"Mulder, what's going on?" Scully inquired, her voice on edge.
"I-I'm not sure." He said, truthfully.
"He's one of them." It was Delany who answered, "That man is not the Warden, he's a plant to make sure I'm the man they're looking for." He shifted, getting into a sitting position and leaning against the wall.
"What?" Mulder was incredulous.
"He knew you were coming to make a positive ID, Mulder, and had orders to take me out of here and back to the labs."
"Labs?" Scully asked, from beyond the cell.
"Laboratories where the government hold secret experiments on people. My guess is they're looking to make human weapons for war, Agent Scully." He sighed, "Wouldn't a man who could control minds be a perfect weapon?"
"You said yourself that you just suggest things." Mulder countered.
"Which is why I'm a test subject and not the finished product. Must still be valuable to them, though." Delany said, as if he were calm, "If you know more than you should, it's likely that you won't get out of here alive anyway."
"If all that's true, then you're going back anyway. All this was for nothing. You got us killed for nothing." Mulder said, his blood heating in anger.
"I'm sorry." Delany said and Mulder almost believed that he meant it, "I didn't want senseless death, I just wanted to live out the rest of my life as something more than a lab rat."
"You expect me to feel sorry for you?" Mulder asked, annoyed, "You brutally murdered innocent people. That's why you're here."
"I have paid for those crimes, believe me."
"And what are we paying for?" Mulder demanded.
"You're an unfortunate casualty of a much bigger conspiracy." Delany said, calmly, "He can keep us down here as long as he wants."
Scully heard the last part loud and clear and was about to respond when Austin seemed to come to. They made eye contact and the memory of what had happened seemed to come back to him. His eyes, she noted, were no longer wild and uncontrolled.
"Oh, God." He mumbled, "Agent Scully, I- I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me. I don't know what I was thinking."
"It isn't your fault." Scully assured him, but made no move to untie him.
As Mulder listened, he couldn't help but be sore at Austin, he knew it was irrational since the thoughts came from Delany, but an involuntary instinct to protect made him distrustful.
No one spoke for a long moment, they all knew the question that hung heavy in the air; what would become of them? Scully's thoughts were, as usual, focused on facts and resources. If they stayed in the cells for more than a few days, they would be suffering from extreme dehydration. Perhaps that was the Warden's plan; to weaken the riot by starving them out. It did not bode well for them.
Mulder's head was swimming with curiosity, confusion, and guilt. Delany was the product of some secret experiment, obviously important enough to make their lives forfeit. How far up did this go? Was Kersh, who had stressed the importance of positively identifying Delany, involved? Then, Mulder thought of Scully and Austin, trapped in the cell next to him. They could all die here and had ended up like this because of Mulder's lapse in control of his own thoughts. He had just stood there as Delany took him captive. Even worse, they could all die and he'd be separated from Scully by a wall. He sat on the bed, staring at the walkie-talkie, mulling over what to say that might possibly convince the Warden to let them live.
Not for the first time, Mulder reached for his gun and cell phone. They had been stripped of weapons and any other belongings on the way in.
"Let me see the walkie, Mulder." Delany said, "It's over for me, but I might be able to save you." Delany purposely avoided using his ability to try and gain Mulder's trust.
Mulder, who paused a moment to see if any unnatural feelings to listen to Delany came up, narrowed his hazel eyes, "Why are you suddenly interested in saving us?"
"Eh, you know, prison has rehabilitated me. You cops ought to try throwing more of us in here, I'm truly sorry for all my crimes now." He said, sarcastically.
"Mulder, you're not going to give him the walkie-talkie, are you?" Scully asked.
"You don't have many options, Mulder." Delany pointed out.
Mulder tapped the device on his hand, considering, "What are you going to tell him?"
"That I'll come quietly and you won't remember who or what I am. The reason they don't just pile in here is because they'll probably lose more than a few men when I turn them against one another. He'll be pretty eager for me to come willingly. They're also concerned about what to do with you and your friends. You know too much, but they can't very well off three FBI agents without an investigation. If I convince him that you're no threat, then you have a chance of walking out of here. Otherwise, they'll just wait until we're all too weak to put up much of a fight."
No one inside the cells spoke for hours. Mulder mulled over the decision in his head, unable to trust his own judgment with Delany but completely at a loss of what else to do. The prisoners on the outside were less subdued. There were several fights as the pressure built between them and the frustration of their situation became more obvious. They were still as good as prisoners, unable to go anywhere besides the cell block. There were more attempts to break down the gate and the two cell doors that held the FBI agents.
Scully had tended to Austin's broken nose as well as she could, but still refused to untie him. He didn't argue with her decision, and voiced his guilt often. Mulder sat on the floor of his cell, his knees drawn up and his elbows resting on his kneecaps. In his hands was the silent walkie-talkie and he stared at it thoughtfully. The battery wouldn't last forever, he had to use it soon.
"Scully?" He said in a low voice.
"Yeah." She answered after a moment.
"I'm going to let Delany try and bargain with the Warden." He knew if he was completely off his rocker that she'd talk him out of it somehow. He heard her sigh.
"I don't trust him, Mulder." She said, understandably, "But, I trust you." In the years they had been together, Mulder's instincts had been proven right over and over again. Perhaps, it was time to trust in them as much as he did. It wasn't as if their situation could get much worse in any case.
Callahan was on the phone, pacing in the Warden's office, "They're in there with him." He said, heatedly, "Mulder knows too much, I can't just allow them to leave. He knows there is more to it than identifying a murderer."
"He can't leave then. None of them can." Said the male voice on the other end.
There was a pause, "How can I explain the deaths of three FBI agents?" Callahan demanded, but seemed to calm down as the voice on the other end grew louder.
"You have a prison riot on your hands, no? No doubt you can use that to your advantage."
"Yes sir." He said, lowly, "Of course we can blame the riot. But, they have locked themselves in the cells. The prisoners can't reach them."
"Don't be incompetent, just open the cell doors." The man countered, impatiently.
"Yes sir. It'll be very messy though, a lot of red tape."
"Not nearly as bad as the red tape if it were discovered what Delany is."
Callahan sighed and hung up the phone just as his walkie-talkie went off, Delany's voice on the other side. Closing his eyes, he made his way toward the cell block.