Skinner stared at place where he'd last seen her. All she had to do was lie down somewhere in the deeper snow and she'd be invisible until she popped up like a leathel jack-in-the-box and took his fucking head off. God, how could he have let this happen? What if she found the shack? He shuddered with a horrible thought: what if she had ALREADY found the shack?
Scully. Scully. Leadfooted, he jogged up the road. When he reached the spot where the woman had fallen, he saw her parka lying like a deflated balloon on the ground. It was white, and empty...and so were her ski pants, and boots.
A few yards away, the rifle lay harmlessly in the snow in the opposite ditch, as if it had skidded there when she dropped it.
Nausea swarmed over him again and Skinner stepped back from the body, holding his hand over his mouth. There was no body, really. Just a faint hissing sound as something burned its way into the cold, leaving a faintly corrosive smell, like muric acid, and a residue, greenish, slimy, coming from the top of the parka, below where the ski cap lay empty.
Vision of the future: Kersh glaring at him over the desk, backgrounded by the men in suits. "You say there was a woman who looked exactly like Agent Scully committing these crimes?"
"That's right. Identical to Agent Scully."
"And where is this woman now?"
"She melted, sir. Melted right into the snow like a pat of butter in a hot skillet."
Jesus.
Skinner went back to where he had left Crawford. The boy was in a bad way, and Skinner wondered if Scully could help him. As he approached, Crawford called out, "No! Stay away from me! I'll kill you."
"I'll get help. I'll get Scully."
The boy's face was bone white and his teeth were chattering so hard Skinner winced at the sound. "Don't let them hurt her," Crawford begged. "Please...she's our mother. Please don't let them hurt her."
"I won't," Skinner promised.
He had to get to Scully. He turned towards the shack, hearing a frightening noise, a kind of muted roar he couldn't identify. He reached inside the truck and turned off the ignition. It sounded like an avalanche, like the whole damn mountain was about to come down on him.
The groaning and creaking sounds made him look towards the shack. Something had shaken the snow on the pitched roof, probably a branch falling from the weight of ice, and it was sliding down both sides, plopping off onto the ground and exposing the roof while it completely covered the sides of the building.
Skinner's first thought was, Surely she didn't sleep through THAT, and then his second was, she might be suffocated by the snow. But the roof was too drafty for that; all she'd have to do was dig her way out, if she hadn't already gotten out...
Sure enough, he saw the blue of her parka, the red hair bobbing above the snow. Her arms airplaned for balance, she was wading through the tunnel he'd made earlier. He went to meet her.
"What's going on?" she demanded. "I heard shots."
"It's okay," he said, "But there's someone who needs your help over here."
Her face darkened with concern, and she followed him to the truck where Kurt Crawford lay. "This kid said there was a clone," he told her. "That would explain who shot Mulder. We guessed right."
"She shot Mulder," Scully said, with relief in her voice. "That explains it, then. I mean, two people couldn't be at the same place at the same time, right? That will clear me, right?"
"Well, you might want to take a look at her before you decide on whether it will or won't."
Scully glanced at the pile of clothes in the road curiously and followed him around the truck to where the boy was lying, his eyes glazing and cooling, his face fixed in a grimace of death.
Scully grabbed Skinner's arm and tugged at it. "Get away from him," she said. "Come on. Back away." Puzzled, he let her move him away from the boy. The sizzling sound began as they were moving, and Skinner watched in fascinated horror as the boy who had called himself Kurt Crawford, the boy who had looked so much like Scully he could have been her son, simply dissolved in front of his eyes. Scully had her hand over her nose and mouth. "There's a chemical reaction," she said. "I've seen this kind of thing before. If you're close to them when they die, they can kill you."
"Shit," Skinner said softly. Within seconds, there was nothing but a green haze, and then that collapsed on itself and faded into the snow. Only the outer clothes were left, sleeves and cuffs frayed from whatever sickening chemical had evaporated into the air. "How the hell did you know that, Scully?"
She was already walking up the road towards the remainder of the clone's body. She stopped and stood there, her legs apart, hands at her sides, staring down.
Skinner walked about half of the distance between her and the truck, slowing as he moved, a great heaviness descending on him. His mind felt like a giant rock that had rolled uphill as far as it was going to go, and now was about to roll back down again, ponderous and inevitable. The sickness was so intense he wondered if he was going to vomit again.
Scully said quietly, "She almost ruined my whole life." Her words barely raised a fog in the air. "She just wouldn't quit."
Skinner felt helpless to move as he watched Scully walk across to the ditch and pick up the rifle. Whatever he was going to say to her didn't matter anymore. All he could think of was that it was just too late. Too damn late. The world spun by like a crystal dream, all powdered sugar and frosting, lovely on the surface and poison underneath. Centuries might have slipped by in the few seconds he stood there watching her.
As she walked back to him, he stared into her face, and she had only to look into his eyes to know.
She stopped, raising the rifle in both hands and pointing it at him loosely. With a heartfelt sigh, she said, "It would have been so much easier if you hadn't guessed. We could have walked right out of here."
"No," he said. "Mulder figured it out. Other people would, too."
She laughed bitterly. "Dave guessed,"" she said. "The fucking idiot. She was so in love with that asshole Mlulder, she never even looked at another guy. But Dave had the hots for her, and I took advantage of it, and no sooner than I'd screwed him, he got up and looked at me like I was dirt, and said, You're not Scully. You know what I said to him? I said, That's right. I'm not Scully."
She laughed again, a little hysterically this time. "The weird thing is, I forgot. He just fell over and didn't get up when I shot him. I mean, I forgot he would leave a body."
"You shot Mulder." It wasn't a question.
"Well, I had to, after that bitch gave us away." The not-Scully gave a little shrug. "He's so into himself, he hardly ever looks at me anyway. It took him weeks, but in his favor, we were never alone that much. Then just when he acted suspicious, I would let DAY-NA off the dosage enough to get back to work." She spoke Scully's name with such derisiveness, Skinner grimaced. "That seemed to calm him down for awhile," she said, "And it kept her so screwed up she wasn't asking the right questions about what was happening to her."
"Still," she said, with another sigh, "Mulder must have been suspicious enough to sic Kurt Crawford on us. Mulder. Jesus." She rolled her eyes. "That man doesn't pick up any signals that aren't from outer space, does he? Any other man would have taken me to bed about fifty times by now."
She looked into Skinner's eyes suddenly, her own a warm blue, smiling. "Had you suckered, though, didn't I? Just for the record, what tipped you off?"
Skinner shook his head slowly. There was no point in trying to explain what he'd felt that morning in the Hoover building outside his office, or this morning, when he'd seen Kurt Crawford. The wrongness that was not Scully, the rightness that was. He might have gone his whole life never understanding it himself if he hadn't touched her in the night in that place that was neither body nor mind, but a kind of singularity, a thing that made the difference between Scully and every other woman in the universe that could never be duplicated or explained. No matter how many bodies looked like Scully, there was just the one soul.
"Oh, my God," the not Scully said, in disgusted amusement. "You're not in love with her too, are you? Oh, great. That is just so damn perfect."
"You won't get away with this," he said.
"Why not? Because I can't kill her? Big deal. I admit it. I can't. But what's she gonna do when I remove you from the equation? Run for it? Not her. Not DAY-NA. She'll take the rap. I'll take the money and my passports and just disappear." She snapped her fingers, a sharp popping sound in the brisk air. "Mulder will stick up for her, but who the HELL listens to that screwball? Oh, that's right. You did. Well, we can fix that, can't we?"
Skinner said, "You won't get away with it because you're dying."
Her face contorted. "No, I'm not. Not me. It was her." She gestured slightly with her head, not taking her eyes from him. "She was the one with the monster tumor. Mine hasn't grown in months."
"But it will," he said, with a sadness he didn't have to fake. "It's inevitable. Already you're making mistakes. Your only chance, if there's to be any chance at all, is in treatment, and you're not going to get that if you run away."
"NO!" She screamed and leaped forward, thrusting the barrel of the rifle into him so hard and fast he didn't have time to move out of the way or tense his muscles. The metal tip caught him in thet solar plexus, driving the air from his lungs. He fell back with a grunt and sat down, gasping.
"You, I can kill," she said, bringing the gun up to her shoulder.
Skinner was trying to wheeze a reply when something flitted between them like a white bird. Before he could even guess what it was, a snowball flattened against the leg of the not-Scully's jeans.
Both of them swung their heads around to see Dana Scully coming through the tunnel of snow towards the road. She was scooping up another handful of snow as she walked, swiveling her hips from side to side to widen the tunnel, She packed it into another snowball, took aim, and fired.
Skinner stared, his mouth slightly ajar, as she flung it hard, overhand, like a baseball, and hit the not-Scully in the shoulder. The snowball exploded harmlessly and slid down the goretex parka.
"Over here!" Scully shouted. Her voice echoed her fury throughout the hills. "You want to take a shot at someone, here I am!"
The not-Scully half turned as if to exchange a look of bemusement with Skinner, and turned the aim of the rifle towards Scully, who looked curiously denuded, wearing the plaid shirt over the thermal shirt. She must have been freezing. Nothing on her head either, and no gloves. She'd be lucky not to get frostbitten ears out of this. But her face was flushed with anger and she looked like an avenging Valkyrie, a Norse legend sweeping down into battle. Skinner closed his mouth and swallowed, his breath coming easier but his heart hammering. The very sight of her made him rejoice; God, she was magnificent.
Whap! Another snowball. This one struck the not-Scully's hand where she cupped the stock of the rifle. "Quit that, you crazy bitch!"
"You drugged me for weeks," Scully shouted. "You shot my partner, you ruined my life and my career, you tried to dump all that snow on me and trap me in that shack. AND YOU STOLE MY COAT!"
Still another snowball, and this one must have stung a little when it glanced off the not-Scully's cheek. "Now you either kill me or I am going to KICK YOUR ASS!"
If Skinner could have stood up just then, he would have cheered. As it was, he only began to slide the Sig out of his jacket pocket. "Give it up. She means it."
Scully had reached the road and was coming at them. She only paused to reach down into the snow in the ditch and come up packing another snowball from hand to hand. She advanced on her double with no hesitation. Skinner drew his gun out all the way into the open. With a hiss of anger, the not-Scully whirled and brought up the barrel of the rifle and pulled the trigger. Skinner saw her hand convulse around the trigger and fired at the same time. Both shot from point blank range. Skinner braced himself, teeth clenched, the gun jerking its recoil in his fist.
No time to aim; his bullet struck her just between the ribs. But her own weapon exploded like a small hand grenade with a flash of gunpowder and a blast that made Scully yelp and drop to the ground and Skinner throw his arm over his eyes.
The not-Scully slithered down as if shrinking into her own clothes. Skinner caught a glimpse of the side of her head, blackened by the explosion, the one ruined eye and the terrible hole in the side of her face, and couldn't look any further.
After a few seconds, Scully crawled over to him. "Are you okay? Did she get you? Are you hurt?" She looked at the Sig in his hand and said, "Why didn't you let me know you still had your gun? I thought you were helpless."
"Is that why you tried to draw her fire? What the hell were you thinking, Scully?" He got to his feet painfully, too furious to think of what might have happened to temper his words. "You had no way of knowing the barrel of rifle would pack with ice and backfire like that! So you thought you'd just come in shooting with a fucking SNOWBALL?"
"I saw that gun lying there before she picked it up," she snapped back. "She'd already fired it, so it had to have melted the snow into ice around it and inside it."
Skinner jerked the zipper of his parka down violently and pulled it off. "That was an insane thing to do, Agent Scully, and if that's the best your FBI training has done for you, then I think it's time you had some refresher courses."
She took the parka from him and put it on without pausing in her reply. "You are the only man on earth who would stand there and complain about someone saving your life--"
The not-Scully was bubbling into oblivion, and the air literally smoked with their shouted words. Skinner turned suddenly and said, "That will be ALL, Agent Scully," in a voice that brooked no disobedience.
Scully glared, but fell silent. She turned from him, saw the clone melting into the earth, and her face changed, grew pale. She looked away again, eyes haunted by the vision that would probably never leave her.
Skinner wondered what she was thinking, but he didn't ask. He was not going to ask her again. That part of their adventure was over, and now he had to think of the future.
His real work was only just beginning.
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