They had made good time, and were at the fence with a minute to spare. They merely had to get over the fence. Scully took Vesper's arm to support her while Mulder took off his coat intending to throw it over the barbed wire of the fence. The idea was for him to climb up and then reach down for Vesper, Scully would help heave her up then follow suit. Vesper stopped them before they could start.
"It's electrified. It would have been activated the moment the alarm was set off." Vesper pushed away from Scully and staggered toward the fence. "Let's see how strong I am, shall we."
Before Mulder or Scully could stop her she reached out and grabbed the fence with both hands. She suffered a serious jolt and was almost thrown, but she held fast. Sparks flew where her hands met the fence. She burned so hot and so brightly that Mulder and Scully had to step away from her. The amount of current she was absorbing was phenomenal. Suddenly, she let go of the fence, and shaking, turned around. "Close your eyes." She stretched out her arms towards the building and let loose the energy in one massive surge of blinding light. The building exploded and the three of them were blown against the fence.
Mulder was the first to recover. He looked over at Scully and saw that she was as dazed as he was. He went to help her up when he noticed that Vesper wasn't moving.
"Scully," Mulder gestured for his partner to come to his side where he knelt by Vesper. "Is she all right?"
Scully did a cursory examination, "As far as broken bones go she appears all right, Mulder, but I don't know what kind of damage she could have sustained by channeling the amount of current that she did. Genetic manipulation or not, she shouldn't be alive. We need to get her to a hospital."
Mulder turned back to the fence and noticed that the area where Vesper had held on had become brittle. Wrapping his jacket around his arm, he began swinging it against the fence until the links snapped and then eventually he kicked what was left down. When he was done, Mulder went back, hoisted his "twin" over his shoulder, and they were at the car in another four minutes.
Neither one of them had noticed the black Saturn that drove away.
**
Everyday Inn
Mulder's room
9:45 PM
"How's she doing, Scully?" Mulder asked as he paced the room.
"Mulder, I really think that we should have taken her to the hospital," Scully replied from beside the bed. She'd just finished treating Vesper's hands, which had suffered surprisingly minor burns from all the energy that had been channeled through them.
"There's no way we're doing that. Her chances are better with you helping her here than in a hospital. She'd be as good as dead if we took her and you know it. With her kind of power, she wouldn't be allowed to roam free to destroy any more of their facilities. If they can't control her then they'll try and kill her."
"We don't even know what drugs she was given," Scully argued, "I would have to wait until…if she wakes up before I could give her anything myself."
"We went over this in the car, Scully. I've made up my mind."
"And you think they won't look here?" she asked, frustrated at not being able to do more than sit by and wait when she could be running tests in a medical facility.
"At least here we wouldn't have to worry about some nurse coming in to give her a shot to make her rest better."
"Mulder?" Mulder and Scully looked down to see Vesper opening her eyes. "Where are we?" she asked getting up.
Scully tried to keep her from getting up, but she was waved away. Vesper moved to the side of the bed. Then placed her head in her hands in reaction to the sudden flash of pain she felt swimming threw her cranium. She flinched the moment her hands came in contact with her forehead and looking at them realized they were bandaged.
Looking at her face as she raised it, Mulder finally saw the resemblance that he was not ready, he realized, to see before. She had lost the dark coloring that she had the day they had met, so the resemblance was more pronounced. It was uncanny.
She too, saw the resemblance but she wasn't as in awe as Mulder. After all, she was pretty much told that she had been spliced from his genes.
"How are you feeling?" Scully asked.
"Besides the fact that my hands feel like their on fire and my head feels as if it was run into a concrete wall at a hundred miles an hour? I'll live."
"So, tell me," Mulder said, as he pulled a chair in front of her, "how did you . . .come about?"
Vesper brought her hands down and placed them on her knees. "I don't know how to explain it myself. I was raised my whole life by people who knew exactly what I was. Whenever the subject was brought up, it was always to point out that I was not human. That I was less than human, not worthy of the privileges that being human granted one. Yet, at the same time, I was shown how I was physically more superior than the average person. The physical and mental focus that I displayed was always twice that which was considered normal. I use at least 50% more of my mind than the average person, Mulder. Yet, I was trained to always obey orders. It was drilled into me from the beginning. I was created to serve and protect the interests of the Syndicate.
"In truth though, they never knew what to make of me. I was their first hybrid experiment. Actually, I'm barely a hybrid for that matter. Only a small percentage of my DNA is alien. It had been thought that too much alien DNA would make me come out warped in some fashion."
"But what's your connection to me?"
"I can't be too specific on that. I was never told the details. I would always ask, and they would tell me that my human DNA came from the offspring of an operative. Sometimes I would overhear how disappointed they were that they had only the one sample of the DNA that they had created me from."
"That sample being mine."
"Yes."
"Hold on a minute," Scully interjected. "Correct me if I'm wrong. You're saying that your human DNA comes solely from Mulder, right?" Vesper nodded. "Well then that would mean you were a clone, and last time I checked a clone was an almost exact copy of the original. Not only are you not an exact copy, you're female."
"That could have been accomplished through genetic manipulation, I suppose. They always talked about how females were more intuitive, hence, more likely to be receptive to outside stimuli. With the proper sequencing this could be enhanced."
"I find that the probability of that happening hard to swallow." Scully said. Now that she had something more scientific to deal with, she was grabbing hold of it.
"Scully, you saw her, with your own eyes, absorb a massive amount of electricity and redirect it to blow up a building. How can you not believe what she's saying?"
"I'm still trying to absorb that, Mulder. And I'm not saying that I'm discounting all of what she says, however, accepting that this 'Syndicate', even with the information that they acquired from their 'unknown' source, . . ."
"Aliens."
"Whatever. Even with this information, having the ability to manipulate DNA of a male and making it female? They could have just as easily taken the DNA from a female and saved themselves a lot of work. What I really want to know the answer to is, how and when did they acquire a sample of your DNA, Mulder?"
"Fox," Vesper interjected.
"'Mulder'" he corrected.
"Sorry. Mulder. Don't discount Scully's own beliefs. I sense that it is her skepticism that has kept you grounded on more than one occasion." Mulder smiled at that. "You're capable of more than you know, if only you'd let yourself be." She said looking at Scully. "As to how they acquired your DNA, I don't have the answer. The when, however, had to have been during your youth. I wasn't put through an accelerated process. It was thought that an accelerated process would increase the chances for error in my development.
"Besides, right now it doesn't matter. I'm here now. I exist. What does it matter how I came to be? I've spent too much time trying to explain it and most my life trying to understand it. I felt I owed you as much, Mulder, but now . . . I have to go."
"Go?" Mulder asked. "Go where?"
"It's best you don't know," Vesper rose removing the bandages from her hands and the Agents saw, to their astonishment, that her hands had completely healed. "I doubt that they'd kill you. If they were going to do that, it would have been done by now. I really don't know why they let you two or myself survive at all. However, I do know that they will come for me and I won't take the chance of either of you getting hurt because of me. I finally have a connection to someone. Someone I can truly call family. I don't plan on losing a brother."
Seeing that she had already made up her mind, Mulder decided not to argue the point further. If she was indeed like him, then once her mind was set there was no changing it. He would have to have faith that she'd be able to make it on her own without him.
"Vesper . . .?"
"Don't call me that. That's what they called me. It's just a project name that they used to refer to me," she paused and smiled. "Call me 'Fox.' It's not as if you're using it."
Smiling at that, Mulder continued, "Fox, how am I supposed to reach you?"
"Don't worry. I'll keep in touch." With that, Fox went to the closet. There she pulled a small package from above the inside of the closet doorframe, and made for the door.
"What the hell else do you have hidden in this room?" Scully asked.
"A map to the real location of Area 51," she replied and then she was gone.
Mulder turned to Scully. "Looks like we're going to have to take better care to search our rooms, Scully."
"What do you mean 'we'?" she replied, "This all happened in your room."
the end
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