The picture of David showed nothing more than the floor, maybe a table leg. The floor was dirty and dusty. It was a building that had been left alone for some time. That was about all he received from David's photograph. The image of Scully told him a little more. Behind her head he could see tables, tables and chairs. On one of the tables there were beakers and a couple of test tubes. Behind those was a chalkboard.
A school.
In a flash, Mulder was out the door and in the car, engine roaring as he recklessly spun out of the driveway. He fumbled with his phone in his right hand, trying his best to not let his madness run him off the road with the left, and he clumsily dialed a number.
"Robert, honey, do you know where David is?"
"I don't know. He said something about going out for a walk, then that FBI lady came by…"
"FBI lady? What FBI lady?" Kelly Watson said, turning away from the window she had been searching for her foster son out of for the last hour.
"Uhh...I forgot her name. She was here earlier." Robert's words exited his mouth as the phone rang. "I'll get it! I bet it's Matt!" he shouted, sliding around the corner of the doorway and into the kitchen.
"Hello," he answered.
"Robert? Listen, I need your help," the voice on the other end said. It was a male voice, and he sounded like he was out of breath or worried or something.
"Who is this?" Robert asked.
"It's Agent Mulder. Look, I need-"
"Oh, you…"
"Robert, listen to me!" he shouted.
"Jeeze, you don't have to comp an attitude, man," Robert said indignantly.
"Listen here, you little cretin, I don't have time for any games. I need you to tell me if there's an abandoned school around here."
"No. No wait, there's the old junior high."
The man sighed. "And where is that at?"
"Well, I don't know if I should tell you since you're calling me names and all…"
"Damn it, Robert!"
"Okay, okay!" What the heck crawled up this guy and died? "It's on West Lucas Street. Go south on the street that goes in front of Kelly's Café and take a right."
There was a moment of silence, and then the beep that told him the man had hung up.
"Yeah, don't say 'thank-you' or anything," Robert muttered under his breath as he slammed the phone back on the receiver. "Jeeze, you'd think his life depended on him finding that stupid school."
Lousy no good little… Mulder was going in the wrong direction; Kelly's Café was behind him on the other side of town, and time was running out quickly. As he again fumbled with the phone, finding it a lot harder to dial three numbers than it had been to dial seven, he slammed the steering wheel hard to the left, feeling the inertia pull against him as he U turned in the street.
He had the call sent before he regained his orientation, and by the time the operator answered, he had swerved around a corner, nearly taking out a silver Thunderbird.
"911, what is your emergency?"
"This is Special Agent Fox Mulder. I need you to put me through to police dispatch." "One moment, please."
It started as a shiver at the base of his neck. Then slowly it crept its way down his back, careful to make sure it traced each of his ribs in session, then it made its way to his stomach where it stayed coiled up in a tight knot that made David Anderson want to throw up.
I have to be brave. For Dana. Fox will come, right? He'll make it, he tried to tell himself, though as each eternity of each second passed, the hope he managed to build up thinned, and the falsity of it all began to show through. But Fox will come. He was holding on to it now, clinging to it desperately. He had to stay brave, and this was the only thing that he could draw strength from.
"Fox will come."
"Well, David," Jackson said softly, shutting the door as he returned with the tray. "Are we ready to begin?" David was almost as tall as the man that stood before him, but now, while David sat on the table, barefoot and cold, scared and alone, helpless in every way, he seemed like a giant. Not really a giant, but more like a shadow. Something that exists in darkness that you know is there but can never get a good look at, and if you do, its intangibility makes it impossible to touch, impossible to harm, and impossible to get away from.
David bit his tongue and held his breath while Jackson arranged the items on the tray. Desperate to focus his mind on something other than fear, David pushed himself up, straining his neck to the right, just to see what was in the tray.
What he saw made the knot in his stomach move up. Up into his throat, burning as it went, leading the contents of his stomach to his mouth, where there was no room to hold them, and they ended up on the floor.
"Are you okay?" Jackson asked. "Is the drug making you sick?"
David did not answer him, the cold sweat now covering his body making him shiver with the reinforced cold.
"I'm going to take that as a 'Yes. I'm okay, Mr. Nicolas.'"
David shot him a death glare.
"This will be a lot better for both of us if you cooperate. Of course, some of my viewers enjoy it when the 'star' plays hard to get."
His voice was so calm as he said the words, like it was an every day thing one would not think about twice about doing should the whim arise. The calmness was what frightened David the most. Though he did not know it consciously, deep down, beyond the realm of his active mind, he knew that it meant his neighbor had done this many, many times before.
The wall that separated Scully from David was thin enough that she could hear their voices coming through it. She could not make out the words, but by the tones she could make their meaning well enough.
In the time she had been alone and conscious, she had managed to bounce herself, chair and all, to the side of a table with old lab equipment on it. Judging by the looks, the room had at one time been a science classroom, chemistry perhaps, as there were now glass beakers deserted on the table.
She had a plan. Not a very good one, no, but anything was better than feeling helpless. With her knees under the table, she tipped her chair back until they touched the underside, her feet no longer on the floor. The table shook slightly, lifting one of its ends off the ground-the exact reaction she had hoped for. Now she only prayed what she wanted to happen would.
She lowered herself back to the floor, and took a deep breath. She held it, and rocked back again harder than before, lifting her knees up as high as the ropes would allow. Her knees collided with the table with a thud, kicking the legs inches off the ground. The beaker precariously perched on top crashed to the floor, shattering into dozens of jagged, glinting pieces.
Once she was again in a fully seated position, Scully bit her lip, expecting to hear the door open with the noise of the crashing glass. Jackson, preoccupied, hard of hearing, or whatever never came, and she finally realized she was holding her breath the entire time.
She took a moment and a few more deep breaths to regain her composure. She pulled her weight to the left and as hard as she could, pushed it back to the right. The force carried her over as she had hoped, and she landed painfully on her side amidst the shards of glass. She could feel them digging into her arm like a thousand jagged teeth thirsting after a meal they had waited lifetimes for.
She ignored the pain of her throbbing shoulder and the cuts on her arm as best she could and let her hand search for a suitable piece. She cut her finger, feeling the warm blood as it slowly leaked out as she grabbed one of suitable size. Then she pressed it to the ropes, and began to saw.
Hold on, David. Come on, Mulder…
Jackson walked over to the camera adjacent to where David was sitting and turned it on. "Okay, David, could you please face this way?" David obliged slowly, never taking his scornful eyes off of the man. "Let's start with an upper body shot. Could you take your shirt off for us, David?"
"You're sick, did you know that?" David said, ignoring the request. "Getting off on kids…that's disgusting!"
"Oh, David. David David David," Jackson said, amused. "You're a cute kid, I'll give you that, but don't flatter yourself. I honestly could not be any less physically attracted to you or to any of my 'stars'.
"This," he continued, motioning around him, "I do for the love of art. I'm an artist. On film I'm capturing the human struggle, a cavalcade of emotions ranging from fear to sorrow all the way to grief. I'm a modern day da Vinci! I do it for art…but mostly…mostly…I stay in it for the money."
"Money? This is about money?" David said in angered disbelief. "God, you're a messed up son of a bitch, aren't you?"
"Shh, watch your tongue, David. Intelligent young men like you should never swear. Now, if you don't mind, take off your shirt." He held up Scully's badge folded with his fingers covering everything else but her picture. "Or else."
Somewhere behind him Mulder heard a horn honk, and he could almost hear the driver's swearing. He did not care. It did not matter. Only three things mattered at the moment: Scully, David, and time.
"Please, David, Scully, hold on. Hold on…" Mulder whispered from bottom of his soul as he past Kelly's Café breaking at least two major traffic laws.
If there had been anything left in his stomach, David probably would have thrown up again.
"Nice," Jackson said, eying the boy as he walked over to him. "Don't worry, I'll take my face out in editing. I don't want to distract from you, star." He let out a chuckle that raised every goose bump David had ever had to the surface of his pale, pale, skin.
David shut his eyes as tightly as he could, trying to focus on nothing, to tune out everything around him as Jackson ran his bony, sinister finger over the his cheek. In the back of his mind, David could feel his telekinesis building, ready to be released at a moment's noticed. It was ready to jump to action, it wanted to jump to action, to get this horrible man away from him, but David held it back. No, I have to be strong for Dana. Fox will come. Fox will come.
It was harder to believe now more than ever, but he still believed in the three little words.
"You are a cute young man, David. I bet you get lots of girls, don't you?" Jackson said, placing his hands on the boy's shoulders, massaging them in a vain attempt to relax him. It only made the lump that was blocking his throat and the one that had filled the void in his stomach his food had left behind grow even larger. David shut his eyes tighter, doing his best to ignore it all. To try to think of something happy…
Jackson sighed. "Still with the silent treatment, eh? I'm trying to be patient with you, but you're not making this easy."
David kept his eyes shut as tight as possible, so tight that it hurt the sides of his face. He tried to ignore the voice that told him to fight back, he tried to think of happy things…
Jackson continued. "Look, the sooner we get done here, the sooner I can get to that delicious red-head you brought with you."
David's eyes snapped open, his blood grew hot, and for the first time in the last several minutes, all the lumps in his stomach and throat were gone. His face grew red, and he turned to look the man behind him straight in his eyes.
Then the voice that told him to fight got its wish.
One quick, violent burst of energy from the boy's mind sent the man flying across the room, knocking over a table, and crashing with the wall hard enough that it almost shook off the chalkboard that rested on it.
Jackson groaned amongst the rubble as David sat seething, not thinking, but loathing everything about the crumpled man in front of him.
"Why you little…" Jackson screamed angrily as he pulled himself from the carnage. His hand balled up into a fist, and before David could react, the man was upon him.
And the hatred had again subsided to fear.
Scully heard the crash, the angry screams. Her eyes grew wider each time she heard the horrifying sound of flesh meeting flesh and bone, the chilling muffled screams of a brave soldier trying to be strong and keep them in, and the awful awful scene that played in her mind of what she would find.
Her ropes were halfway cut through, and she began to saw faster and faster, possibly cutting herself in the process, but she no longer cared.
The only thing that was important to her as her heart bounced in and out of her chest was in the next room, screaming her name.