Project Excaliber

by DigimonDragongirl

One of the first fanfics I ever wrote, way back when, about a genetic experiment Mulder frees and has to protect when the scientists who created her want her back.

Project Excalibur

By Shelli-Jo Yvonne Pelletier

***************

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has a few cases they'd like to keep under wraps. These cases are the unexplained, the unnatural, the cases filed under 'X'. Only two agents are willing to look for the truth, Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, the believer and the skeptic. Together they investigate the paranormal, aliens, ghosts, psychics, and whatever else no one wants to deal with, not to mention the occasional government conspiracy. They investigate the X-Files.

***************

FBI agent Fox Mulder sat in his rental car and straightened his tie. He was, and not for the first time, venturing into places he wasn't suppose to go, or even know about. He replayed the visit his informant had paid him this morning in his mind while waiting for the car in front of him to pull up to the only gate in the electrified chain-link fence that surrounded the classified medical hospital known as the Foxmire Building.

The black man he knew only as 'X' had said little, as usual. He had handed Mulder a blank manila envelope, again, not surprising. And he had disappeared before he could ask any questions. All in all, a standard meeting. Inside the envelope was a single photograph, grainy and in black and white, obviously from a security camera. The photo showed three men in white lab coats and, from what X had said, their test subject: a teenage girl. She was strapped into some kind of surgical chair, but didn't appear to be struggling. Her back was to the camera, so he couldn't read her face; he couldn't tell if she was there voluntarily or not. On the back of the photo was an address, and this was it.

Mulder pulled forward as the car in front of him passed through. The guard at the gate was young, which was a stroke of luck. The younger they were the more easily they were conned into believing. Mulder handed him the ID his hacker friends had printed up for him. It might not get him into the secret areas, they had warned him, but it would get him past the gate. The young man took the papers and studied them suspiciously, for a moment Mulder thought he wasn't even going to get that far, but he passed him through with a nod and a wave to the small parking lot around to the side of the building.

Out of view from the guard at the gate, Mulder opened the door to the rented car quietly. He had to find out what this was about. That girl could have been one of the hundreds kidnapped in the US each day, and proof that the government worked above the law when it suited its purpose to do so. At the least, Mulder would know one more truth that was out there.

X had mentioned a test, but that was it. He was the worst kind of informant, the kind that fed you tidbits like throwing scraps to a starving dog when it served his interests. But he was the only one Mulder had at the moment. The number of people he had even an ounce of trust in could be counted on one hand. Which included his partner Dana Scully, whom he had failed to inform about this little endeavor for an assortment of reasons, not the least of which was that he didn't want her mixed up in his illegal adventures.

There was a pair of guards at the doors, but the guard at the gate must have contacted them, because they waved him through without question, just ran a metal-detecting wand over him briefly. He had left his gun in the car, if he hadn't he would have had some explaining to do. Unfortunately it left him extremely vulnerable. He stood in a standard lobby, with no one at the desk against the back wall. Mulder strode purposively past it and down the main corridor.

As soon as he was out of sight of the guards he abandoned his stiff, I-know-what-I'm-doing-and-where-I'm-going posture and slunk down several twists and turns. He had a rough idea of where he was going from his friends' hacked schematics. Around the corner of the corridor there should be a door that led to the less known section of the Foxmire Building. He had a code that would possibly open the door, or it might get him caught. Well, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, he thought.

Suddenly the authenticity of the code became a moot point. A ringing clamor filled the building and he jumped, realizing it was an alarm. Something had blown his cover. "Dammit," he muttered. "What'd I do wrong this time?" He turned to try to make it back out the front doors, which was why he didn't see the figure that rounded the corner behind him until it had slammed into him at a run. They both were knocked off their feet, but Mulder's Quantico training kicked in and he was up in a moment.

The figure that had run into him shook her head and looked up, large brown eyes wild with fright, like a fox running from hounds. Mulder stared in amazement. It was the girl from the photograph! He recognized her long straight dark hair. That fear put all his worries about voluntary testing to rest. It appeared he wasn't the one who had set off the alarm after all. Now they wanted to keep their test subject from escaping. Not if he had anything to do about it.

Mulder reached down and held out his hand to the teenager. "I know you don't have any reason," he said softly, "but you have to trust me. I'll get you out of here."

The girl, who looked about fifteen, stared up at him in fright, then at his extended hand. After what seemed like an eternity with nothing to break the silence but the continuous alarm, she hesitantly took the offered hand without word and let him pull her to her feet.

He didn't say anything either. Thousands of questions buzzed in his mind, but they would have to wait. He pulled her down corridor after corridor, heading back the way he came. She didn't resist or try to speak. The few times he glanced back at her she was staring around stunned, detached, like she was trying to take everything in. Mulder wondered if she was drugged. Most of the time he was watching for guards or anyone else that might be looking for them. Several times he had ducked into rooms to avoid them, but they were all totally normal looking labs or examining rooms.

Finally he found the entrance he had come through, but he jumped back around the edge of the turn when he saw they wouldn't be able to get out that way. The two guards had been joined by four more, and they all had weapons. Not the small handguns the government issued him and Scully, these were semiautomatics. The looks on their faces told him they wouldn't hesitate to use them, government programmed. "Shit," he whispered.

He felt a small tug on his arm and stiffened. It was only the girl, who hadn't said nor done anything until now. She tugged again when she saw she had his attention. Drawing back so as not to alert the guards, she whispered, "I know another way out." He allowed her to pull him back down the hall and several others. He didn't even blink in surprise when she led him through the door he had come for, wide open.

The irony of the reversed situation wasn't lost on him as he stared around in wonder. The rooms they passed were filled with the highest level of technology and each had a one-way mirror for observation. Mulder saw countless labs for testing and examinations, each more high tech than the last. There was a library, gyms and rooms with both listening and viewing stations that he knew would normally be keeping close watch on someone, but now were silent and blank. There were so many rooms they all passed by the agent in a blur. It was as if an entire community lived behind that door! It was amazing.

The girl looked at none of it. She stared straight ahead and kept a firm hold on his hand, which she hadn't released yet. He could see it in the stiffness of her back and the way she moved with a faint jerkiness; if he could see her face he would have been sure, but he knew she was furious.

The last room in the corridor was a bedroom, of sorts. He caught a flash of plain white walls, like all the walls of the corridors and rooms, a bed in one corner and a small bookshelf. The girl pushed on towards the door at the far end with greater urgency.

"Wait! Stop!" The voice rang out from behind them and they both jumped. The girl tightened her grip and broke into a run, dragging Mulder with her. She hit the door when the first shots rang out inches above their heads. Mulder ducked and shoved her out before whoever was behind them fired again.

They were outside. Mulder snapped his head around, trying to find out where they were. The trees were no help; they totally surrounded the building, masking it from view from the highway. He couldn't see the gate. His heart was hammering. Any second now whoever was chasing them was going to run out the back door and they would be toast. He wasn't going to let that happen, not when this girl had just freed herself from this hell hold. Then he saw the parking lot, and his rental car.

"Come on," he told the girl. He looked at her for the first time since they'd stepped out. She was in shock. She stood, staring, her eyes glazed over. Her jaw had dropped open in awe. She stared at everything: the trees, the pavement, even the sky. Geesh, even if those guys did come out of there right now I don't think she'd notice, he thought. It scared him, the way she was acting. It was almost as if . . . as if she had never seen them before.

His words didn't rouse her from her reverie. He began dragging her towards the parking lot. She went, but didn't acknowledge him, still looking around in wonder. It was the slamming open of the door and the shots that woke her up. Then she ran with him. They sprinted across the pavement, ducking low. As they reached the car Mulder suddenly wondered if she even knew how to open the door. He shot ahead and pulled it open, shoving her in without remorse and darting around to the other side. A bullet whizzed by his head; it was so close he could feel the heat on his face.

The keys were in the ignition. He had left them in encase of just such an occasion. "Hold on," he cautioned her as the car sprang to life. They shot off with a squealing of tires, the shots still firing behind them. He heard them hitting the pavement, and a few the metal frame of the car. They were trying to shoot out his tires. Lucky for them, he knew from first-hand experience just how hard it was to do that.

The rental car tore around the side of the Foxmire Building, aiming straight for the gate. The young guard was still there, and had drawn his weapon and now stood in the way of the exit. He thought Mulder would have to either stop or turn to keep from running him down.

Mulder floored it.

At the last second the kid realized what he was going to do and leapt clear. The FBI agent heard two shots imbed themselves in the back of the car. Then he hung a hard left, the back tires skidding on the loose gravel with a whine, and they were on the highway.

* * *

"How could this happen?" demanded the chief of security, Captain Marvin Taylor, in the soft voice he used when he was most furious with his team. The assembled men collectively gulped and prepared themselves for the worst. "We have round-the-clock surveillance, guards posted at all major exits, premium enclosure of the building. Now I'll ask again: how did this happen?"

A young lieutenant stood on shaking legs. "S-sir, he had the correct authorization. I thought--"

"And you are?" Captain Taylor asked icily.

Gulp. "Lieutenant Samuel Jacobs, sir."

"Lieutenant Jacobs." The gray eyes of Taylor were now locked solely on the young man. "You were stationed at the gate at the time of escape, correct?"

"Yes sir, but--"

"Thank you, sit down lieutenant."

"But--"

"I said SIT DOWN!" Jacobs fell into his seat as if his legs had collapsed out from under him. "And be thankful I'm making an exception because of your youth. Do not disappoint me again." The lieutenant nodded obediently.

The door to the debriefing room opened and a tall man entered silently. Captain Taylor gave his team another frosty glare before he followed the man clad in a white lab coat into the hall. "You're report, Captain?" he asked.

"Welcome back doctor. I have no knowledge of how the test subject originally escaped her confinement, nor should I. Not my department."

"I am well aware that your duties are to the security of the more well-known section of this medical hospital. I assure you, the proper parties have been chastised accordingly. I was referring to how she obtained a vehicle and left the establishment. I heard there was another?"

"We are currently undergoing an investigation into his identity, doctor. His face was captured on security cameras quite clearly, it shouldn't be long before we have a positive ID."

The tall scientist nodded curtly and turned away. For a moment, it seemed the shadows swirled around him and followed him down the corridor. Taylor shook his head to dispel the illusion. His voice sounded loud in the empty hallway, yet still hard to discern, as if the shadows obscured the sound. "I should hope so, Captain. The longer the test subject is at large, the greater the risk of my operation being discovered."

* * *

The heavy silence in the rental car was becoming uncomfortable, but the girl didn't seem to notice. Mulder watched her out of the corner of his eye, trying to get a feeling about her. She was still dazed, staring out the window and the windshield periodically, looking at the trees, the sky, other cars passing them. Her dark roving eyes finally settled on him, studying him like everything else. If she noticed he was watching her she didn't say. She didn't say anything actually, just watched him quietly.

He smiled. "Thanks, by the way."

She jumped slightly, as if she hadn't expected he could speak. Her open study of him was beginning to make him nervous. "For what?" she asked in confusion. Her voice was soft and clear, making her sound much older than she looked. There was something there, some indistinguishable factor, that made him think she knew things no fifteen-year-old would normally know.

"If you hadn't been there, I wouldn't have gotten out of that building," he said.

The girl seemed to digest this for several silent moments. "And if you hadn't been there, I wouldn't have gotten past the door. Everything out here is so beautiful," she murmured seriously. She turned back to the window, but not before he caught the awe that still lingered in her gaze. "I can't concentrate on anything else."

"Yeah, I noticed," Mulder commented dryly. "I take it you don't get out much."

She nodded absentmindedly, watching a passing convertible. Abruptly she turned and looked at him warily. "Who are you?" she demanded. "Why did you help me?"

"Special Agent Fox Mulder with the FBI," he introduced himself. "And I was looking for . . . the truth. It's sort of a hobby of mine." He searched her face for a moment before turning back to the road. "Why did you trust me?"

She shrugged. "I didn't have much of a choice. But what did you mean by the truth? What truth?"

"The truth about the testing being done in that building." He reached out back with one hand and brought up the blank manila envelope, handing it to her. He watched for her reaction. She stared at the photo with something akin to fear on her face, then anger. "Can you identify the people in that photo?" he asked gently.

She nodded. "That's me," she said softly. "And Dr. Fort, with two of his assistants: Dr. North and Dr. Carpenter."

"Do you remember that day?" he pressed. This was it; this was evidence. This was what he had been looking for all this time.

She shrugged again. "Not specifically. There were a lot of days like that."

"A lot being . . . what? Days? Months?"

She looked straight up into his hazel eyes and held his gaze. "Fifteen years."

"You were born in the Foxmire Building?" he asked in surprise.

"I wasn't born," she said bitterly, "I was created."

"Genetics." She was silent. "Do you know what they've been doing to you all this time?"

"I'm their test, their operation. I'm what they've been working on for over two decades. They don't know how much I know about it. They tried to keep it a secret, but I fooled them. I pretended I didn't know. And the more I learned, the more I realized what they were doing was wrong. They didn't have the right to keep me there, studying me like some . . . some. . . ." She dropped off, too furious for words. He was surprised at the sudden anger in her voice, not that he didn't understand.

"Can you explain it to me?" he asked her, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice. He had been close before, but she was right here! He had her in the car, safe, proof.

But he saw the fear and distrust in her eyes. "I'd rather not," she whispered.

He smiled gently. "It's okay," he told her, cursing himself for his directness. It would be no good if he chased her away. "Hey, who are you anyway?"

"Huh?"

"Me Mulder, you . . . ?"

"Test subject 4."

His head snapped around. "There are four of you?"

She shook her head sadly. "No, four attempts. There is only me. The first three . . . did not survive the treatments."

Mulder mouth set in a grim line. If he ever met these doctors. . . . They were human beings weren't they? And yet they hadn't even given her a name. For the same reason scientists didn't give names to their lab rats and call them pets, he knew. If they ever had to exterminate their test subjects, they wouldn't have to worry about pricking their damn consciences.

"I don't even have a name," she said softly, making Mulder wonder if the tests had anything to do with telepathy. Suddenly she sat up, looking at something out the windshield. Mulder followed her gaze. It was a green mileage sign, reading how far to various cities. One of them was his own: Alexandria, 57 miles. "Alexandria," she murmured, savoring it like a delicacy. "It's beautiful." Her lips curled upward faintly: her first smile since he'd met her. She turned back to him. "Is it all right for people to make up their own names, Agent Mulder?"

He tried not to laugh at her innocent plea. "Hey, if you've been gypped for fifteen years, I think you can do just about whatever you want. Welcome to the US, Alex."

Her smile turned into a sardonic grin. "Yeah, 'the land of the free.' Funny, it hasn't been that way for me all this time."

Mulder grew serious at that. "The government seems to think they can change the rules when it best serves their interests."

"What about you? Don't you work for the government?"

He glanced at her. "Are you accusing me of being part of the conspiracy? Gee, I don't think anyone has before. I told you, I want the truth. The FBI's a resource that helps me find it."

"Oh, I see, a conspiracy within a conspiracy."

This time he did laugh. "Well, when you put it that way . . . what's wrong?" Her face had dropped as she apparently thought of something.

"What's going to happen to me, Agent Mulder?"

He sighed. "To tell you the truth, I haven't thought that far yet Alex. Those people aren't going to give you up so easily, and I'm sure they caught my face on the security cameras. We both have to lay low for as long as it takes, and if I go back to work or my apartment they'll have us for sure." He slammed the steering wheel in frustration.

It was her turn to ask: "What's wrong?"

"I've had to do this before. You have no ides what a rough time we're in for. And I can't trust anyone, not even Scully." The last bit he hadn't meant to say aloud, it just slipped out of his thoughts.

"Who's that?" Alex promptly asked.

"My partner. Normally I'd trust her with my life, but I don't want her involved with this. There's going to be hell to pay when this is over, and I don't want her to pay for it with me."

She nodded as if she already knew. There was silence in the car, until she asked, "Where are we going?"

"To the airport."

* * *

They left the rental car in the airport parking lot. Mulder explained once they knew who he was, it would be a simple matter to track his credit card and anything else he signed his name to. Inside, he bought two one-way tickets back to Washington DC with the card. He gave them to the man at the terminal, saying he forgot his keys in the car and would return in just a second. Back outside, they hailed a cab. He gave the driver an address of an old friend that lived close by.

"We haven't seen each other in years," he told Alex. "I doubt they'll think of looking for us there."

When they pulled up to the quaint white cottage Mulder paid the driver while Alex climbed out. She looked over the picture perfect home, complete with swing set in the front yard and a white picket fence, as Mulder followed her out of the taxi. It sped off in a cloud of dust and Mulder shook his head. "Great," he muttered, "he became a family man."

When they knocked on the door a boy that looked about seven answered, golden-haired and blue-eyed. His head fell back as he looked up at the agent.

"Hi," he said adorably.

"Hi," Mulder replied, "is your dad home?"

The young boy nodded, tugging on a strap of his corduroys. He turned into the house and yelled, "Dad! There's a girl and a salesman here to see you!"

Mulder rolled his eyes, as if he often got this. Alex hid a grin.

The man that came to the door was as blond as his son with green eyes and a grin that seemed permanently etched in his youthful face. "Sorry sir, I was busy and my son got to the door--" He dropped off and his grin grew so wide Alex feared it would break his face in half. "Spooky? Spooky Mulder, is it really you?"

Alex saw him grimace at the nickname. "Yeah, it's me James. Mind if we come in?"

"Sure, sure. Geesh, I haven't seen you in . . . what, seven or eight years?" He backed up as they entered the most furnished living room Alex had ever seen, which could have been pretty sparse considering she had never actually seen one before.

"At least," Mulder agreed. "Sorry I haven't called."

"Hey, no problem. Oh, this is my son, Jason. Jason, say hi to Mr. Mulder and . . . I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name, miss."

She was a bit dazed by the man's jumping from one topic to another so abruptly, but Mulder seemed used to it. "Alex," she said a bit proudly.

"Alex, great. I'm James Davidson. Hey, Honey, company!" he shouted up the stairs. Jason trotted up, presumably to get his mother, as James offered them chairs. She sat uneasily, deciding to stay silent and out of the way as Mulder did whatever it was he had come to do.

"Listen, James," started Mulder, offering no preamble. "I need to ask a favor, a big one."

"Yeah, well that doesn't surprise me," the man replied, still grinning. "How many times did I have to bail you out of a jam in the academy, huh?"

Mulder grinned this time. "Yeah, too many for me to keep track of. But I think I repaid most of it when I introduced you to your future wife."

As if on cue a woman walked down the stairs, holding Jason in her arms. James jumped to his feet, took his son, and sat back down, bouncing him on his knee. "Hello Fox," she said to the agent. "It's been too long. The Bureau keeping you from seeing old friends?"

"You could say that Marcy," Mulder admitted, standing to give her a brief hug. "This is Alex," he told her as she turned to the teenage girl. She smiled down to the girl before heading out of the room, calling back that she'd make some coffee. Jason squirmed out of his father's grasp and ran after her.

"So, Fox, what brings you to my modest abode?" James asked. "I've heard things about you man, spooky things to be frank. They say you're the laughing stock of the FBI, that you run around chasing little green men and looking into cases everyone else throws into the garbage. What happened?" For the first time she saw the grin fade as he grew serious.

Mulder shook his head. "James, it'd take way too long to get into. You have to trust me, the work I do in the X-Files is real; it's not just a joke. The things you hear are being spread around to discredit me, to make sure no one believes me when I find the truth."

The man nodded seriously. "Fox, I'll tell you right now I'm not the kind of man who believes in little green men and ghosts and Bigfoot, you know that. I know there are things in this world that can't be explained, and I leave it at that. I also know that you were a good friend and a great student at Quantico; we both were before I left. And I wouldn't be surprised to find out you became a superb agent. That's why I trust you, Fox. Not because I believe in your truths, but because I believe in you."

"I'll take what I can get at this point."

His grin returned, subdued a little. "Great, now what's the favor? And who's the kid? She's not yours is she?"

"No, she's the truths you were talking about. Right now we've got people who are going to be looking for us, people who have unlimited resources and don't care who they have to go through to get at us. If we don't find a place to lie low for awhile. . . ." He left the sentence hanging.

James was silent for a moment, openly studying Alex. "You're joking, right?" Mulder shook his head. "Oh man, I guess not all the rumors about you were made up after all. You still know how to get yourself into the most amount of trouble, don't you?"

"Old habits are hard to break, James."

The blond man looked at his old friend in silent contemplation for a long time, and Mulder didn't rush him. He knew James was a man who could be counted on, even with the rift of time between them, if he chose to be. He had quit the FBI academy in Quantico an astonishing single month before graduation. But he had gone anyway, to watch Mulder and the rest of his friends. He had no remorse; he had decided he wasn't the kind of guy who could go through a life as serious as the Bureau provided. He wasn't that kind of guy, and young Fox Mulder had agreed. He still did.

"All right, Fox, tell you what. You and the kid stay here, I've been talking to Marcy about taking Jason up to our summer cabin anyway. Since we haven't seen each other in years I doubt these people out to get you will think to look for you here."

"I hope not, I took some precautions."

"Right. Now, if I don't hear from you, one way or the other, in three weeks I'm coming back here to check, 'kay?"

"All right James, three weeks," Mulder promised.

* * *

They were ready to go in an hour. James hadn't explained everything to his wife, but she hadn't questioned him too severely. Alex hadn't moved from her chair, feeling slightly out of place as Mulder, Marcy and James talked about old times. Jason finally asked her to come see his room, and she had complied somewhat awkwardly. James had come upstairs to get his son a little later, finding them completely immersed in Super Mario World.

Marcy hugged Mulder good-bye and took her son out to the waiting mini-van. James shook the agent's hand and put something into it as he was walking out the door. He looked down to find the man had given him a set of keys. "Encase anything happens to you, take the white neon out front," he said--serious--but still grinning.

Mulder was surprised. You could ask a lot of things of James, but his beloved vehicles wasn't one of them. He took his automobiles very seriously. To give Mulder the keys to one of his cars was an expression of trust and friendship he wasn't expecting.

"Thanks, James."

"Anytime . . . Spooky." And then he threw them one last grin and was gone.

Mulder pocketed the keys with a grimace. "I hate that nickname," he muttered.

As soon as they left Alex burst out, "What was that? What are the X-Files? Why does everyone laugh at you? People discrediting you before you met me? Does this have anything to do with that hobby of yours?"

Mulder looked at her with interest glowing in his hazel eyes. "If I tell you my life story, will you tell me yours?"

She shuddered and turned away, not answering.

* * *

"That's him," Lieutenant Jacobs nodded when Captain Taylor handed him a printout of a personnel file. "As I said, sir, he had the correct authorization."

"Yes, and I can't seem to find anyone admitting they gave it to him," Taylor muttered. "Thank you, Lieutenant, dismissed." Jacobs saluted and left the room as quickly as he was able without making it look like he was a disobedient child running from a bad tempered parent.

Captain Taylor turned to the only other people in the small room: two scientists in white lab coats. The taller man--the one who seemed to gather shadows around him like a cloak--stood silent and let the shorter, slightly balding man do the talking. "This is the guy, Dr. Fort," Taylor reported, handing over the file. "We found the personnel file in the FBI database, Special Agent Fox William Mulder. Our sources report he's been AWOL since Friday morning, the day the test subject escaped. No one's heard from him since."

"Family? Friends? Have they been checked?" demanded the scientist, looking up from the file to glance at the taller man.

Taylor nodded curtly. "Yes sir. His apartment is empty, no close relatives have been contacted by him. His partner, a Dana Scully, is currently under watch as well. We believe he still has test subject 4 with him, and that they are hiding in the vicinity of Washington DC. His rental car was found outside the airport, and he bought two tickets there."

"Well good, have our men continue to monitor the people close to him. Chances are he'll turn to one of them for help. I'll fly over myself to--"

"Wait, Dr. Fort," interrupted the taller man. He stepped forward to be heard, though the shadows still seemed to conceal him. "I know of this Fox Mulder. He is not one to be underestimated. He may only want you to believe this is where he had gone. I think it would be intelligent to widen the search here, as well as in DC. I have a feeling he will not go far if he does not have to."

There was a moment of silence as the other two men glanced at each other. "Whatever you say, Dr. Keller," Fort readily agreed.

* * *

Agent Dana Scully entered the J. Edgar Hoover Building, national FBI headquarters, Monday morning, bracing herself for another workday with her partner. Instead, she found his basement office empty, which surprised her. He was never late; he was often early. Her surprise deepened when the Assistant Director, Walter Skinner, called her up to his office.

When she saw the look on his face she began to worry. "Agent Scully, are you aware of Agent Mulder's currant whereabouts?"

"No sir, is there a problem?" She suddenly had a feeling of deja vu; this wasn't the first time she'd been in this situation.

"Agent Mulder hasn't checked in since Friday morning," Skinner informed her. "And I warn you, withholding any information you have would only be furthering the danger he's already in."

She glanced around the office, seeing they were alone. "Sir, I assure you, he hasn't told me anything." She was about to ask him if he had any word, but she stopped herself.

Skinner looked like he was about to say something as well, but he abruptly nodded. "Thank you Agent Scully, that will be all." It hadn't been that long ago that Mulder and Scully couldn't decide whether Skinner was a friend or enemy, and they still didn't trust one another completely.

She turned and left the AD's office thinking only one thing: I'd better get over to Mulder's apartment and feed his fish. . . .

* * *

On the third morning at the Davidsons' residence Mulder woke up to a shriek heard above him. He sprang from the couch--sleeping there to keep watch he explained at her look--on a reflex before he realized what he was doing, and thundered up the stairs at a run. Alex had been sleeping in James and Marcy's bedroom, where her voice had sounded like it was coming from. Pulling his handgun from its shoulder holster, the FBI agent pressed his back against the wall beside the door. Then, in one fluid motion, he kicked open the door and leveled it at whoever or whatever might be inside.

All it took was one look at the large shards of glass on the floor and the stricken expression on the girl's face for Mulder to slam his eyes shut and back out into the hall, waiting for the searing pain behind his eyelids and the strange hissing to fill the air.

Silence, broken only by Alex's muffled sobs. He cracked open an eye and saw her clutching on hand with the other, a jagged streak of blood cutting across her palm. Red. Red blood, not green like he had feared. He sighed with relief and holstered his gun, mentally crossing alien/human hybrid off the growing list of Alex's possibilities in his mind. "What happened?" he asked, striding across the room to look at the injury.

She bit her lip and her cheeks flushed. "Just clumsy," she muttered, her voice cracking with pain. She let him take the hand and examine it for pieces of glass. "I've never hurt myself like this before," she whimpered.

He smiled reassuringly. "It looks a little deep, but not too serious. We'd better bandage it up. Watch the glass." He led her out of the bedroom and into the bathroom across the hall.

Alex was stunned, both by the intensity of pain and Mulder's calm and sure actions as he cleaned the injury and wrapped it in gauze. She had blocked his questions at every turn, making excuses or just ignoring them. But the truth was, she was afraid of him. Whenever the questions began a hungry look entered his eyes, like a man eyeing a glass of water in the desert. It was as if he needed her, as if he had been searching his entire life just for her, and she saw it in his eyes when he looked at her. She was afraid of how he would react if she did answer them.

But she had also been getting to know the agent the past three days, and it fascinated her. He was, after all, the first person she had interacted with human to human, not just observer to subject. He cared about how she felt and what she thought, he had asked her what she preferred for meals! She knew he was surprised that she felt like that, but it still amazed her.

And she amazed herself. There were times, for hours, she would simply sit and stare out the window, watching the rain or the sunset or the stars come out. Never before had she been allowed to just sit by herself and think, and that was what she did. She thought about her old life, her new one, about the wonders of the outside world (what was a McDonald's anyway?), and about Mulder. Sometimes she would look up to find him watching her, like she watched the rain or the wind, and she would wonder what he was thinking. She had never thought about what went through other peoples' minds before; she had never been offered the chance. It amazed her.

"There." He startled her out of her reverie. She looked down at her hand, bandaged and clean.

"Thank you," she said softly, and he knew she meant more than just the early morning accident.

"Who are you?" he asked with the look in his eyes.

She took a deep breath and let her eyes close briefly. "I am the next step in the man-made evolution. Heightened intelligence, superior strength and agility, immunity to all known viruses and diseases, accelerated healing properties, sharpened reflexes--"

"All that and you still did this to yourself?" he interrupted, holding up her appendage with one hand. In the other he held a tape recorder that had appeared out of his jacket pocket.

She sniffed indignantly. "I didn't know how fragile glass is."

"You mean you don't know your own strength."

She smiled weakly and grew serious again. "I was observed, tested, watched my entire life by people who wanted to know how smart I am, how strong, how quickly I react, how fast I can learn. I'm only the beginning of the project. They're suppose to observe me in a controlled environment."

"What project?" Mulder demanded.

"The creation of the perfect human: Project Excalibur."

"The controlled environment, the Foxmire Building?"

Alex nodded. "Though the medical hospital's just a cover-up encase of unauthorized visitors."

"Yeah, so I noticed. Who runs the project?"

"Dr. Travis Fort supervises everything at the Foxmire Building, but like I said, I know things I'm not suppose to. I know he reports to a Dr. Keller. He doesn't come often to the facility, but he gets monthly reports via Dr. Fort. He must've been notified of my escape by now," she said this with a smirk, as if she enjoyed the notion.

"Everyone reports to someone," Mulder remarked. He looked about to ask one thing but switched to another. "How do you know things you're not suppose to?"

She smiled proudly. "They underestimated my intelligence. I played dumb, so they wouldn't find out otherwise, ever since I was old enough to understand that I don't lead a normal life. I'm also an excellent computer hacker."

"You broke into your own records right under their noses?" He smiled too, enjoying the thought; it wasn't a nice smile.

"That's how I learned. They thought they had a security leak." She laughed without mirth. "I doubt they even know how I escaped."

"How did you?" he asked eagerly.

"With this." The girl brought a palm-sized device out of her pocket with her good hand and showed it to the agent. Mulder stared down in amazement. It was electronic, cobbled together like some flat Borg cube from Star Trek, shaped roughly like a miniature TV remote.

"You made this? When? How?"

"A piece at a time, after planning for a year and building for another. I was never left without the supervision of security cameras and one-way mirrors. I had to build it in the bathroom with my back to the security camera, a piece at a time," she repeated, and there was the strength of pride in her voice that almost completely covered the small tremor of fear he heard underneath.

"What does it do?" he wanted to know. She pocketed it while replying.

"It made a looped recording on the security tape of me, sitting on my bed. It sat along the same wall as the mirror, so the guards couldn't see me if I laid on it. They didn't think the needed to, because of the cameras."

"Just like that movie, Speed," Mulder murmured thoughtfully.

"The what?"

"Never mind, sorry. Go on."

"It also unlocks any electric lock in the building. I slipped out of bed with the looped recording playing, crawled under the one-way mirror by hugging the wall, and I was free for the first time in my life. Unfortunately, I didn't think there would be a separate alarm on the door that lead to the hospital. I should have been prepared; I was too excited to be cautious. Then I panicked."

Mulder nodded, shut off the recorder and pocketed it as well. When she looked at him questionably he explained, "I have a problem with keeping evidence. I've learned to collect all I can." He shook his head with a smile, amazed. "Congratulations Alex, you beat the best our country has to offer . . . or the worst, considering how you look at it."

She grinned at his praise, then her face fell and her eyes grew wide with fear. "But what if they find us, Mulder? I don't think I can go back. I know I can't. I won't."

"Calm down Alex. We'll deal with it when and if it happens."

"But we can't stay hiding forever!" she objected, panic tightening her voice to a squeak. He took her good hand in his own.

"I won't let them take you anywhere, Alex," he swore.

She shuddered and turned away, pulling her hand out of his grasp. "You don't know what I know, what I've seen. You're only one person Mulder, there's a lot of them. I don't want you getting hurt because of me. I-I like you."

She didn't see the surprised look on his face because she was turned away, but he quickly covered it anyway. "Hey, I've been doing more dangerous stuff than this long before I met you, Alex. And I don't plan on stopping or getting caught before I find the truth, the whole truth. Now come on," he turned and strode out of the bathroom.

"Where are we going?" she asked, following him.

"I'm going back to bed," he called over his shoulder. "And you're going to clean up the mess you made in that bedroom. Don't cut yourself again." He started down the stairs.

In typical fifteen-year-old fashion, she stuck her tongue out at his retreating back.

* * *

Scully hadn't found anything in Mulder's apartment, not a single clue as to where he was. She got the feeling he wanted it that way. If Mulder had wanted her to know, he would have found some way to send her a message.

So she was slightly miffed when Skinner informed her the FBI was dropping the search for him. Slightly miffed, as in anyone who saw her face headed in the other direction--fast. She replayed the meeting in her mind, trying to figure it out.

"Sir, are you serious?" she had asked in frank disbelief. He looked up from a file--he hadn't even given her his full attention to tell her!--as if surprised she had anything to say. But when he spoke, she heard the anger that simmered under his indifferent tone, and she knew he was just as furious as she was.

"The matter has been taken out of our hands, Agent Scully. There's undeniable proof he broke into a high-security medical hospital. It's been given to national security."

"National security? Sir, why would national security be interested in a medical hospital? What was there that made it so important?" she demanded in quick succession, pushing a strand of auburn hair out of her blue eyes.

"That information has not been divulged to the FBI," Skinner said. His voice lowered, as if there were things close by he didn't want to hear him, losing its official authority. "I've tried pulling some favors, nobody's talking. Someone's keeping them silent." The AD shifted uneasily. "They don't have him yet, that much I do know. I don't want you putting yourself at unnecessary risks, Agent Scully, but if you can find him--unofficially--before they do. . . ."

"I understand, sir." Still furious, she turned and left without waiting for his dismissal.

Now she stalked down the halls of the Hoover building, down to the basement. She had already searched Mulder's office, but she was going to search it again. She didn't have anything else to do, no clues, no one to go to. She almost never called on X, and she had no reason to believe he knew anyway.

In the basement office everything was as it was the last time she checked it. Not that I would even know if things have been changed, she thought to herself. It was an understatement to call Mulder a cluttered person. His office looked like it had been hit by a tornado, yet he always managed to find what he was looking for in there. If only I could be so lucky.

She went to his desk and began rifling papers and folders. The latest alien abductees, sightings of dragons in the forests of Maine and New Hampshire, the lost city of Atlantis found and more, nothing was above Mulder's attention. But she had seen it all before. There was nothing knew here, nothing she just overlooked the first time.

"Where are you, Mulder?" muttered the agent angrily. "And why can't you tell me?"

* * *

That night Mulder sat on the hood of the white neon, head craned back to watch the stars. Alex leaned against the windshield, gazing up with him. Periodically she'd let her gaze wander from the bright pinpricks overhead to the sparse trees that surrounded the Davidsons' home, the car and Mulder. Now her head lolled to rest on his shoulder.

"They're so beautiful, Mulder," she told him. He nodded, but her eyes were still locked upward. "I've never watched them, you know. I know how far away they are, how they're born, when they die . . . but I've never watched them before. They're so beautiful." She sighed again. "Am I just weird, Mulder? Or do other people watch them too?"

"I watch them," he replied. She could see his grin in the darkness. "But then, people accuse me of being pretty weird myself, so I can't really say." Though I haven't watched in a long time.

"Mulder?" the teenager murmured hesitantly, and he got the feeling she was almost falling asleep. Her weight on his shoulder felt strangely comforting. Keeping this a secret from Scully made him feel worse than he had thought it would. And though he could not say why, sitting there made the old ache that followed him all his life well up with intensity.

"Yeah?"

"Why do you look for the truth so hard? Not that I'm not grateful," she sat up to look at him; he saw her face faintly outlined by the starlight, and there was no moon out. "But why? What makes it so important that you would risk so much while everyone else doesn't know it exists or likes to pretend it doesn't?"

And her words made Mulder remember. . . .

"Come on Samantha, just for tonight," he pleaded with his younger sister.

She rolled her eyes with annoyance and blew her bangs out of her eyes. "It's silly Fox, why don't you just go by yourself?"

"It's no fun by myself. Come on," he repeated, grabbing her arm and giving it a tug.

She gathered herself to her full seven-year-old height to try to look down on her brother with superiority. Unfortunately, the eleven-year-old was monstrously tall for his age, and she didn't quite pull it off. "All right Fox, I'll go. But you owe me big for this."

Happy enough to ignore the threat, young Fox Mulder grabbed his sister's hand and pulled her out the front door. He wanted to hurry before his father found out what they were doing and made them come back in. He hit the porch light off on his way through the doorway. It was no fun with the lights on.

Outside he hopped up on the car hood and patted the space next to him. His father had just come home, and the hood was still warm. Samantha pulled herself up beside him. Together they leaned back on the windshield and looked upward at the starry night.

"I can't believe you dragged me out here to look for flying saucers, Fox," she complained. "Don't you know those things only exist in movies and books?"

"Shhh, you're ruining it." He craned his neck back as far as he could, scanning the sky with all the attention a fascinated little kid could. "There!" He suddenly pointed toward the heavens.

She laughed. "That's just a falling star Fox. Quick, make a wish!" He obediently opened his mouth but she clamped a hand over it. "Not out loud, then it won't come true!" she hissed. He watched with brotherly amusement as she scrunched up her eyes. Then he closed his eyes too, and made a wish.

When he opened them again she said seriously, "Now you can't ever tell--ever--because then it won't come true. Promise?"

"Yeah sure, whatever Samantha," he muttered, eyes locked up again. She pouted sisterly for a little while, but then forgot about it in her brother's excitement. In less than half an hour they heard the front door open.

"Fox! Samantha!" they heard their father's voice call from the front door. The two siblings shared a secret look, as if they were planning on not answering the call, but then Fox answered sensibly.

"What do you want, Dad?" he shouted back.

"It's late! Get in here!" the voice commanded.

Fox sighed. It was too early, he hadn't found anything yet. Then he saw his sister grinning at him and he remembered the falling star. Maybe it wasn't such a waste after all. "Come on Fox," she grabbed his hand and pulled him reluctantly back to the light of the house. "We'll have plenty of time to look for flying saucers another night."

"Mulder, what's wrong?" Alex sounded shocked. He blinked back to reality and found the stars were blurry.

"Nothing," he said hastily, sitting up. "You got night vision along with all those other wonderful attributes?"

A gasp was her only answer. He looked up at her face and saw the whites of her eyes and her mouth fallen open. His head snapped around. The Davidson home was on a rise; they could see the road stretching a good five miles down the way. And just coming in sight were two white beams, piercing the darkness of the otherwise empty road: headlights.

Alex jumped from the hood of the car, trembling. "It's them Mulder, it's them!" she whispered harshly. "I don't know how I know, but I do. It's them!"

"Are you sure, Alex?" Mulder asked, getting off the car to look down the road.

She grabbed his hand in her own, and he realized the bandage was gone. He could feel the smooth, unbroken skin of her palm against his own. "Trust me, I can feel it." The headlights--that's all they could see of the vehicle--were speeding faster than a car normally would on a back road at night, but that's all that told him anything was out of the ordinary. "Mulder . . . I'm scared."

That decided it. The FBI agent sprang into action. He whirled and took her by the shoulders. "All right, listen Alex. You take these--" he thrust some objects at her. She barely recognized the photo and the tape recorder before he was handing her something else. "--and this, it's my cell phone. It's got Scully's number on speed-dial."

"What? Mulder, what about--?" she started, but he cut her off, turning her away towards the tree line.

"I want you to run, Alex. Take the phone and run. After you're sure they're not following you, call my partner. Tell her everything that happened. Show her the evidence. Now you're the one who has the truth."

"But what about you?" she finally pushed in.

He turned back to the headlights. They were much closer; too close. "I'm going to try to stop them. Now go."

"But--"

"Go!" He shoved her towards the trees. She stumbled, tucked the objects into the inner pocket of her jacket, and fled. She didn't want to, but her fear of being recaptured overrode her loyalty. It drove her like a whip and for a moment she could think of nothing except escaping the light. But her breath was tight in her throat and her heart hammered too fast to run at her best. And so she ran stumbling, weaving, driven by her fear to the trees.

When she passed the first of them something in her quieted, as if they could protect her from the people who wanted her. But she knew that nothing would stop them, not the night, not the trees . . . not Mulder.

Her desperate flight slowed to a stumbling jog, then a walk. She looked back through the low branches; she had run farther than she thought. But not too far to see the headlights had stopped at the white cottage. Her fear flared again, but this time she beat it down savagely, and crept back the way she had ran. She crouched low in the pine needles and fallen leaves and crawled silently back to the edge of the woods. Then she could see everything.

Mulder stood in the glow of the headlights, passive, unflappable. He stood, blinded by the lights, as a man stepped out of the vehicle, flanked by two more. Because of the angle, she could see what he could not. She could see the man was Dr. Fort, and it sent a chill down her spine to know the man was so close. He approached the agent calmly, serene, with two men slightly behind him. She could see they both carried rifles.

"Agent Mulder," Dr. Fort announced.

"You have me at a disadvantage, sir," he replied, his tone dripping with false respect.

"Several actually, Mr. Mulder, but you do not need to know my name. You only need to know one thing: I want the girl."

"What girl?" he asked promptly, peering against the glare into the darkness, but he couldn't make out anything besides the three shadows of the men.

Only Alex saw the five other men exit the apparently large vehicle. In the night they were only duplicates of the two men with weapons that flanked Dr. Fort. The man on the left turned to them and she heard his low voice in the stillness, "Search the house fully."

Mulder must have heard too, because he stepped forward with an objection on his lips. He didn't get to voice it. So smoothly she barely had time to blink before it was over, Dr. Fort stepped back and let his men advance. One rifle rose into the air and down so fast it was a blur, and the crack the echoed through the silent night hid her soft cry of shock. The two men caught Mulder's body before he hit the ground.

"Get him into the truck," Dr. Fort ordered. As they dragged him away the five men returned from their search of the Davidsons' home. Alex, caught in the horror and unable to move, recognized the man in the lead. It was Captain Taylor. She only knew him from notes and a picture in her files, he didn't come to the classified wing of the Foxmire Building.

"Nothing sir," Taylor reported.

Dr. Fort frowned, clearly not expecting this. Then he turned to the woods and seemed to stare straight at her. Her heart froze. "Check the woods," he told the Captain. The five men, joined by the other two in a moment, immediately spread.

Alex ran for her life.

* * *

Scully sighed in exasperation as she drove home. She had been looking for evidence of Mulder's whereabouts all day, and found nothing. As she stopped at a red light her cell phone rang. Hopeful, she yanked out the appliance and hit the talk button. "Scully," she announced. "Mulder, is that you?"

Heavy breathing was the only answer. She waited a moment, but nothing broke the ragged stream. "Hello?" Nothing. She knew someone was there, why weren't they answering? "Who is this?" she demanded.

She was ready to slam the phone off when the person drew a large breath and a tiny voice whispered, "They've got him, Ms. Scully."

"What? Who is this?" The light turned green and she hit the gas, pulling the car over to the curb to focus her full attention on her phone. "Who has him?"

The ragged breathing had slowed but the speaker still said nothing for a long moment. The silence was becoming very annoying very quickly. "My name's Alex," the voice finally said, and Scully realized the speaker was a young girl.

"How did you get this number, Alex?" she asked. Not many knew it, and it was unlisted. She should have at least heard of the girl if she was calling her cell phone.

"He gave me his phone," she replied, her voice low. The girl's tone was so miserable. Scully forgot to breathe. Something had happened to Mulder.

She knew she had to get this whole story, in order, or she was never going to make sense out of it. "Listen Alex," she said into the phone. "I need you to tell me where you are. Do you know your location?"

"Um. . . ." There was a pause, but not like the silence before. She must have been looking around. "Baker St. I can see the sign from here. I ran here to get away from them."

"Do you know the name of the city? And the state?"

"No," she answered uneasily. "Oh, I think we're somewhere in Virginia."

Well, at least she wasn't too far. She was obviously in shock. Scully was going to have to talk her through everything. But as long as she trusted her and stayed on the line, she should be okay. "All right Alex. Do you see a store anywhere nearby? With a neon sigh or something like that?"

"Uh huh . . . the sign says 7 Eleven."

"Good. Stay on the line, don't get off the line. Go inside and tell the person at the counter that you're lost. Ask him what city you're in."

"I can do that." Her tone betrayed her confidence. Why was she afraid of going into a convenience store? Later. Right now she needed to find this girl who apparently knew Mulder.

"Don't worry Alex. It's going to be okay."

"Right," she replied, surprisingly without sarcasm. "I'm going to put the phone in my pocket, but I won't get off the line." There was a rustle of fabric, and the electronic bing a convenience store usually makes when the door opens. Though she couldn't hear the actual conversation, she heard the low murmur of words. Then the bing again and Alex pulled the phone out of her pocket. She told Scully the name the man at the counter had told her.

"All right, I know where that is," Scully assured the girl. "I'll be there in 45 minutes at most. Can you hold out until then?"

"Sure, Ms. Scully. But if they find me here. . . ."

"Don't stay if you see them Alex. But call me periodically so I know you're okay," Mulder's partner told her. She agreed, and after a few more words Scully shut off her cell phone and tucked it away. She pulled back out into traffic and turned her car around.

* * *

Mulder woke in darkness with a splitting headache and for a moment he couldn't remember what he was doing there. Then the memories rushed back. The Foxmire Building, Alex, the Davidsons, the headlights. He opened his eyes, but there wasn't any improvement from when they were closed. It was still only blackness. He tried to get up, but he was bound with his hands behind the back of the chair they had put him in. His legs were tied to the front legs of it as well. "Hello?" he called out to the darkness.

A piercing white light snapped on and he squeezed his eyes shut against the painful glare. He couldn't see, but he could hear a door open and smart footsteps ring out as they walked across the hard floor. They stopped in front of him.

"Kidnapping is against the law," he informed the footsteps. "You're under arrest. You have the right to remain--"

"You seem to be in a bad position to make demands Mr. Mulder." It was the voice of the man that had addressed him before, in front of the neon.

"Yeah, I noticed that. If you could just untie me and get me a set of handcuffs. Also a gun if it's not too much to ask."

"Ah yes, the famous Mulder humor. I'll admit, I'm not one for jokes. Life rarely seems funny when you're in the line of work I am."

He kept his eyes on the floor, and they eventually adjusted enough to see the man's regulation black shoes, but that was all. If he tried looking up any farther the light blinded him. That was a relief at least. If they hadn't taken enough precautions to keep their identities secret it would have been a sure bet they were going to kill him. He tried futilely to get comfortable in the hard chair. "I don't doubt," he agreed. "Look, I'm getting a cramp. So why don't you just get to the point."

"The point, Mr. Mulder, is that you know where the girl is, and I need her. And so you're going to tell me where she is." It wasn't a question.

It seemed pointless to pretend he didn't know "Why? She's been outside. She's no longer part of your controlled experiment, she's been affected. She's nothing to you now. Why can't you just let her live a normal life?"

"That's not my concern. Even if we can't reverse the effects modern society has done to her, we can't let her go. We would have to eliminate the evidence before people--people like you--tried to blow our operation," he told Mulder coldly, emotionlessly, as if he was talking about a piece of paper or a file, and not a young girl.

"She's not just a test subject," Mulder insisted. "She's a living individual with thoughts and feelings. Do you know the first thing she did when she escaped from your labs? She chose a name. A name! You couldn't even give her a name. Did you know she doesn't like broccoli? Or that she's afraid of spiders? Did you even take the time to learn how she thought about you?"

There was no answer for a time. Then, surprisingly, the light turned off. Mulder blinked in the darkness until his eyes adjusted. There were normal lights on in the ceiling now, but low, so he couldn't see the corners of the room. What he could see was unadorned white walls and floor tile, and the only other piece of furniture was a black chair--that looked much more comfortable than the one he was stuck in--that the man pulled up and sat in.

He was short and balding, with sunken in cheeks and bifocals. He folded his arms across his chest and stared at Mulder. "Yes, Mr. Mulder, I knew." His voice softened. "She used to act like I was her father when she was younger. She would come to me for anything. Once, when she was reading some story about a circus, she asked me why she didn't go to places like that. I told her that she was special, that there were plans for her, that she would never have to worry about anything in her life. I could tell in her eyes that she understood, but she didn't believe me. That was when. . . ."

"When she found out what you did to her, didn't she?" Mulder guessed.

The man nodded. "You should have seen her. She was never angry with us, never refused to cooperate, but you could see it in her eyes when she looked at us. She never trusted us after that, but she knew. She knew she couldn't resist." Mulder watched the man. He didn't seem devastated, more like a kid would act if he were bitten by a dog he trusted. Mulder had spent three years profiling criminals in the FBI before he found the X-Files, and he was good at his job. He could understand how people thought and what kind of people they were. He couldn't hope for help from the man, who was more concerned with his experiment than a human being.

"You must be Dr. Fort," Mulder said. That elected a quick look of surprise from the man, but it was brushed aside.

"Yes, she must have told you that. She must have known, somehow, everything. We knew she was intelligent, there were even tests to find out how much she did know, but she fooled us every time." Dr. Fort stood abruptly, and when he spoke the little warmth that was in his voice when he spoke of her vanished. "When she is recovered we will not make the same mistake. Mr. Mulder, I'm only going to ask this once. Where is she?"

Mulder stared, deadpan.

The scientist sighed. "Very well. We'll use more extreme methods." He turned and his footsteps echoed on the tile until they were out the door.

When two men entered the room Mulder closed his eyes and waited for it to begin.

* * *

When Scully entered the 24-hour diner she didn't know what she expected to see. Alex had called and told her that she had been frightened by a police cruiser. She had taken refuge here, waiting for her. Now she scanned the dimly lit place with the patched stools pulled around the counter and the worn red booths against the windows and wished she had picked a place with a little less . . . atmosphere. It was something out of television show, right down to the waitress with the short-cropped hair and apron tied over a faded yellow dress.

When the waitress gave her a look over the counter top she simply shook her head. It was late, there wasn't more than three customers in the place that she could see. Two of them were obviously truckers, perched on the stools around the counter. The third looked like a prostitute that had come in out of the cold, sitting by herself in the booth closest to the door. Scully prayed this wasn't Alex.

Her prayers were answered. A girl sitting alone in the back stood and halfheartedly raised a hand to draw her attention. Scully looked her over as she approached. She looked about fifteen, with straight brown hair and eyes that were wide with fright. She backed away a step as she came over, as is afraid of her. To reassure her Scully withdrew her FBI badge from her inner pocket and handed it to her for inspection as she took a seat. "Alex?" she asked. The girl nodded. "I'm Special Agent Dana Scully. We talked on the phone."

The girl nodded again. She handed back the ID and pulled something of her own from her pocket. She held it up for the female agent to see. "This is Mulder's phone," she told her. She handed it over.

Scully checked the speed-dials. Her number was there, plus Mulder's mother's number and a few blank ones. "Yes, it is," she agreed. "How did you get it?"

"He gave it to me and told me to call you." Alex looked nervously around, as if expecting an attack from any side. Then she lowered her voice and started from the beginning. At some point in the tale she withdrew the three pieces of evidence and let Scully examine them. It was very late by the time the story was done, and Scully could only gaze at the tormented teenager, trying to decide how much of what she had heard could be believed. It wasn't beyond belief, she had seen and known stranger things in her line of work, but the girl was obviously shocked and alone. It would be easy for her mind to make up such traumas to deal with her emotional stress. And sometimes, when you were with Fox Mulder long enough, you started seeing things the way he did. She knew from personal experience.

"Do you know where they took him?" she finally said. Right now this girl was the only link she had to her partner, so she had to go along with her story. Even if she wasn't ready to believe it without question, she had been with Mulder.

The teenager ducked her head and shook it miserably, not wanting to meet the agent's blue gaze. "The only place I know they wouldn't be bothered is the Foxmire Building. No one can get in there with ease."

Scully shook her head. "That would be too obvious, that would be the first place we'd check." A chilling thought occurred. "Unless. . . ."

"What?" the girl glanced up warily then fastened her gaze back to the tabletop.

"Unless they want you to find him and try to break him out," she told her unhappily. Such terror shone in the dark eyes at that she wished she hadn't mentioned it. "Would that thing you showed me still work on the building's locks?"

"It should. No one saw it, and I never let it get seen on the security cameras. If they don't know about it, they can't guard against it. We don't have to worry about them changing the electronic codes, either. They do that once a month anyway, and it searches systematically until it finds the right ones."

Realizing what Scully was implying, Alex risked looking up to see if she was serious. The agent's eyes, though they weren't hazel and didn't even come close to the look his had when they were on her, reminded her of Mulder's. There was something there, something that she couldn't place but knew she never saw in the scientists' and security guards' at the Foxmire Building. This was a friend then, and she made the decision to trust the woman as she had trusted him.

"Do you mean you want to do exactly what they're waiting for? We'd fall right into their waiting hands!" Her voice started in a whisper a rose so the last words were a squeak.

Instead of answering, Scully stood up and gestured for the girl to follow. She led Alex out of the diner into its small parking lot, where her car was parked. Before she could get to the vehicle and pull out her keys the confused teenager blocked her.

"Where are we going?" asked Alex as she stopped in front of her. It wasn't a demand, it was a plea for understanding.

"To see some old friends," she answered with an odd smile. Alex heard her mutter the rest of the reply under her breath as she opened the driver's door, "Though they're sure as hell not mine."

* * *

The man that answered the door when Scully knocked was, by far, the strangest person she had seen out of her confinement. Having fallen asleep in the car, it was past midnight after all, she actually rubbed her eyes to make sure he wasn't some vestige of a dream. Despite the ungodly hour, he was dressed in jeans and a ratted T-shirt that advertised for something called Black Sabbath. His long blond hair fell in strings and looked like it hadn't been brushed in years. He stared at them suspiciously from behind thick glasses until his face suddenly cracked into a grin.

"Agent Scully!" the man exclaimed loudly. There was a sudden explosion of movement from the room behind him, but he ignored it and opened the door wider to let them through.

Inside was enough electronic equipment to make her feel uneasy. It reminded her of the rooms in the Foxmire Building. A lot of it was computers, and a large thing she instantly recognized as a tape recorder stood against one wall. Two other men were in the room as well. One was tall, with a neat red beard and a suit like Mulder wore. The other was short with close-cropped hair and glasses. When the one who had answered the door went to stand with them the three witches from Shakespeare's Macbeth came to her mind.

"Agent Scully!" the small one greeted the agent. Then the exact same look passed on each of their faces as something occurred to them.

"Where's Mulder?" the last one asked.

"And who's the kid?" the first one demanded before she could answer. "Scully, we run an important operation here. You can't just show up with anyone."

Scully finally got a word in edgewise. "This is Alex. Alex, this is Langly, Byers and Frohike, the Lone Gunmen. She's the reason Mulder's been AWOL this week."

"Really?" the one Scully had called Langly came forward to peer at her through his thick glasses, then up at Scully. "What? Is she an abductee? Possessed? Unexplained disease?"

"No," Scully answered, as if she was about to be amused. "Apparently she's an experiment of the government trying to create the superhuman." Alex glared at her accusingly. She had told them! The agent gave her a trust me smile.

The Lone Gunmen stood in shock for about one second. Then they suddenly bustled into a flurry of activity. Scully watched, shaking with held in laughter, as they ran around, grabbing this and that and discarding it for something else. A camera flashed in Alex's face for a moment and disappeared so quickly she couldn't even tell which one had taken a shot of her. When she looked at Scully for an answer she leaned over a told her softly, "These guys are ten times worse than Mulder. You're their dream come true. You can trust them; Mulder does at least. The worse thing they'll do is put you on the cover of their magazine, and no one that would recognize you even know it exists."

That put some of the girl's fears at rest. The way these Lone Gunmen were watching her . . . it wasn't the look Mulder gave her, it was closer to the way the scientists at the Foxmire Building watched eagerly for the results of one test or another.

Eventually the three men calmed down enough for Scully to steer them back to reality. As they dragged up chairs from somewhere in the equipment for them Alex decided they were okay. But if they planned on doing one test, just one, she was gone, with or without Scully. She had had enough tests for one lifetime.

They didn't have any planned. They did, however, plan on questioning her for hours on end; both women could see it in their eyes. Before they could start Scully cut in. "We need your help finding Mulder. You can interview her when we get him back."

That snapped all attention back to her. She briefly told them what Alex had told her about earlier that night.

All business now, the Lone Gunmen dove for their computers. As if something just occurred to him, Langly's fingers froze above the keyboard. He turned to the teenager. "You any good with computers?" he asked her.

She smiled proudly. "The best," she informed him.

He vacated his seat and motioned for her to sit. She did, not even noticing when the four adults clustered around to watch the screen from behind her. In seconds she was on the Internet and jumping from page to page. When Frohike saw she was already in the government's section he told her to wait.

"I want to follow you in," he explained as he took the computer next to her.

"Go in the way I did, through those pages. It'll lose anyone watching for a few minutes," she advised. He looked at her smugly, as if it was nothing but child's play, and then the race was on.

Alex led him (and anyone else) through the FBI database, the military records, and the US satellite program so fast her hands were flying over the keyboard. She never used the mouse at all. Even Frohike had to admit he was having trouble keeping up, but not out loud. Byers and Langly quietly made bets.

Finally she stopped at a page that proclaimed "The Foxmire Building" in large lettering on the top. A demand for a password flashed across the screen. She had known the codes, or how to bypass them, for the other pages. Now she paused to steel herself for a return to what had been her prison for so many years.

"The Foxmire Building?" Byers mused aloud. "That's the building Mulder was checking out. From our investigations it's just a medical hospital for military personnel, but Mulder insisted it was something more. If this is what they were hiding it doesn't surprise me we couldn't find anything."

Ready, Alex's hands flew again. "This password," she explained, "is kind of a key to the back door. This lets us in to Project Excalibur." She leaned over and typed the same thing on Frohike's keyboard: PENDRAGON. "We have seven minutes before they find out someone's in here who's not suppose to be. Another 30 seconds before they trace us back here." She was already glancing through the pages as Langly assured her they had proper protection from tracers. She listened as he listed their equipment, unimpressed. "Well then, another minute," she corrected herself.

Langly snorted. Byers, murmuring "Project Excalibur," like he remembered it from somewhere, left the crowd at the computer and began rummaging through a stack of papers. He pulled out a single sheet, a computer printout, and motioned for the unoccupied Lone Gunman and FBI agent over.

"Project Excalibur," he said, handing the paper to Langly. "We found the reference two months ago when conferring in a chat room with some military Trekkers."

"What did they say?" Scully asked as Langly scanned the printout.

"Only that the project began in 1977 with lab rats and then spider monkeys. They were planning on going to the second stage, and we suspected human experiments, but couldn't get them to prove anything. We were going to investigate further but . . . something came up."

"Yeah," called Frohike from his computer. "That was the night the Twilight Zone marathon started."

A small cry from Alex brought all attention back to the young hacker. Frohike glanced at her, then quickly skipped to the page she had found. Scully crossed the room and leaned over the teenager's shoulder. "What is it?" demanded the FBI agent when she saw the stricken look on her face.

The girl just shook her head mutely. Scully turned her attention away from the girl to read the page. Frohike was muttering to himself when she found it.

"'Interrogation of apprehended suspect unsuccessful,'" she read quietly from the screen. The room was silent until Alex started on the keyboard again, weaving back out of the pages and getting off the Internet. Frohike hit the print button, then followed.

When the printer spit out the pages Scully grabbed them and read, looking for anything that would tell her more about Mulder. Most of it was abbreviated, unintelligible without explanations. The information she could understand was the reports on certain tests and observations on Alex, and only the last page was recent enough to include a report on her escape. Mulder was only mentioned that once.

Finished, she handed it to Alex, not only because she had a right to know what was reported on her, also that she might understand some of the abbreviations.

"There's nothing here that can help us," the girl finally informed them. Scully couldn't help be feel sorry for the teenager, who obviously knew things no teenager should have to deal with. "What are we going to do?" she asked the four people she had only met hours before but trusted warily anyway. "It's my fault. If he hadn't been trying to save me--"

"Then he would have been doing something else that put his job or life on the line," Scully told her matter-of-factly. More gently, she added, "It's not your fault, you didn't ask for this. Mulder does whatever he wants. Don't worry, he can take care of himself." Then why are you so worried? She asked herself. Because I know that's a bunch of bull, was the immediate answer. If she wasn't there to watch his back the number of times she had been he would have been in the ground long ago.

"What are we going to do?" cried Alex again.

The Lone Gunmen had been conferring with themselves while the two women had their quick heart-to-heart. In answer to Alex's plea Byers announced, "We may have a plan."

* * *

"I can't believe they're letting you do this," Scully muttered the next morning as her car, housing a FBI agent and her hostage, and a van housing three passengers plus a whole lot of electronic equipment headed up the highway towards the Foxmire Building. "Then again, I can't believe I'm letting you either."

"Please Scully," insisted Alex for the umpteenth time. "I want to do this. I owe him." Scully pulled the car over to the side of the road as the van turned off the asphalt and into the woods that surrounded the building. Scully didn't envy Langly, driving a van between the big trunks of the forest.

They waited for a few minutes for the vehicle to get into position. "Okay folks, this is it," Langly's voice crackled over the walkie-talkie he had given them. "We can see the building from here, but they shouldn't be able to see us. Unless they have the woodland creatures as their lookouts," he added. "Give us five minutes to set up everything before you go knocking on their door."

"Right," Scully replied. She was about to turn the dratted thing off--the static was extremely annoying--when one last message came through.

"Be careful Scully," Frohike warned. He was about to say more when she cut him off in exasperation.

"Yes Frohike, thanks." She shut it off firmly.

"What's with him?" Alex asked.

"I haven't the foggiest," Scully snorted.

Five minutes later they pulled into the gate in the only break in the electric fence. A man with gray eyes and the rank of captain on his uniform stopped them. As he approached Scully pulled out her own gun before he could take out his. With a calm gaze at the man that dared him to try anything she rested the muzzle against Alex's temple. The girl did her best to look frightened, which wasn't as hard as she thought it would be. Staged or not, a gun less than two inches from your eye seriously got the adrenaline flowing.

The guard stopped approaching when he saw the gleam of metal and recognized the passenger. "I see you've found something that belongs to us, Ms. Scully," the man said coolly.

She answered just a frostily. "And you have something that doesn't."

"I don't know what you mean." His sneer plainly told her otherwise. The captain turned to pick up a phone in the booth by the gate but the ominous cocking of her gun froze him in his tracks.

"If you don't call your superiors and tell them I want Agent Mulder right now your test subject's brains are going to ruin my upholstery."

He whirled. How could she know? The surprise was only on his face for a moment. Then he nodded curtly and turned back to the phone.

Alex watched as the man that she knew to be Captain Taylor held the phone to his ear and spoke into it. This was her worst nightmare. She never wanted to be near this place again, much less inside with the people who had raised her as test subject 4. The fear was bubbling up inside her, but she beat it down like the night Mulder was taken--was that only last night? It seemed like a lifetime ago. But she would endure, and walk into the lion's den, for Mulder. He had risked all for her; she would do the same. If all went well she wouldn't be here long anyway. If not . . . well, she wouldn't forget him.

Captain Taylor put down the phone and neared the car again, staying far enough away to ensure he wasn't going to do anything. "They'll bring him out in a moment," he told Scully. "Dr. Keller is quite anxious to get his project back." Scully felt Alex shiver against the muzzle of the gun.

She gazed at him with hatred, that he would willingly do this to an innocent child, but he simply met her gaze with an unfathomable coolness. There was nothing they could do but wait.

* * *

Mulder woke from the blackness of unconsciousness gradually, and then wished he hadn't. Every part of him ached. He couldn't think straight with the throbbing of his temples with every heartbeat. When he finally gathered enough strength to crack open his eyes he found the left one had swelled shut.

He couldn't move. He didn't think he was strapped down, he just didn't have the strength. Raising his head made the room pitch and sway, he groaned and let his eye close. Opening it again, he saw he was in a white-walled room. There was a small bookcase against the wall opposite him, and a window--no, a mirror he realized, squinting--on another wall. The door was heavy steel, and electronically sealed. Suddenly his bruised mind made a connection with a recent memory. This was the bedroom he had seen when Alex was dragging him out the back door of the Foxmire Building.

Well, he was still alive. Not happy, but alive; that was something. He wondered if Alex had been captured despite his silence of her whereabouts as his head became too heavy to hold up and he let it fall back on the bed. She couldn't be. If they had caught her they would have caught Scully too, and that was something he didn't want to consider.

The loud clicking of the door unlocking snapped his head up again and he winced. Two men entered and his stomach dropped. "Hey guys, I seem to be a little lost, could you show we the way out?" he tried. It didn't work. They grabbed him by he upper arms and hauled him to his feet. Searing pain shot along every nerve, driving all thoughts from his head. The sudden change in altitude made the room spin again and he didn't even realize they were moving until they were out of the room and down the hall.

To his surprise they were showing him out. The sun blinded him but he caught the fleeting vision of someone passing him, heading back to the building as the guards hustled him forward. Then they released him unceremoniously and he couldn't stop his legs from buckling. He would have dropped but someone was suddenly by his side, supporting him. Red hair flashed in the sun: Scully. His abused mind did think of why she was here or how she got them to release him. He just tried to smile reassuringly and sank gratefully into the passenger seat as she opened the door and guided him in.

In seconds she had crossed around the front of the car and jumped in. Mulder felt the acceleration as the car shot backwards, turned, then shot forward, but he had decided he didn't need to see the Foxmire Building ever again. He didn't say a word as they drove, except a noncommittal grunt when she asked if he was all right.

Suddenly he remembered. His eye snapped open and he shot up straight, pain flaring everywhere but ignoring it. "Alex!" he exclaimed. He turned to look at Scully through his good eye. "That was Alex that passed by me wasn't it?" he demanded.

His partner nodded. "She went back for you Mulder," she told him. She pulled over to the side of the road and tried to examine him to find the severity of his injuries, but he grabbed her hand.

"Scully, we can't let them have her!" he insisted. How could she have done this? Before he could demand a further explanation the walkie-talkie that he hadn't seen her reactivate buzzed to life.

"Do you have him?" The voice was familiar; he should have recognized it.

"Yes, Langly," Scully replied. "Go ahead with the plan." To Mulder she said, "Don't worry, we're going to get her back." She leaned over and opened the glove compartment, withdrawing a handful of napkins. She pressed one against his forehead. He realized blood was running into his eye. His movement must have reopened a cut. He murmured a thanks, leaned back and closed his eye to ease the headache the pressure caused. He trusted her; if she said they were going to get her back, then they were going to get her back. He only wished he could do more than just sit there.

* * *

Alex choked in dismay when she saw Mulder being led--dragged was more like it--out of the Foxmire Building. He didn't see them, didn't see anything. Scully motioned for her to get out of the car with the gun, climbing out herself to keep it leveled at her head as she crossed the pavement to the front door. He didn't even look up as she passed him. She saw his swelled eye and bleeding forehead and swallowed a whimper.

Just before she entered the Foxmire Building she stopped and looked back. Scully had just hurried over and caught him before he could fall; they were together, at least. She would remember them like that. Then Captain Taylor, who had took her firmly by the arm after she had exited the car, tugged her inside and the doors closed on the outside world, perhaps forever.

She was led through the door that led to the secret of the Foxmire Building and into one of the many examination rooms. She sat in the offered chair, knowing she had no choice. "Wait here test subject 4, Dr. Fort will be here shortly."

"It's Alex," she growled at the captain of the security guard. He sneered and left the room. She didn't move, knowing it locked behind him.

"Alex, you read me?" It was Langly's voice, strong in her ear.

"Loud and clear," she whispered into the microphone hidden beneath her shirt. The Lone Gunmen had assured her no one would be able to hear their voices from the tiny device they had put in her ear. She was afraid the captain would run the wand over her, as was policy in the Foxmire Building, but he was in a hurry to get the escapee to Drs. Fort and Keller. "Do you have my location?"

"Got it. We can have you out of there in minutes, soon as you give the word."

"Not yet. Some--" She cut herself off as the door opened. Dr. Fort entered, followed by a tall man who stood in the doorway, just watching. She couldn't see his face, covered in shadow. That must be Dr. Keller. She felt a chill run down her spine when she saw the man who led her project from behind the scenes.

"Hello," Dr. Fort said pleasantly. "I was told your name is Alexandria now."

"That's right," she declared angrily. She looked at the scientist suspiciously. "Who told you?"

"Mr. Mulder was the one who informed me. However, he had to be persuaded to talk." The tall man still didn't move or say anything as Dr. Fort walked briskly across the room. Alex knew the procedure. It revolted her, how easily she slipped back into the old habits, but she sat back in the chair and let him strap her down.

"You tortured him," she hissed as he adjusted a scanner on her head. His gaze wandered to her face for a moment, but she saw no sympathy or remorse in his eyes. Only the glowing interest as he looked at his test subject.

He stood up again. "It was necessary," he told her indifferently. "Unfortunately he would not tell us where you were, but Agent Scully solved that problem for us." He flipped on a monitor above her, watched it for a minute, then wrote something down on a clipboard. "And now you're home," he finished cheerfully.

"This will never be home," she snorted. "Never."

"Oh, come on now Alexandria, don't talk like that. You never use to be this mouthy," muttered the doctor distractedly as he continued to scan the monitor. He nodded to the taller man. Dr. Keller drifted across the room slowly and stood before the monitor. She swiveled her eyes up and saw a diagram of her brain on the screen. The two scientists were muttering between themselves and pointing to different areas.

"Well now I've seen the outside," she announced defiantly. "And I've met people with an actual conscience. I'm not the ignorant little girl you always had control over anymore!"

The two doctors turned to her, surprised at the outburst and the anger in her voice. Though she was strapped down to a surgical chair she looked mad enough to melt them with the hate in her eyes.

Dr. Keller slowly approached the bound teenager. He leaned over her and for the first time she saw his face clearly. His features were long, twisted and cruel, and his eyes were as dispassionate as ice. When he spoke his voice doused the fire of her anger and froze her heart. "I would watch your tone young lady. Your friend was unwilling to cooperate with us and I watched him scream for mercy and weep like a child. It will be a long, hard existence if you don't learn to enjoy your place in life."

Alex was stunned into silence. But when the man straightened to rejoin his associate she gathered her courage and vowed quietly, "I'll learn to enjoy it as soon I'm out of this godforsaken place."

Moving so quickly that she didn't even expect it Dr. Keller whirled and belted her across face. Stars exploded in front of her eyes and the room faded to black for a moment before returning to normal. With a sudden gulp of fear she prayed the microphone and receiver weren't damaged.

"Dr. Keller!" Dr. Fort grabbed his hand before it could rise again. "There is no need to do this!" he said fiercely. "You'll damage the project."

"The project is already damaged," declared the superior scientist. "She will not be easy to handle any longer. You are no longer in charge of a controlled specimen Fort."

The men were silent for a moment, then Dr. Keller muttered, "There is only one possible option left to us to salvage the operation."

The shorter man nodded. "I can have the procedure from the military in an hour. It will have to be altered for her mind but we can still remove the memories of the outside world." He glanced over to the trapped girl. "Then maybe we'll get some peace around here about that FBI agent."

Alex gasped. No! They couldn't take that away from her! She knew struggling against the bounds was useless but she tried anyway. They wouldn't move. She had to get out now! But the plan wouldn't work until she able to get away.

Minutes felt like hours as they decided how to ruin her life. When they were finally finished Dr. Keller called in a security guard over the intercom system and began releasing her from the straps that held her prisoner. He took hold of her arm--the last thing she wanted was his filthy touch on her body--and guided her to the door.

This was it. If the microphone had been busted she was doomed anyway, but there was only one way to find out. "Now," she muttered.

"What did you say?" the scientist demanded when nothing happened. Alex moaned and sagged, she was lost.

Then the lights went out.

She took a step away from the doctor but he tightened his grip on her arm. She could hear Dr. Fort in the background trying to get the intercom to work. She knew it wouldn't. The Lone Gunmen had cut power to the entire building and disabled the generators, but they didn't know that yet. Hopefully they wouldn't figure it out until after she had gotten away.

But first she to get away from this sorry excuse for a human being. In seconds her eyes had adjusted to the pitch-blackness and she could have laughed at the irony. She was only going to be able to escape with the powers Project Excalibur had given her. Alex looked up at the towering figure of the man that held her and told herself she was going to enjoy this. Then she balled her free hand into a fist and pulled back. She uppercutted him with all the strength and anger boiling in her.

Dr. Keller fell.

She used one of the more colorful curses she heard Mulder use and massaged the fist. "I think I broke my hand on his damn face," muttered the girl. Laughter came in over a background of static in her ear.

"Don't stop," cautioned a voice in her ear. She grinned in pure relief. Mulder! He was okay!

Now nothing was going to stand in her way. Not even the security guard blocking the door with a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other. She moved quickly and he didn't get a chance to see his attacker before she crashed into him full force. His flashlight clattered away and she grabbed his gun before it could follow. Then she shot out the door, a timer ticking away in her mind. Tick-tock, tick-tock, how long before they realized what had happened and came after her?

She heard Dr. Fort bellow to follow her but she was already gone. "I'm out, where to now?" she demanded into the microphone.

Byers's voice came on through the low-level static. "Down the corridor ten yards there should be a ventilation plate in the wall. It air-conditions the entire building, you should be able to fit inside."

"Found it," she reported. She grabbed the edges of the cover and pulled. The screws resisted, then protested with a mental screech, then it popped off the wall. She pulled herself up into the ventilation shaft. "I'm in."

"At the end it splits into two tunnels, take the left one." The metal banged as it buckled when she crawled over it. She hoped no one in the building heard her. Or if they did they were more interested in getting the power back than what was crawling around in the walls. In the background of the receiver she heard Langly and Frohike trying to keep the power off. The technicians of the Foxmire Building were doing everything possible to trace down the problem and fix it, and they were doing everything possible to block them at every turn. Byers continued to direct her down one shaft after the other.

She didn't mind the darkness, or the confined space. She was having trouble just concentrating on Byers's instructions. She kept thinking about Dr. Keller, and the life she spent behind the farce of the medical hospital Foxmire. When he came to, would he hunt her down again? Would she ever be free of her heritage? Or would it make more sense to admit defeat and let them catch her? Mulder was free, that was the important part. The gun she had taken felt heavy in her hand.

"What?" she asked, missing the last thing the Lone Gunman had said.

"I said you'll have to get out of the ventilation now. This is as far as it goes toward the front entrance. There's another plate like the one you crawled into on your left."

She found it and kicked it open, dropping to the ground gently. She recognized the room instantly, it was one of the many they use to do tests on her in. She remembered the scans, the examinations, the needles. She recognized the horror of it all now. She also remembered how far the front door was from the room: not very. She moved to the door.

"Freeze right there Alexandria," a voice behind her commanded. She whirled and brought up the gun instinctively. Dr. Fort had his own gun pointed at her and pinned her frame with a high-powered flashlight.

She saw him smile in the dark. "I don't think you'll shoot me Alexandria," coaxed the doctor in a slow, gentle voice, like he was speaking to a child. "Think of all the time we've spent together."

"If I do I'll pull the trigger without thinking," she spat.

"Oh come now, you know you can't kill me. Why don't you put the gun on the ground?" His slow coaxing was getting on her nerves. A tiny voice in her mind told her to do it. It was the only way she could be free. He couldn't come after her or raise the alarm if he was dead. "Even if you do escape Alexandria, we'll find you again. You don't think that FBI agent can save you, do you? We've caught him once, we can do it again. And it will be all your fault when we do."

Her aim wavered. He was right, she could never escape her life. She was created to be Project Excalibur. How could she think she could be anything else? Her gun lowered a little more.

"That's right Alexandria. There's nothing you can do. Put the gun on the ground and I'll forget this whole mess ever happened. In a few hours you'll forget too." Forget? Forget the stars and the trees and the rain? Forget the city of lights that was like something out of a fairy tale? Forget Mulder, and Scully, and the Lone Gunmen? She didn't want to, but she didn't want them in danger either. If she escaped they would come after them, looking for her. She couldn't let that happen. She let her arm slowly fall to her side in defeat.

"Yes, good girl," Dr. Fort cajoled. "Now put it on the floor and we'll get the lights back on. Everything's going to be fine."

The little voice that told her to pick up her arm again hadn't stopped, even when she surrendered to the defeat. Then she realized it wasn't herself anymore. It was her receiver!

"No Alex!" Mulder shouted into her ear. She didn't know how long he had been trying to reach her. "Don't listen to him. He's wrong. You can get out and we'll find a way. You can't give up Alex. You can't let them do that to you." His voice stopped as he listened to voices in the background. She heard the Lone Gunmen warning him they couldn't keep the power off much longer. "Alex, you're out of time. I know you don't want to do it, but if you don't . . . if you don't I'll never see you again." He sounded anguished, as if he couldn't bare the thought. It brought a ghost of a smile to her lips.

Then the smile vanished. Before she could stop herself she squeezed her eyes shut. Her arm shot up and she fired blindly at the closest thing she had ever had to a father. He made one strangled sound and fell.

She opened her eyes slowly, first one then the other, to look upon what she had done. A dark pool spread from behind the fallen man. His eyes were forever frozen open in shocked surprise. She turned away and was sick. When she was done she wiped a hand across her mouth, murmuring, "What have I done?"

"The only thing you could Alex," Mulder said gently. She turned and ran. Ran away from the carnage and the darkness and toward the front door, not even realizing she was partially blinded by tears. There was a pair of guards at the gate, but she didn't stop. She fired at them while she ran. They dove for cover--one wounded in the leg, one missed--and she dropped the gun in the doorway and bolted into the sunshine. She never wanted to remember this ever again, but she knew she would never forget.

Scully was waiting with the car revved and ready. When the girl tore around and threw herself into it the female agent tossed something out the window and hit the gas. The car shot off onto the highway with the squealing of tires as Alex buried her face in her arms and wept.

* * *

The lights in the Foxmire Building came on a moment later. The technicians had successfully jammed the source, even if they couldn't find out where the signal was coming from. Dr. Keller slowly drifted out the front door as the FBI agent's car disappeared down the road, ignoring the stream of blood that ran down his chin. At his feet was what she had dropped: a simple ball of white paper. He bent over slowly, picked it up and smoothed it out. It was a short note, written in a rushed hand.

Do anything to anyone and we go public.

He crumbled the paper in his fist. Captain Taylor approached him from behind. "Dr. Fort is dead, shot by the girl. Do we go after them?"

Dr. Keller shook his head slowly. "No, she earned her life, I suppose. I'll keep an eye on her just in case, but I doubt there will be any occurrences. Who's next in line for promotion Captain Taylor?"

"Dr. Talbot, sir."

"Good, I've heard some nice things about her. Tell her she is now the supervisor of Project Excalibur and get her on the first plane to Oregon." His last words were murmured more to himself than the security guard. "We'll just have to begin again."

"And the Foxmire Building, sir?"

"Get the data and everyone out. Then destroy it."

* * *

"Mulder!" Alex cried happily when the van pulled out of the woods. He didn't even wait for it to stop before he opened the door and leapt out. She pushed herself away from the car and threw her arms around him.

He couldn't quite hold in the gasp of pain. Immediately releasing him, the teenager searched his face anxiously. "Sorry," she breathed.

He grinned weakly. "How's the hand?" She curled her fingers to show him it still worked.

"Accelerated healing, remember?" she reminded him.

"Ah."

The Lone Gunmen were eager to get back to their office as fast as they could. "Being out in public makes them nervous," Mulder whispered to Alex. He made them promise not to write articles that would tell anyone anything about who she really was or where she was going. "And no pictures," he insisted. They agreed, grudgingly, and not before they demanded to at least have the device she had made to escape to play with. She pulled it out of her pocket and handed it over with relish.

"Keep it," she told them. "I just want to live a normal life and forget all about Project Excalibur." They took it excitingly and drove off, already discussing who was going to do what with it.

Scully shook her head. "At least I won't have to hear from them for awhile." She turned her attention back to her partner. "And you should sit down before you pass out," she informed him briskly, ushering him to the car. She was about to climb in the driver's side when she noticed Alex. She was standing still, as if listening intently for something, head cocked to one side, facing the way they had come. It was almost as if she was waiting for something.

"What is it Alex?" Scully asked as she came up behind the girl.

She shook her head. "I'm not sure, but . . . I think something's going to happen."

Before the agent could ask what she meant an explosion rocked the ground and knocked them off their feet. They both cried out, but the tiny noises were lost in a deafening roar. Smoke and flame rose above the trees in the distance as the ground stilled and Scully jumped to her feet to check on the other two. She helped Alex up after being assured she was all right and left her staring at what they all knew was the destruction of the place that had been her prison for so long. Mulder was trying to get out of the car but she froze him with a glare. He must be hurt if he's taking my medical advice without complaint, she thought.

"Alex, come on!" she called to the still girl. "I want to get out of here before the fire department shows up."

The teenager took one last look at the black and red smudge against the sky, then turned and climbed into the back, face impassive. Scully hit the gas and they pulled away.

Several Days Later. . . .

Mulder leaned back in his chair and closed the folder with the photograph, his official report and the tape from the recorder in an evidence bag. The report explained everything that had happened since he went AWOL, except how he got the information in the first place and where the witness was currently. Skinner had agreed it was acceptable to protect her. X-File #X3653766BG was closed. Though not solved, since the people responsible for her fifteen year abduction would never be recognized or held accountable.

His basement office door opened and his partner entered. "How are you?" she asked as she eyed the black shiner over his left eye and the butterfly stitches still in his forehead.

"Bruised and stiff," he replied easily. "What did Skinner say?"

"That he's happy enough that you returned with the witness and your both alive that he's only going to chew you out for a couple of days for going AWOL, though not in so many words."

"Really? Hey, maybe he's taking a shine to me," he grinned. He stood before she could reply to that, straightening slowly. "You ready to go?"

"Ready." He looked around on his desk for a moment before she dangled something in front of his nose. "I'm driving," she announced, retracting the keys before he could grab them.

He made a face and grabbed his coat off the back of the chair. "Let's go, I don't want to be late."

* * *

Alex looked up from the newspaper when the robust woman Ms. Pennyworth entered the cheery living room, leading two very familiar faces with a smile on her own. "Alex, dear, there's some nice people here to see you honey."

She dropped the paper and sprang to meet them as the woman gave her a last kind look and disappeared back through the doorway.

"Hey, Alex," Mulder greeted the fifteen-year-old. "How's life treating you?"

She shrugged nonchalantly, then dropped the act and grinned wholeheartedly. "It's great. Ms. Pennyworth's a nice woman, and the other kids here are okay too. They think I'm a bit . . . well, weird, but I've made a few friends."

"No . . . problems?" he asked warily.

"Nope," she announced. "Haven't seen anyone, except some foster families that stop be here from time to time."

"Oh?" Scully rose an eyebrow. "Anyone interesting?" They sat down in the overstuffed sofas of the living room.

"Oh, I don't know," Alex said sheepishly. "I guess they were nice people." At the two mirrored looks she laughed. "Okay, okay, I'm just counting the days. Did you contact the Davidsons?"

"Yeah, they say they were glad they could help," Mulder told her. "And did I just see you reading the newspaper?"

"Well, I've got a lot of catching up to do," she answered, and they smiled at her defensive tone. She was turning into a regular teenager all right.

When the two agents stood to leave a few hours later Alex was sad to see them go, though she tried to hide it. She smiled and nodded when they promised to come back and visit, wherever she was living at the time, and blinked rapidly when she followed them to the door.

"If you ever want to just talk, Alex," Mulder said, "my cell phone's number--"

"I know," she said and rattled it off quickly. At their surprised looks she explained, "I memorized it."

Scully rolled her eyes good-naturally and informed them she was waiting in the car. Alex hugged her briefly before the agent stepped out the door, leaving them alone.

Alex unabashedly threw her arms around Mulder. "Hey, come on. I just ironed this suit this morning," he protested feebly. She shook her head in fond exasperation.

"See ya around, Mulder," she said seriously as she pulled away. "I hope you find some of those truths you were looking for."

He opened the door and sauntered out, pausing only once to look back on the steps of the old brick adoption center. "I think I did," he told her.