This? Not mine. Just so we're clear.
Before I begin, I'd like to explain where this story came from and why I've spent so long on it.
This story was an idea that popped into my head while I was in the midst of writing my epic masterpiece/first attempt at fanfic Abracadabra (look it up - it came out good with the exception of the little chapter that wouldn't.) Anyway, I was writing this epic 28 chapter monstrosity and I was tired, so what happened? I decided that someone should really tell the entire story of the X-Files from Mulder's POV. Because that's a reasonable goal.
I quickly discovered that writing two multi-chapter fics was biting off more than I could chew. A lot more. The Mulder Files was soon all but abandoned, and Abracadabra got finished. And then I started to miss my story, so I went back and looked it over. Yeah, it sucked. There was only one thing to do - I started the whole thing over.
The plan is to leave the original chapters intact and go back and replace them as I work my way through. At this present rate, the story should be completed at roughly the time I pay off my student loans, which you'll notice is sometime after 12/22/12. Sorry 'bout that. Hopefully Mulder and Scully will prevent colonization and we'll be able to see how it ends - and what Mulder's thinking when it happens.
I don't want a partner.
It's not that I have anything against Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully, MD. Yet. It's just that... well...
I don't want a partner.
This must be some sort of punishment – like my whole cursed life has been. Born on Friday, October 13 and then it's been all downhill from there. I haven't been on one single date since Diana left me. Samantha is still gone Who Knows Where, and the Close Encounters director's cut was on at the same time as my baseball special last night. Mom's been begging me to come visit too, and right after I got off the phone with her, the memo came.
Agent Mulder:
Due to the unorthodox nature of your work, a partner is being assigned to study your methods in the X-Files division and evaluate the resources to be allocated to you. Please expect Special Agent Dana Scully tomorrow at ten o'clock.
Assistant Director Scott Blevins
Now, that's not what the memo actually says, of course. It's just bureaucratese for:
Agent Embarrassment:
We're sending someone to spy on you so we have an excuse to shut your little pet project down.
Don't be late!
Your Boss
So of course I went and looked her up. M.D, Bachelor's in physics, college thesis on Einstein's Twin Paradox. Intelligent, driven, and loyal. Navy brat. No husband or kids, currently doing autopsies at Quantico.
Shit, in other words. I'm scared. I can read a file, after all. I am a profiler. Logical minded, she'll be. Focused on fact, not imagination. Unbending and totally loyal to her government, the way she was raised.
I should look on the bright side. At least they can't be holding her firstborn hostage to make her do what they want.
My only card to play is that she's also devoted to her career, so I can minimize the time she'll spend here. Get her to request transfer before she ruins me by pointing out as much as possible how bad the X-Files will look on her resume.
Knock, knock.
Well, there goes that.
I'd kind of hoped she'd just call. Oh well, maybe I can get her out of here as soon as possible. "Sorry, nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted." Please go away, just go away...
The door opens.
I bury my nose in the slide projector and pray she won't judge me on the merits of my poster alone. Or maybe that she will. Instead, she says nothing, and I admit that my curiosity gets the better of me, so I look up. She's cute. I didn't just think that.
"Agent Mulder. I'm Dana Scully, I've been assigned to work with you."
I get to my feet, and we shake hands. She has a very firm grip, of course. At least she's not openly showing contempt for me. "Oh, isn't it nice to be suddenly so highly regarded? So, who did you tick off to get stuck with this detail, Scully?"
I know she didn't tick off anyone, of course. She's not that type. "Actually, I'm looking forward to working with you. I've heard a lot about you."
You're kidding. She's a fan? Is that of my work when Spooky was still a term of endearment? "Oh, really? I was under the impression... that you were sent to spy on me." I try to inject as much creepiness into my voice as I can while smiling pleasantly. It's not easy and I gain a new respect for serial killers.
"If you have any doubt about my qualifications or credentials," she begins, but I cut her off by pulling her file out from under the telephone.
"You're a medical doctor, you teach at the academy. You did your undergraduate degree in physics." I look at the paper, but I'm really reciting from memory. ""Einstein's Twin Paradox, A New Interpretation. Dana Scully Senior Thesis." Now that's a credential, rewriting Einstein."
"Did you bother to read it?"
What else would I do? "I did. I liked it." But it won't help. I pop the slides in the slide projector. "It's just that in most of my work, the laws of physics rarely seems to apply." As far as I can tell anyway. Keeping in mind that I'm a psychologist. She glares at me, so I decide to stop bashing her major and get on with the briefing I'm gonna have to give her if she's gonna pretend to be my partner. "Maybe I can get your medical opinion on this, though." She stops glaring and I turn on the slideshow and there's Karen Swenson on the screen. Poor kid. "Orey-gone female, age twenty-one, no explainable cause of death. Autopsy shows nothing. Zip." She's lived all over, and I bet she knows the pronunciation of Oregon, so I'm hoping she's one of those people who's really annoyed when you say it wrong. I change the slide to show the two bumps on Karen's back. "There are, however, these two distinct marks on her lower back. Doctor Scully, can you ID these marks?"
She frowns at the screen. "Needle punctures, maybe. An animal bite. Electrocution of some kind."
Not needle punctures, I already know from the file. An animal would have to have a very flexible jaw. Electrocution... I hadn't actually considered. Damn her. She walks up to the viewscreen and frowns at the picture. I change the slide to the molecular diagram.
"How's your chemistry? This is the substance found in the surrounding tissue."
"It's organic. I don't know, is it some kind of synthetic protein?" Synthetic protein was the lab's guess.
"Beats me, I've never seen it before either." Before this case, I mean. "But here it is again in Sturgis, South Dakota," I add, showing her the kid that vanished for six months and was found facedown ten feet from where he vanished, "And again in Shamrock, Texas." The idiot who named a town Shamrock is right up there with the person who decided "Fox" was a good name for a kid in my book.
"Do you have a theory?"
"I have plenty of theories," I reply mysteriously, crossing the room to stand next to her, "Maybe what you can explain to me is why it's bureau policy to label these cases as "unexplained phenomenon" and ignore them." I switch to my eerie voice. "Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?"
"Logically, I would have to say no."
Naturally.
"Given the distances needed to travel from the far reaches of space, the energy requirements would exceed a spacecraft's capabilties -"
Typical. "Coventional wisdom," I tell her. "You know this Oregon female? She's the fourth person in her graduating class to die under mysterious circumstances. Now, when convention and science offer us no answers, might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a plausibility?"
She's gonna run away. Maybe not right now, but there's no way she can keep this up forever. But it won't be now. I can tell, because she blows into full rant mode.
"The girl obviously died of something. If it was natural causes, it's plausible that there was something missed in the post-mortem. If she was murdered, it's plausible there was a sloppy investigation. What I find fantastic is any notion that there are answers beyond the realm of science. The answers are there. You just have to know where to look."
I like it. And you know why I like it? Because all I have to do is get her really frustrated with not finding anything useful and she'll go away. " That's why they put the "I" in "F.B.I." See you tomorrow morning, Scully, bright and early." I sit back down at the desk. "We leave for the very plausible state of Oregon at eight A.M."
I kind of hoped she'd miss the flight, since I didn't give her any details about it, but she found me at the airport curb. I manage to restrict the conversation to the utterly mundane weather and therefore it stagnates.
I hate spies.
Once we've made it on the plane, Scully's true nature as a nervous flier shows itself. During the takeoff she clings, white-knuckled to the seat and an idea creeps into the back of my brain.
I am not a nervous flier. Turbulence doesn't even bug me one bit. So if I were to just... play that up a little, shall we say, maybe she'll decide we're totally incompatible as partners. So as soon as the seatbelt light flicks off (no sense in annoying the flight attendants) I stretch out, lying across the empty seats on either side of me.
Scully ignores me.
I pull out the headphones in my pocket and plug them into my Walkman. She pulls out the casefiles and starts reading. And we stay that way for two hours until we land for our stopover. And after another white-knuckled takeoff, we stay that way again. In fact, it goes on for four hours.
God, I'm bored. This plan may not be working as well as I hoped, and I'm seriously considering becoming the Annoying Talkative Seatmate -
Bump.
The loudspeaker comes on. "I would like to ask all passengers to fasten their seatbelts, as we're about to make our descent..." the pilot begins, but instead the plane begins to shake. I mean really shake. There's screaming, there's chaos, and there's Scully gripping her seat so hard I think the thing is gonna start protesting any second – inanimate object or no. I can hear objects flying behind me, the plane is shaking so hard. When it stops, she breathes a sigh of relief and my chance is nigh.
"This must be the place," I tell her, and ignore the dirty look she sends my way.
Once the car is good and rented, we start on the drive to the Oregon coast. Bellefleur is located just south of Astoria, Oregon, so the trip should take about two hours, depending on how lost we get. There don't seem to be any road signs to point us there, at least until we actually pull into the city. And the whole way there, it's just a replay of the plane ride. Oh dear God, I can't take this much longer. The silence was a really stupid idea.
Also, I'm about to get my ass kicked and I know it. I've been doing some thinking, and I remembered that Oregon has a fair number of UFO sightings – they even have a UFO festival in McMinville. And there is something about this case. The way nothing adds up practically screams "otherworldly". So I know – there are aliens here. They have to be here.
Of course, I'm pretty sure Samantha isn't with them, but that's not important right now. I just want to prove that part of my story is true. Is that too much to ask? So I'll just have to keep my eyes open for anything that might pan out to be a sign of alien activity and record it accordingly. Good thing I remembered the spray paint.
"You didn't mention yesterday, this case has already been investigated."
She speaks! I try to pretend this isn't an amazing occurrence. "Yeah, the FBI got involved after the first three deaths when local authorities failed to turn up any evidence. Our boys came out here, spent a week, enjoyed the local salmon which, with a little lemon twist, is just to die for, if you'll pardon the expression. Without explanation, they were called back in. The case was reclassified and buried in the X-Files, till I dug it up last week."
"And you found something they didn't."
Who cares what I found, really? I want to know what she sees. "Mmm."
"The autopsy reports of the first three victims, show no unidentified marks or tissue samples. But those reports were signed by a different medical examiner than the latest victim."
I never actually noticed that. "That's pretty good, Scully."
"Better than you expected or better that you hoped?"
Better than... just better. I can't deny that I hoped she'd suck as an investigator – that would make my life easier. But I expected her to be smart. Too damn smart. "Well... I'll let you know when we get past the easy part."
She laughs and I feel better about this whole partner thing. "Is the medical examiner a suspect?"
Everyone's a suspect. "We won't know that until we do a little gravedigging. I've arranged to exhume one of the other victims' bodies to see if we can get a tissue sample to match the girl's. You're not squeamish about that kind of thing, are ya?" If she faints it will only work to my advantage.
"I don't know. I've never had the pleasure."
And then the radio goes nuts. It wasn't even on, but it is now, and changing its own channels. I fumble for the off switch, but then the clock goes nuts too. The radio starts screaming and I remember that guy in Arizona that saw the flying disc after his CB radio recorded a screeching sound, so I begin scanning the sky for flying discs.
"What's going on?" Scully asks me, but I don't have an answer, so I just pull over and mark the spot. A little spray paint, no biggie (unless you count the look on Scully's face that says I'm in for a world of hurt when her report gets turned in). "What the hell was that about?" she asks.
I don't think an explanation about flying discs would help right now. "Oh, you know... probably nothing," I tell her as I climb back in the car. It's probably nothing anyway.
And the silence returns.
By the time we get to the cemetery, I've decided the silence isn't as annoying as it was on the plane. When I pull up at the curb outside the cemetery, though, I'm still a little frustrated, for an entirely different reason. We're not supposed to work well together. That's not in the plan.
They're all set with the crane and the required people from the county waiting for us to come desecrate the grave of one Ray Soames. One of the waiting men walks over to us when we get out of the car and shakes our hands. "Mister Mulder, John Truitt, County Coroner's Office."
I don't care. Just another local official. "Yeah, hi." We shake hands. "This is Agent Scully," I add, remembering that I now have to introduce her too. She and Truitt greet each other, which I don't care about, and then nothing happens. "How soon can we get started?" I ask Truitt, while Scully greets his assistant.
"We're ready to go."
"Oh great."
"Okay, Vinnie!" he shouts up the hill to the guy sitting in the crane.
We head uphill toward the grave. "Were you able to arrange for a, uh... an examination facility?" I ask Truitt, hoping that since I brought my own coroner I don't have to use his.
"I think we got something for you -" he begins, but he's cut off when a man pulls up behind us and starts yelling. "Excuse me!"
Here we go.
"Excuse me!"
He starts up the hill but has to turn around to put his daughter back in the car and then heads up the hill again. "I just don't know who you people think you are. You just think you can come up here, and do whatever you damn well please, don't you?"
I'm guessing victim's family. "I'm sorry, you are..?"
"I'm Doctor Jay Nemman. I'm county medical examiner."
Coroner? Oh, like he's never exhumed anyone himself! "Surely, you must have been informed of our intentions to come up here."
"No, uh, no. We've been away."
Mystery solved. "Well, that answers the question that we had. Why you hadn't done the recent autopsy on Karen Swenson. You're aware of the tissue sample that was taken from the girl's body."
The effect of these words is farily entertaining. "Wha... wha... what is the insinuation here? Are you saying that I missed something in those other kids' exams?"
"We're not insinuating anything, sir," says Scully in a very calming voice.
"Wait a minute," he says, and the rest of them start to head back up the hill but Nemman reaches out to grab me. "Wait a minute, see, well I think you are. And if you're making an accusation, then you'd better have something to back it up."
"Daddy, please, let's just go home." His daughter is not staying in the car. She's standing in the street, pleading. "Let's go home, please."
Nemman shoots me one more glare before he climbs back in the car.
"Guy obviously needed a longer vacation," I tell Scully, who sighs.
We head back up to the grave, Scully reading Ray's file as the hole gets deeper. "Ray Soames was the third victim. After graduating high school, he spent time in a state mental hospital treated for post-adolescent schizophrenia."
I know this part. "Soames actually confessed to the first two murders. He pleaded to be locked up but he couldn't produce any evidence that he committed the crimes. Did you happen to read the cause of death?"
"Exposure. His body was found in the woods after escaping the hospital." She says this like it's totally logical.
"Missing for only seven hours in July. How does a twenty-year-old boy die of exposure on a warm summers night in Oregon, Doctor Scully?"
The coffin is pulled out of the ground before she has to respond. It rises into the air on a crane, but suddenly...
"Look out!"
It goes rolling down the hill and is stopped by a giant headstone! We all follow it and when we get there it's cracked open a little. Like destiny.
So I lift the lid. Truitt tries to stop me, of course. "This isn't official procedure."
Which part? "Really?"
I keep opening it. The body is an alien. Short, grayish, and big eye sockets. There are gasps behind me and Scully kneels next to me. She doesn't gasp.
"It's probably a safe bet Ray Soames never made the varsity basketball team," I tell her.
It's an alien body. I turn to Truitt. "Seal this up, right now! Nobody sees or touches this. Nobody!"
Truitt slams it shut.
I have to wait in the hallway for an hour before Scully goes in to examine the body. When I finally get inside I'm about to jump out of my skin. And then I get another good look at it and I know I'm right. Good thing I remembered the camera too.
I've finally got my proof.
It's an alien
Click!
I found proof.
Click!
I'd better call the gunmen.
Click!
Scully can't discredit me now.
Click!
She ignores the clicking of the camera in my hands. Can't stand for that. "This is amazing, Scully. You know what this could mean? It's almost too big to even comprehend."
She starts talking into her tape recorder. "Subject is a hundred and fifty-six centimeters in length, weighing fifty-two pounds in extremis. Corpse is in advance stages of decay and desiccation. Distinguishing features include large ocular cavities, oblate cranium... indicates subject is not human. Could you point that flash away from me, please?"
Oh. I guess she did notice.
It's still an alien, though, right? "If it's not human, what is it?"
"It's mammalian. My guess is it's a chimpanzee or something from the ape family, possibly an orangutan."
And that makes no sense. "Buried in the city cemetery in Ray Soames' grave? Try telling that to the good townsfolk or to Ray Soames' family. I want tissue samples and x-rays. I'd like blood type and toxicology and a full genetic work-up."
"You're serious?"
We stare at each other. "What we can't do here, we'll order to go."
"You don't honestly believe this is some kind of an extraterrestrial? This is somebody's sick joke."
Fine. Prove it. I want to prove it. "We can do those x-rays here, can't we? Is there any reason we can't do them right now? I'm not crazy, Scully. I have the same doubts you do."
Okay, well, I sort of do.
We finally manage to check into a motel about midnight. I tried to go to sleep, but who can sleep when they've found an alien corpse in a city cemetery? I throw on my sweats and head out the door and make it half a block before I realize that I really should at least try to pretend to be nice so I head back and knock on Scully's door.
"Who is it?"
"Steven Spielberg," I reply, wondering if she's even seen Close Encounters.
She opens the door in her pajamas. No wonder, this time of night. "I'm way too wired. I'm going for a run, you want to come?"
"Pass."
She's got all the evidence spread over a table. You figure out what that little thing up Ray Soames' nose is yet?"
"No," she yawns, "and I'm not losing any sleep over it. Good night."
That was step one. Step two is to look into Ray and figure out why no one ever noticed he was an alien. His family's moved away, so the place to start is his doctor, a man named Noah Glass.
Doctor Glass is pretty forthcoming about Ray, which makes me think he has nothing to hide. "Ray Soames was a patient of mine, yes. I oversaw his treatment for just over a year for clinical schizophrenia. Ray had an inability to grasp reality. He seemed to suffer from some kind of post-traumatic stress."
I wonder about the other kids... "Is that something you've seen before?"
"I've treated similar cases." Care to vague that up?
Scully seem to know where this is going. "Were any of those Ray Soames' classmates?"
"Yes."
"We're trying to find a connection in these deaths. Did you treat any of these kids with hypnosis?"
"No, I did not." Must be one of those people who doesn't think hypnosis is science.
"Are you treating any of these kids now?" Scully asks him.
"Currently? Yes, I'm treating Billy Miles and Peggy O'Dell. Both have been long term live-in patients." Good. Someone to talk to.
"They're here at this hospital?" Scully asks.
"That's right, going on four years now."
Exactly where the FBI wants me. "Would it be possible for us to talk to them?" she continues.
"Well, you might find it difficult. Certainly, in Billy Miles' case."
Billy Miles is as dead to the world as he's been advertised. Peggy sits next to him, and she's reading, but nothing else. "Billy's experiencing what we call a waking coma.," explains the doc. "Functionally, his brainwaves are flat and he's persistent vegetative."
"How did it happen?" Scully asks.
"Both he and Peggy were involved in an automobile accident out on State road. Peggy?"
She stops reading.
"Peggy, we have some visitors, would you like to talk with them for a moment?"
"Billy wants me to read now." She resumes.
This girl could tell me everything. I kneel in front of her. "Does he like it when you read to him?"
"Yes. Billy needs me close."
I wonder if they gave her telepathy? Anyway, we need to check for symptoms of abduction. I head back to the doctor. "Doctor. I'm wondering if we can do a cursory medical exam on Peggy."
And Peggy suddenly goes nuts, wrecking the room.
She puts her hand to her face and pulls it away covered in blood – her nose is bleeding. While everyone else runs around trying to calm her down, she's fallen out of her weelchair and the back of her shirt is right in front of me. So I have to know, it's that simple. I lift it up just an inch, and there are two little bumps on her lower back, right where they should be.
I look behind me, to Scully. I want to show her, but she's already seen.
I didn't think anyone could look that shocked. And then she stomps out of the room. I seriously consider just letting her run, but that's not a good idea.
I catch her down the hall, about to head outside. "What's his name, er... Billy said he was sorry he didn't get to say goodbye."
She rounds on me, and she is furious. "How did you know that girl was going to have the marks?"
"I don't know, lucky guess?" If I tell her, she'll report it and that'll be the end of my career in the FBI.
"Damn it, Mulder, cut the crap. What is going on here? What do you know about those marks? What are they?"
Does it matter what they are? Really? If I don't tell her, my methods aren't producing anything. If I do tell her, I'm crazy. "Why? So you can put it down in your little report? I don't think you're ready for what I think."
"I'm here to solve this case, Mulder, I want the truth."
At least if I'm crazy they'll pay for my care. "The truth? I think those kids have been abducted."
"By who?"
It's probably a collective consciousness. Like the Borg. "By what," I reply in a moment of mysteriousness.
The look on her face is totally worth it. "You don't really believe that?"
"Do you have a better explanation?"
"I'll buy that girl is suffering some kind of pronounced psychosis. Whether it's organic or the result of those marks, I can't say. But to say that they've been riding around in flying saucers, it's crazy, Mulder, there is nothing to support that."
Not nothing. It shares elements with thousands of abduction scenarios all over the country... but there's nothing concrete, so it doesn't count. "Nothing scientific, you mean."
"There has got to be an explanation. You've got four victims. All of them died in or near the woods. They found Karen Swenson's body in the forest in her pajamas, ten miles from her house. How did she get there? What were those kids doing out there in the forest?"
Well, she's not writing her report yet. Progress.
Of course, to prove that I'm right, we have to go out to the forest and find a complete lack of evidence. Which the police have already done, but no, since we're here, we have to be thorough.
When we get to the forest, it's already dark. Oregon's kind of pretty. Crickets chirping, woodsy woods... is that a coyote moving around in that bush? Scratch that pretty thing. Not pretty.
Luckily we brought flashlights. Despite the fact that this is a crime scene, the Sheriff hasn't yet returned our calls, so we're just gonna hope we don't get caught. Once we're in the trees, we split up and go to look around. I'm wandering past yet another fern, minding my own business, when the rumbling starts behind me. For a second, a wild hope flares through me that I'll get abducted by aliens, which would solve a good number of my problems, but it's not a UFO. When I follow the sound, I find a man with a rifle pointed at Scully, who is pointing her gun back at him. He's just at the point of accusing her of tresspassing.
"We are conducting an investigation," she says, not wavering in the slightest, but I run up to her and point my gun at the guy too.
"Get in your car and leave, both of you, or I'll have to arrest you. I don't care who you are."
Now wait just a damn minute! "Hold on! This is a crime scene." Although we don't actually have clearance...
"Did you hear what I said? You are on private property without legal permission. Now, I'm only going to say it one more time, get in your car and leave."
We really do have to get in our car and leave. Dammit. We'll just have to sneak in better tomorrow. "What's he doing out here all by himself?" I ask her.
"Maybe it has something to do with this." She opens her hand. It's full of... ash, maybe, or sand? "What do you think it is?"
We're at the Oregon Coast, for crying out loud! "I don't know. Is it a campfire?"
"It was all over the ground. I think something is going on out here, some kind of a sacrifice, maybe. What if these kids are involved in some kind of occult and that man knows something about it?" Occult? That's your theory? How is that any better than E.T? My compass is still spinning. "I wanna come back here," she adds, oblivious.
Following the traditional pattern, we should lose time soon. My watch says 9:03. Compass still spinning. "You okay, Mulder?"
"Yeah, I'm just, er..." I don't know how to explain, so I start scanning the sky.
"What are you looking for?"
And then everything is white.
And then the car glides to a stop. I try to turn it on but it's just dead.
"What happened?"
Start with the obvious. "We lost power, brakes, steering, everything." It's 9:12 – no, 9:13. "We lost nine minutes."
It must have been right here, and I MISSED IT. Before I know it, I'm out of the car, screaming into the heavens. My sanity case is looking thinner and thinner. Scully climbs out after me and has to yell to be heard over the rain.
"We lost what?"
Stick to the facts and you could get out of this, Mulder. "Nine minutes. I looked at my watch just before the flash and it was nine-o-three. It just turned nine-thirteen." Something pink catches my eye, and I run toward it. "Look! Look!" We stop at the spot. The X I painted in the road on the way into town. "Oh-ho, yes! Abductees... people who have made UFO sightings, they've reported unexplained time loss."
"Come on."
I'm on a roll now. "Gone! Just like that."
"No, what a minute. You're saying that, that time disappeared. Time can't just disappear, it's, it's, it's a universal invariant!" Said with the tone of someone clinging to a lifeboat in eel-infested waters.
The car starts up again. "Not in this zipcode," I answer. So we get back in and drive away.
I might actually sleep if someone wasn't pounding on my door. But when I open it, it's Scully. She looks terrified.
I'm thinking mugger, attempted rape, something along those lines. "Hi."
"I want you to look at something."
Look at what? "Come on in."
She walks into my room, turns her back, and takes off her bathrobe. She's wearing a bra and underwear underneath. She looks at me, fear in her eyes, and then glances downward. I follow her gaze and notice, in the candlelight, a few bumps on her lower back.
No way. No way would fate be so cruel as to let someone who doesn't even believe be abducted by aliens and come back with no proof. No freaking w-
Those are not Alien Test Bumps.
They are mosquito bites.
"What are they?"
I am such an idiot.
"Mulder, what are they?" Her voice contains a tinge of panic.
She's not incapable of believing. "Mosquito bites."
"Are you sure?"
The panic's still there. This partner thing might not be as bad as I thought. "Yeah. I got eaten up a lot myself out there." She pulls her robe back on and wraps her arms around me, shaking slightly. She must have been way more scared than she let on. "You okay?"
"Yes." She lets go. I should have kept my mouth shut.
Back on uncertain terms again. "You're shaking."
"I need to sit down."
She grabs a chair and takes deep, regular breaths. I grab the one across from her. "Take your time."
She is silent for a while.
"Mulder," she asks finally, "don't you ever feel like just giving all this up?"
Easy answer. "No."
She frowns at me. "Why not?"
I stand up and pace around the room, trying to formulate an answer to that question. "Because if I quit... something that shouldn't win will beat me."
That seems reasonably safe.
"Don't you ever feel that way about anything in your life?" I ask, genuinely curious all of a sudden.
She nods slowly. "My parents want me to be a doctor. I like the FBI. My father and I still can't even really talk about it. But part of the reason I can't quit now is that if I do, I'll be admitting that he knows what's right for me more than I do."
She does understand. I slump down next to the bed. "You see what I meant by that then."
I feel the bed move behind me as she settles down on it. "Yeah."
There is silence again.
"Mulder – why did you get started in the first place?"
If I'm going to tell this story, I'll have to start at the real beginning. "I was twelve when it happened. My sister was eight. She just disappeared out of her bed one night. Just gone, vanished. No note, no phone calls, no evidence of anything."
"You never found her."
She's about Samantha's age. She would have been nine or so. I wonder if she remembers hearing about Samantha at all as a child. "Tore the family apart. No one would talk about it. There were no facts to confirm, nothing to offer any hope."
"What did you do?"
Nothing. There was nothing to do. "Eventually, I went off to school in England, I came back, got recruited by the bureau. Seems I had a natural aptitude for applying behavioral models to criminal cases. My success allowed me a certain freedom to pursue my own interests. And that's when I came across the X-Files."
"By accident?"
We'll leave Diana out of it for now. "At first, it looked like a garbage dump for UFO sightings, alien abduction reports, the kind of stuff that most people laugh at as being ridiculous. But I was fascinated. I read all the cases I could get my hands on, hundreds of them. I read everything I could about paranormal phenomenon, about the occult and..." I've already told her about Samantha. Everything else is just gravy, really. Doesn't matter what she can do to my career, she can ruin my whole life with that knowledge.
"What?"
"There's classified government information I've being trying to access, but someone has been blocking my attempts to get at it."
"Who? I don't understand." But her posture is more erect, and I can tell she does understand, at least a little bit.
Don't let my instincts be wrong. "Someone at a higher level of power. The only reason I've been allowed to continue with my work is because I've made connections in congress."
"And they're afraid of what? That, that you'll leak this information?"
I don't know what they fear. But it isn't me. I'm just a flea, an annoyance. I'm nothing. "You're a part of that agenda, you know that."
"I'm not a part of any agenda. You've got to trust me. I'm here just like you, to solve this."
She's got serious denial. I move closer to her, willing her to believe. "I'm telling you this, Scully, because you need to know, because of what you've seen. In my research, I've worked very closely with a man named Dr. Heitz Werber and he's taken me through deep regression hypnosis. I've been able to go into my own repressed memories to the night my sister disappeared. I can recall a bright light outside and a presence in the room. I was paralyzed, unable to respond to my sister's calls for help." Her eyes are wide and unblinking and blue and I feel like I'm drowning. "Listen to me, Scully, this thing exists."
I want to explain how I know, but I don't know how.
"But how do you know..."
"The government knows about it, and I got to know what they're protecting. Nothing else matters to me, and this is as close as I've ever gotten to it."
Nothing else matters.
The phone rings and I think we both jump about a foot. I grab it before it rings again. "Hello?"
"Peggy O'Dell is dead."
Huh? "What?"
"Peggy died tonight."
"Who is this? Who is thi..."
But the dial tone answers me. I turn back to Scully. "That was some woman... she just said Peggy O'Dell was dead."
"The girl in the wheelchair?"
She's out in the middle of the road, lying under a sheet. Scully drifts toward the body, so I drift toward the deputy and the driver of the Mack truck that hit her. Poor Peggy. "What happened?"
The driver is shaking. "She ran right out in front of me."
"Who are you?" asks the deputy.
Ran? She was running? "She was running? On foot?"
"Listen, sir, I don't know who you are, but you're going to have to let me keep questioning this gentleman without interfering!" shouts the deputy.
I'm about to shout back, when his radio goes. It's static to me, but the deputy pales a bit and then asks, "Are you Agent Mulder?"
Not good. "Yes."
"I'm sorry, but someone just found the autopsy bay vandalized and the body you were working on stolen."
I hate conspiracies. "Well, that's just..." But I never get the chance to finish.
"We need to ask you a few quest..." Scully begins
They'll be going after our motel next. "Let's go, let's go." She gives me a weird look as I drag her away. "Someone trashed the autopsy bay in the lab and they stole the body, we're going back to the motel."
"What? They stole the corpse?"
Well, the hotel's a loss. As in burning to the ground. Cops and firemen everywhere. I can't get in, despite the badge. It's not a fireproof shield. "There goes my computer," Scully mutters.
"Damn it! The x-rays and pictures!" I just realized exactly what we lost.
The firemen keep running around. "We need a couple of men out here!"
My motel's never been burned down before. What the hell are we gonna do now?
"My name is Theresa Nemman. You've got to protect me."
Which is at least a new development. And just when I thought we were SOL. "Come with us."
There's a diner three blocks away that's open. Theresa sits next to Scully in a booth and tells us her story. "This is the way it happens, I don't know how I get out there. I'll just find myself out in the woods."
Classic. "How long has it been happening?"
"Ever since the summer we graduated. It's happened to my friends too. That's why I need you to protect me. I'm scared I might... die like the others, like... Peggy did tonight."
I remember her. She's the girl we met on the first day here – Dr. Nemman's daughter. "Your father's the medical examiner. You were the one on the phone, you told me Peggy O'Dell had been killed."
She nods.
Scully speaks up for the first time. "Theresa, your father knows about this, doesn't he? About what happened."
"Yes. But he said never to tell anyone about any of it."
A very odd twist. "Why?"
"He wants to protect me. He thinks he can protect me, but I don't think he can."
At least maybe we can get some confirmation. "Do you have the marks, Theresa?"
"Yes. I'm going to die, aren't I? I'm gonna be next?"
Scully shakes her head. "No, you're not going to die." But Theresa isn't listening because her nose has just started bleeding at an alarming rate.
"Oh, God!"
Scully grabs some napkins, but Dr. Nemman and the Detective show up at exactly that time.
"Let's go home, Theresa. Theresa, come on," says the doctor, and he sits down next to her, puts a handkerchief to her nose. "Come on, honey."
"I don't think she wants to leave," I tell him. I'm on dangerous ground and I know it.
"Come on..." He looks over at me. "I don't care what you think! She's a sick girl."
The detective joins in. "Your father wants to take you home. He'll get you all cleaned up."
"I'm going to take you where you'll be safe, Theresa. Detective Miles and I won't let anything happen to you, I promise."
Miles? Miles? "You're Billy Miles' father?" No way.
"That's right. And you stay away from that boy."
Ouch. That hurts.
Dr. Nemman bundles Theresa into his van and they drive her away. She never says "no" and we can't stop them.
I hate this town. "Eh, you gotta love this place. Everyday's like Halloween."
"They know Mulder. They know who's responsible for the murders."
She's right. "They know something."
We head to the car, and Scully continues her rant. "Dr. Nemman's been hiding medical evidence from the beginning. He lied on the autopsy reports and now we find out about the detective. Who else would have reason to trash the lab and our rooms?"
She's said it, now. We both stop walking. It doesn't make any sense... "Why would they destroy evidence? What would they want with that corpse?"
"I don't know, I..."
There might be more evidence to be found. "Makes you wonder what's in those other two graves."
So we grab our flashlights and head into the dark cemetery and night, in the pouring rain. It's no trouble finding the graves. Just look for the big holes in the ground. "They're both empty."
"What is going on here?"
Who is hiding? There's no motive. But someone in a mental ward wouldn't really need motive, would they? "I think I know who did it. I think I know who killed Karen Swenson."
"Who? The detective?"
He's the obvious choice. Except he has no motive. But he might have something to hide. "The detective's son. Billy Miles."
"The boy in the hospital? The vegetable?! Billy Miles, a boy who's been in a coma for the last four years, got out here and dug up these graves?"
She doesn't believe. I want her to believe. "Peggy O'Dell was bound to a wheelchair but she ran in front of that truck. Look, I'm not making this up, it all fits the profile of alien abduction."
"This fits a profile?"
"Yes. Peggy O'Dell was killed at around nine-o-clock, that's right around the time we lost nine minutes on the highway, I think that something happened in that nine minutes. I think that time, as we know it, stopped. And something took control over it." She smiles. In fact, she grins. "You think I'm crazy." She nods. Damn. There goes that. I'm sunk. I head back to the car – and then I realize she's not squelching along behind me. "What?"
"Peggy O'Dell's watch stopped a couple of minutes after nine. I made a note of it when I saw the body."
It all fits. "That's the reason the kids come to the forest, because the forest controls them and summons them there. And, and, and the marks are from, from some kind of test that's being done on them. And, and that may be causing some kind of genetic mutation which would explain the body that we dug up." I'm making this up as I go along, but it fits, it all fits...
"And the force summoned Theresa Nemman's body into the woods tonight."
"Yes, but it was Billy Miles who took her there, summoned by some alien impulse. That's it!" I've got it. I've done it. It's solved. Scully laughs, sounding slightly insane. We'd better go see our killer. "Come on, let's get out of here."
"Where are we going?"
"We're going to pay a visit to Billy Miles."
When we walk out of the cemetery, I can't shake the feeling that nothing will ever be the same.
"Now, we could stand here until the second coming, waiting for Billy to get out of this bed. It ain't going to happen. He blinks and I know about it."
She examines his I.V. I like her. "I guess you changed his bedpan last night."
"Hmm, nobody else here's gonna do it."
Okay, so I know she saw him. "You noticed nothing unusual? Do you remember what you were doing last night around nine-o-clock?"
"Mmm, probably watching TV, yeah."
Oh yeah, he blinks and you know about it. "Do you rememeber what you were watching?"
"Um, let's see... you know I don't really remember what I watched." Sigh. "Miss?"
Scully is inspecting Billy's feet. "What is she looking for?"
"Mulder, take a look at this."
I'm very in demand, aren't I? Scully is scraping dirt off of Billy's feet and into a glass vial. There's dirt on Billy's feet. I'm brilliant, all right. "Do you know who was taking care of Peggy O'Dell last night?" I ask the nurse.
"Not me, it's not my ward. Not my aisle of the produce section." I was wrong. I don't like her anymore. "I do have a job of my own to do... what is she doing now?"
She's just closing the vial, for God's sake! "Thank you for your time, ma'am."
"Okay."
"Good day." And then we're free.
One we're in the hall, Scully starts talking a mile a minute. "That kid may have killed Peggy O'Dell, I don't believe this."
"Scully..." I begin.
"It's crazy! He was in the woods."
How can she prove that? "You're sure?" She holds up her vial.
"This is the same stuff that I took a handful of in the forest."
Great. Now we just need proof. "Okay, then maybe we should take it and run a lab test..."
"We lost the original sample in the fire. What else could it be?"
I don't believe what I'm hearing. We stop walking. "All right, but I just want you to understand what it is you're saying."
"You said it yourself."
Yes, yes I did. "Yeah, but you have to write it down in your report."
"You're right. We'll take another sample from the forest... and run a comparison before we do anything."
When we get out to the forest, the detective's van is there. Possibly not a good sign. He's not inside, at least, so we're not caught yet. I have a feeling he's going to be even less tolerant this time. We really should go away and come back when he's gone.
"The detective's here. What do you think?"
Someone screams in the woods.
Screw smart planning – anything could be going on in there! We run through bushes and trees. It's dark and I lose track of Scully but I don't even care. We run. We will find her. She must be here, somewhere...
Somewhere.
She screams again, and I turn toward the sound. The ground is uneven, and I look down for just a second as a I stumble. When I look back up the detective is there with a shotgun.
"Hold it, hold it right there! You got no business out here."
I can't believe he'd ignore the screaming. "There were screams..." I begin to try to explain.
"Down on the ground. Now!"
I'm not gonna just give up. "You know it's Billy. You've known it all along."
"I said down on the ground."
This is gonna be easy. Not like the guy's a criminal mastermind. "How long are you gonna let it happen?" Another scream. "He's gonna kill her!"
For just a second, he looks away, and then suddenly he runs into the woods. I chase him, and suddenly we're in a clearing. Billy is standing in a pool of light, holding Theresa in his arms. They are surrounded by swirling wind and leaves and dust. It gets in my eyes but I cannot look away. They're here. I know, now. I'm right. They exist.
I've proved it to myself.
The detective is yelling but I don't hear what he said. Suddenly he pulls out his shotgun and points it at his own son.
Not the plan I had in mind.
I tackle him to the ground, which may have been one of my dumber plans. Oh, yes, tackle the man with the shotgun. Great idea, Fox.
Bang!
For a second I think I'm shot, but it didn't hit either one of us. Billy picks her up and looks to the sky, and in the light I can see two small bumps on his back, just above the waistband of his pajama pants.
I love being right.
The wind grows stronger and the light gets brighter – and then they die down. A sudden thunderclap, and Billy is standing in front of us. Theresa is on the ground. But she's moving, so it's okay.
And Billy is moving too. "Dad?" he asks.
"Billy. Oh, god."
I can't watch their touching reunion. A feeling of unfairness overwhelms me and I look away. I notice, with scientific detachment, that Billy's bumps are gone. Whatever they've done to him is over for now.
Scientific detachment? "Scully." Crap, I lost her.
Well, I guess that's one way to make sure they don't shut me down. Lose the spy in the woods. Dammit. "Scully!"
Luckily, she's right there when I start looking. "Mulder, what happened? There was a light."
I noticed. "It was incredible."
It wasn't that hard to get Dr. Werber to come visit Billy when we got him back to Washington. Billy, after all, is what he's made his career for.
"If you can hear me, raise your right hand."
And Billy does.
"Tell me about the light, Billy. When did you first see the light?"
That damn light.
"In the forest. We were all in the forest having a party. All my friends. We were celebrating."
Playing Stragego. I was playing Stragego with Samantha.
"What were you celebrating?"
Mom and Dad were just down the street.
"Graduation. And then the light came. It took me away to the testing place."
Is Samantha in the testing place now?
"They would tell me to gather the others so that they could do tests. They put something in my head... here."
What have they done to her?
"I would wait for their orders."
Is Samntha their slave too?
"Billy, who gave the orders?"
Who? Who did this to her? To my parents? To me?
"The light. They said it would be okay. No one would know. But the test didn't work. They wanted everything destroyed. They said they were leaving. I'm afraid. I'm afraid they're coming back." He begins to cry.
Is Samantha even alive to cry over what she's lost?
"Don't be afraid Billy, we're gonna help."
The door on the other side of the glass opens and I look over to where I know Scully is. She's watching this all. What could she possibly be thinking?
When I call over to the D.A. in Oregon, our paperwork is gone. Everything we've done and nothing's been accomplished.
Actually, something has.
I file my request with Blevins to keep Scully in the basement with me. I know he'll go along with it – probably with a chuckle over how dumb I am. But I know what side she's on. It's not my side – it's the side of the truth.
Something I can't really say I'm against.
The only thing is that Scully could stop that from happening. It was supposed to be short-term after all.
I can't sleep.
Somehow, we haven't been shut down. When we became we, I'm not sure, but there it is. Scully and I.
It's only eleven or so, so I call her. She answers on the first ring.
I knew she wasn't asleep.
"Hello?"
"Scully? It's me, I haven't been able to sleep. I talked to the D.A.'s office in Raymon County, Oregon. There's no case file on Billy Miles. The paperwork we filed is gone. We need to talk, Scully."
"Y, yes. Tomorrow."
And then she's gone.