but the gun was perfectly steady in her hands.
"Put down the gun."

He shook his head. "Scully, whatever is making you do this, it isn't
really you. You don't want to..."

"Shut *up.* If you are Mulder, put the gun *down.*"

"Scully, it's me."

"Put it *down.* Unless you're going to shoot me, is that it?"

He shook his head again. "Okay. Okay." He held one hand up in 
surrender as he crouched and put the gun on the floor.

"Kick it away." Her voice was still hushed, still cold, and he did as
she asked.

"Scully, it's me. You don't need to do this," he whispered again,
rising slowly with his hands still held up in supplication. "Whatever
they've told you, or whatever you're thinking right now, you don't
need to do this. I'm not the enemy."

"*Mulder* isn't the enemy. I don't know who you are. A man with 
Mulder's face once threw me into a glass table and kidnapped me." 

"It's *me,* Scully." He paused, waiting for a memory to come him, 
something that only they had shared. "You sang to me in Florida. 
Joy to the World. Not the Christmas carol, the one by Three Dog Night.
How would I know that if I weren't me?"

"You could have taken that from my memories! You could have gotten
that from me, by stealing from my mind..." The gun shook in her hand,
and he thought he saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes in the dim 
light. Her voice was intense, but still pitched low, as was his, to
avoid being overheard.

"My memories are all I *have,* Scully. How else can I prove this to 
you?"

She held up a scalpel with one hand--that must have been the 
sharpness against his neck. "I want to see your blood. I want to know
that you don't bleed green."

She held it out to him at arm's length, and he came forward slowly,
cautiously, to take it.

He stepped back, holding it with his right hand to the palm of his
left.

"Be careful," she blurted out, and he glanced up, startled, to see
that she looked startled herself, as if the admonition had come from
her unawares.

He sliced shallowly, carefully, across the base of the palm of his 
left hand, wincing a little, and held his hand out to her, palm up.
Finally, finally, she lowered the gun, reaching out her other hand
to touch his. "Oh. Oh, Mulder."

"Scully. Are you...? What did...?"

"I'm so sorry." Her eyes were fixed on his hand, at the blood welling
up. "But he was here, the other man, the one who looked like you 
that one time. I couldn't..."

"You had to know," he said. "It's okay." The cut wasn't bad anyway;
he'd have gone through much worse to prove himself to her.

Her eyes rose to meet his, and he could see that she was in command
of herself again. "How did you get here? How did you know to come
here?"

"Paper trail...stuff we dug up about Spender before. Scully, we gotta
get out of here before they come back. There's only one guy downstairs
now. You going to be up to getting out of here?"

She reached out silently to take the scalpel from his hands, and 
held it up to him, raising an eyebrow. "I didn't steal this just for
fun."

He nodded, suddenly close to tears or laughter. She looked almost as
bad as she had in Antarctica, pale and tired and barefoot, her eyes
strained and red. But damned if she hadn't been ready and able to 
get herself out of here by taking on whoever would next walk through
the door. The sheer pride that he had in her nearly silenced him,
and his voice was husky when he spoke. "Let's do it, then."

***

He was preoccupied with the shoe problem, trying to think if there
was anything between the room and his car that she couldn't run over,
if necessary. The factory floors were okay, only the risk of splinters.
When she stopped in the middle of the top floor and turned around, he
stopped too.

"What's the matter?" he whispered.

She was staring at the computers and their blank, silenced, screens.

"What's the matter?" he repeated, a little louder but still
as quietly as possible.

She was moving over to them swiftly, her fingers flipping switches
with confidence and reaching over for a blank disk. "I want what they
know," she said. Her voice, like his, was still hushed.

"Scully, we can come back with a warrant and get this. Come on, let's
go out to the car. We'll call on the cell."

She shook her head, not bothering to look at him. "It'll disappear
before we get back. You know that as well as I do. I want what they
know, Mulder."

He glanced uneasily at the stairs. Staying here longer than 
necessary was pushing their luck...the lure of knowledge pulled him 
back, as it always would, and he moved to stand by her side. 

"Keep watch," she told him. "I don't want him to hear us and alert
someone before we can get down there and prevent him."

He nodded, keeping an eye on the stairs, trying to listen for any
movement that might come from downstairs.

"What are you looking for?"

"What they did to me...what they did to the others." She was rapidly
searching through file names now, selecting one to save on to disk.

"How do you know what's relevant?"

She did glance up at him, briefly, at that, but her head turned back
down, hair covering her face so that he could not see her expression
when she finally responded, in an affectless voice. "I imagine they
were planning on...erasing my memory again, before they sent me 
back. They didn't bother to keep their research quiet."

The computer whirred and clicked as the file saved, and she pointed
and clicked to save another one. Her voice was a merest breath as 
she continued. "I remembered...being here, I remembered more from the
first time they took me. Not everything, but more. They didn't bother
to hide their plans that time either. They would talk about their
science projects in front of us then, too, if we were in the room."

His gaze moved, involuntarily, to the set of gurneys, and he imagined
Scully there, trapped and helpless, and fighting it, or immobilized.
He shivered. "They're very arrogant," Scully said calmly.

"Who was here?" he asked. "Alien or human? You said that the man
who...the man with Samantha on the bridge, the shapeshifter. He was 
here?"

Her eyes slid up to meet his and away again. "Briefly. To...he 
claims to have the same sort of ability as Jeremiah Smith. The others
who have come, and those who held me last time, were thoroughly 
human. No special abilities at all. Sorry to disappoint you."

"Dis..." his head snapped back, as if she'd physically struck him.
He felt as if she had. "Scully, I would *never* want...I need to know
what we're dealing with. It wasn't..."

She moved to save another file, and his words stumbled to a halt.
"At any rate, they talked more than they should have," she said
finally.

"What are you getting from their computers?" he asked.

"Information on how the cancer was programmed into the women through
the implant. How they designed it, basically."

"Is that what they wanted you for? Are more of the women here?"

She shook her head. "They wanted a chance to test me because of last
summer. The vaccine. They wanted to know its effects. The other women
didn't seem to matter to them. Mulder, I'll tell you about this 
later. We don't have time now." She ejected the disk, inserting 
another one.

The backwash of what she had said earlier hit him suddenly. "Scully,"
he said, and reached out to touch her shoulder. "This man, this being,
you said he claimed to have the same abilities as Jeremiah Smith.
Scully, Smith could heal people. Did this man, did he?..."

He knew that his hope was naked in his eyes when she finally turned
to face him. Her own eyes were troubled. She nodded slowly. "I think
maybe so. I don't know how, and I'll need to have some tests run, 
but...I haven't had a nosebleed since he came. I haven't had any of
the other symptoms." 

"But that means..."

"I have to have the tests run," she repeated stubbornly, and turned
back to the computer.

After a moment, he put his hand on her shoulder again, feeling the
fine tremble of her skin underneath his touch. She had been stretched
too far these last days, he knew, and he also knew that she would
not fully talk to him about them for a long time, if ever. 

"Don't get your hopes up," she said, very softly, so that he had
to strain to hear her. "They might have just wanted me healthy 
enough that they could run their tests on me. It doesn't mean..."

"I want to have my hopes up," he said, leaning in close to her
ear. "I need to."

She shook her head, her hair brushing against his chest, his neck,
because he was standing so close.

"I thought you were dead," he told her. "I thought you were dead,
and gone, and then I started to hope that you were still alive. I can 
hope for this, too. For both of us."

She didn't say anything, but neither did she step away. He ran
his hand up and down her back, soothingly, as she stood at the 
computer, feeling periodic tremors shake her underneath his hand.

***

A half hour later, she had filled up three disks when they suddenly
heard movement below, doors opening and a multitude of voices.

"Hell," Mulder muttered. "I think some of the other doctors are coming
back. How many were there, total?"

She shook her head, ejecting the disk and shutting down the computer.
"Nine or ten men. Not all doctors. Some were just muscle men or 
assistants. Usually not more than five or six were here at the same 
time."

He glanced again involuntarily to the gurney. Nine or ten men who had
seen Scully helpless, who had put her in that position...he snapped
his head back to the stairs. "You think they'll come up?"

"I don't know." She reached out her hand, and without even thinking
about it he pulled his gun from its holster and handed it over to
her, drawing the second one from the ankle holster automatically.

"You're not on some kind of drugs that would make you not shoot
straight, are you?" he hissed belatedly. 

Her eyes went distant again. "Not enough to make a difference."

"You want to go downstairs now and confront whoever's there or stay
here and wait to see if they come up?"

She cocked her head to one side, considering.

"They may just leave," she said doubtfully. "And we're not sure how
many are down there."

"We're trapped if they come up here, though. If we go downstairs
now, we might be able to avoid them."

She shrugged. He ran his gaze over her, trying to gauge her fitness
to storm downstairs.

She wasn't even wearing any shoes, for God's sake.

"Downstairs," she said suddenly. "I don't want to be trapped."

He nodded, started to warn her to be as quiet as possible, and then 
forced himself to silence. She wasn't an idiot.

"My car's out the back way..."

"You think anyone's noticed it by now?"

"If they had, they'd probably have come up here."

Their eyes met for a minute, as they usually did before searching a
building for a suspect, and then she gestured for him to take the 
lead, holding the disks in one hand and the gun in the other. He
reached over to take the disks and tuck them into a pocket, and
she let them go slowly, reluctantly.

The walk down the stairs was an eternity, Scully at his back, the 
proper distance away as defined by training protocol.

As always when he had to be quiet and sneak up on someone or something,
he had to fight the urge to yell loudly and run at them, brandishing
his gun. He wanted, badly, to hurt the ones who had hurt Scully, who
had taken her away for their own uses, to pummel them into the ground,
to wave a gun at them until they pleaded for mercy, to strap them to
the metal gurney and...he stopped his thoughts. This wasn't the time.
He had little idea of Scully's condition, and less idea as to how many
people were downstairs. Anything could happen in a firefight, and he
didn't even know what kind of weapons they had. Priority was getting
Scully out and the disks away.

He gritted his teeth against the part of him that wanted to take
the rest of the stairs running and yelling like some sort of Celtic
warrior, Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

He had mentioned this temptation to Scully once, and she had said dryly
that Mel Gibson might be able to get away with it, but she wouldn't
advise that he start wearing kilts.

Four men were standing by the small office; they sounded like they
were joking with each other. None of them looked in Mulder and 
Scully's direction as they sidled to the back door carefully.

The opening of the door gave them away, as it cast patches of sunlight
on the ceiling, and he heard a raised voice. "Hey, who's...shit, get
him..."

But he had already pushed Scully in front of him, and they were 
running to his car. He already had his key in the ignition as she
was pulling her door shut. 

"Duck!" he snapped, pushing her down on the seat, crouching low
himself, and putting the car in gear.

Yells behind him, and the crack of a weapon and he waited for the
car to slew sideways as a tire went out or for the back windshield
to shatter, but it didn't happen. 

"The four who were there were all researchers. Probably not very good
shots," said Scully from where she had slithered down to crouch in
front of the seat, one hand balanced against the dashboard.

"They might get lucky," he said, accelerating and peeling out of
the parking lot. "You think they'll follow us in the cars?"

"Don't know."

He grunted in response and pulled out onto a main road, following
it before he saw a smaller side street and pulled onto that. No 
reason to follow a straight path.

"The police?" he asked after a moment.

"No."

"What?" That surprised him; Scully was usually such a stickler for
the letter of the law.

"Whatever's on the disk will become evidence. And our evidence
disappears. I want to see exactly what I have on here first before
I let anyone else see it or tamper with it."

He nodded; the reasoning made sense to him. But then, it was his
own kind of reasoning, his own brand of paranoia. "Hotel?" he asked.

"Somewhere out of the way. Somewhere where they won't be able to 
see your car. And we'll need a computer..."

"I'll call the Gunmen."

"No! Not on your cell."

"We'll stop someplace at a pay phone," he told her. And she nodded,
and after a moment pushed herself up onto the seat.

"You okay?" he asked.

She didn't answer.

"Scully?"

"Fine."

***

They drove around aimlessly for over an hour until he found a pay 
phone and called the Lone Gunmen. There were a few clicks, where 
he suspected that he was being transferred over to his own 
apartment's line. 

"Byers."

"It's Mulder."

"Mulder! Where have you been? Are you all right?"

He heard Frohike and Langly's voices as well, clamoring to talk to
him. 

"I'm fine. Is this a secured line?"

"As secure as it can get."

"Okay. I need you guys to come, and bring a computer. We'll be at 
the Dayz and Nightz hotel at 600 E. Wesley, okay? Under the name 
of..." he paused, frantically searching for a name that had no 
connections to his own. "Um, Rowland."

"We? Who have you got with you?"

"Just come," he said, and hung up. After a moment of hesitation,
he called Skinner as well.

"Skinner."

"Sir? It's Mulder. Listen, I need you to do me a favor, without
asking questions. I need you to come to..."

"No." Skinner's voice was sharp.

"What? This is about Scully, about...what happened to her. It's 
important."

"This isn't a secured line. Don't say anything that you don't want
to be overheard."

"You think your line is being tapped?" Mulder said after a moment,
thinking about the shifting edges of uneasiness that he'd heard in 
Skinner's voice.

"Maybe I've met your friends too often," said Skinner. The comment
was light enough, but the undercurrents of his voice troubled Mulder.
He replayed Skinner's tone in his mind.

"Are you okay?" he asked finally.

There was a beat of silence at the other end. "Just fine."

"Okay, so I'll assume your phone might be tapped...um, suffice it
to say that I made a visit to a warehouse owned by the Consortium
and found something...interesting. My friends, if you talk to them
via a secure line, they'll know where I am."

"Where was this warehouse?" Skinner asked, and the uneasiness in
his voice had escalated.

"Virginia--not far from where you are, in fact..."

"No...don't say any more than that..." Skinner said urgently.

"We're a long way from that now, anyway," said Mulder, trying to
catch what in Skinner's tone was troubling him...a lack of surprise?

"We?" Skinner asked, and now he was surprised.

"Um, yeah. I don't want to talk about that over this..."

"Oh, my God," Skinner said, as if in realization. "Oh my...is sh...
is the person you're with, they're physically okay?"

"Yeah." He found that his face was stretching with a grin. "Yes."

"*How?*" 

"I don't know. I'll explain later."

"Okay. Get off the line. Make sure that you go somewhere far enough
from this phone." And then there was a click.

He returned to the car thoughtfully. "The Gunmen are coming."

She looked over at him. "Something wrong?"

"Maybe. I don't know. Skinner was weird."

"Is he coming?"

Mulder shook his head. "I don't know. He was more paranoid than the 
Gunmen are. I think he figured out that you're still alive, too."

"How would he possibly have..."

"I don't know. I guess it doesn't matter. Come on, let's find that
hotel."

"And maybe at a K-mart or someplace first. I need clothes."

"Oh, I brought 'em. You still had your overnight bag in the trunk
of my car from our last trip, and I never took it out."

When he glanced over at her, she was looking back with an expression
of fervent gratitude. "Clean clothes and my own shampoo?" she said
longingly. "Oh, I owe you."

He found himself grinning again. "You're so easy to please."

End 5 of 8

Subcutaneous 6 of 8
Disclaimers, etc. in part 1

She took a shower when they got into the hotel, moving with as much
haste as she could without actually running, and he waited in the 
room they'd checked into, torn between restless pacing and sudden
waves of exhaustion.

When she came out again, she was dressed in the outfit that she had
had in her overnight bag, her standard outfit of black pants, white
blouse, black blazer. No pantyhose; her feet were still bare.

"The Gunmen will probably be here pretty soon," he told her, settling
in the middle of one of the double beds. She sat on the side of the
other and regarded him seriously. "Do you want to wait for all of us
to be here before you tell us what happened, or tell me now?" 

She pulled her feet up on the bed, sitting cross-legged as he was;
for a moment, they could have been on any of a hundred cases, batting
ideas back and forth across the beds. "They told me that they were 
telling people I was dead. What tipped you off that I wasn't? Another
mysterious informant coming out of the woodwork?"

He bit his lip. "No, I...you didn't feel gone to me. For the first
few days, I thought I was just in shock. Denial. Whatever. And then
I started to think...I'd never seen your body. My proof that you 
were dead was based on what other people had said. Not necessarily
people I knew or trusted. I thought it was worth a shot to check some
of the warehouses owned by the pharmaceutical companies that we know
they're allied with." 

"That was it?"

He lifted his eyes from the bedspread to give her back words she had
once given him. "I just knew."

Her lips twitched a little in what might have been a prelude to a 
smile.

"What about your brother?" he asked quietly, knowing that the question
would defeat the smile altogether. "That stopped me for awhile; he 
wasn't a doctor I'd never met before. I couldn't think of how they..."

"Easily. The EH substance that Susanne Modeski synthesized."

"Hell. I thought that Susanne had destroyed the samples of that."

"I can only assume that they had a similar substance, or that her
fiance had already given them the formulas." For a moment, her brows
drew together, in a remembered pain. "They came in, three of them,
and injected him," her hand traced a path behind her right ear,
"and told him that it would be better for me if they took me off to
save me, that he should tell people I was dead. They did the same 
for the medical examiner, I imagine, or instilled some conviction that
he had performed the autopsy. I don't know. I don't remember the time
I was under the EH very well; I doubt he does either. Probably
he doesn't remember anything about that day, only that he was told
I was dead...I don't know."

He let out a sigh of relief. "I was afraid that..."

"Afraid of what?"

"That they'd gotten to him in some way. That they'd..."

"Trust no one?"

He shrugged.

"He's my brother, Mulder."

"I know." 

They fell silent.

Her eyes closed for a moment and then blinked open again slowly 
before closing again.

"What are you thinking?" she asked softly, still with closed eyes.

He looked at her tiny figure, hair still wet, and told the truth.
"Foot fights."

The corners of her mouth turned up involuntarily. "What?"

"Sam and I, we split a room in the summer house. We'd sit on the 
edge of our beds at night, when we were supposed to be asleep,
and have foot fights."

"Melissa and I did too," she said, and he could imagine the two 
of them, little red-heads in the dark of the room, dressed
in frilly nightgowns, kicking at each other's feet and trying to
stifle their giggles so their parents wouldn't hear them. The 
corners of her mouth turned up even more, and then she said
quietly, "I'm glad that my brother didn't sell me out. Not 
voluntarily."

"So am I."

***

The Lone Gunmen were happy. No, ecstatic. 

"Why didn't you let us go with you?" exclaimed Frohike, punching 
Mulder in the arm after he'd hugged Scully.

"Didn't have any proof that there was anything odd about her death.
Besides, you guys already thought I was cracking up."

Frohike slugged him again. "We would've come."

"Are you doing okay, Agent Scully? We should get her to a doctor,"
Byers said. Frohike had hugged her exuberantly, Byers much more
carefully, and now he put his hands on her shoulders and peered at
her face. 

"At least they didn't take her to Antarctica this time," Langly
said in an aside to Mulder, and he nodded in response. His credit
card had never been the same since.

"We should get you to a hospital," said Byers, even more seriously.

Scully shook her head in what Mulder knew was carefully concealed
irritation. "There are some other things I need to take care of first.
How many doctors are there among your subscribers?"

The three men looked at each other and shrugged. "About fifteen,
maybe," said Langly. "No one ever tells us their real occupation.
A lot more have medical knowledge of some sort."

She reached out her hand to Mulder, and he pulled the disks out of
his pocket. "I want some other doctors to see what's on these. 
Especially some oncologists."

"What's on them?" Frohike asked, pushing his glasses up with one
finger and reaching out for the disks.

"Scanlon said he had a treatment for the cancer. It made it worse,
but I should have paid more attention to it. Because...twisted around,
changed a little...it might be a treatment. How many more of the
women have died?"

The three looked at each other, and Byers delivered the news. "Forty-
two that we know of. There are sixty more who have gone out of 
remission. They're in various stages of the disease now."

"You think this can save them?" asked Langly.

"It might be a start," said Scully. "An explanation, at least."

"And you?" said Frohike.

"I don't know," said Scully, biting her lip and not telling them
about the shapeshifter. "Let's get this done before they realize
that I've taken their information, okay?"

***

They told their stories to each other in dribs and drabs while the
Lone Gunmen began to upload the files and disseminate the information
to their friends and allies. How the Cigarette Man had come with the
two other men to her hospital room, directing them. How her mother 
had reacted to her death. How the shapeshifter had placed his hand
on her forehead, and the tingling warmth she'd felt. How he'd slowly
begun to realize that the feeling he still had of her presence wasn't
simply denial. How they had tested her blood in a million different
ways to see what the virus and the vaccine had done to it. How he'd
decided to escape his apartment by presenting the Gunmen with a 
busted computer.

He felt alternately solid and shaky, both happy and undeniably
fragile. 

"Okay, we're getting something back from Dr. Who," said Frohike.

"Dr. What?" asked Mulder.

"Dr. Who. We're fairly sure that he's really a doctor," said Byers.
He was sitting and typing at the small desk, and the others crowded
around him. Mulder stood on the outside, trying to decipher the
graphs and tables that were forming on the screen. Medical data.
Scully's department, not his. She was engrossed, her eyes moving
swiftly to process the information.

"He thinks that..." Byers started to interpret.

"I got it," Scully interrupted, and bent to take control of the 
keyboard herself. Her hands were on the keyboard were both elegant
and capable, but the nails were chipped. He could see part of a 
bruise on her wrist, most of it hidden by the cuff of her blazer,
probably from where she had fought the restraints. 

His throat closed up, another quick emotional response. "I'm gonna
take a shower," he said, and beat a hasty retreat to the bathroom,
grabbing his own overnight bag along the way.

The tears waited until he was in the shower, for which he was
grateful, but they were not kind when they came, wrenching, noisy
sobs that shuddered through him. The small, calm part of his mind 
told him grimly that he should have been expecting this, that he
was on emotional overload and that this was an acceptable, typical
response, but it was a small comfort as he tried to stifle his 
weeping so that the others wouldn't hear, tried to breathe.

***

He'd stayed in the bathroom for a long time, carefully shaving, taking
his time. He wasn't eager to go back to the other room; he suddenly
wanted nothing more than to hole up in his own apartment with nobody
else around, not even Scully. 

They were still clustered around the computer, but he let himself
settle on one of the beds, pulling the pillow out from under the
neatly tucked bedspread and leaning back on it, letting his mind
wander over the events of the day. He supposed that this had been
a victory, but he had been trained by myth and fairy tale to expect
a pattern to victory: boy defeats danger against great odds, saves
girl from captivity, gets girl. No mention of post-traumatic stress
or reoccurring dangers at all...he sighed. Well. They'd deal with it,
he supposed.

He reached over to the end table for the remote, clicked the TV on, 
and switched channels until he had reached a college basketball game. 
Not a team he cared about, but he settled back and let his mind 
drift.

Skinner. Skinner had definitely sounded strange.

The four others were talking, and he picked Scully's voice out
and let it be the background to his thoughts.

And then, unexpectedly, to lull him to sleep.

***
Part III--April 25-29--Scully
April 25, evening

Mulder was mumbling in his sleep, which wasn't unusual. Scully had
heard him do the same in hospital rooms, on airplanes, on her own
sofa once or twice. Usually, the words were slurred and unidentifiable,
but occasionally a phrase would come through clearly.

Several times over the years, she had heard her own name, usually 
surrounded by phrases like, "listen for a moment," or, "how can 
you not see it that way?"; she didn't know if it was amusing, annoying,
or comforting that he argued with her even in his sleep.

She thought she heard her name in his mumbles today, but indistinctly,
and she couldn't tell the context. 

Byers had apologized for Mulder, as if Mulder's falling asleep on 
them were bad manners, by telling her that Mulder hadn't been 
sleeping more than two or three hours a night since her reported 
death. It hadn't occurred to Scully to take offense, and in fact she
was somewhat grateful. She wanted to focus on the data that she was
sending and receiving to the Lone Gunmen's subscribers, not discuss
her death and resurrection with Mulder. 

She would have to call her mother. Or better yet, have Mulder call her
and explain so that her mother wouldn't be shocked by her dead
daughter's voice on the telephone. And maybe it was time that Mulder
got the chance to deliver good news to her mother.

She would have to reverse the process of paperwork that her
death had started, she supposed. Answer questions about the warehouse
and what had happened to the police. And somehow she thought that 
Karen Kossoff would want to see her about this.

God, they hadn't even managed to wade through the emotional minefields
created by the first abduction yet.

She let her eyes close for a moment, wanting to get up, away from
the computer, to go over and and curl up on the bed as Mulder was
doing, to let exhaustion take her into dreamlessness and 
thoughtlessness.

"More from Dr. Who," said Langly, and tapped her shoulder. "You up
to this, Scully?"

"Yeah," she said, and opened her eyes again to read the message.

"Dr. Scully--I'm sending this to some other oncologists I know,
and I'll have to look over it more carefully myself over the next
few days, but even a preliminary read-through shows that what you
have here, if correct, will forward cancer research by at least five
years. Now, some questions about some of the protocols..."

She blinked to clear her tired eyes and continued to read.

***
April 26

Something was soft underneath her, and she relished that, pushing her
face deeper into the pillow.

"Rise and shine, sleepyhead," said a voice, and she twisted around
and sat bolt upright, feeling her heart begin to beat faster and 
looking around in confusion.

"Hey, it's just me," said Mulder, and she blinked him into focus,
sitting on the end of her bed. He held his hands up briefly as if to
show her that he wasn't armed, and she saw the very thin red line
where he had cut himself yesterday.

"Oh...oh, what time is it?"

"8:00. You've been out for about twelve hours."

"I was working at the computer..."

"Yeah, well, you pretty much conked out about eight, Byers said.
Sort of slowly keeled over. They figured you'd had enough. Put you
to bed."

Which meant that she'd slept all night in these clothes...God, she
wanted to brush her teeth. She rubbed her eyes. "I need to eat 
breakfast. 8:00 in the morning, right?"

"Yeah, unless that was the moon coming at dawn."

She looked around the room. The Lone Gunmen were gone, but evidence
of their presence remained: empty Doritos and Cheetos bags from the
hotel vending machine.

"Where'd they go?"

"They're going to get your mom, and your brothers. We're going to need
to return you to the land of the living today, but I thought you might
want to talk to your family before officialdom strikes."

"Deciding my schedule again?" she asked dryly, looking around the 
room for anything else, and then looking back at him when he was
silent.

He looked stricken, and she replayed her words in her own head,
realizing that Mulder had misinterpreted dryness as rebuke. "Thank
you. That sounds good," she said in apology.

"They'll be here in about an hour. Maybe you wanted to clean up,
get some breakfast?"

"Yes, please."

He smiled, restored to good humor. "There's a bagel place nearby. How
about if I go and get some while you take a shower or whatever?"

"Thanks," she said, and tried to smile for him, too, although she
suddenly couldn't wait for him to leave, to leave her by herself.
Perhaps he saw that behind her smile, because he suddenly looked 
sad again, and started to stand up.

She caught at his arm before he could, and leaned into him for an
awkward, quick hug. He put his arms around her as she was pulling hers
away, and gave her a longer, tighter hug, and she felt tears come 
to her eyes.

"Mulder...I'm not a very nice person right now," she said, muffled
into his shoulder.

His hand was warm on her hair, smoothing out what were probably
tangles. "Join the club. You and me, we can get a joint membership. 
I'm gonna get the bagels, okay? You need to build up your strength,
you know. Because let me tell you, rising from the ashes is a bitch."

***

It was. Oh, it was. 

Later, she would appreciate Mulder's tact in leaving her alone
for the half hour it took her to shower and dress in the jeans
and denim shirt that she had in her overnight bag, because it was the
last moment alone she had that day.

Her mother burst through the doors of the hotel and had her arms 
around her almost before she realized it, and she returned the hug
tightly, fighting back more tears. Then Bill was holding her, 
apologizing incoherently--the Lone Gunmen had apparently explained
the EH drug to him--and then Charlie snatched her out of his 
arms, swinging her around and telling her that he was so happy, so
very happy, he couldn't believe it. Then it was Tara's turn to gush
over her, telling her that she looked so well, so very well. 

As if she'd been gone at a spa instead of a government-owned 
warehouse.

And then she was back in her mother's arms again, torn between the
desire to cry as if she were still a child and the urge to comfort
her mother.

The part of her that wanted to retreat into the bathroom and take
a very long, very hot bubble bath, she ignored.

"But how did this happen? How did this happen?" her mother kept
saying. 

***

The police and the FBI agents had much the same questions, which she
spent the rest of the day answering. Skinner asked hardly anything 
when they saw him, standing in the corner of whatever room she was in 
with his arms folded, waiting for someone else to ask any questions 
for him.

She wished that she had worn her jeans and shirt yesterday, and saved
the suit for today, an additional armor against their probing 
questions. Yesterday, though, she had needed that armor as well.

At some point, someone pointed out that she had been kidnapped from
a hospital, which indicated sickness, didn't it, and shouldn't she
go back there? Her mother approved of this plan; Scully adamantly
refused. 

She didn't know what the shapeshifting bounty hunter had done to
her, but she did know that cancer or not, she would not go into a 
place that would leave her defenseless or drugged. It was Mulder and
Bill, in a surprising, and very temporary, alliance, who supported
her decision. 

Bill was furious at Mulder, perhaps because he hadn't been able
to rescue her himself. In a quick aside over lunch, when she 
apologized for Bill's continued cutting remarks, Mulder casually
diagnosed Bill's problem as shame: he had been duped, without even
realizing it. "How did you feel the day after you'd been drugged,
huh? Imagine that, but with worse consequences," he said. "And then
it's the guy who's ruined your sister's life, who you hate, who 
gets the fun of saving her."

"Thank you, Mr. Psychologist."

Mulder took a bite of his sandwich and spoke around it. "And, while 
you and I know that you were probably on your way to rescuing 
yourself, Ms. Scalpel, he doesn't see it that way."

"Because it wouldn't occur to him that his little sister could."

Mulder shrugged. "Charlie didn't look surprised at the scalpel-waving
part of the story."

"Dana, are you sure you don't want to get checked out by a doctor?"
asked her mother, coming to sit by them.

"I've already called my oncologist. I'm going to go to the hospital
for some tests later today, but I'm not staying there overnight."

"But the hospital could..."

"Mom, no."

"The FBI would put protection on your room."

"People can be bribed, or drugged. I'm not putting myself in that
position again."

"But surely you don't think they'd try something again?"

"They didn't let me go, Mom. That probably means they weren't 
finished with me. No, I'll be okay, but I'm *not* going back to
that hospital."

Her mother hugged her again, tears streaming down her face. "Oh,
Dana. It was so hard to lose you once...I can't bear..." and then
she was hurrying away to the bathroom.

***

The battery of tests at the hospital were stressful and exhausting.
It was almost an anticlimax when the X-rays and the blood tests came 
back.

Not a trace of the tumor. Not a trace of the cancer. No implants.
Other than exhaustion, she was a healthy woman.

End 6 of 8