The next few days were a blur to Scully. They consisted of her waking up in the morning, going to Mulder's, driving around checking his hanging out, make calls, then returning home at the end of the day exhausted. Not really eating, not really sleep. It was drain her physically, and emotionally - she was sick with worry.
Finally the day arrived for Scully to return to the FBI, she wondered if she could. They only motivation to go was there may be some resources she could use to check when Mulder was. That was if she could find a way to do it without notifying her superiors. That would only get her into trouble again. Scully wondered if anyone at the FBI actual was aware that Mulder was missing, or if they cared. Surely some people would be glad to have him out of their hair.
Scully went into work and went about her day. When others had gone to lunch she ran some background checks on Mulder and some of his aliases he'd used in the past.
Fox Mulder - nothing helpful.
George Hale - nothing helpful.
Scully clicked of that screen and went to her emails. She then noticed an email from trustno1. She looked at it, hesitate opening it. Checked to see who was around, only then did she realise that she was holding her breath. She opened the email and let out a sigh of relief. It was Mulder.
Scully, hope the rest of your suspension wasn't too bad. You should have no problem keeping out of trouble without me around to drag you into trouble. Mulder
What the Hell! thought Scully, was he joking, was the email even really from him. She knew he used email like that before, especially when he did not want it traced.
Scully quickly printed a copy of the email and returned to work just as the others from the office came back from lunch.
The rest of the day dragged, the printed email was like a burning coal in her pocket, and she kept pulling it out and rereading it. First chance she got at the end of the day she grabbed her things and drove straight to the Lone Gunmen.
Scully pounded on the door. The locks were undone one by one, and the door opened revealing Langley on the other side.
"I didn't want to call from the office, who know what they are monitoring on me at the moment but I had to tell you about this." said Scully
She pulled out the paper from her pocket and handed it to Langley. He read it, and passed it on to Byres, who passed it on to Frohike.
Scully then realised that all three men were being very quiet.
"What is going on?" she questioned them
All three looked at each other.
"We got an email too." Byres said
"When?" she asked
"Came through this morning." said Langley
"What did it say?" she asked
"We do believe Mulder sent this email to you and the email to us." Byres said
"What did it say?" she asked again
"Mulder asked us not to tell you, but just to tell you he is ok, that you should not worry and just go about work like normal, pretend he's just away on vacation." Frohike said quietly as if the words would hurt Scully, which they did.
How could he do this? she thought, especially after what happened recently. Scully was hurt, but she was also mad. She stood still for a minute not knowing what to do; she then turned and sat down of the couch.
"Why is he doing this?" Scully asked
"We don't know. Honest." Byres said.
Scully just sat there thinking, Frohike brought her a glass of water. She sat there with the glass in her hand, not drinking, just staring at a distant point, her mind racing, the three men were a blur, she almost forgot where she was until one spoke.
"Scully?" came the voice again
She shook her thoughts and tried to focus on the voice. "Scully, are you alright?" Byres said
"I'm sorry." she said "I just can't quite understand it's not like Mulder to do this. I'm afraid that this is because of what he said." Scully was just talking now not really knowing what she was saying.
"What he said?" Byres question
"Oh." said Scully when she realised she had said that last bit out loud.
"It's something that Mulder and I really need to talk about, then he did this and disappeared without telling me, now some cryptic emails and no explanation." Scully explained.
Scully regained her composure.
"Don't suppose I'm allowed to ask you guys to see where that email was sent?" Scully asked
The three men looked at each other.
"Actually he did not specify that in our instructions." Byres said
Scully sat up, she was not expecting that answer.
"Hey we want to know what the hell is going on too." said Frohike as he saw her excitement.
"More than that I want to know what this thing that the too of you need to discuss." he added wagging his eyebrows.
"Oh it's just about Mulders undivided love for you Frohike." Scully joked.
The three men laughed, and the tension in the room was eased.
Scully sat waiting for the guys to do their thing, she didn't realise how tired she was. The last few days of worry and not sleeping finally caught up with her and she fell asleep on the couch. She did not know how much time had passed when she was woken by a gentle tap on her shoulder.
"Scully?" Byres said
"Mmm." She said sleepily
"We have some bad news I'm afraid." Byres said
Scully sat up, not to worry about her hair was all over the place, she just wanted to be awake enough to understand what this bad news could be.
"First, we think he may have used a prepaid account paid with cash, The I.P address just tells us that it came from within the United States but we can not pin point it due to no billing address. We tried to triangulate an area based on usages and the times the email was sent but it looks like he emailed them to a service which then forward the emails to us." explained Byres
"Why would he go to so much trouble?" Scully asked
"We have no idea." said Langley
"Only thing we can think of was that he knew you would want to know where he was and would ask us for help so he went out of his way to steer us in the wrong direction." Byres said
"This is crazy, this is not Mulder. There has to be something more to all this." Scully said
