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CHAPTER 14

System #1

". . . I don't believe this, Mulder! I feel like . . . like . . ."

Scully turned to the window of their room, as though looking to the outdoors for the right simile. Mulder was subtly smiling behind her back.

"Like old times," he finished. "Like when we used to bicker over the minutiae of every case we used to work on."

She tossed a glance at him over her shoulder, then looked back out the window.

"Maybe," she murmured.

"There's something he said, though, that's starting to hit home with me."

She turned back to him.

"How do you mean?"

"He mentioned something about . . . about some people *seeing* things when they're near the gaps."

"And you've been seeing things?"

"Not things, so much as people." Mulder cleared his throat uneasily. "At the risk of sounding like Haley Joel Osment, I've been seeing dead people."

Scully's eyebrows shot up.

"They talk to me," Mulder continued, not caring that he probably sounded like an idiot. "Guide me. I saw Krycek at the military base . . . I saw the Lone Gunmen . . . And they were *real,*" he insisted. "They weren't shadows, or transparent ghosts, they were flesh and blood, talking to me!"

"And seeing dead people is one of the signs?"

"One of them."

There was a long silence as she weighed the matter.

Finally: "Well, I guess it wouldn't hurt to just take a little look . . ."

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Onward to the next chapter! :)