Valediction---Chapter 5

A voice was soft in her ear. It was soft and familiar, like a warm blanket wrapped around
her to keep out a chilly night. Her eyes fluttered open and took in his face, serious eyes
but lips smiling to reassure her.

"Hey Scully, rise 'n shine," he said, poking her softly. "We're here."

She sat up and felt the soreness in her neck and back. The drive had been long and bumpy,
and their vehicle was less than comfortable. Scully reflected wryly that she ought to be
able to handle the discomfort---she had spent the last nine years of her life enduring 
backaches and headaches for Mulder's quest.

"My God." Reyes voice floated out from the back. Scully was still a little groggy and she
rubbed her eyes, unsure of what she was seeing.

"You sure this is the place, Mulder?" asked Doggett, climbing out of the small, cramped
vehicle and slamming the door behind him. His t-shirt was drenched with sweat in the front;
the temperatures were soaring into the high nineties.

"I'm sure." Mulder grabbed his duffel and Scully's from the back seat and began making his
way to the small building just in front of them. He smiled at the memory, although it wasn't
particularly pleasant. He walked to the door, which was overgrown with weeds and climbing 
plants so that one could barely make it out.

"Hey Scully!" he called behind him. "Remember this place?"

"Sure I do, Mulder," she replied, smiling a little. "One of your dumber ideas, I'd say. One
of the many times I had to come to your rescue."

Doggett turned to Reyes and lifted an eyebrow. "What're they talking about?" She shrugged
and hefted her duffel out of the car.

"You rescued me? No, no, no Scully, if it weren't for me and my excellent driving we'd've 
had our asses toasted by those Blue Berets," Mulder insisted. "I've got skills."

"Yeah, you've got skills all right," Scully countered.

She smiled at him and shook her head. Doggett and Reyes exchanged another look of confusion,
then followed the pair along.

"So what is this place? Some kind of secret test facility? Alien UFO storage closet? The place
where Oprah gets her liposuction?" asked Doggett humorlessly.

Mulder laughed a little while he tried to jimmy the lock on the door. "No, my disbelieving friend,
it's a high powered satellite once used to monitor the skies for extraterrestrial communication."

Just then the lock broke and the door swung open. He turned around, looking triumphantly at the 
other three. Scully motioned for him to go inside. He nodded and walked to the entrance, turning
on his flashlight, beaming it around the inside of the building.

"Hey Scully," he said, throwing light on dusty, corroded equipment and a trash-strewn floor. 

"What?" she answered, stepping inside and adding her own flashlight to illuminate the room.

"Look---just as we left it," he pointed out, drawing his finger across the table and holding it up
so that the others could see the thick coating of dust that had been allowed to accumulate.

"That's funny," Scully mused, lifting up plastic covers and examining equipment. "It's all still
here."

"What do you mean?" asked Reyes.

"When we were here last we were driven off by a batallion of Blue Berets, a UFO retrieval team sent
to clean up a crash," Mulder told them, flipping a few switches and watching the equipment whir to 
life beneath the plastic sheets. "I was told they were sent here to torch the place."

"So why's this all still here?" Doggett stood in the doorway, his flashlight off. "What would they
have possibly left here for us to find?"

"My only guess is that this wasn't what they were after," Mulder muttered.

"So what *were* they after?" asked Scully, riffling through a stack of papers. "I hate to give off
any negative energy, Mulder, but this feels suspiciously like a wild goose chase to me."

"You think Marita Covarrubias would do that?" he asked her.

"Do I think she's capable? Yes, Mulder, I do." Scully looked him in the eyes. "She's done it to you
before."

"But that was different," he protested. "That was when she was one of them. Before they did what they
did to her."

"What *did* they do to her?" Reyes asked. "I mean, what made her turn her back on them?"

"They used her," Mulder explained, getting up and brushing himself off. "As a test subject. For the 
vaccine we were sent here to find. They made her a lab rat and almost killed her. It's only by a fluke
of circumstance that she's still alive."

"But what about this source of hers? How do we know he's telling the truth?" Doggett postulated. Mulder
shrugged.

"I guess we'll just have to take that chance."

"Mulder, you were here years ago and didn't find anything," Scully reminded him. "What do you expect
to find now?"

"Scully, when I didn't find anything here I suspected that there might be another site," Mulder told her.
"According to Marita Covarrubias that site is near here. If we just fan out and search the woods, I bet
we'll find it. And, if what her source said is correct, that's where we should find the vaccine."

"If it's still there. Mulder," Scully began, "those military men were out here eight years ago to get
rid of *something*. If it wasn't this place, what was it?"

"That's what we're here to find out," he said, smiling at her boyishly.



"Agent Leigh!" called Parsons, approaching her at a run. She didn't move. She was still holding Marita
Covarrubias' body. It was still warm, and her blood was still pooling on the floor. Parsons bent down
beside her and put his hands on her shoulders to steady her. She was beginning to sway back and forth
slightly, and he was afraid she was going to faint.

"She---I don't know what happened," Leigh stammered, lifting her hands up. They were covered in blood. 
She took in a deep, ragged breath at the sight. "She walked away and then---and then---"

"Shhh, don't talk right now. I'll call for help." He took a cell phone out of his pocket and began 
to dial.

"No!" She grabbed the phone and threw it away. "Don't do that."

"Why not? This woman needs help."

Leigh shook her head. "She's already dead."

"Who shot her, Agent Leigh? Was it you?" Parsons asked.

"No." Leigh swallowed hard. "It was someone else. I---I didn't see them. They took off while I stopped
to help her. They're long gone. She knew---"

"She knew what?"

"That they were going to kill her---that her life---was in danger," Leigh choked out.

"Why did you shoot her, Agent Leigh?" 

"I didn't! I swear to God I didn't kill this woman," she insisted. "It was someone else. A man---"

"Okay, okay," Parsons said. "But regardless, we've got to get you out of here. We've got to call an 
ambulance."

Leigh nodded. "Fine. But wait until we get out of here. We need to find Mulder and Scully."

Parsons' eyes widened. "Agent Leigh, this woman is dead by the hand of an unknown assailant. You could
very well be in some kind of shock. You need to get to the hospital, NOW. I'm calling an ambulance."

She was too weakened by the experience to argue. She had been through the FBI Academy at Quantico; she
had believed she could handle anything. But this had been her first experience with fieldwork and she
had never held a dead body in her arms, never felt the steady pulse of someone's heartbeat as they
faded away, never felt the warmth of fresh blood pouring over her hands. Taking a deep breath she allowed
herself to fall against his chest, closing her eyes and sinking into darkness.



"Is she going to be okay?" Parsons asked the attending physician. They were outside Leigh's hospital room, 
looking through the little window at the sleeping woman.

Dr. McKane nodded and smiled reassuringly. "She'll be fine in a few hours. We put her on a mild sedative
to help her sleep. She's been through a scary experience."

Parsons nodded. "Do you think she'll be okay to go soon?"

"Well, she shouldn't go climb any mountains or bungee jump off the Golden Gate Bridge any time soon, but
I think she'll be fine to leave the hospital," Dr. McKane replied.

Parsons bit his lip thoughtfully. He was anxious to get on with the investigation, but he doubted that 
Leigh would be up to it. Nevertheless, he wanted to continue, with or without her, and to do that he needed
to know what she knew. He was certain that the Covarrubias woman had told her *something* about where they
could find the perpetrators, but she hadn't been able to tell him in her condition. He hoped that she would
awaken soon.

There was another question that irked him. Who had shot the Covarrubias woman? She had asked him not to call
the police but he couldn't ignore local law enforcement's jurisdiction over the murder. In a few minutes,
police were swarming the building. Several shady-looking plainclothesmen had been loitering around Agent Leigh's
hospital room ever since she'd been placed there, but when Parsons had approached them to ask for identification
they disappeared down the hall or into an elevator. 

Leigh had said something about Marita Covarrubias knowing that her life was in danger. He wondered what reason
she had to suspect such a thing, and what reason anyone would have to kill that woman. It couldn't have been
for the information she had---Mulder and Scully might have been a matter of national security, but he seriously
doubted that someone would kill for the things Covarrubias knew. He wondered if, maybe, the woman was in some
way connected with the mob.

A nurse emerged from Leigh's hospital room half an hour later with a soft smile on her face. "Agent Leigh's 
awake now, and she's asking for you, Deputy."

He nodded. The woman stepped aside and he entered the room, letting the door swing closed behind him before
approaching the bed. 

"How are you feeling, Agent Leigh?" he asked.

"Okay," she told him. "A little groggy, but no pain. How about you?"

"I'm doing fine," he said. "You wanted to see me?"

She nodded soberly. "You need to get me out of here."

"Sure," he said. "We'll just get your things together and check you out---you've got the doctor's permission.
I'm sorry I can't accompany you back to Washington, but I think I'm going to follow up on---"

She shook her head insistently. "No, no. I'm not going back to D.C. I'm going to Puerto Rico to find Mulder and
Scully."

"They're in Puerto Rico?" He lowered his voice and glanced over his shoulder. One of the plainclothesmen that 
had been lurking around passed by without looking inside; he must have know that Parsons was getting suspicious.

"What's wrong?" Leigh asked.

"There are some men outside your room," he whispered, moving closer to her. "Every time I try to ask them who 
they are they just vanish."

A strange expression crossed her face. "That woman---"

"Marita Covarrubias," he supplied.

"Yes. She believed that she was being followed---she knew her life was in danger."

"Yes, but why? What did she know?"

"She told me that Mulder and Scully were headed for Puerto Rico, to the SETI satellite at Aricebo. She didn't
tell me anything else about why, or how, but I think she knew. I think that's why she was murdered. Maybe she 
knew too much about the men who wanted her dead," Leigh surmised.

"What kind of people are we dealing with? The mob?" Parsons asked. Adrenaline was pumping through his blood.
In his small town he had never had such exciting cases---on a regular basis, there was nothing more significant
happening in Ivory, Colorado than a stolen car that turned up in a ditch, or a couple of irate neighbors calling
in complaints against noisy adolescents. The Ruskin murders had been the first in the town's history. Now the
mafia---the case was becoming more and more exhilerating by the minute.

She shrugged. "Maybe, but I don't think so. As much as I hate to say it, I think this might have something to
do with the government."

"What about the people who have been telling you about Mulder and Scully?" asked Parsons. "Who do they work for?"

"I don't know," Leigh confessed. "I don't know anything about it. Marita Covarrubias thought I was sent by the
people that were out to kill her---I didn't believe that was true at first, but now I don't know what to 
believe."

"So what do we do?"

"We need to get out of here without attracting too much unnecessary attention," Leigh told him quietly. "We need
to shake those guys outside my door and head down to Puerto Rico. I'm sure what we're looking for is there."

"Okay." He pressed his lips together and rose from his chair. "You get your things together and I'll try to 
chase those guys off. Then we'll high-tail it out of here. Sound good?"

She nodded wordlessly. He watched her for a few seconds as she wrung her hands and stared at them absently.

"Agent Leigh?" he called inquisitively.

"Sorry," she apologized. "I just can't seem to get that woman's last words out of my head."

"What were they?" he asked.

She hesitated. "Trust no one."

He smiled reassuringly. "Sounds like good advice."



Scully stared at Mulder's back as it disappeared into a thicket of bushes. She followed him in and called his name
when she couldn't catch site of him.

"Mulder? Mulder!"

"I'm right here," he said, his hand shooting out from behind a large bush. She jumped instinctively, then exhaled 
heavily and shot him a whithering look.

"*Must* you do that?"

"Do what?" he asked, grinning boyishly at her. She couldn't resist him when he looked at her like that and found 
herself smiling a little as well. He moved his hand down her arm and tangled his fingers in his. "Don't worry---
we'll find it soon."

"Well we'd better," she warned jokingly. "Or else I'm just going to sit down here and wait for December 22, 2012."

"That's Plan B," he retorted as he let go of her and forged ahead, deeper into the forrest. 

They had been wandering around in the area surrounding the Aricebo satellite for over two hours now and hadn't
found a thing. Scully knew that Mulder was covering it up with humor and bravado, but he was just as apprehensive
and afraid as she was. This wasn't just some random X-File that they could leave unsolved and forget about---this
was about their lives, their love, and, most importantly, their child. To give up now would be to give 
up on ever gaining control of their own destinies; to fail now would be to fail William. Both of them were 
determined not to do that, even if they had to die trying. 

*Which*, Scully mused darkly, *isn't out of the realm of possibility at this point.*

Really, it never had been. She recognized that, and she was sure Mulder did as well. She couldn't count the times
when either of them had been in mortal danger. They had lived their lives in constant peril for over ten years now,
Mulder for even longer than that.

*You'd think we'd be used to it by now*, she thought. But it wasn't something you could ever get used to or accept.
It just made them more determined to get back what rightfully belonged to them. They would stop at nothing until
this was settled on their terms.

Just then Mulder's voice broke through the thick leaves like a gunshot in the dark. "Scully! Over here!"

Scully broke into a run, heading in the direction of her partner's voice. She couldn't see him, but she could sense
him, and soon she found herself at his side, staring down a hill at a long grey building. It was simliar in
construction to the one they had found at their arrival, but there was one notable difference. It was charred
black along the roof and walls; it was apparent that someone had come and torched the place. Scully watched
Mulder's face fall as he realized what he was seeing. Doggett and Reyes approached them from behind and beheld
the same disasterous sight. They all stood at the crest of the hill in silence, each of them wondering what
could possibly be done next.

Finally, Mulder took the lead, hurrying down the hill as if he were running from something. The other three
followed his lead and came to the building in only a few seconds.

"Mulder---" Doggett began, but Mulder held up his hand for silence.

"There might be something they missed," he proposed hopefully, although Scully could hear the uncertainty in
his voice. She knew Mulder, and she could tell that his confidence had been shattered, no matter what sort of
front he was putting up for the others.

She put a hand on his shoulder and spoke softly. "Mulder, there's nothing here. Let's go. Maybe there's something
else."

"No, Scully, this is the place," he protested. "We have to go inside."

"You won't find anything," Reyes predicted. "It looks as though a bomb went off in there, which is probably
what *did* happen."

"If I've learned anything in this job, it's that nothing is what it seems," Doggett replied, moving to stand at
Mulder's side. "I say we go in and search the place."

Mulder looked at him with what Scully recognized as gratitude, then they both went for the door. The women 
followed and the four entered the building with their flashlights ablaze.

"Look at this," Reyes remarked, throwing light on several pieces of equipment that had been blown apart. Doggett
let out a low whistle.

"They really did a number on this place," he commented, picking up a few pieces of warped metal from the floor 
and throwing it aside. 

"You're a military man, Agent Doggett," Mulder replied. "The best of the best of the best."

"I guess you're right."

The four wandered around for a little bit more. Suddenly, Scully, Reyes, and Doggett were startled by a loud noise,
the scraping of metal on the cement floor. They whirled around to see Mulder struggling to move a large piece of
equipment aside. Without asking questions Doggett ran to his assistance and together the two got it aside to
reveal a door that seemed almost untouched, as if it had escaped the destruction almost entirely.

"Scully, look at this," Mulder called, motioning her over. She exchanged an interested look with Reyes before 
walking over to the metal door. To the left side of the panel there was a keypad with numbered buttons on it,
and there was a small plaque bearing a familiar name bolted onto the center of the door.

"Purity Control," Scully read aloud. "Oh my God, Mulder, this is it."

"What's Purity Control?" Reyes asked.

"It's the project code for the US government's attempt to create a vaccine against the alien virus," Mulder 
explained in short.

"All right, so how do we get this door open? That Covarrubias woman didn't give us the password to this
thing, did she?" Doggett asked.

"I don't even think she knew what we were going to find out here," Scully said. "There's no way that she
could have known."

"What I wanna know is who told her about this thing in the first place," Doggett demanded. "Who's this confidential
source that she's protecting. IF they're really trying to help you, then why don't they just tell you everything
themselves."

"You don't understand, Agent Doggett," Mulder replied. "These people, the ones that have always helped us out---
they don't know everything, nor do they necessarily have the ability to give us information they do know. 
Ultimately, this game is all about saving your ass. You've gotta play to win."

"That's all fine and dandy, but how do we win, then? We don't have the password to this thing, so we can't get
at what's behind it. Hell, we don't even know *what's* behind it!" Doggett said.

"Yes we do," Reyes answered. "It's the vaccine---the cure for the alien virus."

Mulder nodded. "Now we just have to figure out how to get it," he said. 

"Well, let's look around," Scully suggested. "There might be something here that will give us a clue to the 
passcode."

Doggett scoffed. "Who would be so stupid as to just leave the passcode to something like this just lying around?"

"Don't laugh, Agent Doggett," Mulder warned good-naturedly, exchanging an amused look with Scully. "I've seen it
happen."

"Okay," Reyes said. "Let's look around."

For nearly an hour the group searched through heapes of bent and burned metal, rifled through file cabinets 
filled with burned folders, punched commands into computers that flickered and died. Just as they were about to
give up, Mulder landed upon something. He rose from his seat on the floor with a small piece of burned paper
that he had found in a file marked "Purity Control" in one of the cabinets and took it to the door panel.
Smiling, he turned to the other three.

"Anyone here know what Feigenbaum's constant is?" he questioned hopefully. "Scully?"

"I don't remember exactly . . ." she wavered.

"What's Feigenbaum's constant?" asked Doggett.

"It's the universal constant for functions approaching chaos via period doubling," Scully told him. "I believe
it's about 4.669, if I remember correctly."

"And you thought a degree in physics wouldn't be useful," Mulder joked. She smiled as he punched in the code.
As if by a miracle the keypad turned green and the door unlocked. Mulder grabbed the handle and swung it open
to reveal a refrigerator that was large enough to fit all four former FBI agents in. Inside the walls were 
covered with small drawers, each bearing a name. One of them they recognized: C.G.B. Spender. Others that they
knew began to crop up: Diana Fowley, Jeffrey Spender. But most of the names they didn't recognize. 

"These must have been the vaccines meant for the members of the Syndicate," Scully postulated. Mulder nodded
his head in agreement. 

"Now what do we do?" Doggett asked.

"We grab as many of these as we can carry and head to Nysarch Air Force Base," Reyes said. "That's what Marita
Covarrubias told us to do, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Mulder said. "I have the map right here." He patted the inside pocket of his jacket. "Safe and sound."

"And then we find my son," Scully said.

Mulder went over to her and put his arms around her. She buried her face into his chest and breathed him in
deeply. He smelled sweet and earthy, like sweat and grass. She wrapped her arms around his waist and closed
her eyes. He kissed the top of her head softly.

"And then we find our son," he corrected her gently. "Then we get our lives back."



Offres Air Base, Grover, Montana:

The man they only knew as Deep Throat stared at the computer scene in the control room. He was thinking of them
at that moment, of Mulder and Scully. He knew Marita Covarrubias had spoken to them, had relayed his message
to them. She had called him only minutes after leaving their hotel room to give the message. He had been at his
apartment then, the residence that the alien replacements had allowed him to keep for what they called "human
sentiment", the place they had planned for him to die. They didn't even keep a tap on his phone, as far as he
knew. He felt safe from their surveilance because he knew they trusted him, respected him. It was he whom they
had made deals with. The aliens never trusted Strughold, Spender or Rosenburg, the man they called "Elder". They
were too subversive with their own kind, the aliens had reasoned; if they could deal double with their own 
people, they would do it to them, too. He and Kipling, the Brit that had helped Mulder, too, before being 
eliminated by the Syndicate---they were the only Syndicate members that the aliens had ever fully trusted. And 
now, with Kipling gone, the Syndicate erased by the alien rebels, he was now the only one left. They kept him
around because they had always liked him, trusted him because they always had, but he had ceased to be a player
in their game long ago. He was merely a spectator now; he depended on others to do his playing for him.

He was disturbed because he hadn't heard from Marita since that last telephone call. He believed she was dead but
was afraid to ask. If they knew that he had an interest invest in her whatsoever they would immediately 
question his fidelity to their project.

He was prepared to assume the worst, that they had caught up to Marita, suspected her enough to find and kill her.
He needed another plan, another way to get in contact with Mulder and Scully. With half the US military out 
looking for the pair it was impossible for him to contact them; besides, he had no idea where they actually were.
No, he neded to find another way. 

Struck with an idea, he punched the keyword VALEDICTION into the computer and searched through the file category
for new entries. There were two for the previous day. He brought them up and stared at them. They were personnel
files on a man and a woman, a deputy sheriff for a small Colorado town and a green FBI agent, respectively. The
file reported that they were receiving directions from an operative named Michaud. He was one of the earliest 
super-soldiers, one of what they called their "thinkers". He had once had a position in the FBI, but had 
disappeared after being apparently blown to pieces to protect the project in Dallas. 

He himself had never heard of this Agent Leigh, and personally wondered why the small-town-Colorado deputy had
gotten involved. He wasn't, however, interested in the particulars. These people were already trailing Mulder
and Scully. If he could just get them to understand his side of things, to get them to help Mulder and Scully
instead of trying to betray them, then he could continue to feed them information.

Slowly and painstakingly, so that nobody would notice, he recorded the telephone numbers for Agent Leigh and 
Deputy Parsons on a piece of paper, planning on contacting them as soon as he returned home that evening. When
he was finished he glanced up at the large digital clock above the computer monitors. The green numbers were
ticking away the seconds until the alien insurrection, and a tear rolled down his cheek. The game was becoming
more and more precarious, the stakes rising higher and higher with each second. They had already lost so many
to the cause; Mulder and Scully were the only hope now.



As Parsons left Agent Leigh's hospital room, one of the plainclothesmen moved away from the door and 
disappeared behind a door marked "Personnel Only". He retrieved a cell phone from his pocket and punched some 
numbers. When someone picked up on the other line he said only one sentence.

"They're at Aricebo." 

He listened for a moment to the person on the other line, then nodded in agreement. "Send a group down there 
immediately to eradicate them. And contact Michaud; he'll be relieved to know Mulder and Scully will finally
be out of the way."

With that he ended the call and left the room.

End of Chapter 5---continued Chapter 6