Alice stood in a laboratory in the FBI's Violent Crimes Unit, waiting for the results of a DNA test. She had finally gotten time to run Mulder's DNA to verify the anomalies that she had seen in his file. She had also run hers, just for good measure. She checked her watch - at least twelve more minutes. The door opened, Mulder walking into the lab. "Hey. What are you working on?"
She waved the question away, saying, "Just some DNA that a friend asked me to run for her. She's been swamped for the last week and a half. What's up?"
"I think we've got a case. Escapee from a supermax prison in Colorado melted though walls."
"Florence? I thought no one ever escaped from there." She leaned across the lab table, watching Mulder nod.
"That's the official story. But this guy was in solitary confinement when he went off-camera. They figured he'd gone to the bathroom area of his cell - that's the one spot they don't have a camera. But when he didn't come back on camera ten minutes later, they sent guards down there. He'd vanished. Walked straight through a wall."
"He didn't tunnel his way out or anything?"
"They turned the cell upside-down. There were no signs of a breakout. He just disappeared. Besides, the prison is built so that the inmates don't know exactly where they are in the complex. They searched the place up and down, but they couldn't find him."
"Should we fly out?"
"Yeah. I've already booked a flight. We leave in an hour and a half."
"And Scully?" The machine beeped, printing out her results, which she readily picked up and scanned. There were bands in Mulder's, but none in her own. It could still be benign. Hopefully.
"They want her to stay here. She's still recovering from a major trauma. Look, I'll meet you in the office. I've got to sign us both out, and I'm sure your friend is waiting on those results." He circled around the lab bench to give her a kiss before he left.
Alice looked over the papers again before folding them up and heading to the Financial Crimes Unit, where she shredded them. The anomaly was probably a fluke, something a few people have. Nothing to worry about. Besides, Scully had one in her file. They knew she had some sort of alien DNA, and it didn't match the fragment anomaly that Mulder had.
"Gary Wayne was serving 370 years for the murders of 13 people," the warden explained. They had met him outside of the prison, and he was walking them through levels of security as he talked. "He vanished without a trace. We've expanded to a 250-mile radius, but so far nothing has turned up. We're hoping you can give us some insight."
"He was the first breakout," Mulder observed. "Security's got to be the best in the business. Can we see the tapes from his cell?"
"Sure. They're in my office. I'll tell you, Agent Mulder, when you're keeping people like the Unibomber locked up, you've got to have some damn good security." They turned into his office, saying hello to a secretary. He opened a file on his computer and spun it around to show them. "Right there, he walks towards the toilet, and then doesn't come back. Officers Goodall and Tian went to investigate, and they found the cell empty. Nothing was disturbed."
"Mind if we see it?"
"Sure. Follow me."
They trailed the warden, who led them down several halls, making turns in the maze that only the staff knew how to navigate. Most of the cells were closed off, with only a small window allowing the inmate to see out. Some of them were a little more open, but most had windows taking up only a sliver of the door. Alice walked close to Mulder, eventually grabbing his hand. He leaned over to whisper, "Kind of creepy, huh?"
"Yeah. I know nothing'll happen, but..." She shook her head, looking around.
When the warden finally stopped walking, they were in front of a cell a little larger than a broom closet. Mulder walked in first, Alice following him. They searched every inch of the place, but there were no holes in the walls or ceiling, and no secret passages to be found. "He vanished," was Mulder's conclusion.
"There's no way he could have had help from the outside?" Alice asked the warden, sitting on the cell's bed.
"No. We've thoroughly investigated the staff that was on duty at the time, and everything checks out. This guy melted through the wall."
Mulder and Alice sat at a small diner, one of the few restaurants in town. They each watched everyone who walked by, making sure Wayne wasn't still in town. "More coffee?" Their waitress had appeared soundlessly.
"Sure, thank you." Mulder waited for her to walk away before he continued his thought aloud. "What if he really did walk through the wall?"
Alice shook her head. "Mulder, people can't walk through walls."
"Think of all the stuff we've seen. You really think people walking through walls is that out there?" he questioned, stealing one of her fries.
"It's possible, but it's more likely that he had help, or someone doctored the footage."
Alice was watching TV in their hotel room when Mulder decided to go for a run. "I'm too wired. I've got to do something. I'm going to hit the gym."
"Have fun. Don't forget a room key." She kissed his cheek, locking the door and drawing the deadbolt as soon as he left. Paranoia, maybe. But a serial killer on the loose changes people's priorities.
She had just begun to doze off when she heard someone walk in. "Mulder?" No. The door was still bolted.
"Try again." She turned to see a burly man, covered in tattoos. He still wore his prison uniform.
"Gary." Her cell phone was charging on the dresser, out of reach. She would never reach the hotel phone either. Mulder would be back soon. She had to stall. "What do you want?"
He pulled a gun from his pocket and gestured with it. "Get up." She cautiously obeyed. "Let's go." He grabbed her phone, gesturing towards the door.
She unlocked it, praying that someone would be outside. The parking lot was clear. "In the car." Alice got into the driver's seat, Gary taking the passenger's side and pointing the gun at her stomach. "Now drive. Follow my directions."
When Mulder got back to the room, he was surprised to find the door wasn't locked. Maybe Alice had gone to get ice, or down to the vending machine. Her phone was gone. But the TV was still on. And her room key was still sitting on top of the microwave. He tried to call her, dialing frantically. One ring. Two. Three. An answering machine. "Alice, damn it, where are you? You're scaring me."
Mulder was at the closest FBI building within twenty minutes. Scully was on her way - she was the first phone all he'd made in the car. He hadn't buttoned his shirt properly, and didn't bother with a tie. Ten other agents were gathered in a war room with him. Some were discussing searches, but they had nothing to go on. When the hotline phone rang, they all went silent. "FBI, this is Agent Mulder."
"Hello." Mulder waved at one of the others. Get a trace going. "I bet you're wondering how I got in. Just like I got out of a locked room." Scully ran in, saw that he was on the phone, and stayed silent, but grabbed his hand instinctively.
"You have my wife."
"Yes, she's alright."
"Prove it. Let me talk to her."
There was a muffled voice on the other end, which must have been Gary Wayne giving Alice instructions. "Mulder, baby, I'm okay. He hasn't hurt-"
"That's enough." Wayne was back on the phone. "You want her back? Give me a full pardon and then start passing the hat around. A million dollars gets her back alive." He hung up as Mulder gaped.
"We got a trace!" called one of the agents. "It's a Washington DC phone number."
"That's her phone," Mulder sighed, sitting down on a desk.
Scully gave him a hug, saying, "I'm so sorry."
Meanwhile, Alice was sitting in a small, darkened shed, handcuffed to a water pipe. At least he had given her a chair. Wayne stood in the corner, playing with a pocket knife. "So how'd you do it?" she asked, watching him.
"You haven't figured it out?"
"I thought you had help from the outside, but there's no way you could've gotten into my room if you were relying on a guard." She looked around while she was talking, trying to see if there were any holes in the walls to look through. Maybe she would recognize where she was. It wasn't likely, but it was possible.
"When I was a kid, I'd melt through my crib. When my brother locked me out of his room, if walk straight through the door. I've always been able to do it. So when I got arrested, I waited. I bided my time," he flicked the knife blade out again, "and I waited. I waited until I knew their routine and how to get by them. Then I just walked out."
"Why ask for immunity and money if you could always walk out of prison and walk into a bank vault?"
"I'd always be on the run. That isn't a great life. You sure do talk a lot."
"What else is there to do?" she asked, watching him cross his arms. He'd ripped the sleeves off of his prison shirt sometime earlier, throwing them on the floor of the shed. "I might as well talk to you."
He regarded her cautiously. "This isn't some FBI trick, is it?"
"Even if it was, what could I do with it? I can't go anywhere," Alice stressed. "Who's Jenny?" She tried to point, but was hindered by her handcuffs.
Wayne held up his forearm, turning to show her the rest of the tattoo, which read, 'Jenny, always'. "She was my sister. She died in a car crash. She was 21, and I was 22."
"I've got one on my shoulder. It's a bee flying in a loop. Kinda stupid, I know. But that's what you do when you think you're going to marry someone. You get stupid tattoos, and then regret them when they leave you for their chauffeur. But I guess it's all for the best." She blinked slowly. She was exhausted, but so nervous that she was surprised she hadn't jumped out of her skin. "What's the wolf mean?"
Mulder was in the war room, trying to figure out what to do. They had no leads, nothing. A search team had gone out to the hotel to see if they could find any more clues, but they didn't had much hope.
The man who had traced the call came up to Mulder, asking, "It's her cell phone he called from, right?"
"Yeah."
He spun the closest computer around. "What's her phone number?" Mulder typed it in. "All we need is a password, and then we can track it."
"Try 'trustno1' with a number one at the end," Scully recommended.
"Nope. We've got two more guesses."
"And then what?"
"Then it'll lock us out for an hour." He typed a few characters in, hesitating before exclaiming, "Got it! It's tracking now!"
"What was it?" Scully asked, watching him scroll through reports.
"'Mulder'. Here we go." He showed Mulder a point on a map of the city. "It's ten minutes from here by car. Let's go."
Alice glanced at Wayne, then at the door. "Did you hear that?"
"Sounds like a car door. Stay there," he joked, picking his gun up off of the decrepit workbench and opening the door cautiously. He went outside.
Alice bent down, picking a bobby pin out of her hair. Within twenty seconds, she had popped the handcuffs off. Rubbing her wrists, she opened the shed's back door, peering out of it to make sure Wayne wasn't standing there. She made a dash for the woods, seeing that the coast was clear.
She ran straight into a figure that had been concealed in the shadows. "Alice?"
"Mulder!" she whispered, smiling. "He's out here somewhere."
"I've got her," he radioed in, holding his wife close to him. "I've got her. Suspect still on the loose. He may be in the woods."
They watched as two agents moved in on the shed, checking to make sure it was empty. There was a rustling noise behind them, Mulder whirling around to face Wayne, who held his gun ready. "Please," Alice begged, reaching into Mulder's coat pocket while Wayne was distracted. "Let me go. They'll get you your immunity. Please. I'm pregnant."
Mulder watched their assailant for any sign that he was about to fire. They had reached a standoff. He could feel Alice grabbing a gun from his pocket, ducking out of the way as she fired, Wayne's gun going off as he fell. The shot hit him square in the chest, Mulder firing another time to ensure that he was dead.
"Wayne's down," Mulder confirmed before turning off his radio and rushing to Alice's side. She stood up, brushing the dirt off of herself. Mulder hugged her tightly, staring at the man lying on the ground. "He really could walk through walls, right?"
"Yeah." Something was dripping into her hair. It had better not be blood... "Fox, babe, are you crying?"
He held her tightly. "I thought I was going to lose you." The other agents started to arrive, each of them checking the corpse and making different radio calls. "I was scared to death."
They finally got back to the hotel sometime in the morning. The breakfast bar had just opened up when they parked and stumbled into their room, utterly exhausted. Alice took a shower first, Mulder wandering down to bring them back breakfast. Scully joined them soon afterwards.
Alice sleepily munched on some cereal while Mulder was in the shower, but was started when the phone rang. "Hello?"
"Hello." She knew the voice on the other end of the line.
"I heard about your little adventure. I hope you're still keeping your word."
"Yes, Sir."
"Don't let him pry into Scully's case too much. I'll give you some answers, but not all of them. He'll find out too much if he tries."
"I know, Sir."
"I heard about the tests you ran, and his results. I trust you won't let him ask too many questions."
"I won't."
"Good. I'll need to meet with you when you get back to Washington." The man on the other end hung up, Alice slowly setting the phone back down.
"Who was that?" Mulder called.
"Just someone from the Bureau," she assured him. Well, it was at least partially true.
