Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files
Rating: PG-13
Prompt Dr. Blockhead: Did you know that through the protective Chinese practice of Tiea Bu Shan, you can train your testicles to draw up into your abdomen?
Mulder: Oh, I'm doing that as we speak.. (Mulder-X-files) 42 on scifi_muses on LiveJournal
Setting: Season Six Episode: One Son

It hadn't hurt that he doubted her evidence about Diana Fowley. What had hurt was that Mulder had doubted her intentions. And for that he could go to hell for all Scully cared. Of course she had made this personal, that was all she had. Did Mulder not understand that the tests, the after effects, those were all personal for her? She had been the one to live through them. And Diana Fowley knew something about them.

She had meant to ignore her phone, to turn it off and go to sleep. But it rang, and she grabbed the cell phone from where it sat by her bed, expecting to see Mulder's name glowing on the green, LED display. To her surprise it was a phone number that she didn't recognize. Who would call her at this time of night?

She sent the call to voice mail, annoyed and irritated, and rolled over into the cool of her pillows and tried to pretend to go to sleep.

The phone buzzed soundly again, humming against the word as her heart leapt at the sound. Flipping over she grabbed it, glaring at the strange number again. Giving in she pressed it on, slipping it to her ear. "Scully?"

"Agent Scully," the voice at the other end was desperate and breathless, and it took her several seconds to connect it to the face of Jeffrey Spender.

"Agent Spender, what's wrong?" Not that she wished to speak to him any more than she wanted to speak to Mulder, but there was something frantic as he began to blather on the other end of the line.

"I need your help, both you and Agent Mulder."

She pressed her lips hard together as she tried to bite back the cutting response and find something more reasonable. She failed. "Strange, Agent Spender, you worked awfully hard to get us kicked out, now you suddenly want our help."

"It's my mother," he strangled on the words, and she wondered if he was in tears.

"Where is Cassandra?"

"They are taking her, Scully, they can't. My father…he's the one to blame for all of this."

Amidst the confusion as to what he was possibly talking about, a sliver of pity crept into Scully's mind. He had figured out who the true devil was. Poor kid. "I know who your father is, Agent Spender."

"Than you know how dangerous he is, what he's been up to. He is the one who took my mother years ago, he was the one who set her up for this. And now…I need your help, please!"

Damn it. She had left Mulder that evening completely convinced that she was done, that this fight was one she had lost, and she wasn't going to be involved anymore. And now…

"Where are you?"

"New York, near their offices, I can't get to them fast enough. They've already left by military transport."

"Where are they going," she was already out of bed, searching for clothes and pulling back the covers roughly over the mattress.

"El Rico, it's an old Air Force Base, it's in West Virginia."

Why did everything have to be in West Virginia? "Right, and why are they taking her?"

"Because she's the one," Spender uttered hopelessly. "She's the one they've been working for all these years. She's a hybrid. They are going to give her to the aliens, it's going to start!"

Scully blinked, pausing in the very act of taking off her pajama bottoms, one foot posed still in the air. "Do you realize what you are saying?"

"I know," he admitted raggedly. "I know, I was the one who called it all lies, who said it was bullshit. I spent so much time and energy telling Mulder he was a fool. But the truth is…I was."

Self-revelation aside, what had Spender seen that changed his mind. Scully fell heavily on the bed as she numbly tried to kick off the rest of her clothing and pull on slacks. "What is going on? Take a deep breath and explain it to me."

She could hear him on the other end, taking a deep breath, though she got the distinct impression he was standing on a New York street corner, pacing frantically. "Everything Mulder believed was true, Scully. Every bit of it, aliens, conspiracies, government cover ups, secret experiments, all of it true. I knew…I always knew, but I had forgotten…perhaps I wanted to forget. I pushed it all back and didn't want to see."

"Spender, I need information," she snapped, standing to button and zip her trousers before reaching for her blouse.

"Our fathers were involved early on," Spender muttered finally. "Mulder's father and mine. They were involved in the conspiracy. Aliens landed at Roswell in 1947, and a group formed within the government to try and understand what the alien crash landing meant. They found out…invasion. They are intending to take this planet, Agent Scully, and they are going to do it with a virus that will kill all of us, all of us except the ones who have the hybrid gene in them. They will then be part alien and resistant."

Scully's tongue felt heavy as she listened, her heart seeming to stop. "That's where Cassandra comes in."

"They've been running this hybrid program for years, it's what they did to you. These men, men like my father, made a deal with the devil, Agent Scully. They agreed to sell their souls, to sell their very families, so that they could survive. They sacrificed their loved ones for this program in the hope that one of them would be successful and that they and they alone could survive. They tried to lie to themselves, to tell themselves that they were trying to save the human race. But now they know they have failed. And they are going to sacrifice all of us because of it."

The rush of Spender's words could barely keep up with Scully's racing thought. Her fingers stilled on her clothes as she stopped and breathed. Simply took air into her lungs and held it there. When she exhaled, her voice was calm despite her heart racing in her chest. "Your mother is immune to the virus they've been playing with for years."

"Immune to it, she is part it." Spender paused. Scully could hear the bustle of the New York streets beyond him. If what he said was true, all of that life, that sound, that noise could be gone.

"Why? Why did they do this?"

"I don't know for sure," he sounded half-embarrassed to admit it. "I could never get my father to give me a straight answer. All I could gather was that the aliens wanted a hybrid so that they could control a group of humanity. These men complied because they wanted to survive."

"And they are going to El Rico now to gain their reward?" Scully felt bile rise in her throat as she considered what this meant. "They are going to take Cassandra there and unleash this virus on the rest of us?"

"You have to stop them, Agent Scully," Spender was begging again. "My mother knew the truth, she tried to tell me and I wouldn't listen. I gave them the means to take her. This will be my fault if it goes through."

A part of Scully that wasn't stunned into silence flared within her and wanted to tell him that indeed the end of the human race was all of his fault. He would be to blame for being an ignorant idiot. But the more sympathetic side won out. In the end he was a man who was a victim, as sure as she and Mulder ever were. He had tried to make sense of it all the best he could. And like them he had failed.

"How is she being transported?" Maybe Scully could call in Charlie, have him pull some sway here. He was Naval Intelligence, perhaps there was something he could do.

"She was taken from the CDC, they'll take her by train to El Rico, likely through the Potomac Railyard. Just like how they took the others, they always transport them by train."

"I'm on my way, Spender, I'll call Agent Mulder and I'll see what I can do. But I warn you…we might fail."

"Just try, please," he stuttered before the phone fell silent.

This couldn't be happening?

Wild thoughts crept into her mind just then. A viral apocalypse, one that would cause a pandemic across the planet, wiping out millions. Should she call her mother, her brothers, their wives, try to warn them? No, what good would it do. No, she could only get to El Rico and try to stop this, to do what Cassandra asked of her and Mulder and not fail her this time. Finishing buttoning her clothes, she grabbed for her shoes, slipping them on as she reached for her coat, purse, and keys. She was out the door before she could even turn out the lights in her room.

Her car started loudly in the silence of the night, though her clock already read 4:00 in the morning. The sun would be up within another two and a half hours. She pulled out of her parking spot and out of her apartment driveway onto the empty Georgetown streets. She pulled her phone out, meaning to call Mulder. To her surprise her phone vibrated in her hand, the black screen lighting to Mulder's name.

"Scully," she answered automatically.

"Hey, Scully, it's me." Mulder's concern at the other end caught her off guard.

"Mulder, I was just dialing you. Where are you?"

"I'm with Diana," he admitted heavily. Scully tried to ignore how her stomach sank at the words.

"I'm coming to get you," she replied, ignoring the hurt that blossomed at the idea that Mulder had run straight to Diana Fowley with her accusations.

"No, we are coming to get you. You're coming with us."

To do what, she wondered. Was he really going to take this time, right now, to convince her that Diana Fowley was Mother Teresa? "No, Mulder, listen to me. I'm going to take you to Cassandra."

There was a long pause, followed by a drawn out sigh. "Cassandra is gone, Scully." So much defeat seemed drip from those simple words. Scully blinked at the traffic light ahead of her, unsure of what she was hearing.

"I know," she retorted. "But I know where she's gone to, Mulder."

"Scully, it's no use," he muttered and sounded as if he believed it. Scully just did bite back the raging scream building up inside of her. Fox Mulder didn't quit, he never quit. Why was he doing so now? And what had that woman said to convince him otherwise?

"Mulder, I'm going there whether you are coming there or not," she shot back stubbornly. Just as she had told him the other night, he could give up if he wanted to, but Scully wasn't about to go down without kicking and screaming first.

"Going where," he asked, as if finally catching on that she was talking about a real place and not a theoretical one.

"To the Potomac yards." They weren't terribly far away, just outside of the city proper on the Virginia side. "They are transporting her by train car."

"Who gave you this information?"

Anger flared. Did he really still doubt her, doubt what she was doing here? And he believed Diana, with whom he was apparently throwing his own pity party?

"Agent Spender called me," she replied shortly, and hoped he choked on it.

He was quiet long moments. She could hear the wheels in his brain finally start to turn, something of her Mulder, the real Mulder perhaps coming to life from his pitiful lethargy. Scully hardly dared to hope as she pulled ahead through the intersection, holding her breath.

"All right," he conceded quickly. "I'm going to send you on ahead."

She could have wilted in relief if she wasn't so very pissed off with him at the moment and scared at the situation. "See you there."

She snapped off her phone and threw it on the seat beside her. How she planned on stopping this, she had no idea. She'd lay down in front of the train tracks if necessary at this point. The fate of the world was in her hands, and it felt strangely heavy and terrifying.

She only hoped Mulder was there. She didn't think she could do this alone.