**Author's Notes: This story revolves around the old conspiracy and dances circles a bit around the newer alien arc, whatever it was. Personally, I disliked the new direction that the creator Chris Carter took the series during Season 8, so I put a new spin on some of the old ways...and then some. This occurs just before "This Is Not Happening". (That was the episode where Mulder came back.) So if you are not quite up to date on your X-Files mythology, I'd suggest revisiting some a little bit before reading this piece, though there are some visits to the past.
My novel "The Edge of Obliteration" is still for sale on Amazon, Trafford Publishing, and Barnes and Nobles in e-book as well as paperback format. I hope you all enjoy-it is never too late to read an x-file...**
"Liefde Zan Ons Levend Bijhouden"
Chapter One
Hobbit Avenue, Flagstaff, AZ
September 15th, 2000, 3:49 p.m.
A canary yellow school bus marked "Cococino County Schools" pulled up to the stop sign to let off the few children of the neighborhood. Five rambunctious children hurried down the tall steps and jumped down onto the sidewalk. Only two of them did not part ways. The eight year old boy and girl remained close to one another while their other companions ran on ahead.
He reached for her hand and held it closely to his side. "So, Theresa, what'd you think of Ms. Connelly's science project?" They began a leisurely stride, and a rush of wind swept across them, suddenly truncating the blazing heat of the day momentarily.
"It's a waste of our time," the girl remarked.
"Well, why's that?"
"If I want to know how a volcano works, I'll watch the Discovery channel. I'd rather do that and write a report about it than build that stupid atrocity she wants us to concoct," Theresa scoffed and broke their touch to shove some of her long ash blonde hair away from her face.
"Yeah, but if we don't do it, our grades will suffer. It's a homework assignment, not extra credit."
"Aaron, do you know how stereotypical it is for kids our age to have to go through the hassle of constructing first a week's worth of newspaper carefully into a paper maché mountain and then have it graded upon how wonderful it looks? And then on top of that, a week later, the whole monstrosity will end up in the school dumpster or if you're lucky, postponed because of the science fair for another week."
"I don't think she grades it according to the project's looks. I think she grades it based upon the fact that it works properly," he stated, reached for her hand again, and started to swing it with his own in a gentle rhythm.
"She used to be an art teacher, you know, before she began her career over at our school."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I read about her just before school started again. Ms. Connelly's just a warm body filling a cavity in the third grade for now, until they can get someone with a real brain."
"That does explain a few things, now that I think of it."
"Right. Get out your paintbrush instead of your white vinegar and baking soda."
"Oh, I'm not very good at painting. Do you think you could help me if I do your paper maché construction?"
"Sure, no problem. Did you notice how she screws up our curriculum, too?" Theresa inquired.
"What do you mean?"
"For one thing, the 'volcano' is supposed to be a fourth grade project according to the Cococino County Schools' syllabus. We're probably supposed to just be collecting leaves and learning how to classify them since we're only in the third grade."
"Since when have you been reading your mom's syllabus?"
"Since my dad keeps on buying me those retarded R.L. Stine books. I asked him for something more stimulating, like a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes novel, but I guess it was too expensive. I don't know. I can't comprehend adult logic."
"Me neither. I think my dad's got a copy of some Sherlock Holmes adventures. I'll bring it over after dinner, if you want."
"Okay, that sounds cool." They were nearing two nearly identical adjacent houses. The only significant difference between the two was that there was a cactus on Theresa Samuels' porch. The Troxlers owned slightly overgrown hedges, and they hid the windowsills' ledges perfectly. But other than that, the color was the same, and so were the types of cars parked outside in the driveway.
"Hey, Theresa," Aaron raised his voice as she went across the way to her front door.
"Yeah?"
"Which do you like better, physics or chemistry?"
"Chemistry," Theresa answered him and fished out a key from her pocket.
"Me, too." As the two children closed the doors to their respective homes, they knew what had to be done. Unfortunately, it could not be put off any longer. By six thirty, the task had been completed.
The X-Files Office, FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
September 22nd, 2000, 8:15 a.m.
Agent Doggett made his usual morning rounds upstairs as briefly as possible. As much as he hated to admit it, the traffic of the bullpen was becoming less and less appealing for him. He had to come up here just once a day for their mail, but even that was getting old. He toyed with the idea of asking the mail room to install a box in the elevator next to the 'B' button but dismissed it once there was nothing in their current pigeon hole. Again.
Oh well.
Doggett eyed the pile of pastries sitting in an unguarded spot in the break room. Two minutes later, he was down in the basement hallway again only to find the X-Files office dark, save for the hard edge of the slide projector's lamp on her bureau. He dumped the Danish and glazed doughnut onto his seat and spun around to try to find the light switch on the wall. "Morning, Agent Doggett," came her voice from behind a portable projection screen.
"Good morning, Agent Scully," he returned and approached her. "Need any help?"
"I'm fine, thanks." She gripped the handle with one hand and cautiously balanced her weight onto a chair behind the screen. After two failed attempts, she finally guided the handle into the hook and triumphantly stepped down. Before she could even say anything, Doggett moved the slide projector into the appropriate position and sneaked past the huge obstruction to get to their coffee pot.
As she battled with the carousel, Doggett set down a mug of coffee beside it and picked up the breakfast junk food before retrieving his chair. "Where'd you get the screen, Agent Scully?"
"I purloined it from the audio visual department."
"Purloined?"
"Well, I actually borrowed it from Agent Schneider. Agent Mulder and I did own one, but unfortunately, it got demolished in our office fire almost three years ago. Besides, he owed me a favor." Scully gratefully took a sip of her coffee and winced. Doggett had many good traits and had proven himself as loyal as a canine, but unfortunately, his skills with making coffee were somewhat limited. I miss Mulder's coffee.
He apparently did not notice her expression since the office was dark, and that was fine with her. Scully remembered how at first, Mulder had the same lack of talent with the beverage when she first darkened the door of the X-Files office. Under her guidance, though, Mulder had gradually learned how to perfect the art.
"What am I looking at, Agent Scully?"
"A very blurry image. I'm sorry, hold on a minute." She drank some more and advanced the carousel into the next slide with the button on the machine.
"I'm guessing the remote got burned up, too?"
"That's another story I'm afraid we don't have time for right now," Scully commented, shook her head, and graciously refused one of the pastries he held out to her. "Ah. Here we are. What you see, Agent Doggett, is an extreme close-up of an exsanguination."
"A what?"
"An exsanguination. The victim is pierced with two knife wounds here, above the jugular vein," Scully said and walked over to the screen to point to the two markings, "where the heart continues to function as a pump, and therefore causes him to bleed to death. This is a common tradition with the Islamic and Jewish ritual of animal slaughter, as the Quran and Torah instruct the practitioners not to eat the blood of any animal. But as you can see, we're not looking at an animal. This neck, does indeed, belong to a human. A Mr. Ralph Troxler, age 38, of Flagstaff, Arizona." She traveled back over to the projector and advanced it.
"How long does it take for someone to die like that?" Doggett had to look away when the next slide showed a long shot of the middle aged man drowned in a huge puddle of blood on the floor. Even though he had been a New York City Police officer and seen much brutality, there were still some things that he could not stand to look at for more than half a second.
"It depends on the victim's height, weight, and blood pressure. But by the data given by the Cococino medical examiner, I can approximately guess that it would have probably taken two hours. And that's only our first victim." She advanced the projector to show the Troxlers and again for the Samuels then sat beside him in the other visitor's chair with an opened manila file in her lap.
"My God. What kind of a screwed up fruitcake would do that to four people? Do you suspect a cult or some kind of a gang initiation?" Doggett turned his chair to face her.
"No, the punctures made were too surgically precise for them to have been done by a gang member. There was the possible theory of a cult's involvement, until I got to the second page of the coroner's report. She found traces of digitalis in the bloodstream. Digitalis is culminated from a plant in South America, and if a human consumes more than 500 mg of it, the results are fatal."
"What kind of prescription medication contains this stuff?"
"None. It can't be bought over the counter, either. Digitalis once ingested causes paralysis to the spinal cord and then from there, the victims had no chance of escaping their murderers."
"Murderers? You're saying that these four people were killed by more than one person?"
"Yes. I've seen this before, as a matter of fact." Scully closed the manila file and reached to the desk for the red and white striped X-Files folder. "Seven years ago, Agent Mulder and I investigated a case where the victims had been poisoned by the means of digitalis and then phlebotomized. The crime was committed by two identical girls. One was from Greenwich, Connecticut, and the other was from San Francisco, California. As a matter of fact, the murders occurred at the very same moment in time."
"Were they twin sisters?"
"Not exactly."
He leaned forward very slightly in his chair. "Then what do you mean?"
"They were clones created by a Dr. Sally Kendrick, of San Francisco, whom they too murdered."
"Clones? Agent Scully, that kind of technology for humans isn't even possible yet. The scientists that made that sheep a couple of years ago even admitted that they made huge flaws with their three hundredth and whatever try that was." Doggett tossed a large amount of coffee down his throat.
"The technology is possible-I've seen it. Mind you, she didn't create these test tube children out of nothing-she did use someone's ova. However, they were engineered specifically to cater to certain expectations."
"Engineered? To whose expectations? You make it sound like that woman was making Chevys on a production line from Detroit."
"That was sort of along the lines of her intentions. She wanted to make the perfect assassins," Scully explained with a shrug.
"That's ridiculous. Why would she do a thing like that?"
"To carry on the work of her predecessors."
"Who?"
"I'm not precisely sure of that information," Scully stated with a shake of her head. "But what I want to know is how the technology got out again-all of Kendrick's achievements were destroyed by the time Agent Mulder and I found her office. This X-File isn't even an original-it's just the field report notes we gave AD Skinner seven years ago."
"I still can't get over the fact that you think two eight year old girls killed a grown woman."
"Well, their fingerprints were found all over a phial of digitalis, Agent Doggett." Scully handed him a sheet of paper and crossed her legs. "Does that sound plausible to you now?"
"Yeah, I guess. So what, do you think that they're at it again?"
"No. I checked on the records at Whiting Institute, which is where they were originally incarcerated, and they're both still there. Someone else is making killer children."
"Okay." Doggett gave her the paper back and opened one of his desk drawers. "I'll fill out the paperwork to AD Skinner for a 302 if you want to stop by the travel office and requisition two tickets to-"
She pulled out another sheet and gave it to him.
"That's a confirmation number for our 1:30 flight to Flagstaff today."
"How'd you get an approval so fast?"
"AD Skinner' s accompanying us."