Chapter 12 – A Deep Breath

A/N: This is the penultimate chapter, readers! I promise I'll wrap the case AND the budding romance between our agents up in the final chappie!

They sat on a little metal bench in the tiny gazebo right outside the emergency room, munching their sandwiches in companionable silence for a few blessed, still moments. He was completely spent and couldn't comprehend doing much more than this. Which is why he hated asking his partner,

"Scully, I want you –"

" – to do Garrison's autopsy. Yeah, okay, Mulder, but I need to find a bunk to get a few hours shut eye, or I'll wind up slicing the corpse to ribbons." She yawned, and he could hear her jaw crack. She had a wisp of lettuce stuck to the corner of her mouth. "Where was he found?"

Mulder sighed, rubbed his eyes. "I almost ran him over, Scully. I was headed back here, with a contingent from US Forestry right behind me. He stumbled out into the road about five, six miles from the pull-off where we hiked the trail. He was dressed in street clothes, but no shoes. His face, his lips, his fingers and toes, were blue and –"

"Wait. He was blue? Before he died?" She brushed her mouth clean, and bit into her sandwich again. Her forehead creased, her eyes bright.

"Yeah. He went over right as he hit the blacktop, went down hard. He was dead by the time I reached him," Mulder paused. He wasn't sure she would believe him, but he would tell her anyway. "And he was cold, Scully. Ice cold. Which I know makes no sense, but -"

"Actually, Mulder, it might." Something smoothed out on her face, and she leaned in towards him. "We're operating on the idea that…that wherever these victims, for lack of a better word, disappear to, they're being oversaturated with oxygen, which is, initially, a catalyst for cellular regeneration, improved mood and cognition, collagen production, but –"

" – but there's such a thing as too much of a good thing," he finished. She had told him about her idea, about the trendy oxygen bars that were popping up all along the coasts of the US. "And it's why O cafes or whatever they're called have warning for asthmatics and people with COPD and –"

"Exactly, yes. And Mulder, listen, I've been thinking about the stairs, okay?"

"There was something happening there, Scully. Something weird. I felt it, and so did Hawke Cleary. It felt…powerful. Huge."

"Yes, exactly. What if…what if…the stairs are markers for spots with unusually high concentrations of oxygen? What if they are put there, intentionally? If the oxygen is as high as I think it has to be in those locations, you can't trust what you think you saw. Your brain wouldn't be functioning properly."

"By whom, Scully? Who put them there? And…let's just say I didn't actually see what I actually think I saw. Hawke Cleary is gone. Tim Garrison, Trish Rodgers, Fred Dudourge, where did they go Scully? And who brought them back?"

Scully put her sandwich down and looked at him for a long time. "Well, Mulder, I think we both can come up with a few ideas there. All it would take is some money, a lot of influence and too much power and corruption." Her hand reached up and rubbed fretfully at the spot where her implant had been embedded.

"We better get back up there, Scully, before –"

"I was looking all over for you two."

They both started, looked up. Their boss was standing above them. Neither of them had noticed his approach or presence.

"Sir," Scully nodded.

"Skinner, Scully and I have to get back up to the most recent disappearance site, where Hawke Cleary was last seen. We don't have much time and –"

"We don't have any time, Agent Mulder," Skinner pursed his lips and refused to meet Mulder's gaze. "The FBI is off this case. It's being handled simultaneously by US Forestry, the CDC and several other agencies, and –"

"The CDC, sir?" Scully stood, and so did he. "Agent Mulder and I were just discussing that there's likely a natural explanation for the nature of the disappearances, why would the CDC need to be in-"

"As the saying goes, it's no longer our place to reason 'why,'" Skinner's face was impassive in that way that made Mulder want to smack him silly, though he knew their superior had taken hit after hit for them through the years. His façade of impartial stoicism was another method of protecting them, in the best way he knew how.

"This is bullshit, sir, if I may say so," Scully's cheeks were red. "We're being shut out because we're on to something."

"Hey, that's my line," he quipped, and the briefest of smiles crossed each of the other's mouth.

"In any case, it's time to get back to DC," Skinner replied. After a long moment. "This one slipped out of our grasp, agents, but there's still lots of others down there, in your basement suite."

This time, they all grinned, and there as a bit more genuine humor in their smiles. And hope.