Skykomesh

Holiday Inn

3:45 PM

It had been a long day. Scully picked up her coat and walked out of the hotel dinning room, heading to her room. Alyssa had left a few minutes before she had, muttering something about getting some rest before they checked out two more possible leads. Scully thought that getting rest sounded like a great idea. Her head had been tingling all day. She had attributed it to worry over Mulder and exhaustion. She hadn't been able to sleep since Alyssa had shown up on her doorstep the night before.

Scully stuck her hand into one of the pockets of her coat and pulled out her room key. As she did, the brochure, which Alyssa had discarded by the roadside, fell out. She had forgotten all about it until this moment. Scully looked at it again, this time actually reading it. The description of the cabins seemed to make them an ideal place for someone who had something, or someone, to hide. It suddenly didn't seem like the 'nothing' Alyssa had made it out to be.  Scully put her coat on and turned around. She had some work to do.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxx

After leaving Scully in the dinning room, Alyssa had gone straight to her room and changed into a dark brown jumpsuit and a pair of rubber soled boots. She then grabbed a bag from under her bed and, having double checked its contents, walked out the door and headed out towards the parking lot and the rental Scully had checked out at the airport. 

Her plan was simple: she would head out to the lodge, find out which cabin would most likely be the one to contain Mulder, and get him out as fast as possible without getting either of them killed.

Yeah. Right. If this clone of Samantha was who she thought she was then Alyssa was going to be in a world of trouble.

6:00 PM

Lake Wenatchee

As soon as she had gotten there she'd headed straight to the main house where the front desk was located. Through an open door behind the desk she could hear the voice of Della Reese heralding the opening song of Touched By An Angel and the sound of popcorn popping in a microwave. She was lucky that it was the off-season or, she suspected, the desk would never have been so ill attended.

Alyssa made her way to the desk and peaked over it to find the computer logged on and, adjusting the monitor as she pulled the keyboard to her, typed in a name. There it was right in front of her: Samantha Mulder. She had checked that name just to get the obvious out of the way, but seeing it in front of her made her realize that this woman had expected to be found. Knowing that a trap had been set and that 'Samantha' didn't care that she knew it, did nothing to boost her confidence. She was now more than a little relieved that she had ditched Scully back in Skykomesh. Mulder would never forgive her if something happened to his partner.

Placing the keyboard back, Alyssa headed around back towards the small boat yard, particularly the area where the small speedboats were docked. The cabin where Mulder was being kept was located across the lake in the cabin furthest from the main house and all others. The quickest and most logical approach would be by water to a point just before a bend in the lake that would take her directly to the small cove in front of the cabin.

Using the water would be dangerous, though. Back when she was still under Syndicate control, she'd heard whispers of an earlier hybrid cloning experiment. The First, or Alpha as the clone was then called, had developed the same abilities that she was thought to never achieve. Alpha, she reflected thinking of the Vesper, the name she had been given, names were never their strong point.  Names aside, the power that Alpha wielded meant that she too could channel energy and the last place that Alyssa and Mulder needed to be was knee deep in one of nature's most natural of conductors. But she'd worry about that later, for now she had some rigging to do.

Xxxxxxxxxx

6:45 PM

Samantha's especially keen hearing picked up the engine of a speedboat as it approached then cut off, somewhere beyond the bend to the cove. She'd known that they would be so desperate to get Mulder back that they would choose the quickest route to him. She had sensed them near and had stopped tracking them as soon as she had. In her own twisted way, she felt that by capturing them without her second sense she would be proving to the Syndicate that even without it she could get things done.

She could feel the blood coursing through her veins. Hear her heart beat loudly in her ears. Her body throbbed with so much excited energy that she had to share the news with her 'beloved brother.' She needed to let him know that, in the next 30 minutes, he would be witness to the beginning of the end of his beloved partner and his so called 'sister.' Walking into the house, she couldn't help but skip to the beat of her raving heart.