Title - Kismet
Author - Jaimee Kidder
Email - invisibleshining@ivillage.com
Rating - PG-13 (for violence)
Classification - XRA
Spoilers - Herrenvolk/Talitha Cumi, Fight the Future,
Triangle, Two Fathers/One Son, Three of a Kind
Keywords - Mulder/Scully romance
Summary - Mulder and Scully investigate a seemingly
meaningless murder in a small farming town in Alabama and suddenly find
themselves caught in the middle of events that could lead to the end.
::whirrrrr:: "I made this!"
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters in this
story. I wish I was Scully and owned
Mulder, but such is not the case. If I
did, this would be an episode -- or two, or five -- of the show, not some story
that Chris Carter will prob'ly never read. :) The secondary characters are mine (so there!). But Mulder, Scully, and the rest are all CC's (hail to the man!),
1013's, and Fox's. Too bad for me. ;-)
Oh yeah...and I borrowed Celine
Dion's "Because You Loved Me"...so thank you, Celine, for singing
such a lovely (and shippery) song!
.kismet.
.hard.losses.
Econo Lodge
9:09 a.m.
Mulder ran down the hallway
towards room 1124, his feet pounding the carpet. He couldn't keep the thoughts from flashing through his
mind. Maybe they hadn't been able to
find the room. He hadn't seen Scully
with them when they went by. Then
again, he hadn't seen most of the men because he had been so close against the
wall. Maybe...
He reached the room and threw the
door open. It was quiet. He pulled out his weapon and walked quietly
through the doorway. The room was
empty, but there were no signs of struggle. Then he saw the bathroom door was closed. He went to the door and knocked. "Scully?" There was no
answer. "Scully?" His heart in his throat, he pushed the door
open. It was empty.
Shaking, he walked out of the
bathroom, looking around at the empty room. Suddenly, there was a sliding sound, and Mulder spun around to the
closet just in time to see a huge fist coming at his face. He staggered back and landed on the bed, but
pushed himself up again and reached for his gun. The man lunged at him and Mulder went down, his head striking the
leg of the bed hard, his weapon and arm pinned against his side.
He pushed at the man, trying to
roll over on top of him, but the man hit him again across the face and then
brought his hands down on Mulder's neck. Mulder brought his free hand up and tried to pull the man's arms away,
but he was too strong and the hands that were choking him never flinched. He struggled desperately but the man never
relented, and Mulder could feel himself on the verge of blacking out.
Just then, there was the sudden
loud ringing of a cell phone, and the man glanced down involuntarily at his
pocket, obviously wondering who was calling. The momentary distraction was all Mulder needed, and his other arm came
free. He shoved the gun in the man's
face and pushed him up. He stared into
the cold eyes of his attacker and growled, "Where is she?" The man smiled, which was all the
provocation Mulder needed. He punched
the man solidly in the jaw, knocking him to the wall. A trickle of blood ran out of his mouth. Mulder breathed harder. "Where is she? What have you done with her?"
"You'll never find
her," the man whispered, with a horrible bloody smile. Mulder leaned against the wall and put the
gun against the man's neck. "Tell
me," he snarled, pulling back the hammer on the gun. The man was silent for a moment, then, with
a sudden movement, punched Mulder across the face. Too surprised to react, Mulder hit the floor again with a cry of
pain, his gun dropping to the floor a few feet away. Then he saw a flash of metal, and rolled out of the way as a long
knife hit the floor where he had been lying. The man pinned him down and pressed the knife to Mulder's neck. "Don't move," he hissed, his face
barely two inches from Mulder's. "Get up, and I won't hurt you."
Mulder nodded, but his fingers
were brushing against the gun, and after a split second he pulled it into his
hand. As the man lifted the knife away
and started to stand, Mulder quickly rolled the opposite way on top of the gun
then drew it. The man looked surprised
but whipped his hand back to throw the knife. Faced with no other choice, Mulder fired.
He stood up, emotionally and
physically drained from all that had happened, and slowly walked to the
mirror. His face was thickly bruised,
there was blood running down the side of his face from a cut on his head, both
his nose and mouth were bleeding, and through the handprints on his neck there
was a thin red line of blood across his neck from the knife. He looked back at the man, who was obviously
dead. The bullet had gone into his face
at very close range, and... Mulder looked away.
The man had a cell phone and a
wallet with a few dollars, but no ID. Mulder checked the speed dial on the phone before slipping it in his
pocket, but it was empty. There was no
way to tell who he was or who had sent him.
Mulder had no idea how he was
going to handle this. He couldn't check
out of the hotel -- then suspicion would naturally fall on Mark Ryder, and he
couldn't afford to have an alias with a police record or even suspicion. Besides, if he went to the police, they
would figure out sooner or later that he was actually Fox Mulder, and that
couldn't happen.
Unless...
Struck by an idea, he went to the
closet and felt in his coat pocket, then took out his F.B.I. badge and real
driver's license. He slid the badge
into the man's jacket pocket and the driver's license into the wallet. Then he put the fake glasses on and found
the bandages that he had wrapped his face in before and put them loosely on his
face as if his attacker had loosened them in the fight. Finally, he picked up the phone.
"Econo Lodge Richmond, how
may I help you?"
His voice was shaking for real as
he quietly answered. "Yes...I've
been attacked."
9:33 a.m.
"So, Mr....Ryder, how would you
say this happened?"
Mulder looked at the officer in
front of him and was glad the stereotype about donut-eating policemen was occasionally
true. He cleared his throat. "I had just come back from getting
coffee and my wife had told me that she was thinking about doing some early
shopping at...I think it was some mall about ten or fifteen miles from
here."
"Cloverleaf Mall?" the
policeman prompted.
"Yeah, I think that was
it," Mulder said. "A friend
had told her about some store there or something...I don't know. So she left, and I went down the hall to get
something from the vending machine. Actually, it took me a while because the machine was broken, and I was
kind of bugged about losing my dollar. So I finally gave up and went back to the room to call the desk about
it, went in to use the bathroom, and when I came out, this guy just jumps out
of my closet."
"Did he have a weapon that
he threatened you with?" the officer asked, taking a big bite out of his
powdered donut.
"Not at first, but he hit me
as hard as he could with his fist. I
think he was going to shoot me, though, or maybe it was someone else he was
after, but when he jumped on me, some kind of handgun fell out of his
jacket. So I saw that, grabbed it and
then he tried to strangle me. I threw
him off and pointed the gun at him. I
thought that would stop him, but it didn't...I even pulled the little, y'know,
thingy, that makes that clicking sound...the thing you're supposed to pull
before you shoot." The policeman
nodded impatiently, somewhat bored since he had finished his donut. "Anyway, he just jumped on me again,
and this time he had a knife in his hand. He pushed it against my neck and told me to get up, and I started to, so
he stood up, but I grabbed the gun again and pointed it at him again, but he
started to throw the knife at me, so I shot." Mulder gestured with a shudder in the direction of the body. "I've only held a gun a couple times
before -- hunting with my dad when I was a kid -- so I'm not a very good
shot...I never meant to kill him, sir."
The policeman nodded. "Well, Mr. Ryder, from what we've seen
here, you clearly fired in self-defense, so there shouldn't be a problem
there. We'll have someone drop you off
at the Richmond Memorial Hospital in a minute, so thank y--"
"Sir?"
The policeman glanced over at the
officer going over the body. She shook
her head. "You'll never believe
who this is."
Columbia Johnston-Willis Hospital
9:58 a.m.
Apparently, the officer who
dropped Mulder off at the hospital was eager to get back to their national
fugitive, because he let Mulder off at the curb, gave Mulder his card, and
drove away. Fine with me, Mulder
thought, and walked down the street to hail a cab, though to go where exactly
he had no idea. Somehow, though, he had
to find Scully. He couldn't get the
scenarios out of his mind. Image after
image of things he'd never seen flooded his mind, each presenting itself as the
most plausible version of reality. The
look he knew had been on Scully's face when she realized she was trapped. That was the one he couldn't shake. What had happened when she was taken? Did they catch her off guard and knock her
unconscious before she had time to even draw her gun? Did they send one or two in to attack her and drag her off like
it seemed the man back at the hotel had tried to do to him? Anything could've happened. She could be dead.
He shook his head violently,
telling himself he would have known if anything ever happened to Scully. But right now he had no idea where to go, or
what to do. And if some lead didn't
present itself soon, he was sure he'd go out of his mind.
Just then, his cell phone
rang. He reached into his inside pocket
and flipped it open. "Mulder." There was no
answer, and after another second, the phone rang again. Mulder looked at the phone in his hand,
puzzled. Then he remembered, and pulled
the phone he had taken off the dead man, his adrenaline rising.
"Yes?" he answered in
what he hoped was the toneless voice used by most bad guy henchmen.
"I couldn't reach you
earlier," a voice said, sounding professionally, distantly concerned. "Why didn't you answer your
phone?"
Mulder thought furiously for a
suitably ambiguous answer. "I
was...busy," he said, hoping it sounded ominous enough.
"Have you located Agent
Mulder?"
Mulder paused, hoping what he was
about to say was what the man wanted to hear. He took a deep breath. "He's dead."
The man considered this. "Was this absolutely necessary? Your orders were to bring him to us
alive."
"He was armed. I was nearly killed," Mulder reported
flatly, wondering how long he could keep up the act before he gave himself
away.
"Unfortunately, my reason
for calling was to change your orders. I was instructed to leave Agent Mulder alone in hopes of negotiating a
deal with him for his partner's life." Mulder froze. "Now that he
is dead, I see no reason to let her live."
Stunned, Mulder couldn't think of
anything to say that seemed appropriate, so he said the first thing that came
into his mind. "Would it be
possible for me to question her, sir?"
"Why?" The voice was more guarded now.
Thinking fast, he said quietly,
"Something Agent Mulder said just before I killed him." He knew he hadn't quite kept the slight
hesitation from his voice when he spoke, but amended, "I'd rather not
repeat it on an unsecured line, but Agent Scully should be able to enlighten
us, if properly motivated." He
kept his voice steady that time, though with an effort.
"Very well. We're holding her in New London."
"I'll be in as soon as the situation here is under control," Mulder said, and, hearing the click on the other end, hung up, though with more questions than answers. At least now he knew Scully was alive, but what they could be doing to her... The tamest thoughts were enough to make him go pale. New London sounded like something out of '1984.' He hadn't the slightest idea where it was. He sighed; he was completely exhausted and on an adrenaline letdown. But he knew exactly who he had to call, though, and after a second of indecision, dialed the Lone Gunmen's number.
A.D. Skinner's office
10:07 a.m.
"What?" Skinner gripped the phone tightly, listening unwillingly to the report of some idiot Richmond police officer. "I'm sorry, that's just not possible. Are you sure it's --" The officer on the other end cut him off abruptly, and Skinner grit his teeth. Finally the endless stream of facts, details, and conjectures ended, and Skinner muttered, "Thank you for your report; the Justice Department appreciates your co-operation," and hung up.
He stood and walked to his open
office door. "Kimberly, get Mrs.
Scully on the phone; tell her that Agent Mulder is dead and that I need to talk
to her." Kimberly's eyes widened,
but she nodded dutifully and picked up the phone. Skinner retreated into his office, closing the door behind him.
So it was true.