Scully held her pistol at ready while she turned a 360º circle in the middle of the dusty floor. "Where are you, you coward?" she spat. "Where's my family?"
"Ah, yes. Your family. You understand I can't tell you yet where they are, it would spoil the surprise. I have the party all planned out, you know."
The acoustics of the warehouse bounced the sound from box to box, ceiling to floor, and wall to wall. Once in a while, a thin sliver of light shone up from some agent who disobeyed the order to kill his or her flashlight. Scully would deal with them later. Something told her it made no difference to their enemy. "I'm not playing your game, Attila. If you can read my mind, you already know what I'll do to you if anything happens to my baby, to my mother, or to my – " She bit off the word, unwilling to reveal more to either the enemy or her colleagues at the FBI.
"They already know he's your lover, whether you embrace the word or not." The mockery in Attila's words cut into her heart. "Oh, but I must admit, you have quite the imagination."
Suddenly the killer gasped, and Scully's heart sped up with a glimmer of an idea. "No weapon can kill you, did you say? What can kill you, oh mighty warrior?" Every syllable was as hard and unyielding as granite. The booming silence spread through her limbs and for the first time since the nightmare began, she smiled. "I know your secret, don't I, Attila? I know how to stop you."
"You aren't capable of killing me," the disembodied voice replied.
But this time, everyone could hear the doubt.
Crawling backward in the pitch blackness, Sydney tamped down waves of claustrophobia. She never dealt with that particular problem before. Then again, she'd never been plunked into an unlit, sludge-filled maze before and been told that countless lives depended on her finding a way through.
Hunting for antiquities might involved hidden traps, and mazes weren't unheard-of. This was something else altogether. She just prayed there were no spring-loaded weapons, no concealed poisons, and no more abrupt drop-offs in the line. Who would have thought her most challenging and most frightening relic hunt would take place in the bowels of a gigantic metropolis?
Once in a while, she still caught a glimpse of illumination. Mulder kept his flashligh on. While she couldn't pinpoint its origin, the minimal light offered her a desperate grip on her faltering sanity.
Her body ached with every movement, but she couldn't let herself stop. "Talk to me, Mulder," she repeated for the thousandth time.
He obliged, "What do you want me to tell you? You want to know about the aliens?"
She chuckled. "Tell me about the aliens, sure." Hell, at this point he could have told her HE was an alien and she'd have welcomed it.
"They took Scully."
Sydney paused. Whatever else the man was saying, there was agony buried in the memory he recounted. "Go on," she urged. Her fingers encountered the carapace of another creature that skittered away and she sucked in her breath, gagging at the encounter.
"You okay?" Mulder's voice floated up to her.
"Yeah," she replied faintly. "Go on. What happened with Scully?"
A moment later, Doggett's voice drifted through her consciousness. "I read the case files. Agent Scully was abducted by a man named Duane Barry. We don't know exactly where she ended up, but she was subjected to some very invasive procedures. She was nearly dead when she finally turned up, a month after she was first taken. It's not a pretty history. I don't think you really want to know all the gory details."
"I need to hear you talking to me. I need –" She paused to collect her wits. "I need to know you're there, that I'm not the only person living in this god-forsaken hellhole. " Please. "Tell me something good. There has to be something good about the X-Files, something funny. I know you guys work for the FBI. I know you deal with murder and mayhem. But isn't there anything bizarre, a case where your suspect turned out not to be the killer or something?"
There was another pause and Mulder chimed in, "Well, I suppose it couldn't hurt to tell you about Eddie Van Blundht. It's public record, after all, and there's no threat to national security. I guess you could say he was just small potatoes."
"Watch the hands, man, watch where you're putting your hands!"
Margaret raised an eyebrow. The three computer nerds were wriggling in place, turning back-to-back as though they actually expected to do something about their predicament.
"Be still, Langly, or I'll leave the cuffs on."
"You'd like that, wouldn't you, you pervert."
Byers, ever the voice of reason, interrupted, "Just get these things off, guys. Frohike, you sure you can unlock them?"
"Yup. I swiped a hairpin from Goldilocks while we were out on patrol the other night. He was too busy enjoying my kiss to even notice."
"Frohike, you are a dead man. Attila can't have you until I'm done killing you."
"Be still, for cryin' out loud. And shut up. I don't want Mrs. Scully to get jealous."
Margaret smothered a grin, knowing now that the exchange was being carried on strictly for her sake. There was a shared gleam of humor in all three of the men's eyes as they fumbled toward shaky freedom. Dana's faith in these odd little nerds bordered on obsession at times. For the first time, Margaret began to suspect the faith might not be altogether misplaced. "What can I do to help?" she interjected.
"Just keep watch over the baby and Wonderboy and we'll do the rest," Byers assured her. "Hey, Bailey, any ideas about where we should start looking for your boss and Mulder and Doggett?"
"I think so. We got moved through the basement and the sewers. From what I can gather, the sword is hidden down there somewhere. I might be able to reconstruct a map if I had paper and pencil."
Langly reached up, displaying the hand that now was freed. Clutched in his slender fingers was a crumpled piece of notebook paper. "I got my half."
A moment later, Byers raised his own triumphant instrument. "No pencil. Will a pen do?"
Frohike's stubby fingers rose with their own contribution. "I've got the painkiller." He fanned three miniature bottles of booze for better view.
I know how to get to you now. Scully's mind replayed all she knew about the killer, including the relatively new practice of taking hostages. Something fundamental had changed.
Her heart ached. Mulder would have thrown out a wild theory, one so bizarre she'd probably snigger behind her hand. He'd then smoothly describe the impossible in the most logical, scientific terms., as though style somehow validated the content. Her lips curved into a sad smile. Maybe it did. Wasn't he right about ninety-eight percent of the time?
She sucked in a breath and blew it out in a whistle. William was alive. So was Mulder, and her mother, and everyone else. And suddenly, she the truth glared at her like a neon sign.
Attila was afraid.
She had the key, but still had to figure out which door it fit. She knew that he was vulnerable to thoughts, but not just any thoughts. He wasn't impacted by mere anger. Tears didn't affect him. She wished him dead and he was still very much alive.
What made the difference? Which ideas reached out and touched him when nothing else could?
Mulder eyed the half-silhouette that hunched against the damp, filthy wall. John Doggett wasn't the sort of man to sit back while the world revolved around him. That meant Doggett's injuries were probably bad.
Probably really bad.
Professor Fox didn't look all that great, either. Even in the half-light of their current location, her normally bronze skin was pasty except where discolored by bruises. She was moving slowly, trying unsuccessfully to hide the ache that accompanied every shift of muscle and sinew. At the moment, of course, that muscle and sinew were lost somewhere in a labyrinth of waste and filth, and he couldn't see her.
"Sydney, you still with us?" Mulder's voice echoed through the cement lines. He was not used to standing by helplessly while someone else did the work. Something told him that if Sydney were an FBI agent, she might have ended up in the X-Files, herself. He squelched that thought instantly, as it raised a whole new list of ideas, distracting ideas. "You okay?"
Her voice drifted back. "Well, other than an intense need for air freshener and a can of Raid, I'm just peachy. I think I'm on the right track, too. You sound closer."
"If we do get the sword for our favorite historical figure, what do you think he intends to do with it?" Mulder aimed his flashlight into the pipe where she'd disappeared two hours earlier. "Line check," he added casually. "Anything?"
Far down the pipe, he saw movement. A triumphant cry confirmed what he saw.
"I'm back! Keep that light on, I'm sliding in home!" A few seconds later, Sydney crawled from the narrow line. "And I don't know what Attila has in mind, but you can bet we won't like it."