This Is How The World Ends

by Solia

In 2012 the invasion started, but no one saw it. This oversight cost them - his reputation, her purpose, each other... An unsanctioned case with a familiar threat puts everything at risk, and as they race to save what matters most, standing alone may not be an option. MSR. Angst. Novel-length. Alternative events diverging post-IWTB, ignoring/replacing S10&11.

38. XXXVII - Sixty-Four

Title: This Is How The World Ends

Fandom: X-Files

Rating: M

Disclaimer: I do not own The X-Files or any of its characters. Can I argue this fic is undertaken for research purposes?

Author's Notes: I'M SO SORRY EVERYONE FOR LEAVING YOU FOR SO LONG. This chapter has taken many a stolen evening or early morning and hence has just gone on and one, ending up way longer than I expected but possibly reflective of the length of time taken to get it down. I'm working on my Masters thesis (which is about fanfic – three and a half weeks until deadline!) and simultaneously my PhD application (in which I plan to write about X-Files fandom) and only now that it's spring break here am I not balancing these tasks with full-time classroom teaching. Due to the soonness of all these workloads, you probably won't see another chapter from me until after thesis submission, but who knows? Pressure and time compression generally generates fanfic in me. Expect to hear more from me in November!

Thanks to everyone who hasn't given up on me, and thanks to those who reviewed the last chapter. , I love hearing back what lines stand out to people :) Thankyou! Yes, xfileslover2013, some big stuff is brewing but this chapter is really more manoeuvring of the game pieces. The next one I think is Scully, then Colt, and we'll get some forward momentum once their storylines meet back up. Thanks Sebastien! That review was super lovely, and I assume by now you're up to this point and will be able to read this reply :) I agree, Mulder is easily blinded by his faith, a trait mediated by Scully. He's kind of internalised her in this fic, hearing her voice in place of his own frank logic, which could be taken as a manifestation of his slow sink into insanity; but likewise she's internalised his voice, as he hears him when she's reacting to instincts about people's motives. Maybe they're both crazy :P Skinner seems to think so. Guest, thank you for reminding me that people care about this story and want updates. I really, really appreciate your pokes.

This chapter isn't going to overwhelm everybody with the feels like the last one, but it's an important shove forward for our littlest cast member Sixty-Four. I hope it's coherent - I wrote and edited it over dozens and dozens of separate occasions. Our weakest character (I say this with pitying affection; the rest of the cast is so strong, she never stood a chance at outshining our leads) goes toe-to-toe with one of the strongest. In this chapter, I've written her to the song Dark Horse by Amanda Marshall, off an album I have always loved for a lot of reasons. Despite her scarediness she's manned up a little in this chapter, though I still hear Evanescence's Breathe No More in the background. Poor sad messed-up kid she is.

Enjoy! And thank you all for reading, I truly appreciate you.

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Desperation draws all things into sharper focus.

The medical examiner's office in Thayne was very small, very closed, and very familiar. Sixty-Four was only here a few hours ago, having her dignity chopped finely and served back to her on a plate. She sat in the warmth and safety of the car she'd taken off with from the convoy checkpoint, engine off, tapping a matchbox on the steering wheel as she stared at the one yellow lightbulb above the morgue doors. She was back.

Now what?

A wave of inspired determination had driven her back to the scene of her most recent humiliation, but a few hours of silence in the car had sapped that from her and she felt silly and small – exactly what Pledge Three and the rest of them already saw when they looked at her. She had the matches; she had no idea if she had the guts to actually try and set a morgue on fire, but she couldn't go back without achieving something, anything, from this impulsive take-off.

And the fire was only a cover, or that was how she'd reasoned it in her head. She was meant to be tracking down the people she'd aligned herself with. Yet here she sat.

She bit her lip and looked harder at the morgue, trying not to feel again the fear and wretched uselessness she'd experienced under the eyes of Assistant Director Walter Skinner as she made herself revisit every millisecond of that exchange inside this building. If she had somewhere else to start, God knew she would have gone there first, but unfortunately it was practically the only place in this whole stupid town she knew. The Sheriff's office was closed and silent, without even the yellow light overhead, and besides, she reminded herself when her weak, childish inner voice suggested staring at that less intimidating building instead, Skinner and Scully hadn't been there. They'd been here. She'd seen them here. Thirty-Nine was shot in town and brought here. Dr Scully, professional and prepared and terrifyingly proficient-looking in her scrubs, had been ready to perform his autopsy here, and that would have taken a few hours, right? Not that Sixty-Four was any sort of expert on, well… anything. She was only guestimating, and her guestimate lined up pretty closely with the timeframe in which Fox Mulder bailed from Erik Johannsson's new house to come to Thayne.

Here.

And the argument might be made that Dr Scully cut up Thirty-Nine, discovered what he was, rang Fox, and he hurried to see this proof, but it didn't sit right with Sixty-Four. Fox already knew what Thirty-Nine would be; he'd been running with Mikhail Levin and his Russians for weeks. Besides, Erik said he sounded worried, inferring that something was wrong.

And Dana Scully wasn't the one who'd called. AD Skinner, the very thought of whom filled the teenage pledge with anxiousness, was the caller. Somehow this reinforced her idea that it wasn't to do with the autopsy results, since the Assistant Director hadn't conducted it, but she had no actual proof of this.

There was something else here. She knew it, though she couldn't explain how except that her intense scrutiny of Fox Mulder's behaviour and movement patterns over the past few months was throwing up red flags, letting her know this was an anomaly. He'd said he would avoid Dana Scully, and the big meeting in the boardroom had indicated the agent wasn't frequently in touch with the rogue, either. So? What was going on here?

She went back to what she knew. Pledge Thirty-Nine, after banishment, had ended up here in Thayne on the back of a pick-up truck. He'd disembarked, and within minutes had gotten shot, mid-rampage, which in itself was highly uncharacteristic. The mayor theory was bull. Obviously. What did Thirty-Nine care who ran a town as pointless as this one?

Sixty-Four got her phone out and reopened the file Pledge Three had given to his team and had trusted her to keep to herself while he silenced it, but which she had risked everything to pass to Erik Johannsson to pass to Fox Mulder. But Fox hadn't read it. He'd passed it on. Funny that he'd ended up here anyway. Sixty-Four rubbed her tired blue eyes, reading again what she'd already memorised and agonised over.

A wild man came out of nowhere… He didn't seem angry… He wouldn't stop… It was all so fast… He was like a savage, all that wild hair and no communication… He grabbed me and looked in my face, and threw me away like trash and just kept on going without a look back… She skimmed the witness statements, absorbing the general theme of terror and urgency. The John Doe she knew as Pledge Thirty-Nine who was born as Morris Bletchley was shot in the middle of the chest at midmorning in the middle of Thayne in the middle of a crowd of people eating and drinking. Lots of middles. She'd seen the body herself and still felt the chill of that refrigerated room of death where he was soon to be sliced up and opened. Better you than me, sorry. She rubbed her curly dark hair, frustrated by her inability to connect the scattered dots. The allies she'd chosen would probably look down at her in disdain if they all ever met her and then realised how perfectly average she was. Henry Gray was super-smart, the only man in the world capable of achieving first the Syndicate's, and now the Family's, goal. She was quite sure he only kept her around because he had nobody else to replace her with. Fox was a genius, one in a million, an abstract thinker she could only admire and never hope to match; Dana Scully had a sheet of achievements and qualifications longer than Sixty-Four's list of years lived, in any body. They, according to Pledge Three and others she spoke to, had need for little other intellectual input than what their partner provided.

Sixty-Four couldn't even meet her own expectations of her personal intelligence. What chance did she stand of impressing anybody else?

Think, think. If she didn't work out where to find them soon, she'd have to either return empty-handed – hugely suspicious and embarrassing – or burn this morgue down to explain her sudden getaway, if it would even catch alight, which she hadn't considered when she stopped for matches at a gas station. Would it catch, would she be caught? Think. Why did her fellow pledge attack that crowd and draw all this attention to their secret? There were many earlier opportunities to disgrace the Family if that was his aim, and again, maybe it was, but this opportunity had cost his life. She remembered him at his trial, choosing his words carefully, opting to accept banishment rather than make accusations against Three, which would certainly have led somewhere similar to this. He wasn't silly; he valued living. Alright, so there had to be another reason. Something that would make him act desperately. She read again. Thirty-Nine was shot in the chest before he could hurt anybody else. Else. He'd hurt numerous people in this random attack. He'd grabbed people and looked them in the eye, then thrown them away and continued. Looking for someone else.

Sixty-Four looked up again at the yellow light of the morgue, turning that thought over in her head with her perfectly average problem-solving skill and processing speed. Thirty-Nine died for a reason. He spotted someone, or wanted something from someone, and he threw himself into harm's way to get it. Died trying to get it.

He was in there. Whoever he'd been after was not. Also notably absent were the FBI agent and AD who'd so effectively scared Sixty-Four and her requisition team off earlier. No one was stationed to watch the morgue – the absence of Skinner and Scully was unsurprising, since they were big deals and observably did not do stakeouts anymore, but they had not replaced themselves with younger agents or local law enforcement. Weren't they paranoid and ultra-careful, as per their reputation? Didn't they suspect the conspirators would be back like they were with Rebecca Johannsson?

These were smarter people than Sixty-Four. If she had considered it, they would have. Yet. They had abandoned this location. Making her drastic action as easy as she could ask for. She apprehensively fingered the matchbox again, unwilling to act. Why didn't Skinner and Scully stay and watch this place?

It didn't matter. The morgue didn't matter. That was the only explanation. Something else mattered more. Maybe someone.

Sixty-Four felt her heart skip up to a quicker pace as she turned her attention back to the file on her phone, pinching at the screen to read closer and more attentively through new lenses of understanding. She looked this time for the names and details of people hurt or otherwise involved in the attack. It was unhelpful. There was no way of knowing whether any of them were Thirty-Nine's target, though obviously the ones hurt first were less likely. Even the ones hurt last were not necessarily the ones he was aiming for, if he was shot before reaching his destination.

Back where she started.

"Post-mortem payback," she muttered, switching the screen off and staring at the ceiling of the car. It was her fault Thirty-Nine was dead, after all. She'd done this, with her risky alliances. Her belief in ghosts was restricted to the physical, like herself and Morris Bletchley, but she still felt appropriately frustrated with this seeming haunting. Thirty-Nine's death was just mysterious enough to attract the attention of the Family's Least Wanted but just that little bit too mysterious to make sense to junior sleuth Sixty-Four. She could make herself sick with dizziness chasing the insubstantial threads of this– "Sick!" She unlocked her screen again and scanned the names of the injured. Name, brief summary of injury, statement of whether they were admitted to further medical attention or sent on their way.

Anyone coming to any degree of real harm, from concussion to torn knee, had been sent to the regional hospital, twenty minutes away according to her mapping app. It was worth a try. She'd read the police report. She'd viewed the dead pledge. It wasn't a certainty, but the only other people involved who Sixty-Four hadn't already had access to were the victims. And the most serious victims were in the hospital.

Maybe Dr Scully, MD, was there too, and maybe Fox Mulder was on his way to her. Maybe tonight Sixty-Four would finally connect with her hero, for whatever good it would do in the long run, and make her first steps toward impressing someone in her undersized world. She tossed the matches onto the passenger seat and turned the car back on, glad to be able to postpone her inevitable introduction to amateur arson.

It had frustrated the Worldwide Family of Hosts immensely when they'd realised their mistake in honouring Sixty-Four's place in their ranks – just one of many perceived inconveniences that she represented, really. Only a teen, parents long dead, she'd needed to be taught how to drive in order to be of any particular use to the cause. "You're deluded if you think that's going to fall to me," Pledge Three had informed her primly when she'd asked for lessons at the appropriate age, just a couple of years ago. She wasn't the only one, and so she and the other couple of minors in the cause had been shuffled into one of the Family's charity programs for connecting disadvantaged youth with essential services, and had been signed up for lessons with kindly community volunteers from a local driving school who'd asked awkward questions about how the Family had found her in the foster system and whether she had somewhere safe to stay that night.

Forget the rich parents she was born to, the beautiful house she grew up in and the gene pool of intelligence she'd mostly missed out on. Pledge Sixty-Four was the very definition of disadvantaged youth.

She backed out of the parking lot, hopeful for the first time in a long while. The Family had had her taught to drive because it suited them, the same way it had suited them to give her somewhere to live that was near to their facilities or the way it had suited them to have someone teach her how to sanitise and service a lab so she'd be of use to the science team. She was a servant of minimal value, and everything they did for her was weighed and measured against what they would get out of it. Dr Gray, she knew with regret, wasn't much different, though she felt like her contribution to his world was more appreciated and more noticeable. He seemed to like her. He took her seriously, trusted her, relied on her… but also used her, because it suited him and his purpose, which would ultimately, one day, not require her any longer.

Imagine, though, someone who gave a shit. Imagine someone like the driving instructors, wondering whether you were safe, willing to offer themselves in service to you without an expectation of exponential returns. Imagine someone who cared for you, and not just the part of you that could earn money or achieve some abstract goal, but for you, the person you were, like you bore some kind of intrinsic worth.

Sixty-Four could only just barely remember this sensation – being a daughter, a granddaughter, a sister, a school friend, being loved – and couldn't explain why she thought she might find this again, especially in an adult man more than twice her age with no understanding of what she'd lived through. Yet Fox's voice in her ear, digitally compressed by the phone line, still asked her soul whether she was safe, an unconditionally worried fatherly question on repeat, and she desired so deeply to feel that again, and had to keep checking her speed on the quiet country roads.

The tiny hospital would have been easy to miss if her phone didn't direct her straight to it. Was Fox here? The parking lot was far from full, but she didn't know his car and it could be one of the few she saw, dark and still. She got out and looked at the single storey medical centre, nerves dancing with an unexpected magnetism, like she was close to something only her intuitive mind could sense. Did that mean she was close to him? She shivered, uneasy. The sanctuary she sought in his presence was unlikely to be there in reality; more probably, he would be with AD Skinner and Dr Scully, who would call her out as one of the interferers from today. They'd arrest her. They'd gag her and drag her off to one of the white rooms of her haunting childhood before she could explain. They'd run tests. Dr Scully in her scrubs and her face shield would hold the scalpel and the needles, and it would begin all over again.

She almost got back in the car, but she'd come so far, and there was no crawling back to the convoy. Meekly she locked the car and headed inside, tucking her wild curls behind her ears, intensely aware of how young and pathetic she was.

Best to work with what you've got, right?

"My phone's dead," she told the receptionist, who was just packing things into her bag, ready to go home for the night and awaiting her replacement. "I was just driving through when it ran out of juice. My mom said my dad would be here tonight, and I was nearby so I was going to stop in and surprise him, but I didn't see his car and I don't know his work phone. He works for the FBI," she added, like a childish afterthought. "Was he here?"

The little girl routine worked much better than the CDC agent one, though it wasn't a sure hit the first time. The nurse offered a small, partially convinced smile and turned to her computer.

"We did have two FBI people here earlier," she agreed cautiously, looking something up. "A man and a lady."

"That's my dad and his partner," Sixty-Four said brightly, playing at relieved and not having to try that hard. They were gone. Thank goodness. No chance of running into those two. "His name's Walter Skinner." That kicked her over into the plane of plausible, apparently lining up with what the receptionist was reading on the screen. She saw it in the older woman's brown eyes, lighting up in recognition. "Do you know where he went?"

"No, sorry, honey," the woman apologised. She nodded at her screen. "He visited a patient, and must have left after that."

Score. "Would we be able to ask the patient if my dad mentioned where to contact him?" she asked, acting nervous. "I feel so stupid, not knowing my own dad's number, and I'm kind of lost – this is the closest he's been to my college since I started, and I thought if I drove out to meet him…" She looked down at her feet, hoping there was a college around here somewhere, and hoping the woman, who'd no doubt gone to college herself, couldn't smell on Sixty-Four the metaphorical stench of the undereducated. "I should have brought my charger. I'm hopeless."

The nurse softened. "He doesn't know you're in town?"

Sixty-Four shook her head. "It was meant to be a surprise. I hardly ever see him."

"You can use our phone here," the nurse started, then remembered: "but you'll need the number… Tell you what," she interrupted herself briskly, making up her mind. She tucked her handbag under the counter. "We'll check if the patient's awake, and if he is, we can ask if your dad left a number. They usually do, don't they? Detectives, and federal agents?"

"Usually," Sixty-Four agreed, hope soaring as she followed the older woman down a hall. This act was getting better results than any ill-fated attempt at being taken seriously as an adult. "Thanks for this."

"If he's asleep, we'll have to leave him that way," the nurse warned, leading the way. "Inpatients are here to rest and recover."

"No, I understand," Sixty-Four said quickly. "My dad wouldn't want me to disturb a sick person's hospital stay. If he's asleep, I'll just drive back to school I guess."

The hallways they walked were mostly empty, the occasional medical professional stepping out of a room and heading one way or another, looking busy and competent. Sixty-Four kept her eyes open and ready to behold Fox Mulder, her body strangely pre-emptive of the encounter she was sure she was about to have. Not like that. Just… her nerves were jingly, in a weird, good way, and the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck started to stick up. It was hard to explain, except maybe as excitement. Anticipation? Inspiration? It felt… powerful.

It built with every step, and all she could think of was the silly game she'd played as a child: getting warmer… getting warmer…

"This is Gary's room up here," the nurse said, nodding at one closed door up ahead. "I'm not sure whether he's a suspect or something. Hopefully your dad didn't scare him and he's still happy to help you out."

Good to know Sixty-Four wasn't the only one terrified by Walter Skinner, although right now, if he pushed open the door they stopped at and came through, she wasn't sure what she'd do. Her electrified nervous system had her feeling jittery and flighty, ready for anything at a moment's notice, and the weird sense of purpose and potential inside her was super-heated by this point, shaky and unstable, like she might burst out laughing or accidentally do something genius.

They had to open the door almost all the way to be able to see the hospital bed behind it, and Sixty-Four couldn't help following the nurse in, drawn like magnetism. Was Fox in here? Was he the thing pulling her here? But all she saw on the first glance was a brunette man in his thirties or forties asleep in the bed, his leg in a long white cast, his soft breaths expanding his ribcage rhythmically under the hospital sheets.

He was not the main event. He was not special. Yet her heart shook in her chest like it wanted to explode with unrealised power, and she didn't know how figurative that simile was. Could she explode? She had a tenuous understanding of anatomy and biology, and hers wasn't in any textbook.

"Sorry, honey," the nurse whispered, turning to leave, prompting Sixty-Four to do the same. It was while pivoting on the spot that she understood, suddenly, with a burst of white-hot clarity.

Beside the door, opposite the bed, were two chairs, creatively rearranged to face one another so that a small figure could curl up across the two. The boy was a young teen, a few years younger than Sixty-Four, still distinctly a child, with rusty-red hair covering white ears, in which ear buds were blasting audible music. His eyes were closed, asleep or maybe just dozing, since it wasn't late yet but this place was undoubtedly boring, his head propped up on an emptied and rolled-up backpack on one chair's arm, and the rest of him crunched up to fit within the bounds he'd created from the two armchairs.

If her heart was going to explode, then would have been the moment, and it didn't. Instead her eyes processed the scene quickly and spotted the white card clutched in the boy's hand, eyes soaking in that name she'd only heard for the first time today and had already committed to permanent memory under 'cause for terror'. She pushed lightly past the nurse before she could be stopped and plucked the card quickly away. The boy didn't stir.

She hurried out with the nurse, implications poised to explode in her brain just as soon as she had the space to actually acknowledge what she'd walked in on.

"My dad's card," she explained quietly to the frowning nurse in the hallway, watching the frown dissolve away as she promised to drop the card back at the front desk on her way out. They walked back toward reception, the shaky sense of power fading with every step away from Gary's room. The nurse pointed out a payphone on the wall but again offered the hospital's desk phone. Sixty-Four declined, thinking it would be hard to fake a call when there were all those lines and lights to watch and the nurse standing so close beside her, hearing the lack of return voice on the other end. She thanked the nurse again as she went to the payphone, digging change out of a pocket of her cargo pants. Lots of people didn't carry real money on their person anymore but she liked to, the friendly jingle of coins against her leg when she moved reminding her of happy innocent days walking to the shops to buy sweets with her pocket money.

She jammed the coins into the payphone, reflecting only briefly how rare these things were nowadays when once they were everywhere, and dialled the first number that came to mind. The pizza man's automated voice started asking her about her address and toppings and whatever, but she conducted a one-sided conversation with her imaginary dad for the benefit of the reception nurse who lingered uncertainly for a bit and then, when they smiled at each other and the nurse returned to her post, could probably still hear snippets from around the corner where she finished her packing up.

"I know, Daddy, it was silly," she told the phone, which had now connected her to a real person because the machine couldn't make sense of her order. She kept play-acting, numb to the questions of the pizza guy, numb with shock. "It was one of those things that sounded good in my head…"

Like coming here. 'Go where Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Assistant Director Walter Skinner and Pledge Thirty-Nine all converge on the map' had sounded reasonable and clever. She'd been sure she'd learn or achieve something worthwhile if she managed to cross paths with them, or even identify what brought them here in the first place.

She hadn't expected this. That boy. How…? She wanted to ask how did his existence, his nearness, make her feel so strangely activated, but it was a waste of a question borne only of awe, because she knew what had to be the answer. The implications, oh, God, the implications. Did the Family know? Did Fox know? Did any of the other pledges know?

This was what Thirty-Nine died for. This feeling, now. He'd found Him. The One. And he'd died without it, his goal unread and misinterpreted by the pledges who came to collect him, and now Sixty-Four had it.

She was the one in the same building as the boy. She was the one, of all the pledges, of all the more useful pledges. What on Earth was she going to do? What in the whole galaxy was she going to do? The pizza guy tried to interrupt her and find out who she was trying to call, but in the end gave up on her and hung up, and she kept talking, pausing occasionally to listen for the receptionist's movements. When she was sure no one would notice, she quietly hung up the payphone and hurried back to Gary's room, the heated sense of power serving as a better navigational tool than her memory for directions.

The room was as she'd left it a few minutes before, and this time she closed the door softly behind herself. The man in the bed kept snoozing. The boy on the chairs kept snoozing. Her existence went completely unnoticed, but for once she didn't care.

She was in the presence of greatness.

She knew it, could feel it in her very DNA. Every recreated cell, every carefully reconstructed strand of protein, knew who this was, even if she had no name to give to this most revered of strangers, even if she'd never met the child. If destiny was a thing, if stars truly aligned to create the circumstances for the mightiest of life's moments, this must be what that felt like. She'd waited her whole life for this. She'd been made for this. Literally.

The boy, she supposed, had to be connected to this Gary man in the bed, as he was clearly not a patient himself, but when she braved taking another step closer and indulged in a breathless analysis of the child's features, she saw none like the sleeping man's. Instead she saw a different, entirely unexpected yet entirely obvious connection.

No.

Way.

"Holy…" she breathed, struck with dizzy amazement. No freaking way. But there was no mistake. In sleep the boy's face was slack and soft, innocent, the classic shape of his jaw and brow and the line of his hair sticking stubbornly up atop his smooth forehead all so achingly familiar it squeezed Sixty-Four's swollen heart. Of course. The sublimity of this cosmic joke was too poetic to overlook. Was there a God? Maybe, maybe not, but there was the Worldwide Family of Hosts, and they would like to consider themselves as such; and even before them, there was the Syndicate serving the same ultimate purpose, and above and beyond all of these were the beings of real power in this equation, and it was through their machinations, hindered and helped variably by the actions of human interferers and interlopers, that the world's fate unfolded. Did those highest of beings have a sense of humour? Is this what they thought of as a joke?

She stared at the child, intermittently remembering to breathe normally. He just kept sleeping, music berating his eardrums. Oblivious. Probably oblivious to all of what she was thinking, all she represented. If the boy was an intergalactic prank, what would the beings think of Sixty-Four stumbling across him? Was this supposed to be funny, too, or was this a terrible mistake on their part? Because she knew what she was supposed to do now.

She knew, but she just stood there.

The Worldwide Family of Hosts had been looking for this boy, specifically this boy, without giving their servants so much as the first clue of who he was or where to start looking for him, ever since their arrival in 2012. Drilled, or maybe programmed, into every pledge was the importance of finding this boy, the ultimate currency, the most valuable thing a pledge could bring before the Family. They were all, every day, thinking about how they could be the one to get their hands on him, but of course it was a stupid pipedream, because the boy was lost, somewhere out in the world, and pledges were kept busy enough without taking days off to go trawling high schools for kids who gave them feelings that would land them in jail if they verbalised them.

He was not lost. He was in Wyoming, and Sixty-Four had found him.

The boy's lashes fluttered, slipping deeper into his light sleep. He was so little, so much younger and more human than she'd dreamed. The pledge, just a few years older but a dozen lifetimes more scarred, tightened her grip on the business card in her hand, trying to ground herself in reality, in the now. A million years could pass and she wouldn't get bored of staring at this boy and soaking in the incredible sensation of power he generated in her cells, but she didn't have a million years. She had to do something. The correct protocol would be to call Pledge Three, since he was the highest authority she was allowed direct contact with, and report her find. She'd get some accolades, if she was lucky; no, she'd definitely be given some grateful attention by the Family, though Three wasn't the generous father figure she craved and would likely handle the acquisition and thus take most of the glory, if he followed through the way he was supposed to. Regardless, handing the boy, The Boy, over to the Family would improve her standing within it immensely.

She'd be special, admired by her fellow pledges.

We won't always be pledges.

Pledge Three's words from earlier cut through the warmth of the boy's potential with the same cold as a chill wind, and she shuddered with uncertainty. What did he mean by that? Did it matter? She knew what he would do in this moment – he'd throw this kid over his shoulder and it would be the last the Gary guy in the bed would hear of him. The last anyone would hear of him. Could she be that ruthless?

They think they've got control of you. Do they?

The boy's fingers, now empty, twitched, and Sixty-Four opened her hand to look at the card she'd taken from him. Assistant Director Walter Skinner. Skinner and Scully had interviewed this Gary and the boy. They knew he was here. This was what they'd called Fox about. It made the most sense. They had stakes in this boy, too, and Sixty-Four had stakes in them.

Fox wouldn't admire her if she followed protocol. He would hate her forever, before he even saw her. He'd have no problem allowing his fed friends to take her to those white sterile rooms in handcuffs. She rubbed her arms self-consciously, thinking of the needles and the pain, and stared again at the special child in front of her. He looked small, frail in sleep, and that face, so young. Just a kid. Kids didn't choose their circumstances. She hadn't chosen hers. What kind of monster was she to willingly subject another child to what she'd experienced? Because she knew it would be little different – needles, tests, white rooms, masked doctors, daily experiences of dehumanisation chipping away at the fear of death until finally it came, a welcome guiding hand in place of a parent's.

Because death had been kinder to her than any parent, in the end.

Surely she, Sixty-Four, could be kinder than death.

She swallowed. If she didn't report this, and it later came out that she had withheld it, she'd be crucified, and the boy would be destroyed anyway. So? Her hyperactive brain, prompted to new levels of inspiration by the nearness of the boy, backtracked quickly, making connections that felt hard half an hour ago. So, nothing. If it came out that she'd failed to turn in the boy, everything would be ruined, so the trick was to ensure it didn't get out. Tell nobody. Not even Dr Gray, her only ally within the Family. Bury this secret. She squeezed her hand half-regrettably, folding the business card in half and pocketing it. She really had intended to give it back, but Skinner and Scully had made themselves conspicuous today and for the boy to remain invisible to the Family, he couldn't be connected to either of them. They probably wanted to help, but they were dangerous associates for this child to have. Sixty-Four couldn't help him if he was in their clutches, and was somewhat relieved by the thought that she would be keeping them apart. Skinner was terrifying.

Skinner and Scully in Thayne was already an established fact, and it had already been identified that they'd come for Thirty-Nine. No obvious connection back to the boy, since it had been such an abstract string of poor connections that had brought Sixty-Four to be standing here following the footsteps of much more creative thinkers than herself. Fox Mulder was a wildcard – there was never knowing who was watching out for him, or what he'd do – but at least he was good at flying under the radar, and probably would get in and out of Thayne without detection by anyone associated with the Family. That meant that the only remaining breadcrumb trail from the convoy of trucks to this boy was–

Slowly, Sixty-Four backed over to the door, turning the handle gently and wincing as it made a sound too small to be heard over the pounding music in the earbuds. The boy kept sleeping, the man kept sleeping. She took a final look at the child, drinking in this sight she never thought she'd see, and let herself silently out into the hall. She exhaled heavily when she was alone.

She was the biggest danger to this boy right now. What if one of the other pledges had followed her from the truck stop? She would lead them right to him. She'd lived these last four years as a constant failure; this didn't have to be another of them. The child didn't need to be collateral to other people's agendas. She could do for him what nobody had bothered to do for her.

She could do right by him, and keep him ignorant. There is a lot to be said for ignorance at times. It's safe.

Moving down the hall, away from him, she felt the withdrawal of his effect, though it wasn't a harsh or sudden drain. She felt a residual glow, a glow she was sure could almost light those matches, set the morgue alight and burn her trail to the ground. What would the other pledges do to feel this? To keep this?

If any of them knew where he was, he'd be either dead or locked up within a day. No question. She shivered again. It wasn't cold in the hospital.

The reception nurse would ask awkward questions about how her phone call went and Sixty-Four started rehearsing cheery answers as she passed the payphone and headed back to the front desk, but as she turned the corner, fake smile pasted on, she suddenly froze and backed up out of sight, her hyped senses taking in the scene and reacting more quickly than usual.

She flattened herself to the wall around the corner, holding her breath, heart thudding. Fox Mulder. He was here. The night nurse had been replaced while Sixty-Four was with the child, and a new woman was sitting in her place, speaking with Fox Mulder over the counter. He looked tired, she considered with some unwarranted concern as the instant-photo scene in her mind burned clearly, sharp with detail. Crumpled, unkempt. The beard she sometimes saw him with was present but, at least, short. Beards were weird. It made him look old.

The nurse's voice was indistinct, unknown, and Sixty-Four had to strain to tune into it. "… not sure of their names."

"That's alright." His voice was immediately clear, her ear ready and waiting for his exact tone though it was lower and should have been harder to catch. "If they were to stay in town overnight, where would they go? I don't know the area and my calls aren't getting through."

Lucky the nurse had traded places – the previous one might have found this second phoneless character seeking the same agents too incredulous. This one didn't know about Sixty-Four, Walter Skinner's fake daughter, and didn't hesitate to answer.

"Hmm," she said, "there's Golden's, which is the bigger complex that most visitors stay at, but any local will tell you to go to Rhonda's Inn. It's only small but much nicer, and out of the way."

"Thanks for that."

Sixty-Four turned her head to listen hard for anything else, careful not to dip her head far enough that her hair would spill over into visibility from around the corner. She heard receding footsteps, presumably his, but they stopped abruptly. She waited, silent. In his silence she half-believed she could hear his breaths. Why did it feel like he was waiting, too? Was this her chance to step out and meet him?

Maybe she should have, but she froze, unable to imagine the consequences of that choice. A thousand times she'd pictured herself finally meeting her idol, but what came afterward she'd never worked out, and that uncertainty was insurmountable.

His footsteps resumed, and she listened as they faded out the door. Gone. She breathed, frustrated with herself. She wanted to be part of his life. She wanted to know him, for him to know her, to feel welcome in somebody's presence. That was never going to happen as long as she hid from him.

Even revitalised by the aura of the boy, she didn't have it in her to cross that bridge right now. It was the wrong timing. These were the big guys, with big problems and big agendas. Fox Mulder didn't want her to appear right now – his mind was with his real priorities and distractions would not be welcome. She was just little Sixty-Four, who happened to have fallen across the biggest guy of all, potentially. In any case, she should get far, far away and not look back, just try to manage this situation from elsewhere so nobody could trace her footsteps back to this little boy. She could burn a morgue. Yep. Definitely.

She counted to a hundred and left, grabbing her cell phone out and playing with it like a typical nineteen-year-old as she passed the receptionist, who paid her no mind at all. She let her eyes flicker around the foyer just once and spotted what Fox Mulder should have been paranoid enough to notice – the surveillance camera positioned in the corner. He was caught on it now, and so was she, and AD Skinner and Dr Scully, maybe even the boy. Every key player. A goldmine in the wrong hands.

She hadn't requisitioned surveillance footage before but she knew the Family regularly had pledges organise for it to happen, and she knew Eighteen was involved in getting hold of the Berkshire County Morgue tapes. She idly wondered what it would take to get his help as she got back into her car and restarted it. Probably not much, but 'help' wasn't enough. She needed help and silence. Allies.

Ugh, she couldn't leave Thayne. She fidgeted with the unfamiliar keychain, dangling from the ignition. She'd managed to overhear the one part of Fox's conversation she needed to be able to find him, but also knew he was heading straight for his doctor and his assistant director.

Two people she did not want to see again so soon.

She needed to go. Already the convoy would be counting down to her return, aware that she'd had enough time to reach Thayne and do whatever she'd set out to do, and should be on her way back.

Allies, though: she didn't have any where she came from. The only way was forward.

Brimming with anxious reluctance, Sixty-Four drove slowly out of the hospital parking lot, half of her thoughts still with the boy asleep across two pushed-together chairs, the other half with the man who'd come within just a few dozen yards of the boy. Would he have been able to leave if he'd seen the child's face? Would he have felt the reverent eminence of the boy, or would he have just recognised the inherited features? Because they were obvious.

The boy. She'd found him. And she couldn't unsee his face, and she couldn't unknow who he had to be.

Rhonda's Inn turned out to be a pitch of old log cabins with sweet little front porches and lanterns hanging down, a wild hedge fencing the place off from the main road. She slowed as soon as she saw it, peering intently through the one big gap to see anything she could. Cabins, cars on the gravelly grounds… Two men on a porch. Then the hedge cut off her view, and she muttered irritably to herself, checking both ways along the empty country road before swinging the car about and retracing. There was nobody else about, no one on the road, so she took this approach even more slowly, cutting her headlights down to avoid notice. She inched the car past Rhonda's driveway, squinting to see.

Fox and Walter Skinner, for sure. They were as distinctive as celebrities, impossible to mistake, standing together on the well-lit front porch of one of the nearer cabins with the door held open as they spoke.

She should go. Whatever they were discussing was probably important, and besides, she didn't want to get caught spying.

Fox went inside, and Skinner looked away toward the road, uncomfortable expression lit by the lanterns. Sixty-Four's view was again obscured by the hedge, but her stomach had just twisted to see Fox go into that room. The room's occupant seemed self-evident. Sixty-Four felt heavy with some weird emotion she couldn't identify.

Not jealousy. Eww. At least, not sexual jealousy. She wasn't sure she knew herself well enough to be more certain than that. She drove on for ten or so seconds of conflicted, anxious thinking, then turned the car around for one more bypass, taking it slowly once again, headlights low. She leaned across the passenger seat of the car to get as close a look as possible.

Fox and Skinner were talking again in the doorway. She slowed almost to a stop across the driveway, drinking in Fox's intensely worried expression and worrying for him in return, but then considered how weird and suspicious it would appear if either of them were to notice her obscure driving behaviours. Had something happened to Dr Scully? Did it justify possibly throwing everything else, including Sixty-Four's chance at freedom, to the winds?

She yanked irritably on the wheel and took the car bumpily off the road, throwing on the brake and turning off both the lights and the engine. Fox, what are you doing? They'd talked about this. He'd promised to keep away from Dr Scully. He'd said they wrote the book on professional distance, or something like that. Because Sixty-Four had told him that the Hosts had an eye on her, and weren't above discrediting or murdering her, and Fox said she was integral to the overall plan.

Apparently, she was more than that, or perhaps less than that, or somehow both. Whatever she was to the case was not all she was to him.

Well. That much was obvious within about ten seconds of being in that hospital room.

Sixty-Four flicked the keychain dangling down beside her knee, thinking. It didn't come as naturally now as it had in the hospital. The boy really did do something to her, something supernatural, almost. Fox Mulder's priorities were not what she'd thought, but before she'd seen the boy, hers weren't, either, so she shouldn't be so annoyed. She just needed to problem-solve around the issue. Right now, she was due somewhere else. Right now, he was with Dana Scully, not keeping himself open and available to Sixty-Four to be able to warn him about the surveillance tape. How long would he be? Could be all night. Maybe if she waited a few minutes she'd get a clear run at his car to leave him another note, as he'd suggested through her last contact with Erik Johannsson, though she'd have to take a guess as to which car was his.

Resolving to this improvised plan, she leaned aside and flicked open the glove compartment. Any note paper? No, though there was a pen. A good start. She grabbed it and clicked it a few times absent-mindedly, digging through the standard manuals and directories tidily stashed away, hoping to be surprised and find a notepad despite strong evidence to the contrary.

Maybe Mulder was already all over the surveillance footage. A man of many contacts, maybe he'd phoned someone on his way over here, gotten it all sorted out. Or maybe he and his genius girlfriend were organising that right now, strategizing away like the soldiers they were, seizing the evidence with her legal channels before anyone else could get the jump on them. But what if they hadn't? The boy had to remain a secret.

Living in a digital age under a very digital Worldwide Family of Hosts, Sixty-Four found no paper to write on during her search of the seat pockets, the doors, the backseat or the central console storage. The car was impeccably clean, not even a wrapper to be found. Damn the overly efficient organisation. Unenthused, she reached under her seat, not liking her chances, stretching to pat her fingers along the recently shampooed carpet of the car's inner lining. Nothing.

A sharp rap on the window jolted her to attention; she jumped, startled, but her hand was still wedged under her seat, and the awkward reaction only made her shoulder bump the horn. She cried out weakly at the unexpected sound, though it was short, and wrenched her hand free.

"FBI! Hands where I can see them!"

Her heart slammed against its confines inside her ribcage as she turned toward the voice, squeezing shut her eyes against the disorientating brightness of his flashlight when he swung it in her direction. The indescribable terror of being caught surged through her and made her think wild things – run, hide, attack, cry, scream for help, bite your way out, kick and scratch and don't let them take you – though she knew nothing at all about her situation. She blindly grabbed for the door handle to make her escape but the voice barked the same order and like an animal she froze, quivering with indecision, eyes shut tight. Please let this be a joke, please let him go away, please let this be a bad dream.

"Get your hands up and get out of the car, slowly."

Oh God, oh God. He wasn't going away, and the timbre of his voice was starting to connect with the numb neurons in her brain responsible for short-term memory. A hopeless do-gooder, she unwillingly stuck her hands up in front of her, and when he opened the door for her, she all but fell out into the evening air, chest and throat tight with fear.

She tried to open her eyes but the flashlight beam stung; she tried to breathe but the air wouldn't go down. She said, "Please don't hurt me," and her voice sounded like a little girl's and she wished that disappointed her more.

His voice grated on her ears in gruff response, some demand she didn't process properly or reply to. Sensory overload. The flashlight beam dropped and though her vision still flared with the afterglow, she could open her eyelids, and if she could see herself, she knew she'd look exactly as she sounded – a scared girl, literally shaking with fear, frozen in place beside a borrowed car with her quivery hands extended in front of her like she was warding off a monster.

It wasn't far wrong. Assistant Director Walter Skinner had to be twice her size and more than three times her age, and exactly one hundred percent more armed than she was right now, staring her down with his huge handgun. His flashlight was aimed at the ground now but its lowered illumination still served to intensify the scene she could barely see, because she could see that the gun was aimed at her. He could end her. He could take her. He could make her go back to the white rooms and she would have neither the power nor the authority to stop him. Nobody would know; nobody would come running to help. Like last time. He was absolutely the most terrifying thing she had encountered in a very long time, Hosts and Pledge Three included, and she was unsurprised to find when she finally drew breath that it was a panicked sob and that her face was wet with tears.

"Step away from the car." She did, unsteadily but obediently, hands out in front of her face to deflect some of the torchlight. "Are you armed?" She shook her head urgently, mumbling an attempt at telling him he had the wrong girl, not that any real words came out for him to take notice of, and her mumbles blocked out his next question. He had to repeat it in his deep, gravelly voice, not dropping the gun. "Who are you?" Was that his perplexed voice? She didn't know. It sounded much the same as his menacing voice. She blinked her tears away, wanting her vision back so she could see what was happening. She felt helpless, trapped. Story of her life. "What's your name and what are you doing here?"

"I'm no one," Sixty-Four insisted immediately, words tumbling over uneven breaths, all of it too fast. "I'm nobody." It was the most honest truth, but Skinner wasn't convinced, she could see it in the way his faceless silhouette didn't budge behind her defensive hands. Panic bubbled inside her; what else could she say? "I'm n-not looking for any troub-trouble, I'm no one, please, don't hurt me…"

"Your name; what is it?"

"Please-"

"Tell me your name," he snarled, taking a threatening step forward, and she cried out her incoherent response pathetically, cowering back against the open car in terror. He stilled. "What did you say?"

She knew she should shut her mouth, but her lips were trembling and wouldn't seal, or at least, that's the excuse she told herself to explain why she stammered out, "S-Sixty-Four. I'm Pl-ledge Sixty-Four."

Privileged information. Who she was, who they let her be, that was privileged information. She'd just shared a privileged Family secret with an assistant director of the FBI. There was no coming back from this kind of overstep. As if she wasn't already, for conspiring with Dr Gray and smuggling the Johannssons and associating with Fox Mulder and not reporting the boy at the hospital, she was now a dead girl walking.

Doubly so.

Scoff of disbelief. "Why were you scoping out this address?" Skinner demanded, not wasting a beat, and she shook her head weakly, scraping the insides of her head for an excuse but her thoughts scattered wildly, as afraid as she was. "Driving back and forth at ten miles an hour, staring out your window with your headlights down is unusually suspicious behaviour that most of the sorts I normally deal with know better than to try. You must be a special breed of amateur, Sixty-Four."

"I wasn't…" But he'd seen her. "I…" Have nothing to offer. "I… I was lost. I was lost! Please, please…" Another petrified sob wobbled its way out of her throat and new tears overflowed from her eyes. She covered her face, humiliated and defeated. She wasn't making a good case. He didn't believe her. He was going to take her in. She couldn't stop him. "Please don't take me back there. Don't hurt me, please. I haven't done anything, I haven't done anything…"

Skinner was heavily silent for a long moment while she shook and cried stupidly. When he spoke again, it was softer, though no less intense, no less authoritative. "Show me your face. I'm not going to hurt you," he added when she shook her head childishly. "Look at me."

What else could she do? Refuse, and be shot or arrested? There was nowhere to run that his bullet couldn't get to first. Reluctantly she lowered her hands, fingers trembling, and raised her face to Skinner's brief flashlight beam. She reopened her eyes when he dropped it away again; by now his strong, nightmarish features were solidifying in her vision, and she saw immediately that he recognised her.

"You were at the morgue," he recalled grimly. His gun was still trained on her. "Where are the others?"

"Gone. I'm alone."

"Don't waste my time. Where are they?"

"I'm not lying!" Sixty-Four almost shouted, volume control lost, her panicky voice echoing in the cavity of the open car beside her. "We drove out of town after we met you, and I came back by myself. I'm telling the truth."

"And I'm supposed to believe that?" His eyes narrowed behind his glasses. "How old are you?"

Sixty-Four pressed her lips together, wanting them to stop trembling, knowing he wouldn't like her answer. "It's complicated. My papers say I'm nineteen."

"Christ. Your papers say? You don't know?" He waited, incredulous, while she shrugged uncomfortably. "So… What? You could be a minor?"

The question sounded more for him than for her, but it still stimulated thought in her. Could she be a minor? Maybe, technically. After all, in one regard, she was only a couple of years old; in another, she was ancient. In the regard she counted as her reality, she was nineteen-ish, and had definitely surpassed her eighteenth 'birthday', not that anyone had marked it.

"I… I don't think so."

"Where the hell are your parents?" he asked. Finally, something she could answer honestly.

"Dead. A long time ago." Good riddance.

"So now you collect dead bodies for a shadow government." Skinner looked away for a few seconds. Annoyed? She didn't know how to read him. He turned back, recomposed, no less terrifying. She shivered, certain she knew now how a creature of prey feels when it's confronted by a wolf. "I could have arrested you this afternoon for your fraudulent impersonation, interfering with the course of justice. That wouldn't look good on your record, young lady. CDC, my ass. Who the hell are you people?"

"I'm no one-"

He frowned deeper and she shied away, hands back between them as if it could do anything to protect her. "Don't play games. I know you. I don't know where from-"

"I've never seen you before today-" she began honestly, fearfully, but he cut her off, too. He shook his head and raised the gun away from her, a motion of defeat, and interrupted, "No, don't. You know what? I don't even care. I don't want to know any of this. You can tell it to your defence lawyer, from your prison cell."

Terror erupted in her at the mere mention of imprisonment, and electrified buzz words flooded her conscious mind. Needles tests screaming white room crying loneliness masked doctors scans. No. Not again, not ever again. "Don't, please don't." She took a step back; Skinner was opening his jacket, presumably looking for handcuffs. Cuffs that would dig into her skin, chain her to a bedframe, lock her into a space while they conducted their heartless studies… "You can't." Except he could. He could lock her in an eternal cycle of white rooms. Would he? This friend of Fox's? But when he took yet another step closer, starting the spiel of her Miranda rights, she heard a squeak that had to be her own as she bumped back into the car door hinge and the words fell out, unbidden: "I'm here for Fox Mulder!"

She knew immediately she shouldn't have said it. She waited for Skinner to get angry, to explode like Three would. Three was going to be so angry with her when he heard about this transgression. She waited for the slap across her face. She waited for the shouts.

"What do you mean?" No explosion, though he did slowly put his gun back on her, without any particular indication of threat or aggression. He gave up on the handcuff search. Sixty-Four didn't know how to react to a reasonable reaction. She shook with indecision. She shouldn't answer. She should run, except that he'd shoot her or arrest her and then others would torture the same information out of her. The wrong people would get the information.

Skinner was Fox's friend and ally. Skinner was Fox's friend and ally. Skinner was Fox's friend and ally and she didn't have enough of either of those.

"I'm his informant inside the organisation, and I'm no good to him in a jail cell," she added for good measure.

"Mulder uses kids now?" Skinner's mouth quirked down, disapproving. Through her own fear, she felt a tinge of defensiveness for poor Fox.

"He doesn't know how old I am. I was the one who got in touch. He doesn't know who I am."

"Neither do I. Pledge Sixty-Four? What's your real name?"

"That's it. That's all I have. They took my name away when they took me in."

Skinner sighed impatiently. "Listen here. I've had about six times my daily quota of bullshit already-"

"It's the truth," Sixty-Four insisted, eyes following the black hole in the end of his gun when he waved it slightly in gesture. She swallowed helplessly, shell-shocked by the chain of events that brought her to be here right now, staring down the barrel of a gun. What had prompted her back here even after the morgue encounter, knowing this frightening man was still around? "You can trust me. I…" shouldn't say this. "I'm the one who leaked this case file to Fox, and somehow he got it to you. We're on the same side."

Skinner looked at her a long time. She looked through her welling tears into dark, heartless eyes in a cold face. His expression was fixed, stony.

"How do I know you're telling the truth?" he asked eventually. She shrugged tightly, scared.

"I don't know. Go and ask him." She nodded in the direction of the cabins, hidden from sight here, though she didn't really want him to do that. This wasn't how she wanted to meet her idol. "No, ring him. He'll tell you who I am."

"You think I have his number?"

"You called him out here," she retorted, which surprised him, made him more wary. Directly against her intention. "No, listen. I just… I hear things."

"Things nobody should have heard," Skinner noted. He jerked his head toward the cabins. "Alright. Let's go and brave knocking on that door."

And interrupt whatever was going down between Mulder and Scully? Nuh-uh. More to the point, follow Skinner away from her car, to sit down for a proper interrogation, before she was properly arrested? Sixty-Four shook her head urgently. "No. I don't…" In the pocket of her cargos, her phone rang, and she jumped, startled into almost a gasp. No, no… She'd been gone too long, they were starting to wonder… "Please, let me leave. They can't know I was here."

"You're awfully skittish," Skinner commented plainly, while the ringtone played out and she worked hard against her inner obedience, which told her to answer the call, and her inner rebel, which told her to burn the phone. "What are you afraid of?"

"Other than you?" she countered, trying to hold it together. It had been a couple of hours. Three and the others were ready to move the convoy on, and they had to have at least an inkling of where Sixty-Four had gone. Would they come looking for her? She was worthless but she was still their property. The ringing continued, piercing her eardrums, and she flattened her hands over her ears, wishing away the noise and the caller. Who was worse? Three or Skinner? "They'll kill me if they know I've spoken to you."

The call rang out. AD Skinner lowered the gun, not putting it away but bringing it down to aim at the ground before her feet, and she exhaled in a heaving, overwhelmed breath. Not a sadistic supervillain. She dropped her hands.

"Does Mulder know you're here?" he asked finally. Sixty-Four shook her head. "Who's calling you?"

"The people I work for." She paused. "Bad people."

"And what would they want that's got you so scared of a ringing phone?"

"I don't want them to know I'm here. I'm… I'm a bad liar," she admitted, "and I haven't thought of a good excuse of why I came back."

"Why did you come back to Thayne?" Skinner questioned. Sixty-Four hesitated.

"I had a hunch."

"A hunch. That's what you're gonna give me?" That was enough for the assistant director. "Jesus Christ, another one. Look, just get in your car, kid." He waved her to it and shook his head, disbelieving. "You're Mulder's informant – whatever, get out of here. I've taken about as much bullshit as I can for one day."

And he started to walk away. He was done with her. He was letting her go.

She should take it and run, far, far away.

But, stupidly, because she was stupid, she called after him, "I need your help."

"Kid, you're mixed up in Mulder's crazy, and all kinds of shit I want nothing to do with," he called back, still walking away. "Try Scully. You need more help than I can offer."

"There was a surveillance camera in the hospital foyer," she blurted before she could stop herself. In the darkness, he stopped, flashlight illuminating a circle on the ground. "It'll show the boy."

It made him stop. It made him turn. As he did, Skinner's gun came back up and her breath caught in the realisation that he could have squeezed that trigger at almost any moment of this exchange and she would have been powerless to prevent it. But he didn't. He just demanded, "What about the boy?"

Skinner had the most discerning face she thought she'd ever seen, and it looked all the sterner lit from beneath by his lowered flashlight beam. She stared at that face, trying to maintain the stupid reckless bravery that had made her speak up earlier today in the morgue and again now. He scared her, god, he scared her, yet he'd done nothing to hurt her, even tried to send her on her way. She inhaled slowly and spoke the words just as slowly.

"The boy you spoke to at the hospital," she said nervously under his angry gaze. "I only found him tonight by accident, because I was trying to follow you and Dr Scully to Fox, but if the wrong people realise who he is…" She brashly wiped her nose, wet from crying. She gathered her wild thoughts and tried to focus them into a succinct form for the stone-faced AD. "I know he's the reason you're all here. I can put that together, and I'm just a dumb kid. If they come sniffing, and they find footage of me walking into that hospital… ten minutes before Fox Mulder, and a few hours after you and Dr Scully, and however long after the boy walked in, too…" They could do math.

Skinner stared back at her, looking shaken. "What will they do to him?"

The flashes bombarded her again, for the slimmest fraction of a second, but it still made her shudder to remember. "Exactly what you think."

"But they don't know where he is? Yet?"

"Not yet."

He nodded, slowly at first and then with more surety. "I'll take care of the footage," he said, with such firm certainty that just like that, she believed him – it was like it was already gone. "What do you care about that boy?"

A sharp redirect, her worries about the surveillance camera dissolved. Sixty-Four scrunched her toes inside her shoes, anxious. She could barely believe she was in conversation with the most frightening man in the FBI, let alone that she'd only met him for the first time a few hours earlier and her life before that was Skinner-nightmare-free, or that this conversation was almost civil. "I…" How was she about to admit this to a total stranger, and one that scared the life out of her, when she'd never said this aloud to anyone else, ever? "I don't want him to live through what happened to me."

Did she imagine that slight softening to his features, or was it some trick of the odd lighting? "Are they hurting you?" he asked, and she realised she'd stopped shaking. She lowered her hands, slowly, inexplicably touched. His gun was still trained on her, but her fear of it was evaporating. All afternoon she'd been quaking in her metaphorical boots about the assistant director who'd crushed her like a bug at the morgue, but now she was thinking straighter. He was bound by the law, and if he was as connected with Fox and Dr Scully as it appeared, his honour wasn't something she needed to question.

"Fox asked me the same thing, the first time we spoke."

"Well, that's because he's not a complete piece of shit. What do you do for him? Is it putting you in danger?"

"I deliver messages between Dr Gray and Fox Mulder."

Skinner's brows rose. "The Henry Gray with two birth certificates? He's inside this organisation?"

"Not by choice."

"Is everyone connected to this goddamn case returned from the dead?" The AD's eyes narrowed when she started, surprised by his knowledge. But, she chided herself, he worked with Dr Scully, who'd autopsied Thirty-Nine this afternoon. It shouldn't come as a shock that they'd worked it out. The Hosts would be furious. Pledge Three would be furious. "Are you dead?"

The question felt like a shove off a balance beam right onto her ass, and she blushed accordingly, hurt and ashamed and just a dumb kid again. "No. I'm breathing, aren't I?"

"So was Morris Bletchley when the Thayne sheriff put a bullet through him this week, but he wasn't in 2004 when he was killed in a hit-and-run. So?" Skinner paused rhetorically, but continued before she could say anything. "What is he? They sent you and that fake mortician out here, to spirit the body away before we could connect the dots. It must be a good secret." Sixty-Four rubbed her arm self-consciously, unsure now whether she wanted to keep telling him. He'd hurt her feelings with his tactless question. He waited; but her silence seemed to tell him plenty, because he was smart and that was why he had a serious job and she was just an unpaid servant to someone else's agenda. "You're one of them."

"I'm not dead," Sixty-Four mumbled, upset. Skinner didn't look convinced; he looked pitying.

"Were you?"

Asshole. The tears came back, stinging her only just dried eyeballs, and she rubbed them away, feeling pathetic.

"Are you a clone?" His question hung unanswered in the night, drifting against the natural hedge and probably past it to the log cabins beyond, against the open car, along the long country road. Her phone, still deep in the pocket of her cargo pants, started to ring again. Her every muscle contracted in dread. "Well? Are you?"

"I'm real!" Sixty-Four exploded in choked anguish, shoving away from the car and slipping between the open door and the assistant director's gun, no longer scared he might fire it. She stalked a few paces away and turned back to him and his flashlight, which he followed her with but lowered when she turned. "I'm a real, valid person and I don't need to prove that to you, or him, or anyone else! You think because I'm a pledge and I lost my name I don't mean anything? I'm real! I'm real, damn you!"

"Alright," Skinner placated, taken aback, raising a soothing hand, but it did nothing to soothe her as the phone continued to ring, taunting her.

"No, nothing's alright! I'm property; I'm their thing. I have nobody. Nobody's on my side, not even you, and you're supposed to be the good guy, and you're pointing a gun at me! You don't even believe me – I've risked everything to help your friends, and other people too, people you don't even know about, even though it does nothing for me but because it's right, and I came here looking for help for that boy and instead I'm being interrogated, and all the while, they're still waiting for me," she added wildly, grabbing her noisy phone out and waving it at him. The screen was lit up; she didn't need to look to know what it would say. "I can't get away. I have to go back. They're going to be so mad. They're worse than you or anything you could do to me, so why don't you just… just… put that bullet through me and save me having to explain myself to them? Go on. Go on," she urged angrily, throwing the phone down, feeling the weight of it and of her whole existence fall away as soon as it left her fingers. Maybe it would be a blessing, like it was last time. She waited, hands open, momentarily high on the prospect of being in control. AD Skinner made no move to shoot her; he looked sad for her. The thought filled her with brazen fury, and it burst out when he lowered the gun again. "No! Fuck you!"

The insult slipped out of her goody-two-shoes mouth before she could catch it and she slapped her hands over her lips, too late, eyes wide in horror as the anger evaporated as quickly as it came on. She never spoke like that. Skinner looked surprised by the outburst. He pressed his lips into a thin line, eyeing her glowing, ringing phone. Sixty-Four looked quickly at the miraculously unbroken screen, dreading what she knew it would read. 3 gleamed up from the grass. Her stomach plummeted, though she'd already known.

The call rang out again, and the tightness in her chest released slightly. After a moment, Skinner did something to the gun with the hand still holding the flashlight. It must have been to disarm it, because he opened his jacket and made a show of putting away. She watched cautiously.

"Alright," he said, showing his empty hand. "Alright. I believe you. If Mulder trusts you, I trust you. You're right – I don't want to know half of this shit anyway. We need to prioritise. First: what's going to happen to you if I let you go back to them?"

That was his top priority? Her? That had to be a poor joke. But he didn't crack a smile while he waited for her reply.

"You'd really let me go?" she asked, uncertain. He'd walked away a few minutes ago but that seemed a year past, before she'd crossed the I-know-about-the-boy line. "Aren't you… going to arrest me?" Throw me in the white room? Let Dr Scully cut me up?

"Given my relative certainty that you're living proof of an illegal human cloning program running on American soil, and given the risk you've taken to reach out to my agents, no, not tonight. I think you're right that you're no help to Mulder from inside a jail cell." Skinner's tone was flat, firm. Businesslike. She couldn't take offence to that tone. "I think you're more than real – you might be the most important lead they have."

"I… I'll have to explain why I was here," she stammered, meek again. More than real. She gestured back at the car. "I bought some matches. I guess I was going…" She blushed furiously, scared again. How was she meant to admit to an assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that she'd been planning arson? She changed tact. "I drove out here before I really thought this through."

"We'll deal with that next time they ring. But will they hurt you?" he pushed, and she shook her head. "Okay, what about the boy? What can I do to protect him?" He waited for her to speak; when she didn't, he prompted, "Do they know about him? Was Bletchley here looking for him?"

Sixty-Four fidgeted with her fingernails. Privileged information, privileged information… But more than real overruled that programming BS. "I think he spotted the boy in town. He wasn't here for him, but he saw him, and when he ran for him he got shot."

"Alright." That seemed to appease Skinner's limited, practical curiosity. "Is the boy in danger?"

"They don't know he's here. I'm not going to say anything to anyone. He's…" She paused, not sure how to word it, because there was so much she didn't understand. "He's special. I noticed it straight away."

"So did I," Skinner agreed soberly, and Sixty-Four felt a momentary kinship with him. He understood. He knew, she could tell, who else the boy was, and he was invested in that child, and would go to any lengths to protect him.

He really was an ally.

"He's theirs, isn't he?" she asked quietly, not really expecting an answer because it was obvious. "Fox's, and Dana Scully's. He's their son." She waited, and the night answered in silence, and Walter Skinner answered with a sigh and a wordless glance at the rough, natural hedging blocking their view of Rhonda's log cabins. Confirmation enough. Sixty-Four felt like he'd fired his gun right through her brains after all. Fox was a father. "But how… did he end up all the way out here?" Alone. With some other man.

Skinner looked back to her, expression closed but words relatively gentle. "Who's the informant here, kid?" He cleared his throat, effectively ending that line of discussion. "What else do I need to know?"

"Umm…" So much. "You and Dr Scully are being watched. My organisation has people inside your Bureau-"

"Who?" Skinner was sharp, his voice and his eyes and his expression. "Can you prove that?"

"I'm not a cop. I'm no one. I don't know who. I just… hear things," she finished lamely. "It's how I knew to tell Fox to stay away from Dana Scully. They monitor her for indications of what he's doing, since he's too hard to track. But after you both turned up when we were picking up Thirty-Nine– uh, Morris Bletchley, they're going to be watching you, too. They said so. So, I, uh…" Embarrassed, she dug the business card out of her pocket and held it out. Skinner recognised it immediately, flicking his torchlight onto it. She swallowed. "If the boy contacts you, they'll know, and they'll find him."

The assistant director stared at his own name and phone number, and finally exhaled in defeat. "Christ, I hate it when she's right." He plucked the card reluctantly from her outstretched fingers. "So the kid's whole family is too dangerous to keep an eye on him. How do we help him?"

"We all have to get as far away as possible," Sixty-Four said, feeling like it was an apology, "and not get caught looking back." Both pairs of eyes zeroed in on the phone on the ground when it began to ring again, a cheery tone unmatched to the person on the other end. She stared at it, frozen with indecision. She couldn't leave Three hanging – the repercussions of that could be worse. "And I need a good reason for running away."

"What, dare I ask, were you planning on setting alight?" Skinner asked dryly, not as concerned about the ringing phone as she was. She bit her lip, anxious. But what was left to be afraid of? Skinner hadn't hurt her, wasn't even planning to.

"I… maybe… thought about… burning down the morgue." There. Out.

No fireworks. "Destroy our lead." Pause. "Hugely, hugely illegal. But clever. Will that be enough to distract them from the boy's existence?"

Sixty-Four nodded, seeing suddenly the perfection of the idea. She spoke quickly, spurred by the ringtone. "They don't know I've found him. Their only interest in Thayne is that Thirty-Nine was killed here, and now they're mad that you and Dr Scully got access to him. If they think your investigation is dead, there's no reason for them to look back."

"Are you sure?"

"You should still take the hospital footage, just in case. But if the evidence is gone–"

"Fine." AD Skinner's voice was firm and impossible to argue with as he coached, "Answer and keep it short. Tell them it's already burning, so they can't suggest another course of action. Do it now." There was no room for worry about messing it up. He left no option to break while trying to lie.

She hurriedly knelt and picked up the phone. It took two stabs at the screen to accept the call.

"Yeah, I'm here," she answered, aiming to sound nonchalant or at least not terrified. She looked up at Skinner while Pledge Three's voice slipped into her ear coldly.

"Where have you been?" His voice was more familiar than Skinner's but after this conversation, knowing what was at stake in the local regional hospital, tonight it sounded so much worse. Who would have thought things could turn so sharply?

"I'm coming back soon. Are you still where I left you?"

"For now. Where have you been?" Three asked again, a little harder on the end of the question, no upward inflection to indicate any sort of invitation to answer. There was no invitation, only direction.

"I bought some matches," Sixty-Four responded, holding Skinner's eye contact for strength as she lied to the most powerful man in her life. "The agents cleared out so I took care of it."

Three was silent for a bit. She felt sweat break out on the back of her neck. Did he know she was lying? Was he watching from further up the road, headlights off, a much better sneaker-up-er-er than she was? She looked around, but there was no car, no movement.

"Is there anything left?"

She licked her lips, her mouth dry with nervousness. "Shouldn't be. It's still burning."

"And Thirty-Nine's inside?"

"He was." More silence. She looked up again and saw Skinner still watching her. He nodded almost imperceptibly, a little gift of encouragement. He was happy with her, thought she was doing alright. How pathetic that she noticed things like that. "Unless they packed the body in her handbag?"

"Hilarious. Come on back and we'll get out of this shithole state."

She tried not to sigh loudly in relief as her body loosened, every muscle dropping out of whatever complex knot they were in before. He believed her. "See you soon."

She ended the call and almost collapsed, allowing that sigh to escape now. She breathed in deep; the cool night air filled her, hurting her lungs, but it felt good. They could take it. Skinner watched her dubiously as she shakily got back to her feet.

"I'm not convinced I'm making the most ethical decision in letting you go back to that," he commented. "They scare the hell out of you."

Obviously. "I have to get back. But what about the morgue? I've never-"

"Burnt a building down?" Skinner guessed. "Why am I not surprised? How did a nice kid like you end up ferrying secret messages between a mysterious criminal organisation and a guy like Mulder?"

"It's a long story," Sixty-Four admitted, "and not a nice one."

"You're right – I don't need to know. Well, let's not make it worse by adding arson to that story, because judging from the rest of your stealth skills, you'll probably burn yourself or get caught before you get the building to catch. So," he said, when she started to ask a question beginning with the same word, "you just get out of here. I'll take care of things."

"You'll burn down the morgue?!" Sixty-Four confirmed incredulously. Skinner raised an eyebrow behind his glasses.

"I will do no such thing. In fact, I don't even recall this conversation, or having ever met you. Go on," he urged, nodding to her borrowed car. "Get. Oh," he added, stepping after her when she tentatively moved for the still-open driver's side door, "and take this."

He held out the now-crinkled business card she'd swiped from Fox's son. She stared, the same way he had when she'd held it out to him.

"I realise the dangers to you are similar as to the boy," he confessed, "and I'd hate for you to get caught with this… and I know Mulder must be grateful to have you on the inside, but… Look, there's a reason his friends are limited to the people on this lot. Mulder forgets how serious and dangerous his own shit is, and people die." He looked uncomfortable to have said so much. "Just call if you need anything, alright? I don't like any of this."

Slowly, Sixty-Four took back the card, reminded oddly of the driving instructors Three had set her up with years before. Maybe just because was about to get into a car? She climbed in, lowering herself behind the wheel, mind spinning with surreal, disjointed thoughts. Assistant Director Skinner didn't want her to die. He cared more about her – a stranger, an orphan, a servant, a thing remade by creepy science she couldn't explain – surviving than he did about Fox Mulder's case. She'd come here for Fox, determined as she had been for months that Fox would accept her, care for her, if only she could brave actually meeting him, but weirdly, it was Walter Skinner sending her safely on her way, problems addressed and feeling secure again. He closed the car door behind her. She turned the key in the ignition and let the engine purr to life. She put her seatbelt on and looked out her window at the assistant director.

Weird, how vastly things could change in so short a time.

She wound down the window.

"I told the hospital I was your daughter," she confessed, "so I could find out where you had gone."

"And they told you?" he asked, not missing a beat this time. "Excellent privacy protocols. Shouldn't take much for me to get that footage then." He paused. "Be careful, Sixty-Four."

"You too, Mr Skinner."

He backed up, and she put the car into gear and put him and Rhonda's Cabins in her rear-view mirror. Between her fingers, gripping the wheel and driving into a very uncertain but much less frightening future, was the card of the first person in a long time who'd shown her genuine kindness, but not the last person she'd feel bad about lying to.

One little lie, though, in a haystack of truth – who was going to count that?