Author's comments: Oh my.

Skyscraper

Chapter Eleven

Part 1.

Smoke billowed as the man watched the body arching before him. Her eyes rolled up into her head as eight-hundred milliamps coursed through her brain long enough for him to take several drags off his cigarette. She would not know he was there—he would leave before she came to her senses, if ever.

He leaned over towards the social worker and said, "It will be interesting to see the effects on the chip." He took another drag. Ms. Snyder wrinkled her nose. "Our scientists believe it will either short out the chip, leaving it ineffective, or that the chip will enhance the effects of the ECT." He grinned. "She'll either drop dead of cancer, or her brain will become mush. I guess we'll find out, either way."

Part 2.

It took a few seconds for the fuzziness in front of Scully's eyes to clear, but the clouds in her head would not leave. "Feeling better, Miss Scully?" asked the social worker, whose name Scully could no longer remember.

In fact, she had a hard time remembering much of anything. She knew she was in some sort of medical facility, but she couldn't remember why she was lying on this table, or for how long, or what led up to this point. Did she have surgery? Someone took the mouth guard out of her mouth, and then she remembered that she had undergone an electroshock procedure. The details were unclear.

"I-I'm not sure," she said, weakly answering the social worker's question.

She was pretty certain that she wasn't feeling better, though. If so, she must have been feeling pretty awful before, because all she wanted to do was cry right now. She let the tears flow and rolled over on her side after the medical staff unfastened her arms and legs.

Someone brought her water, and she could barely hold the cup, as bad as her hands were trembling. To say that her head hurt would be an understatement—it was more like her brain had been scrambled, with some parts in the wrong place, and other parts malfunctioning like a computer that had shorted out.

She smelled cigarette smoke, and she couldn't understand why. Weren't hospitals supposed to be non-smoking facilities? Maybe she remembered that wrong, too.

They helped her to a wheelchair, and she began to notice aches in various parts throughout her body. Even her teeth hurt. A persistent ring permeated her head, and every time she closed her eyes, she saw a flash of blue.

They wheeled her into a room that looked unfamiliar at first, and then she started to recall that this was the room in which she was staying. A tall, lanky young woman with short brunette hair entered the room, talking to herself. Scully thought she knew her, but she had no recollection of who she was or what her name was. "April, time for meds," the stout orderly said.

'April, yes April.' Scully stood to get into the welcoming bed, and when she did she almost fell to the floor, her leg giving out underneath her. She collapsed onto the bed. "Oooohh," she groaned, gingerly rubbing her shin.

April stopped to look at her. Scully shut her eyes and rolled up into a ball on the bed, except for her leg, which she stretched out straight. Fragments of memories came back to her—running out of the social worker's office, waking up in the hospital, people around her catching on fire. People catching on fire? She couldn't recall the order of anything, just flashes of events in random sequences.

Another young woman came into the room, plump with long, silky hair, and sat down on the bed next to hers. "D-d-d-dana," she said, and began to rock. "Hi, Dana!" she said, waving.

Scully felt like she might throw up, so she began to rock, too, while lying on her side. "Hi," she whispered. "I don't remember your name, I'm sorry."

"I'm Misty, remember? Goofball." Misty smiled, which was somehow comforting to Scully. She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, while flashes of blue light disrupted the blackness behind her eyelids.

Scully woke periodically, but she had no desire to be conscious. The treatment had devastated her, and all she wanted to do was lie here and waste away until she passed. Memories began to come back to her in fits and bursts throughout the day like jigsaw puzzle pieces, but she could not fit them all together. The only thing she knew for sure was that she was miserable.

She opened her eyes to see April step over something invisible on the floor, and then sit on the ground, cross-legged. "Mine too," the girl said, and then she mumbled something else.

"What?" Scully asked.

"Not talking to you," April said.

Scully looked around, but there was nobody else in the room. Her leg throbbed, and she put a hand on it. She sat up when she realized that something wasn't right. The bone was not smooth—there was an unevenness. 'That's right, I'm a doctor,' she thought. 'And it's definitely broken. I need to tell someone.'

Misty came in the room and sat down on Scully's bed. She started rocking and said, "Hey, Dana, today is going to be a fabby day!"

Scully lay back down and tried to fight back tears. She knew she had wanted to get out of here, but she couldn't remember how or when she was going to do it. Heck, she had a hard time remembering where "here" was.

The big orderly showed up at the door and said, "Dinner time." Misty and April got up and began to move out of the room, but Scully stayed where she was. "Come on, Dana, you slept through lunch so you need to eat."

Scully closed her eyes and said, "No, thanks." She knew she didn't want to move, but she didn't know why. She felt like there was something she was supposed to tell him, but she couldn't remember what it was.

"Suit yourself," he said, and left the room.

A few minutes later, Scully rolled over, and her leg reminded her of what she was supposed to tell the orderly, whose name she could not recall.

Part 3.

Mulder spent the entire day trying to track down Scully's doctor. The hospital had no record of him, as if he did not exist. Mulder searched through every FBI database, and could not find the man. The only records he did not search were those of the Baker Center, which seemed to have a clearance level so high that even his best sources could not reach it.

Returning to the Lone Gunmen's lair, he listened while the three of them gave their best assessment. Byers began, "We've tried accessing the Baker Center records through various means, Mulder, but they have their own database, on their own mainfraim. Everything is in-house."

Langly turned toward the computer screen beside him. "Yeah, everything except for security footage, that is. It takes up too much space, so they have to store old footage at an off-site server."

"Cloud computing at its finest," said Frohicke.

"The server where it's stored is not easy to crack," said Langly, "but you know us."

He smiled as he brought up computer image of a room. Mulder smiled too. "Did you find her?"

"Yes, yes we did," said Frohicke. "But we can't get current footage. Everything here has been downloaded periodically throughout the day."

They watched as Langly fast-forwarded through to yesterday. He slowed it down when the video feed, shot from above, showed Scully being wheeled into the room in a wheelchair by a large, male staff member. Mulder leaned in and nudged Frohicke out of the way.

Mulder frowned when he saw her pale face scanning the room. Her eyes, sunken in, reminded Mulder of the time she reached her low point before, when the cancer almost took her life. This time, there was no physical ailment threatening her life, but depression appeared to be weighing on her just as heavily.

He kept watching as she got settled in and went into the bathroom to change into her hospital gown. He felt guilty for spying on her this way, even though he knew she would understand why. There was no camera feed in the bathroom, but she reappeared a few minutes later, and he felt sorry for her that she could not even wear her own clothes.

The feed went dark at lights out. There was movement during the night, but all Mulder could see was shadows, and he hoped the big bastard who had wheeled her in wasn't coming back in to take advantage.

The four men stared at the computer screen while Langly fast-forwarded through times when Scully wasn't there, and slowed it down when she was in the room. Around mid-morning the second day, Langly slowed it down again when the orderly began to wheel someone in a wheelchair into the room, and Mulder gasped when he realized it was Scully.

"Why is she in a wheelchair now?" he asked. "She walked out on her own."

Frohicke shook his head. Mulder ran fingers through his hair and leaned in again to watch her. He couldn't see close-up, of course, but her eyes looked vacant from here. She stood up out of the wheelchair and almost collapsed, and Mulder flinched forward as if he could grab her and help her up. She fell into the bed and curled up in a ball, and Mulder stared at her sullen face.

"Do you want me to fast-forward?" Langly asked softly.

"No," Mulder said, in a voice barely above a whisper. "Just leave it on."

Respectfully, the Lone Gunmen all turned their heads away and gave him a moment of privacy while he watched her sleep. His heart felt like it might burst at the sight of her fragile, unmoving frame. He brushed away a tear from his face and sniffed away more. 'What did they do to you, Scully?' he thought. "You can fast-forward now," he told Langly.

But there was not much to see—just Scully sleeping, with occasional interruptions from her roommates, all the way until the room went dark.

Mulder turned away from the screen and clenched his jaw. "So what do we have to do to get her out of there, guys?"

"We can't," said Byers. "The place is like Fort Knox."

"Yeah," said Frohicke. "Even if we could get past the electrified fence, even if we made it all the way into the building, Scully's in the tightest locked-down part of the facility."

Mulder frowned. "There's got to be a way—she can't stay in there."

"Nope, there's no way to get in," said Byers. "But there might be a way for her to get out."