for everyone who still wants to believe that the truth is out there

HOPE

\ˈhōp\

noun

desire accompanied by belief

"The passage of time imprisons us not in a cell of brick and mortar, but in one of hopes dashed and tragedies unaverted. How precious then, the chance to go back, only to discover that in facing the past you must face up to yourself. And exiting the prison of time doesn't free you from the prison of your own character, one from which there is no escape."

- Martin Wells, "Redrum"

CHAPTER 1

Saturday, September 14, 2002
Hoboken, NJ
06:58 PM EST

The air smelled of sugar and yeast, purposefully pulsated through the bakery by a large white fan above to lure in customers with the intoxicating and irresistible scent of sweets. Few who entered would be able to fight the powerful high the atmosphere possessed, thanks to the blades that whipped the olfactory drugs with steady ease. This was part of their plan for world domination, or at the very least, for domination of Hoboken, New Jersey.

The home of the fondant-covered tiered cake masterpieces, endless colorful Italian pastries and giant chocolate-dipped strawberries was a well-adored secret. Carlo's was a place that certainly attracted many tourists, but the people who called it home in Hoboken knew it was really theirs - that the New Yorkers or other Jerseyans who trekked up to the little bake shop weren't allowed to claim it despite its geographical location. It was as much hers as her next-door neighbor's. After all, that was her exclusive privilege for being trapped in her own personal hell for now, officially, the last fifteen years.

Fifteen. No one cared about fifteen. Sixteen, eighteen, and twenty-one were all birthdays to aspire to. Fifteen was just shy of glory, yet too old for anyone to fuss anymore. Gone were the days of brightly-colored wrapping paper with princesses or fairies that were adorned with curly bows. These days, at fifteen you rarely got an actual wrapped gift. People opted for the easy way out, the quick and convenient gift bag with tissue that most likely had been recycled from their own closet - that's if you were lucky. The fall back, should the gift bag present itself to be too much of a challenge, was to tuck a plastic gift card into an overpriced greeting card, though it remained the cheapest of all options. Nothing that would take more than sixty seconds to assemble. No thought required.

She would have been thrilled to find such a quick and hasty gift on the kitchen table this morning. Instead, she found a note sloppily scratched on the back of a grocery store receipt:

Here is cash for milk.
Buy yourself some dinner for tonight.
And buy me a new lighter.

Working a double. Don't stay up late.
You have counseling tomorrow.

There was no need for a signature - she knew its author, a woman who remained so distant from her that at times she questioned their shared genetics. Working a double my ass, she thought with anger. The author of the note never went above and beyond in any aspect of her life - why would work be any different?

She knew the double entendre of the excuse. She was fifteen, she wasn't stupid. She knew how it all worked, though she was proud that she hadn't yet tried it. She refused to be like the author of the note, the woman who gave so much yet offered so little. Besides her alcoholic father who she avoided like the plague, there was only her withdrawn and selfish mother who used men behind her father's back to make her feel better about herself. She wasn't like her. She didn't need anyone to make her feel worth something. She didn't need anyone, period.

Hence why she now stared at the giant sugar-dusted cannolis in front of her with a small smile. She fished around in her pocket, pulling out the small wad of cash she earned from her after-school jobs around her complex that went unnoticed by her parents. She would buy the milk and the lighter with her mother's money, but the rest she would take care of herself.

"Can I help you, young lady?" the older gentleman behind the counter asked softly, his rounded face grooved with wrinkles that stretched as he smiled.

"I'll take one cannoli, please," she replied, handing him a faded ten dollar bill.

"Just one?" the older gentleman chuckled. "Don't you think your mom and dad would want some?"

She knew he had absolutely no idea who she was, and probably still assumed that everyone lived like the Beavers from the 1950s - Stepford Wives who cooked every meal consumed by their family, cleaned in high heels and were perfect examples of society while dashing husbands earned respectable livings in steel gray suits and skinny ties, their mutual children dutifulling aspiring to be like one or the other, depending on gender. She shifted her feet that were covered in sneakers she had taken from a friend who no longer wanted them because of a small scuff on the toe, though they cost well over seventy dollars brand new. Mustering a polite smile - because after all, it wasn't grandpa's fault - she replied, "They're allergic to sweets."

"Oh," the old man said, his brow wrinkled in confusion. "People these days …" he muttered, pulling the tray of cannolis from the case as she watched. "Everyone's allergic to everything. Back when I was your age, we drank from the garden hose and ate peanuts in public. Now … now everyone's afraid of bacteria and baked goods are segregated for fear of lawsuits." He stopped, realizing he had been carrying on to a teenager who most likely didn't care to hear his soapbox speech. "Anyway, here you go, young lady. And here's your change." He handed her the small white paper bag with the red logo plastered on the front.

"Thank you," she said softly, grabbing both and leaving through the main entrance before she could let him see her tears forming.

10:22 PM EST

She was glad to see the station wagon wasn't near the complex when she returned home, knowing the hour would likely spark an argument between her and her mother that would end in tears for her mother and her having to console her, as if the roles were reversed in their relationship. She had spent the day how she pleased, first riding the bus that morning to Washington Street where she window-shopped casually, lingering over the delicate floral print tops and the sparkle of the jewelry as the sun caught it through the storefront. Though she labeled herself as more of a jeans and sneakers kind of girl, she had to admit that the feminine wares being peddled that weekend drew her in instinctively, as if to remind her that obtaining strength didn't mean sacrificing softness. The whimsical outfits and fanciful accessories didn't know of her life, though. Strength was all she had - there wasn't any room for being soft. At least, not so that people would know.

She found herself in Pier A Park later, basking in the September sun as the preview of autumn's breeze danced through her blonde hair. The blades of green grass tickled her skin as she pressed her back to the earth, her well-loved book in hand that she had lugged with her in her small backpack that her head now rested on. Alice In Wonderland was her selection for the day, though it was a lengthy read and she knew she wouldn't be able to conquer much of it. It didn't matter, though - she knew the story better than perhaps she knew herself, so she expertly skipped through the pages, reading the sections she favored as she lost herself in the fantasy.

When her stomach growled viciously two hours later for lunch, she found her way to a hot dog stand, loading up her purchase with "the works" as they called it. Despite her taste for junk food, she was slim, fit and agile - not to mention she had a killer arm for softball, though she didn't play for her high school team. She was too busy earning money so she could support herself; her only pleasure in life was knowing she didn't depend on money from abusers or neglectors.

It was that day when her eyes fell on a police officer in the distance, patrolling the park on foot. She was just about her height, five foot nine inches, with chemically processed hair that looked natural on her, it rolled into a tight bun. She wore her uniform with pride, her duty belt resting on her hips and swaying with her steps. She was strong. She was powerful. She was everything she wanted to be. It was that day that she decided she would become her in three years. She would be the powerful woman who no one could ever hurt again. No one.

Now, as she slid her key into the lock of the back door, she sighed. Whenever she returned to this God-forsaken place which she dare not call home, the strength she armed herself with outside of these walls seemed to vanish into thin air, all of her weaknesses rising to the surface with each moment spent inside. She had dreaded seeing her father's blue sedan parked nearby, knowing he was most likely holed up in his office with his best friend, Jim Bean. Her father and Jim spent a considerable amount of time together - too much, in her opinion, and she had the scars to prove it. She set the milk in the fridge and tossed the lighter on the table near the note she read earlier that day, dropping the cash and change from her shopping trip near it without concern as to appearances. She did her duty, and that was enough. After all, it was her fucking birthday.

As she swiftly made her way to the stairs leading up to her bedroom, she paused, gripping the white bag she retrieved from Carlo's Bakery as she listened to the murmuring sounds coming from her father's office. Two men, her father and another, discussing something in darkened tones. It was unusual for her father to invite anyone into their home. No one came over, not even the few people she called friends, let alone a strange man who she had never heard his voice before.

She was curious by nature, which often got her into trouble. She set the bag down on the stairs, inching closer to the closed door of the office to better understand the conversation that had continued without missing a beat despite her return.

"Doctor English," the man said, his voice calm and cool, "I would like to have some kind of assurance of the success of your preventative measures taken." She heard the sound of a finger gliding over a lighter to spark a flame, knowing the sound all too well from her mother. The man inhaled and exhaled approvingly on his cigarette - at least that's what she imagined.

"I can assure you, the Project is protected," her father's voice replied, a waiver to it that she confusingly associated with fear as she listened. "There is no possibility that-"

"There are always possibilities," the man interrupted, taking another drag of his cigarette. "Nothing disappears without a trace."

"You have nothing to worry about," her father insisted softly, pleadingly.

"Well," the man said, "should I ever come to the point of worry, believe me - you'll be the first to know." He inhaled on the cigarette again; she heard him press the smoke from his lips. "Until then, I'll be monitoring things very closely. The Shield is my property, after all. I retain the rights to it."

"You … you can't …"

"I can't what?"

"It's not-"

"Doctor, I trust you understand the agreement you made years ago." The man crushed the cigarette into an ash tray. "You handed it over entirely to me."

"Yes, but-"

"Don't complicate things for yourself, Doctor. After all, middlemen can always be replaced."

With that, the knob to the door opened, and she bolted for the stairs, praying she didn't make as much sound as she thought she did so she wouldn't be found out. She scaled them quickly, perching at the top over the railing as she held her breath and waited out of sight to listen to the man's parting words. "Say hello to Caraline for me," he said in the doorway as her father's shoulders drooped, clearly inferior to the smoking man. The small smile she managed to see on the scowling face from her obscured angle chilled her.

Who is he, and how does he know my name?

As she locked the bedroom door behind herself without being seen by her father, she took a deep breath and sighed. What a birthday. She tossed the white bag down on her bed, the covers in the same rumpled position she had left them in that morning. She didn't make it a habit of being sloppy, but today she allowed herself the luxury of foregoing one responsibility. Just one.

She changed into her favorite set of pajamas and threw open the curtains, letting the soft moon light fill her room. She perched on her window sill, now holding the sweet pastry she treated herself to, gazing at the stars as she took a bite. Delicious. She savored each moment of silence, peace and calm, pretending that the sweet treat was a gift from a doting father who had taken his precious princess on a fantastic day to celebrate her birth, her mother showering her with hugs and kisses upon their return, a warm meal she had managed to either make or obtain herself filling her belly and satisfying her soul.

Reality hit her quickly when the sound of a nearby horn blasted, an angry driver signalling impatiently to another which woke her from her reverie. No, that wasn't her life. Her life was eating a cannoli alone in her room on her birthday while her drunk father became more intoxicated and her neglectful mother poured her attention on the latest man of the week behind closed doors. Was it her? Did they regret having her? Was she a terrible mistake made by two young people in college like she assumed she was? Her mother was only thirty-five now; she knew she was twenty when she had her, a nursing student. Her father was a brilliant scientist, or so the degrees on his office wall proclaimed, touting Magna Cum Laude status in every university he attended from undergraduate to doctorate. Maybe they couldn't be parents - maybe despite their adept in science and education, they lacked the proper skills for parenting.

It was just like her, to defend the defenseless on a day she was meant to be celebrated.

She chewed on the last bite of pastry, remembering the police officer from the park. One day, a little girl will see me like that. I won't let this beat me. She was too headstrong to allow circumstances to dictate her future. She was in control of her destiny. She, alone, was responsible for her future.

The slam of the door startled her, an instant wave of sickening fear crawling up her skin. She knew the angry tones being used in the lower half of the condo, hearing her father's slurred speech, breaking glass and her mother's angry tears that she shed through profanities. He had finally done it. He had caught her. Yet, her father was too much of a coward to ever confront her sober, though she suspected he knew of her mother's indiscretions long before tonight. She had witnessed this dance before, but tonight was eerily different. Tonight, there was fear where anger usually resided. Tonight, there was sheer terror.

She didn't think, she just acted. She grabbed her clothes she had worn that day that she tossed on the floor, quickly changing back into them. She knew better - she wouldn't stick around for another round of her father's drunken rage. The times before when she had were painful enough, let alone the severity of the fighting going on below her. She needed to leave and never look back. When she slipped on her sneakers, she began tossing only what was critical to her from her room, though there wasn't much to begin with. She had spent four years in boarding school, and the rest of her belongings from before were children's toys that her mother donated one day before she came home from school. It was easy to pack what she cared about in her backpack, now throwing open the sash of the window as she heard her father's heavy footsteps approaching from the stairs. No, not this time, Dad.

The fire escape waited patiently for her, as if it was designed exclusively for this very moment. The cool metal hit her hands as she slipped out of the window and fell the distance to the landing, bracing herself upon impact. She had imagined this happening at some point in her life, but never figured it would happen so soon, and even worse on her birthday. Yet, despite the surprise it took her by, the exit from the hellish place seemed so fluid and natural, as if staying there were the unnatural thing versus running away. She released the ladder to the escape, hearing her father's pounding on her door and his muffled tone as she quickly climbed down. Those sneakers her classmate didn't want because of a scuff became her new best friend as they swiftly carried her down the city sidewalk into a new life - one which she never had to hear, see or feel them ever again.

August 23, 2012
02:25 PM EST
Hoboken, NJ

Cara Mulder's hand rested on her rounded stomach, a wave of illness flooding over her as if she were in her first trimester instead of the end of her third. The oxygen seemed to be scarce in the atmosphere around her, as she found it difficult to breathe when she passed it on foot to pick up the bus. The condo complex she had grown up in stood quietly, as if to explain that it wasn't at fault for the haunting memories it contained. She never did make that counseling appointment - not that it would have mattered. It was nearly ten years ago, yet it felt like yesterday. She protectively clutched her womb, shifting her focus to the bus she knew she needed to pick up to get to her mother's house. There was no sense in renting a car in the city when she knew the public transportation system so well. After all, the less places she put her name at, the better.

A middle-aged man with quiet gray eyes respectfully relinquished his seat to her in the standing room only bus that she boarded, to which she gratefully obliged. Her two ever-active children were beginning to weigh more than she had imagined they would while still inside of her, though she knew she still had weeks to go until they would be ready to make their debut in the world. Her mother in law had said her last ultrasound showed them growing at a wonderfully healthy rate, and that's all that mattered to her.

She clutched her duffel bag in her hands, not having yet found a motel room to stash her belongings in. She felt naked without her phone - she left it in New Mexico next to the person she loved most in the world. Cara allowed herself to briefly close her eyes and see his handsome face, taking comfort in the depths of his eyes and the memory of his warmth. She had only been apart from him for just over twelve hours now, but it felt like an eternity. She knew this most likely had to do with the circumstances under which she left, being as they weren't truly in anyone's favor.

It would be a rough ten minutes of city stop-and-go traffic as the bus continued to pick more people up who replaced the ones who left at different stops. The rhythm of the city soothed her; it was what she knew. The desert had become her home merely in the sense that he was there with her. Beyond that, she had no home. The story had always been the same. She was the girl without a family, the girl without a home. Now, at a point in which she had both, she willingly gave it up to return to the one person who was able to but never helped her escape.

Of course, Cara couldn't forget the point of her memories being tainted, that the night she left her home for good, it was her father's intention to keep her safe from the threat of evil rather than to beat her. She would come to realize that the man who her father had been with that night in the office was the same man who observed her while she was in a chamber being tortured by an alien lifeforce injected into her body as he puffed on a cigarette. Still, her mother had no such excuse for her cold and distant behavior, other than she removed herself to avoid the pain of it all, which wasn't good enough for Cara. She was fifteen. She was a child. She had once been carried in her mother's womb like she now carried her own children - she could never imagine abandoning them as her mother did to her. Yet, here she was, granting her mother's literal dying wish to see her when she had no earthly reason to.

Her stop came, and Cara stood with a hand supporting her lower back, feeling the ache radiate through her lower spine. It was a pain she had become accustomed to, much like her emotional pain she hid for a decade after her disappearance from her parents' home. Her mother left her father shortly after she ran away, taking residence with a boyfriend across town. Her father sold the house, and she didn't care. Cara begged friends to let her sleep on their couches, pretending she had a decent home life with their parents so they wouldn't ask questions. She knew they weren't stupid, but perhaps they, too, didn't want to get too close. No one ever seemed to want to be close to her - not until William Mulder came into her life.

Cara shut her blue eyes, trying to summon the courage to face the fear of seeing her mother in person after nearly three years now, having only briefly chatted with her when she ran into her at the grocery store, handling the situation like she had seen an old neighbor. Her mother had attempted a relationship after, but it fell on deaf ears. Cara wasn't interested. She wasn't any longer the girl who ran errands for her mother so she could busy herself sleeping around. Cara was now the strong, powerful woman she once saw in the park, her duty belt gracing her hips as she strode with importance and authority. She was untouchable.

Now, as she approached the house, the fear touched her very deeply, consuming her. Her mother was dying. Soon, she wouldn't have any biological family left. Her father had died a very tragic death eight months earlier, as did her uncle - both died under the hands of Colonists who showed no mercy. Cara was now asked to show mercy on her ill mother, who had but weeks to live, and it scared her that she found it difficult to distinguish herself from the same monsters who killed her father and uncle. Was she that cold? Was she still unable to release the burden of her past, despite the dire circumstances that surrounded her?

Cara climbed the short set of stairs to the door marked 9376, hesitating as her fist hovered above the wood. She moistened her lips, letting her knuckles collide with the wood gently, hoping it was enough for her to notice. This was it. There was no turning back.

She chewed on the inside of her cheek as she waited, hoping the self-inflicted pain would somehow distract her from the somersaults her stomach was conducting in response to her worries. She held her breath when she heard the security chain slide slowly across the inside of the door, the deadbolt releasing itself and the knob twisting.

Somehow, it was like looking in a mirror when Cara saw her mother, the same worries she knew she felt displayed on her mother's face. Maryann English sighed, letting a smile lift her spirits. Her daughter was here.