ELEVEN
For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
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The lights were harsh, interrogating. Scully shielded her eyes from the sheer brilliance, even as her other hand squeezed harder at the warm arm being dragged behind her.
Mulder yanked her to a stop. "Airstrip," he managed. He put his hands on his knees, panting in air. "She wasn't lying. This is DeSoto Airport. We've been here the whole time."
"Then how did they get us off the plane?" she demanded. "None of this makes any sense - I remember arriving, disembarking, the motel… deputies and - and - and Sheriff Carson - and everything."
"I remember a peluda and everyone pitching in to kill it," he grunted. "Doesn't mean it happened."
"But why do this?" she demanded.
"You heard her. Her 'people' were testing us. They do say the way to judge a civilisation is by their games. Or is it their prisoners? I forget."
"Mulder… I don't think we should be here."
He straightened up in time to see her point upwards. His gaze went up - and encountered a helicopter, still several hundred yards away, but definitely on a straight line toward the hangar they were still in front of.
"Run?" he hazarded.
She took off across the tarmac. It took him a second or two to kick himself into gear after her. They pounded across the blackness only to have some kind of searchlight follow them from above.
Until new lights, a protest of sound, made them skid to identical halts. A dark blue car screeched to a stop a few yards away. The driver's window went down and McGivers' head came out. "Get in!" she shouted.
Scully didn't think. She leapt for the rear door. Mulder climbed in after her and slammed it just as McGivers stamped on the accelerator.
"Why are you helping us?" Scully demanded.
The car spun and they were thrown around on the large back seat. McGivers didn't answer; she strained the car's every suspension strut and spring to bring them about-face. The sedan picked up speed - frighteningly so - as lights criss-crossed the tarmac searching for them.
Mulder grabbed Scully's shoulder to bolster them both as the car bounced up and over something - and then kept going. "Where are you taking us?" he called.
McGivers shifted gears and stamped again on the pedal. "They must not find you. Once you're outside their perimeter you'll be safe. Please just hang on a little longer."
"The perimeter?" Mulder asked. "What perimeter? What makes you think they'll stop at some line on a map? They have a helicopter."
"Because it is the agreement we made, Agent Mulder," she called over her shoulder. The car dipped so hard Scully could swear she could feel her lunch - from two days ago. They bounced up and jerked hard to the right as the car just kept on going. Scrubland and bushes, damp earth and weeds - it all flew by as the tyres did their best in a place they were never designed to go.
"What agreement? With whom?" he demanded.
"We had an agreement - with your government - to only operate within a certain area. We are allowed two sites at once. One is here, in DeSoto Parish. The other is… not in the Americas," she said. "We have to destroy the notes in my office."
"But that was a dream," Scully cried. "You said it was all part of some shared hallucination."
"Based on fact, Agent Scully," she said. "Give the people an inch of truth, and they will believe the next eleven of lies."
"Sounds about right," Mulder said under his breath. "So where are we going?"
"I am going to my real office, Agent Mulder." She steered round a particularly menacing rock in their path. "You two need to get to a car and leave the state."
"The state?" Scully spluttered. "It's got to be at least six hours to… where, Texas?"
"It's only four and a half hours to Mississippi, give or take traffic, if you take the I-20 East," McGivers called back.
Scully turned and glared at Mulder. He noticed, then shied away from her to open his side window and stick his head out. He drew back inside. "I don't see the helicopter," he said.
McGiver slowed the car. She checked her mirrors, then turned the headlights off to crawl along in the dark. Finally she stopped the car and turned in the seat. "Now then," she said, hooking both hands over the backrest. Her right one had a gun in it.
Mulder hastily reached for it - but she simply lifted it and proffered him the handle.
He froze, but then something in him clicked and he took it from her. He checked it was loaded, then the chamber. He looked back at her. "I don't understand."
"You two will escape the state," she said. "I will destroy my notes of your experiment, and all the evidence that you two actually passed the test and that we killed the peluda."
"But why?" Scully asked. "This still doesn't make sense."
"No… It might," Mulder breathed. "What if… What if they were testing people, all different people, to find someone who could outsmart their little game? And we did it, Scully. We won." He looked at McGivers. "That's what you said, right? You said we were the only ones to figure it all out?"
"I did, Agent Mulder," she nodded. "What I need to do is destroy the evidence of your doing so. They can never know a couple of locals solved their impossible riddle, and they can never know it took two, not one."
"Why?" Scully asked. "If you destroy the notes and they don't know we beat it, won't they just keep experimenting - on more people - until they do find someone who beats it?"
"Ho - wait a minute. She's right," Mulder said. "They have to know they've been beaten."
McGivers put a hand to her face. She rubbed at her forehead, then slid her fingers right down to swipe off her chin. "Let me ask you something," she said, glaring first at Mulder, and then Scully. "When you experiment on animals to see how clever they can get, what do you do if one day they become cleverer than you?"
Mulder looked at the loaded gun in his hand. "Shit."
"Precisely," McGivers nodded. She eyed Scully. "You. You can do it."
"What?" she asked.
"This is where we part company. I can move faster on my own. The notes must be destroyed, and the experiment discontinued." She paused. "I want you to shoot anyone who tries to stop you, Agent Scully. That gun has silver bullets in it. They will work."
"Don't be absurd!" Scully cried. "You're telling me to kill people - with silver bullets - to stop an implied alien conspiracy that you haven't even explained from wiping humans off the planet just because we solved a puzzle!"
"See? You understand completely," McGivers said.
Mulder hefted the gun in his palm. "Why silver?"
"Because everything we made, everything we brought here, is vulnerable to silver. Silver is toxic to us in the right quantities," she said.
"That's true of everyone," Scully said with enough exasperation to fill the boot of their getaway car.
Mulder looked at the gun in his hand. He looked at Scully. His eyes went back at the gun. Until Scully plucked it from his palm and rested it on her knee.
"This is all very distracting," she said coldly, "but you've illegally detained two federal agents for who-knows-how-long against their will, for reasons unknown. We have been lied to, drugged, used and most definitely abused. We are not going to let you run off into the night, Agent McGivers - we are taking you back to the FBI and you're going to tell this ridiculous story to Assistant Director Skinner, who I can assure you has far less patience for all this than I do."
McGivers gave a small smile. "I like you, Agent Scully, I really do. I wish we could have been friends. But please, I'm not Agent McGivers. There is no Agent McGivers. Not in this reality."
"Do you have a name?" Mulder asked.
She turned a warm expression on him. "I do. But you could neither comprehend it nor pronounce it. So you can call me Marla."
"Where are you from?" he asked in a small voice. "I mean… really."
Again, an enigmatic smile played around her lips. "You never stop searching, do you, Agent Mulder?" She shook her head fondly. "I suppose we're all alike, in that regard." She took a deep breath, then let it out all at once. "A very long time ago… when this new world had more land than people, tall ships arrived with foreigners on them. What they didn't know, as they tried to pioneer new lives for themselves here in the new world, was that we had already tried it. Only our tall ships didn't come from an old empire, they came from a journeying republic of people, who had been forced to leave their own home. I have heard your people call that place Põ Tolo." She paused. "You must take the car and escape. I will get to my office."
"To destroy files," he said.
"Yes."
"You can't do that," he argued. "I want to see them - we need to take them to Skinner with you as proof. We can't just—"
"Agent Mulder," McGivers interrupted. "While those files exist, you are both in mortal danger. You can have the truth, that is not in dispute. But you must weigh up how badly you want it. Files or Sc—. Or you both being safe. Which do you want more?"
Mulder glared at her. McGivers appeared to wait.
Finally he looked at Scully. She lifted the gun to point it at McGivers. "We're going to your office," she said. "Drive."
"But you have to get out of here!" McGivers warned.
"Drive," Scully barked. McGivers stared at her, totally at a loss.
Mulder leant forward and rolled his eyes up to her. "Just go," he advised.
McGivers turned in the seat. She started the car, left the headlights off, and began to crawl the vehicle forwards.
.
ooOoo
.
"Anything?" McGivers whispered.
The two agents moved toward their side windows and peered out. Mulder opened his door as quietly as possible and stuck his head out, craning his neck to peer above the roof of the car.
"I don't see anyone," he hissed.
"Me neither," Scully whispered. "Let's go."
The three of them piled out of the car. They hurried across the scrub to a slight ridge, whereupon they stopped and crawled to the top. They surveyed the parking lot beyond their hiding place, but it was empty. Sat right next to the car park was a small building, made up of perhaps three offices and typical side rooms.
"Nobody here but us chickens," Mulder mused.
McGivers frowned at him, then shook her head and turned to Scully. "I will go inside. Assist me if you must, but I intend to burn down the office."
"Are you sure there's no other way?" Mulder protested.
"Of course I am sure," she said, somewhat angrily.
"Go," Scully said, waving the gun toward the building just beyond the car park.
McGivers got to her feet and jumped over the top of the line, hurrying down the other side. Mulder scrambled after her. Scully paused to look up at the night sky, then around at the emptiness surrounding her. She got up and followed silently, finding them both by the back door to the small complex.
McGivers was producing keys. She unlocked a fire exit door and they all slipped inside, the two agents keeping up with McGivers as she raced down the short hallway in the dark. She stopped outside a room and found more keys. The door squeaked open. She was the first one in.
Scully waited outside the door, the gun ready as it pointed lazily at the ceiling. She gestured to Mulder with her head and he went in.
He stopped dead. "This looks exactly as I remember it," he said, confused.
McGivers was pulling open several notebooks and leaving them on top of the desk. "Like I said, we used this as a base and made an exact copy. Your memories are real in that you experienced them, but not real in that they did not happen outside of the experiment room."
He blinked. Then he noticed she was rifling through papers, leaving them on the floor to open more box files. "What are you looking for?" he asked.
"Propellent. To start a fire."
He turned and disappeared from the room. Scully watched him go, then leant around the doorjamb to look in. "When this place goes up, everyone will know what you've done," she said.
"I hope so," McGivers said with real energy. "I have endured this job for so long, because of one tiny infraction over a century ago. I think I have more than made up for it."
"Ignoring the 'hundred years' comment for now, what was this 'infraction'?" Scully asked.
"I… became fond of a… local. He was… kind to me. And I thought for a moment that we could… that I could experience what so many of your kind have." She did not pause in her searching. "When the original watcher noticed our relationship and reported me, the local was summarily recycled and I was sentenced to watching."
"When you say 'recycled', you mean killed. Like those people in the jars."
"It pains me to concur."
"And this original watcher… what happened to him?" Scully asked with a frown.
"He was rewarded; he went home."
"To this… Põ Tolo."
"No. Our civilisation has been wiped from our home. He went back to the journeying republic."
Scully raised her eyebrows. "Are you not allowed to fraternise with colleagues, or people you mix with in the course of your duties?"
"Not at all. Our elders take pride in us being a 'pure race'. It was felt that too much contamination would ruin us as a people."
Scully curled her lip in disgust. "Maybe wherever you really come from could do with some contamination."
McGivers smiled. "As I said, you and I could have been great friends." She looked over at Scully. "May I ask… why do you want to aid me in wiping out all the records? Agent Mulder has been very vocal about doing the opposite."
Scully didn't look at her. "I have been tested, over and over. In my job, in my private life, and physically in ways I did not want - by people who consider themselves outside the law. No-one should be able to do that - to anyone. Except God."
"And God does it for mysterious reasons?" she asked with a smile.
Scully glared at her. "Don't."
McGivers' face collapsed into apology. "I am sorry, Agent Scully. I did not wish to offend. I only wish to understand."
Scully heard a noise. She peered into the gloom, back toward the front door. Mulder was jogging back to them, a glowing red item in his hand.
"Cigar lighter," he puffed. "From the car."
Scully nodded him inside and he went straight to the papers on the desk, setting the cigarette lighter face-down. He blew on the side gently, watching the paper start to char. Abruptly a tiny yellow flame started up from the corner.
"Ah! Perfect!" McGivers grinned. She fanned at it and then grabbed up more papers, holding the corners in the flames.
Mulder stood back. "What now?"
"Now you two escape, Agent Mulder. I am very sure my people are already on their way here."
The sound of falling glass made Scully snap straight. She turned, her back still to the doorjamb. Her arm went out to point the gun deeper into the corridor. "I think someone just came in the front way," she whispered.
Mulder looked at the steadily growing pile of burning papers. He could not keep the resignation from his face. "Have you got this?" he asked McGivers.
"I have," she said. "Take the car. Go."
Mulder put his hand out. She paused to look at it. Then she stretched hers out slowly and shook his hand. "I don't know what to say," he offered.
She smiled. "I must admit, I was very excited when I heard that it was you two coming to us for an experiment." Her smile died. "But then I knew… I would have to make a choice. You two, or me."
"What will happen to you now?"
"I can never go home again," she said with a smile. "But that was never going to be a choice. Not at all."
He let his hand drop and turned to the door.
Scully moved back until she was against the far wall of the corridor. She kept the gun pointed down the hallway. "There's someone here," she whispered.
Mulder picked up a fire extinguisher from beside the door. "You see anyone, you shoot them."
"What if they work here?"
"No-one works here. And they should have used a key," he said. She began to walk slowly down the tiled walkway. Mulder turned his back to her and followed in reverse, gripping his fire extinguisher tight. They made it twenty feet before he stopped. "I think… there's someone behind us."
"There's definitely someone this way," she whispered.
"Then there are two of them."
"Or it's the acoustics." She heard a whoomf from behind them and turned her head to look. A bright orange glow was now coming from the open office door.
McGivers put her hands to the doorjamb and leant her head out. "Success!" she cried happily. She stepped out of the room.
"McGivers!" Mulder shouted.
She gasped and jerked. And then she fell forwards to the floor.
A man stood over her, a strange, blue knife in his hand. He wiped it on his sleeve. His head snapped up to lock eyes with Scully.
"Federal agent!" she called at him. "Don't move!"
He wheeled his arm back with the knife ready in his hand. Mulder pressed his back against the wall.
Scully squeezed the trigger. The first shot hit him in the head - the next hit him where his heart should have been. He toppled backwards.
Mulder was already running toward McGivers. He dropped the fire extinguisher and collapsed to his knees next to her. "McGivers?" he demanded. He rolled her to her back and put a hand under her head, grasping her hand firmly in his.
She smiled. "Marla," she said quietly. "It's a shame. Really."
Mulder looked up as Scully checked for a pulse in the man on the floor. She shook her head, then opened his eye. She tried his wrist, too. Then she stepped over him and crouched down to McGivers. She felt for a pulse in her neck. Mulder watched her frown. "What can we do?" he asked.
"I have no idea," Scully said, eyeing the rivulets of blue liquid seeping from McGivers' mouth and from one eye.
"We can't let her die," he argued.
"There is nothing… to be done," McGivers whispered. "The silver… is already spreading through my blood. Poisoning me. And there is no-one on this planet… who can replace it."
Mulder gripped her hand. "But…"
"Deputy Mouton," she mused, her eyes going past him to appraise the ceiling. "It would have been nice."
Mulder's mouth worked but nothing would come out. He looked helplessly at Scully.
She wiped a hand over her forehead and looked down at her. "I'm sorry," she said wretchedly. "Tell me what to do to save you!"
"You have already done more than enough," she smiled. "The rest is not up to you."
"I wish I knew what to do," Scully urged. "I wish I could help you. I'm sorry."
McGivers swallowed. "I am the sorrier. I gave you two everything you wanted, and then it was taken away." She gulped in breath, then let it out again. "But… while the peluda was not real… everything you said and did… was."
"What things?" Scully asked gently. "McGivers?"
"Marla?" Mulder urged. "Marla?"
She smiled up at him. "I wish all my days… could have been like this one." Her eyes rolled up slowly. They closed.
Her entire body went limp. The two agents stared in disbelief, in anger, in frustration.
Scully put her hand to Mulder's arm, pulling him free. His fingers let go of McGivers' with great reluctance.
Something popped and then banged so loud they both jumped in their skins. As it was they collapsed to their behinds in the suddenly sweltering hallway.
"The fire," Scully realised. "Let's go."
"But… Marla," he began.
"Let's go! We can't move her in time. We're already breathing in smoke, Mulder!"
She got up and yanked at his arm, pulling him all the way back to the fire exit. As she swung the door open into the night air he stopped and looked back.
"But she's everything, Scully!" he argued. "She's proof! She's not even human!"
"If we go back in there to drag her out, we die, Mulder," she snapped. "Which do you want? Do you want to be a partial witness or a dead man?"
He turned to look at her. "But everything, Scully!"
"We can't change that!"
"I didn't get my peluda! I didn't get scientific proof! I didn't get files or corroboration of any of this!"
"What good is proof if you die getting it?" she demanded.
"But we can't just leave it all here!"
"We can and we will," she snapped.
"Then we leave here with nothing! Like nothing ever happened!"
"But we'll know, Mulder! We'll remember!"
"So what? What does that prove?" he shouted. She opened her mouth but he turned in the doorway. He put a foot back inside.
She lurched forward and grabbed his arm. He tried to shake her off but she heaved with all of her weight. He was caught off-balance and tumbled out of the door. He fell backwards off the step and slammed into the tarmac. The heat got nearer to their exit, the warm orange glow now bringing evil black smoke with it as it crept closer to them.
He got to his hands and knees on the tarmac of the parking lot. "You go, Scully!" he cried. "I'll go back for—"
She put a foot in his back and pushed. He was thrown face-first to the ground. Her knee went into his spine and she flipped his right arm across his back. Before he knew it he was trying to squirm out of an expertly-executed arm-lock.
His head tried to raise as he grunted in pain and frustration. "Get off me!"
"Listen to me!" she growled. "We are not going back into that burning building!"
"But we need—"
"Mulder - so help me!" she raged. "You are the most stubborn son of a bitch I have ever met!"
His forehead fell to the tarmac and it wobbled, tilting to push his cheek into the gritty surface. "Help me with this one thing, Scully. Or we leave with nothing." He lifted his head and bumped it into the ground. "Nothing. We always come away with nothing." He let out a long huff. "We can't leave her there. We can't just walk away while she's in there." He let out a small, muffled cry of injustice, of frustration. All of his muscles let go of their anger.
She relaxed her hold, sliding to sit next to him on the ground. She rested her hand on his back. His face turned toward her. "Not nothing," she said quietly. "We always come away - alive."
He put his hands under him and forced himself to roll onto his back. His full-on petulant pout was directed at the far away stars as Scully's hand slipped down to rest on his t-shirt. He put a hand up and covered hers, trapping it to his chest. "Scully?" he asked quietly.
She leant over him, watching the way his eyes roamed around the night sky. "What?"
He shifted his head to adjust his gaze, and suddenly his eyes were boring straight through to her soul. "Scully?"
"What?" she said. She leant over him, bringing her face closer to his.
"That building behind you is on fire."
She shook her head. Then she got up and dusted herself down. He did likewise, before turning toward the ridge beyond the car park.
"Where do we go?" she asked. "The car should still be there, right?"
"Someone came here to kill her. We should leave."
"Where to?"
He spun to favour her with a weighty smile. "Well a crime's been committed," he said. "Shouldn't we go to the Sheriff's office?"
Her eyes widened. "Absolutely."
.
