What was a nice Boston girl doing in the cold, merciless streets of Manhattan? That's what Ally McBeal was wondering. Right now, living in New York was her choice for the sake of her one and only daughter. Several years ago, Ally had donated some of her ova for storage to a fertility clinic. Eleven years later, one of those eggs popped up in the form of a eleven year old girl that had been conceived and raised by people she had never known. Maddie Harrington was now Ally's daughter, and it was her existence to whom Ally was now completely devoted. Leaving Boston to raise the girl in her native Manhattan was a major sacrifice as Ally said goodbye to people she had known and loved. Good-bye, John, good bye, Elaine and good-bye to all her long lost boyfriends. William Collins and Larry Paul now had new lives somewhere out there and she now had Jason Smart and he could be just as roguish and charming as both of them put together.
Despite the new home and the new faces, it seemed as if Ally's life had just been recast with new faces. John Cage was now in her past, but Jefferson Smith sure reminded her a lot of the Biscuit. Junior partner of Germann, Bellows and MacNichol, her new law firm, he didn't channel Barry White or have a pet frog named Stefan, but his office was decorated as if a comic book had exploded. A stencil in his window resembled the bat signal and behind the door was a manikin in a Captain Marvel costume purchased from off E-Bay. The room was adorned in sci-fi pictures as Jeff worked at his desk surrounded by small plastic X-Men figures fighting Star Wars figures and interspersed with Star Trek figurines. Ally gazed upon the original "Thirty Foot Bride of Candy Rock" movie poster on the wall and then up to the life-size Spiderman figure hanging from the ceiling.
"Um, is that…" She stared up at it. "Is that new?"
"Not really," Jeff looked up with a boyish gleam to his face that belonged more to a boy who was lost in space. "I used to have it home, but Brenda made me bring it here. Can you believe that!"
"I'm starting to understand what she's going through." Ally lightly nodded as she tried to discuss the case they were trying together in court. There was a sound behind her as she lifted her head to the door opening behind them. Jack MacNichol stepped into the room with an open case file and immediately saw the new costumed crime fighter in the office dedicated to Jeff's youth. Beaming ear to ear to get his opinion on it, Jeff looked up and hoped for a comment, but Jack had learned long ago not to encourage him. He just pretended to ignore it and went about business.
"The Denning case is going back to trial." He replied. "I want you to give this case to Ally and get prepared."
"But I got a settlement in that case." Jeff replied.
"The Morgans got new evidence they want the judge to see." Jack continued. "I want you to get back on this case and wrap it up since you closed it." He looked to Ally. "Ally, can you handle this case on your own?"
"Oh, um, sure." She looked at Jack He reminded her a bit of her Billy Thomas, her first love. They both were no nonsense characters with serious convictions and like Billy, Ally could even see herself serious with him if she were not already seeing Jason so seriously.
"How are you liking it here?"
"I think I'm adjusting just fine." Ally grinned like a young girl. "But I can't seem to get any heat in my office."
"I'm sorry bout that." Jack grinned warmly. "You see, this building used to be an old clothing warehouse and the heating system doesn't work very well in some rooms. In fact, your office used to be an old storeroom before you joined us." He paused a minute. "I'll get Jenny on it."
"I'd appreciate it." Ally replied. Jenny Liu was sort of a mix of the Elaine Vassal and the Ling Wu that Ally used to know. A very attractive girl of Polynesian descent, the girl was incredibly efficient as the office manager. She didn't have aspirations of stardom nor did she create eccentric inventions, but she did sing like a bird at the nightclub down on Fifth Street after hours for fun. Unlike Ling, she was as warm and as personable a person as one could be.
"Ally," The girl hastened along Ally as she traveled through the old warehouse. "A call came in about your dry-cleaning and I took the liberty of picking it up from the Marcetti's for you while I was out getting doughnuts. I also rescheduled your meeting with your new client to Thursday so you could meet Maddie's teacher on Friday."
"Thanks," Ally pushed toward her small office overlooking Fifth Street outside. "Could you get me a…"
"Double café latte? It's on your desk." Jenny shined with a nice grin as Ally noticed Courtney Ross stride arrogantly behind her. She was Ally's new Nell. Short, and brunette with rich azure eyes, the cold calculating lady lawyer could be merciless and unyielding, but yet it was something about her that made Ally want to kill her. From her first day in this new firm, Ally had the feeling that Courtney didn't like anyone, but she had to admit one thing. Ross was an incredible litigator specializing in the firm's corporate cases.
"Excuse me, Debby," Ross turned toward them.
"It's Ally." Ally corrected her.
"What?"
"Her name's Ally." Jenny pointed out. "You called her Debby. Her name's Ally."
"Really," Courtney grinned venomously as if she really didn't care. "I guess I'll get it sooner or later." She turned up her noise arrogantly as she turned to Jenny. "Jenny, I need you to make me an appointment at La Belladonna at exactly six-forty-five for dinner with a client and make sure I don't get stuck near the kitchen again. I always get stuck near the kitchen." She looked to Ally. "How are you liking it here, Lizzie?"
"It's Ally, and I…." Ally began as Courtney wandered away rather than stay and listen for the answer. Sighing deeply, she just rolled her eyes a bit depressed and looked to Jenny as she scribbled the request in a pad.
"Six forty-five, La Belladonna, make sure near the kitchen…."
"But she didn't want near the… ohhhh…" Ally suddenly understood Jenny at the root of Courtney's torment. There was a new understanding between them as Jenny grinned devilishly.
"I have an idea." Ally added. "Why not tell them that it's her birthday?"
"I love it!" Jenny laughed sadistically as she pictured Courtney embarrassed by the hats, streamers and cake. "Ally, I'm going to love having you working here!"
Ally turned with a vicious glint herself and proceeded for her office. Located toward the back and near the stairs to the catwalk overlooking the circular chamber that was the main floor, she noticed her door was open and someone moving around inside. Barely a step inside, she watched as Amy Shepard lightly adjusted a small plant on the desk and then a painting on the wall. The only person Amy reminded Ally of back in Boston was Georgia. Incredibly friendly and extraordinarily attractive, Ally could find no reason not to like her. Ally had started out sharing an office with her in the beginning, but it was Amy who had convinced the partners to reconvert the old storage room into an office so that Ally could have privacy. Without the decorations, it was still pretty much still a storeroom.
"Ally," Amy beamed to her. "I wanted to surprise you. I hope this brightens up your office."
"Thank you." Ally sat down at her desk as it wobbled a bit. Amy noticed it as Ally tried not to.
"You know," Amy beamed brightly. "I've got this big mahogany desk at home that's just taking up space. I was thinking about getting it transported here for you to use. I don't need it."
"No, you don't have to…"
"I want to…"
"Why not?" Carter Bellows strided happily into the room. "Ally, we want to make you happy." Cut from the same opportunistic mold as Richard Fish, Carter Bellows had started the firm back in 1971 with Jack MacNichol and Michael Germann as his partners. Very rarely in court since then, he now spent much of his time drinking and throwing parties for the employees that made him rich.
"Ally," He postured as if he belonged at the helm of a starship. "According to your resume, you specialized in civil rights cases back at Dish and Wage back in Boston."
"It was Cage and Fish." Ally corrected him.
"My mistake," Bellows lightly giggled at himself to Ally and then to Amy. "Ally, I have a new client for you. Her name is Melissa Strickland and she was unfairly dismissed from the local USI think tank here in town. I'd really like you to win this because with the government contracts that USI has, I'd bet they have some pretty deep pockets to shell out a settlement. How about it?"
"Well," Ally nervously pulled her hair back. "I'm kind of already on the Olsen case with Jeff…"
"Ally," Amy spoke up. "I can do second chair with you. I'm only defending that Bridges boy in the shop-lifting case and besides, I haven't done a civil rights case in a while."
"Perfect." Bellows clapped his hands together. "I'll send Melissa in to talk to you two." He turned out with a moneymaking grin as Ally pulled her hair back against her head a bit overwhelmed.
"It's just so busy here." Ally gasped. "I mean it's nothing like I was used to in Boston. Are things always this jumping?"
"Ally," Amy sat on the corner of her desk as it wobbled. "It's New York. Don't worry, you'll catch up."
"Ally," Jenny opened the door. "A Melissa Strickland to see you."
"I'll see her." Ally looked to Amy for support. Glancing up, she rose as a petite young beauty with bright blue eyes entered. She looked young enough to be in a teenage soap opera. Wearing a violet skirt and jacket with a pure white blouse, the entrancing young woman gazed upon Ally and then Amy with a regal bearing as they joined hands in a brief cursory handshake before sitting down in the one chair in the room.
"So," Ally lightly beamed adorably. "Maybe you should begin with why you are here?"
"Well," Melissa started with a gaze to the steel supports in the ceiling before looking back to Ally. "I started working in the legal department at USI in 1983 under one William D. Caber. When I started, it was perfectly understood that all my legal papers such as my birth certificate and law degree was lost in a fire in 1979. Mr. Caber, however, recently retired and a Johnathan W. Drake replaced him as my new boss. A year after getting started, he decided to restructure the legal department and in doing so revised all the personnel files. Realizing my law degree was lost, he fired me."
"Excuse me," Amy grinned a bit. "You started practicing law in 1983? You look like you're only twenty-five."
"I was born in Sandusky, Ohio in 1959." Melissa claimed quite rehearsed.
"Where did you first practice law?" Ally asked.
"Under my father," Melissa continued. "He practiced in my hometown and taught law in the family home before it burned down in 1986. I passed the state's bar exam in Connecticut in 1981."
"Is there anyone who can confirm your degree? Your father…"
"No." Melissa replied lightly shook her head. "Daddy died shortly after I came to New York and Judge Leonard Kirk who knew me in Connecticut died in 1988."
"Oh," Ally and Amy shared a look. "Well, it's looks pretty simple, but I'm sure a little bit of research could prove who you are." Ally glanced over to Amy as Melissa tilted her head with nervous apprehension.
PART TWO
A convenient break room served at the hub of the firm's informal meetings. Two soda machines, a snack machine and kitchenette replete with a coffee machine often bore mute witness to the discussions legal, personal and public that were interacted in here. Brenda Krakowski-Smith lightly stirred her coffee as she eavesdropped on the conversation Courtney was having. Sitting at the end of the one long table, the cold prima donna of the firm continued talking as Ally entered through the arch to get a capucchino from the firm's personal machine. Jack MacNichol was standing hunched over with one leg in a chair and Carter Bellows sat by Courtney and tried to console her over her experience.
"It was the worst experience of my life." Courtney held her head up as she talked. "Not only did I get stuck near the kitchen again, but as I was talking to the client, they started singing "Happy Birthday" to me and pushed a cake into my face."
"Courtney…" Ally turned round with an evil grin. "It was your birthday? Happy birthday!"
"It's not my birthday!" She hissed toward her.
"Clearly they got some messages confused somewhere." Jack theorized as Carter hugged Courtney. To anyone who didn't know better, it might have seemed as if the two of them had a relationship, but the truth was that Courtney was just his favorite lawyer in the firm. The most successful next to Jeff, she made pretty much the law's reputation in middle Manhattan.
Ally sipped her moca capucchino with an evil grin on her lips and turned out of the room. She was feeling mischievous and daring as she returned to her office to peruse a case she was going to go into court with. Inhaling the flavored scent of her hot drink, she lifted her head in unison to Jenny rushing to meet her.
"Ally," Jenny had a stack of files pulled to her chest. "There's an FBI agent here to see you. His name's Fox Mulder and he's in your office."
"An FBI Agent?" Ally looked taken aback. "Am I trouble or something?"
"No, I don't think so." Jenny shuffled her handful of files. "He said he had info about your case with Melissa Strickland. He showed me his badge and everything."
"Oh," Ally turned slowly and continued to her desk. Dodging a few temps and other people in gathered discussions, she pressed on for her little office and stepped through her door left ajar. Standing and trying to adjust the thermostat, Fox Mulder looked up to her with an eager interest almost as if she intrigued him. He reached to shake her hand before pulling out his identification.
"Fox Mulder, FBI," He started with decisive authority as he flashed his badge. "I'm doing a background search on Melissa Strickland and, you look familiar, have we met?"
"No, I don't think so." Ally reacted with a nervous giggle to her seat. Her desk wobbled as she sat down.
"No, I'm really good with faces. I know we've met." Mulder sat in the chair across from her while his hand poked his ID back into his shirt pocket.
"I can assure you I've never encountered anyone from the FBI." Ally replied honestly as Mulder searched his memories. He looked upon her perusing at the same time events and incidents from his less than memorable private life.
"Now, I know," He snapped his fingers. "Collinwood, the wedding of William and Paula Collins, you were beating the crap out of some blonde in the foyer."
"That was Elaine." Ally tried to hide her face in her hair. "Um, I kind of… blamed her for ruining for relationship with… um… William."
"You two were really serious for a while." Mulder knew his buddy William was quite in love with Ally for almost a year. He spoke a lot of her in their correspondence. "I thought you practiced in Boston?"
"I did." Ally nervously tapped her pencil as she discussed her past with this agent. "But I decided to move here for the sake of my daughter." She unconsciously nodded her head lightly before catching herself doing it. Mulder blinked his eyes as he tried to psychoanalyze her personality.
"Well," He shifted back into investigator mode. "I'm here investigating Melissa Strickland." He pulled out a manila envelope he was sitting on. Opening it up, he pulled out a newspaper clipping with a photo and turned it to Ally. "Can you identify her from that picture?" Ally leaned over the front of her desk as she pulled it closer. She definitely recognized a few people in it from her USI cases on Boston. CEO and Chief stockholder Robert Hogan was the charming gentleman in the middle and right next to him was Nick Holden, one of the institute's directors. Scanning the other faces, she recognized Melissa standing on the far end.
"Yes, that's her." She traced the tip of her finger over it with the tip of her fingers. Mulder pulled out another photo with faded color that was considerably older and set it by the clipping. It looked like an inauguration picture because of a vague ribbon in front of a building christened New Sandusky High School. Melissa was in that picture too wearing the old fashioned clothes of the Sixties.
"There she is again." Ally replied.
"What if I told you," Mulder leaned forward ominously. "That the Erie County Historical Society in Ohio actually identified this woman as Melissa…" He pointed to an attractive young blonde in the faded photo. "And this woman as Charity Bathory." He pointed to Melissa.
"I'd say their records are in error." Ally looked at him.
"Okay," Mulder pulled out an old black and white daguerreotype photo from his envelope and turned it to Ally. The bottom read "Moosejaw Presbyterian Church – 1914" and had a crowd of almost fifty parishioners standing in an open field. One of the young ladies was Melissa Strickland.
"Does that look like Melissa?" He asked Ally as her pointed to Melissa's familiar face.
"Yes." Ally pulled her hair back as she felt unnerved.
"Actually," Mulder stood up. "Her name there is Trinity Pratt, and this…" He pointed to another face. "Is Charity Bathory. Now…" He pulled out a Xerox copy of a tintype photo of people standing around Union Civil War officers. Ally immediately saw the woman she thought was Melissa standing barely obscured behind others.
"In this photo, this is the real Trinity Pratt," He pointed to a brunette young nurse and then to Melissa. "And here Melissa is calling herself Chloe McBeal. One of your descendants?"
"Sounds… familiar." Ally was getting even more spooked as she wondered if Rod Serling was going to walk in and introduce "The Twilight Zone."
"Don't get excited." Mulder looked at her eerily assured as if none of this bothered him. "According to your family's genealogy records in Baltimore, Chloe McBeal vanished along with one Monica Blair in a flood in 1834 thirty seven years before this photo was taken. Now, if this pattern is true, Monica Blair is possibly the earliest name for the woman now going as Melissa Strickland. Every time she reappears, she has appeared using the name of the woman who vanished with her."
"But that's impossible…" Ally widened her eyes. "That would make her almost two hundred years old." Ally suddenly recalled something. "Wait a second, Melissa can't be that old. Her father died in the Eighties before the family home burned down…"
"On October 13, 1986," Mulder knew the case very well. He pulled out a newspaper article about the fire. "Both Melissa and Charity Bathory supposedly died in that fire and their bodies were never found. Charity is obviously very much alive and posing as Melissa and I suspect she's been using names and identities of people who cannot be traced for much longer than two hundred years, possibly going back five hundred years to when this woman existed…" He showed Ally a color plate of a German painting. The woman vaguely resembled Melissa, but the German countess with the fine dress and regal blue eyes was identified as one Countess Sieglinda von Uchtmann. Her lifetime was written in pencil on the copy as 1410 to 1458.
"Mrs. McBeal," Mulder looked at her. "I suggest you tread lightly on this case with Melissa because there's been a strange thread of deaths and disappearances wherever she has been. In Sandusky, Ohio alone, eleven people vanished to be never seen again from 1972 to 1985."
Ally jumped from his ghost story as someone rapped on her door. With a light shriek, she looked up and noticed Jason Smart poking his romantically grinning face through the door. He pushed forward a red rose as Ally shivered a bit scared from the odd history she had been revealed.
"Jason," She stood trying to compose herself as he kissed her. "I'd like you to meet…"
"Mulder?"
"Jason…"
"You two know each other?" Ally stroked her hair back as she tried to figure this out.
"Of course," Mulder was collecting his photos and clippings back into his envelope. "You're still working at…" Jason started snapping his fingers to remind him Ally was in the room. "American Airlines, right?"
"Right…" Jason rolled his eyes over that close one. Still spooked by the strange facts of her case, Ally wasn't even paying attention. She wasn't even sure what to think after the chilling documentation that Fox Mulder had shown her. All she did know right now was that with Jason near her, things felt right around her.
"Ally," Jason looked to her. "Lunch perhaps?"
"Sounds… great." She grinned to him as Fox Mulder postured a bit near her. "But it would have to be after my trial. I've got court in an hour and I'm in the middle of a two cases at once." She beamed her innocent childlike features to him as he kissed her.
"I've got to be going too." Mulder jostled his envelope under his arm. "I've got to meet Scully over in Long Island in an unrelated case to the one I'm working on."
"I'll see you out." Jason mentioned to him and fondly embraced Ally's hand. "Lunch after court, promise." He asked her as she consented. She distractedly pulled her hair behind her ears as Mulder courteously shook her hand with a lingering faint look. He wanted to remind her about the case with Melissa. Turning on his heel, he sidled up alongside Jason as they walked through the firm for the exit.
"I take it she doesn't know what you do." He asked Jason.
"No, she doesn't," Jason held both sets of glass doors to the firm open as they stepped out on to the busy, bustling and sweltering Manhattan sidewalk along the crowded traffic of New York City. "And I prefer it that way."
"I'm kind of glad I ran into you." Mulder resounded with an ulterior motive. "I'd sure like to get a crack at that ARDVARC computer you guys use. I'm working on a case where I've gone as far as I can with my own deductive reasoning and now I need a computer that can think and cover a million databases on the Internet at once."
"Uhhhh…" Jason sounded as if he was mulling the idea. "I don't know. My dad doesn't even let the IADC or the CIA use ARDVARC. Maybe if I talked to him I could arrange something." Jason looked distractedly at a book on trains in the bookstore window by them. "Is this another of those UFO cases of yours?"
"No," Mulder looked around distractedly. "I'm just tracing the history of possibly the only vampire to ever live by day." His eyes fell upon a novel called "Mythos" in the bookstore window written by William Benjamin Collins.
PART THREE
Maddie Harrington scurried like a typical teenage girl through her apartment in Manhattan's Whittendale Towers sipping a bottle of water and talking on her cell phone to Brenda Walsh, one of her best friends. She was her best friend both before and after she had tried living in Boston. They had grown up side by side in a lower east side brownstone, and now Maddie lived in the high-rise apartment over all her friends and relished every moment of it.
"She did not say that." She replied over the phone. "Well, I did not say that. Did she say that I did? Well, she should have not said that. She should not going around saying that I said things with all the things she's been saying about what I've said unless… wait, who exactly are we talking about?" She heard a buzzing noise from the phone as she jumped onto the sofa. "Wait, I got another call." She hit a button. "Hello?"
"Maddie," Ally was sitting in the back of a taxicab on Seventh Street approaching Central Park. "I was just calling to let you know I'm on the way home. Are you being good? Did you do your homework?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" Maddie responded impatiently as she looked out the balcony windows to the lights of New York City lighting up the night like a huge black Christmas tree. "I'm being good. Oh, Mr. Jefferson called from the west coast. He wants to know if we're still getting any of his mail."
"If there's any," Ally remarked with a light grin to Melissa by her side. The former occupant of their apartment was an African American businessman named George Jefferson who had retired to the west coast. Since he had retired, Ally and Maddie were still getting mail for him from people unaware he had moved. "It's on the table closest to the entryway. Anyway, I'm pulling up close to the building. I want you ready for bed when I get up there."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" Maddie was getting to be so much more indifferent since she had returned home to Manhattan. Hearing her click off, Ally smirked a bit and looked to Melissa riding with her. The darkness and passing lights of storefronts passing into the car made her appear mysteriously enigmatic and pensive. Beautiful and alluring like some modern goddess transplanted in the Twentieth Century, she leaned back poignantly as she looked to Ally. Those rich blue eyes of hers glittered with an otherworldly light as she looked upon her.
"It must be nice having a daughter." She replied reflectively repentant. "I sort of wish I had a husband and a family."
"I've never been married." Ally admittedly freely. "I've had a few chances, but…"
"Raising a daughter by yourself?" Melissa looked at her impressed. "Is it hard?"
"No," Ally answered. "She's practically self-efficient. And smart… She impresses me a lot by the way she thinks." Ally looked out at a delicatessen going by and realized she had an opening to Melissa's odd and convoluted past. She had been trying to ignore the ghost story of that FBI Agent all day. There was no way Melissa could be as old or as dangerous as Mulder imposed.
"What kind of childhood did you have?" She inquired.
"Uneventful." Melissa shined. "I lived in a farming community and had all sorts of friends. It was a lot like those Laura Ingalls books with the small church and little schoolhouse and dad often drove us into town where he worked to see movies and eat in restraunts. My mom grew and sold her own vegetables and my brothers and sisters all had different jobs growing up. I was the only one who became a lawyer like dad." She paused nostalgically. "If I win this case, I'm going to move back there."
"Where's your family now?" Ally asked.
"Well," Melissa thought as she recalled. "Mom retired down to Florida with my sister Jan. My brother Peter is out on Montana as a park ranger. Quentin is out in California building houses and my sister Kris is racing cars in Texas and my brother Greg lives in England working for the BBC."
"They're all over the place, aren't they?" Ally lightly grinned as she forgot to think of Melissa as an immortal countess and more of a down-to-heart home girl at heart. "Do you see them?"
"Often," Melissa grinned. "But not enough." She sighed a bit as the taxicab turned a corner. "So, what do you think my chances are of winning this case?"
"Good," Ally nodded optimistically. "I've met Robert Hogan a few times and I'd like to plead my case directly to him. Also, if I can't get him, we can get an affidavit proving who you are from three people outside your family who know who you are."
"Sounds great…" Melissa beamed as the cab braked. In the front seat, Alex Reiger wrote down the time and mileage and turned back to his passengers.
"Mrs. McBeal," He turned to Ally. "Here's your stop."
"Oh," Ally absent-mindedly realized where she was and paid him his fare with a ten-dollar bill. She slid out and slammed the back door behind her. "Melissa," she looked through the window. "I'll see you in the morning. Don't worry. I've handled tougher cases."
"Thank you." She smiled to Ally and gasped hopefully for the minute. Ally's doorman opened the door for her as she entered the building. In her absence, Alex looked back upon Melissa over the front seat.
"Can you take me to the Universal Science Institute?" She asked him. "And wait for me when we get there. I'm just going to run in and get my private things and I'll be out."
"That's on the other end of Central Park." Alex reminded her.
"I know." She sat back as the taxi lurched forward again. Watching the traffic and the people passing by, she wondered on their lives and futures as the thirty minutes passed by briefly. Alex and her talked pleasantly as she remained pleasant and cordial, but as the two-story stone structure where she once worked reared up, she became coldly distant and sinisterly remote. Alex pulled up outside the high steps to the entrance as she reminded him to wait for her. Exiting the car, her heels tapped ominously against the barren deserted front stairs and echoed off empty man made canyons of even higher structures. Alex Reiger looked into the dark trees walled up inside Central Park across the street and then up to the flat imposing darken structure and rolled up his window and started reading the Bible from the glove box.
After dark, the institute felt like a haunted mausoleum with sterile halls and empty corridors. During the day, it was usually quite active, but at night, the guards and cleaning staff shared ghost stories from the basement. Confidently unafraid, Melissa headed straight back to the legal department. The guard out front was missing, possibly getting coffee from downstairs in the lounge, and the offices were deserted. Melissa gazed a bit depressed at the double doors that once had her name in raised silver letters. They had been pulled off in her termination. Standing in the middle of her vast office, she sighed with lamentation at what could have been. It was the biggest office in the building with a high ceiling, her own bathroom and a nice view of the street below. Glass shelves lined the walls and a small refrigerator plush with the decorations graced the corner of the room. Remembering parties and old friends, she wished for events that would permit her to stay. Her private belongings rested in a cardboard box unceremoniously on her white painted wood desk. She reached to open the desk to search for anything forgotten and found it locked to her.
"Don't worry," J.W. Drake entered the room alone sipping a glass of scotch. "We didn't forget anything."
"Come to gloat?" Melissa stood at her lowest.
"I don't gloat." Drake stepped up to her. "You were good, Melissa, if that is your real name…"
"My name is Melissa Anne Strickland. I was born…"
"You really believe that, don't you," Drake looked at her with amused disbelief. "You see, Melissa, my grandmother was born and raised in Elyria, Ohio near Sandusky and when I was growing up, she told me about the two girls who burned to death in a fire in the next county. She said the fire was so intense that the clouds of smoke could be seen for miles. Nothing could have lived through it. Two girls died in that fire and one of those girls was supposed to be you."
"Newspapers have been wrong…" Melissa replied.
"Your father…" Drake sipped his scotch. "Sifted through the ashes for any trace of you and found not a single thing. Everyone told him you were gone and he spent almost a thousand dollars trying to find you. Now, if it was you in that fire, why didn't you step forward?" He poked her with his glass as she waited for him to get to the point. She peered at his smarmy face looking at her with two beady eyes and lightly flicked the hair out of her eyes with a toss of her head. She stared at him silently without a thing to say.
"I don't know who you really are…" Drake raised his eyebrows at her. "But I guess I'll find out, when I get you in that courtroom." He mused with a triumphant repose and lifted his drink to her. Grinning at her, he turned for the doors of the office and hummed a little show tune as he reached for the door. As he reached, he heard behind him rumbling as if several people were entering the room behind him, but from where? They were alone. He heard fabrics ripping and seams exploding on top of each other as he froze and stood where he was in the nearly open door. He didn't want to look back. Something told him to not look back, but his curiosity was getting the worst of him. A loud gasp broke over his head like a broken vacuum seal escaping an old gas heater. Two loud thumps lightly shook the building as he turned his head over his shoulder. His mind snapped at what he saw. He could not handle it. It just wasn't possible. It just wasn't possible! His eyes widened and his jaw dropped in a loud piercing scream as the door slammed shut by itself and pinned him into the office to meet his dire fate.
PART FOUR
Jack MacNichol stood scanning a file in the open walkway of the firm as he chanced upon Ally coming in late. He started to peruse his file again, but a spark in his brain reminded him of another fact and he realized he had a message to pass on. With a light patter to his walk, he turned on his heel and tapped Ally's shoulder to get her attention.
"How's the Bradbury account?" He asked with serious interest.
"Well," Ally lightly rolled her eyes as she thought. "The jury is going to deliberate overnight and then we'll wrap it up tomorrow. I'm pretty hopeful." She nodded her head optimistically.
"Good, good…" He nodded along with her. "I've got a message from Carter for you. He wants you to hold off the Strickland case for a while. Don't set a date for trial yet because there's been an upset."
"What's happened?" Ally shifted her weight to her other leg as she held her briefcase handle with two hands.
"J.W. Drake vanished last night." Jack replied as Ally reacted unaware. "His wife has filed a missing persons file and forensics is going over the institute trying to find a trace of him. Since Drake was taking Melissa to court to dispute her identity, the police are looking for Melissa for questioning. Until we know what's going on, I think you should stay out of it until we know there's been a homicide."
"Is there any indication she's on the run?" Ally wondered.
"Not yet," Jack folded his arms in exasperation as Jenny came closer. "As far as I know…"
"Ally," Jenny lightly slipped in to the conversation with discretion. "Melissa Strickland's waiting for you in your office." Ally turned and looked at Jack for guidance. He looked to Jenny for a brief second then turned to Ally's office before exhaling frustratingly at the turn of events.
"Don't say anything about Drake." He told her. "If she brings him up, just advise her of her rights." He turned away just before Ally shuddered. It was as if someone had just walked over her. Jenny stood by as Ally looked to her for emotional support. Turning to her office, Ally lightly pressed onward into her office as Jenny sat up and cast aside a magazine she was reading.
"Ally," Melissa was grinning exuberantly. "I got in touch with my mom and she sent me several names and addresses of people who know who I am. I've got the last known whereabouts of an old boyfriend, my old babysitter, my old piano teacher…"
"This is great." Ally grinned nervously over the list as she wondered if this girl could be a murderer. "Um, I haven't been able to get a hold of Hogan because he's on the west coast, but his personal assistant did a get a message through so I'm expecting a call from him. Hopefully, in a few months, we can set a court date."
"A few months…" Melissa reacted confused. "Why is it going to take that long?"
"Melissa," Ally stood at her desk and held her head low as she stared to the mementos on her desk. "Um, uh, Mr. Drake vanished last night."
"What?" Melissa stroked her hair back in confused disbelief. A brief burp followed up from her stomach inaudibly as she tried to accept this revelation. "How is this going to affect my case? I'm not being accused of having anything to do with it, am I?"
"You tell us," Someone slipped into the room. "Fox Mulder, FBI." He showed his badge and identification.
"You again?" Ally reacted with frustrated and annoyed exasperation. "Melissa, you don't have to talk to him."
"I've got nothing to hide." The brunette beauty reacted distantly to what was going on.
"Mrs. Strickland," Mulder postured a bit on his two feet as Ally sighed at the confusing twist of events. "Last night after Mrs. McBeal left you, where did you go?"
"To the institute." Melissa answered crossing her arms before her chest with a bit of unconscious ego. "I collected my personal belongings and departed."
"Several employees said Mr. Drake had been waiting there every night to catch you when you returned and he just happened to vanish on the same night you were known to be in the building." Mulder continued. "Did you see him?"
"You don't have to answer that." Ally told her client. Melissa lightly shook her head trying to believe this was happening.
"I was only inside for a few minutes." She replied honestly. "I went in, came out and that was it. I didn't bother looking for anyone else. I didn't see him…" She looked afraid as she turned to Ally. "Unless he was already dead at that point. Oh, god, if I had stayed longer…." Her mind was imagining horrible experiences as Ally reacted and tried to console her. In her heart, she didn't think Melissa was a killer, but her mind was still trying to make a decision.
"Another thing, Mrs. Strickland…" Mulder pulled out his manila envelope once more. Ally made an annoyed groan at the sight of it as she wondered how this would solve things. Wrapped around the folded over opening in a condescending conspicuous manner was a chain with a cross dangling on it. Mulder grinned as he tried to work it off. "This thing gets caught on everything I carry. It doesn't bother you, does it?"
"Not especially," Melissa pulled hers out from under her black sweater where it dangled from her neck. "I wear my cross around my neck. It was a gift from my mother when I moved to New York. Actually, I'm glad I wear it because I'm such a night owl that people always thinking I'm a vampire or something."
"Really," Mulder reacted with skeptical and earnest culpability trying to make allowances in this turn of events. He looked at her small gold cross with distant intrigue. Over him, Ally McBeal smirked at how foolish he was appearing.
Seven blocks away, Sunshine Cab dispatcher Alex Reiger wanted nothing more than to return to his work, but there was always something to get in his way. Either another time sheet was filled out wrong or he wasn't able to get the parts to repair the cabs or he had one employee constantly rubbing him wrong like a rogue hair on his collar.
"Come on, Reiger, give me another chance!" Louis DePalma clawed at the outside of the cage.
"No, Louis," Alex looked at his former boss's porcine bald little face and twitching eyes and turned him down. "I've gone to the bosses three times for you and you've let me down every time. I'm not going to bat for you again. What you did this time was a mean and horrible stunt! I'm cutting you loose!"
"What did I do so wrong?" DePalma shrugged confused.
"Wrong?" Reiger stepped out of the cage and closed the door behind him. "Louis, you kicked two old ladies out of your cab in the middle of Central Park and drove away!"
"That's not where they wanted to go?" Louis shrugged convincingly confused. He was trying to figure it out as he dived to Alex's feet. "Alex, please! I promised Xena I wouldn't come home unless I finally got a job!"
"Get a shopping cart and start pushing!" Reiger handed new envelopes to the new cabbies that had joined since Bobby, Elaine and his other friends had moved on. They were a better lot than the rest. About the only other guy that still lurked around from the days Alex was a full time cabbie was Jim Ignatowski and he was nothing like the former Jim that he used to know. The man drove during the week and preached in church on Sundays often attributing religion to his newfound life.
"Louis, get out of here or else I'm calling the police!" Alex snapped as his former employer proved to push his patience.
"Fine, I'll go." Louis sneered with revenge. "But I'll be back…." He was chuckling under his weasel-like breath as he turned to head out. Coming down the stairs was a heavy bald figure with a mustache. His sleepless narrow eyes peered at Louis with annoyed interest as he flashed his badge.
"Detective Sipowitz," He flashed his badge. "Where's your dispatcher?"
"Really?" Louis started snickering. "Reiger, there's a cop here for you!" He started laughing all the way up the flight of stairs up to the sidewalk. His echoing banter rang through the garage as if he had just realized his revenge. Detective Andy Sipowitz peered back with unconcerned interest to the short laughing balding midget and turned back to Reiger.
"I'm the dispatcher." Alex replied on his way back to the cage. "Alex Reiger." He introduced himself. "How can I help you?"
"Last night," Sipowitz read from his pad. "One of your cabs was seen parked in front of the Universal Science Institute from between eleven-thirty to midnight. I need to talk to the driver of that cab."
"That was me." Reiger admitted freely. "I sometimes drive to break the monotony of the paper work. It's creepy outside that place at night."
"Is that general operating procedure here?" A woman asked as Reiger and Sipowitz looked up and noticed a shapely red-haired woman coldly standing before them in a dark blue blouse and white pants suit. She pulled out her identification. "Dana Scully, Federal Bureau of Investigation."
"Are you following me, agent?" Sipowitz reacted annoyed.
"FBI?" Alex Reiger stepped back a bit nervous. "Am I in any trouble here?"
"Last night," Sipowitz continued with a snide glace to Dana Scully and went about his business. "Elaine Drake reported her husband missing when he didn't come home." He pulled out a photo of a brunette woman. "Is this the woman you dropped off there?"
"Yes, that's her." Alex took and recognized Melissa Strickland's photo. "I dropped her off and then drove her afterward out to her to her home out on Staten Island."
"How long was she inside the place?" Scully asked.
"Not long." Reiger stood as he shoved his hands into his pockets. "Five, ten minutes at the most."
"Did you hear anything out of the unusual?" Sipowitz asked.
"No," Reiger replied honestly. "Well nothing that I can recall off the top of my head. I could recall something later, you know."
"Was there anything about Mrs. Strickland that you noticed out of the ordinary about her?" Scully listened intently.
"Nothing that I can recall, but then, like I said, I could recall something later." Alex answered genuinely wanting to help. "Could you tell me anything about what you're investigating that might bog details down in my mind?"
"A man named J.W. Drake vanished." Sipowitz replied annoyingly drowning out agent Scully. "We're trying to locate him and Strickland might have been the last person to see him."
"You think she killed him?"
"We don't know that…" Sipowitz handed over his card with his number. "I'm just doing my job."
"My card…" Scully handed over her number. "If you recall anything no matter how trivial. Give me a call before you call him."
"Sure," Reiger flapped the cards into his palm as his eyes gazed over the female FBI agent's figure. An obscene thought came to his mind that he was not proud of, but the wonderful shape of the female form on Dana Scully did trigger something from his memory.
"Oh wait a minute," He stopped the detective and the agent. "I do recall something. When she went into the institute, she was wearing like this simple violet dress with a short jacket. When she came out, she was carrying a box of stuff and wearing this long raincoat. I think she was naked under it…"
PART FIVE
A phone call to his motel room sent Fox Mulder racing for the train station and returning without his partner back to Washington D.C. There was little to slow him down as he hopped from the train to a cab and then took a ride for a tiny post office annex sitting alone on a back street in view of the FBI Building and the Library of Congress. Mulder had never been here before but he knew the person he wanted was in the basement of the annex. Surrounded by private security vaults, Jason Smart was sitting and reading a newspaper on a bench as he silently noticed Mulder and gestured to a phone booth conspicuously out of place in the basement. He dropped his paper as if he was going to make a call in the booth. Looking around confused, Fox Mulder looked around as Jason dialed a phone number then pulled him into the booth. The floor gave way as they slid in to the sub-sub-basement.
"You do this every time?" Mulder groaned hitting the floor after sliding through ten feet of twists.
"Actually," Jason lifted himself up and dusted his clothes off. "I thought it was sort of fun the first hundred times, but now I keep pestering dad to update to something new." He twisted a crick out of his neck and turned down the hall for his dad's office at the end of the hall. His father had always walked this corridor humming a theme song to himself that he himself had created. Today, Jason hummed a slightly altered tune patterned from the old Sean Connery films.
"My dad is off having dinner with my mom." Jason walked into what looked like just another government office. "But he said it was okay if I let you use it." He pulled back a mounted pen on the desk as one of the pictures slid up into the wall to reveal a concealed computer system. A sparkle came to Mulder's eyes and a grin formed on his lips to be seeing this machine. It was supposed to be one of the most state of the art thinking computers in the United States Government.
"I wish we had one of these things at the FBI." He felt like when he was a boy watching old Sci-Fi movies. Jason chortled a bit amused at his wish.
"It took us ten years just to update the thing." Jason was passing his identity card and security clearance through it. "I doubt they'd shell out another three billion dollars to create a second one." He snapped his fingers for Mulder's data and held his hand out. Snapping out of his trance for things of high technology, Mulder reached to his jacket pocket and pulled out his master disc.
"I've got a routine pattern of names, dates and places on this." He looked toward Jason. "I want the pattern completed as far back into history as possible as well as a possible character bio for this person going on the data I've compiled."
"It shouldn't be much of a problem." Jason took the disc and slipped it into a computer port before clicking several icons on the screen. "ARDVARC has provided bios for KAOS agents going back to World War One."
"And beyond that….." The computer talked back.
"It talks?" Mulder was taken aback.
"And cheats at poker." Jason answered as ARDVARC started scanning Internet pages and census websites within minutes. Every legend that was ever published, every disappearance was cross-matched and every identical name documented by man was cross-referenced and matched following Mulder's pattern. Legends and newspaper accounts flashed over the screen as ARDVARC continued compiling, merging and crunching data. Mulder's eyes flicked back and forth as history, mythology and crime sites going back as far back to the advent of written history were compiled, indexed, discounted and merged with seconds.
"This could take a while." Jason yawned and checked his watch. "Want to raid the Control Cafeteria? I think they had chicken and eggplant today."
"Sounds alright to…" Mulder started to turn as Jason led the way, but the ARDVARC suddenly buzzed and started printing data. Jason just barely caught Mulder's disc being spit out as he looked to the screen. The screen had made a character profile with the name of Melissa Strickland and as well included a photo atop a page of incessant data and dates.
"What's going on?" Mulder turned round.
"ARDVARC's suddenly put her at the top of the FBI's Most Wanted List!" Jason shifted the twenty-seven pages of data. "Here's her profile…"
"Forget that…" Mulder shook his head trying to fathom what was happening. His heart was racing to realize that this super-computer had solved a case he knew on which he had barely scratched the surface. "Her history… how far did she place Strickland?"
"1164!" Jason shuffled through the report.
"Eight hundred years?" Mulder stood in shock. This was everything he had ever hoped for and more.
"1164 BC!" Jason was swaying about to pass out on his feet. "Melissa Strickland is more than three thousand years old!" His mind suddenly focused on something else. "Ally!"
PART SIX
The cab dropped Ally McBeal off in front of the former Olympia Civics Center in Todd Hill, New York. Looking at the address in her hand, she checked the number on the front door of the old structure and then the street signs and wondered if her arrival was in error.
"Excuse me," She leaned over the front seat to the cab driver. "Is this 3634 Olympia Boulevard?"
"Yes, ma'am," Her young driver confirmed it. "That'll be seven fifty…"
"Oh…" Ally emerged from the back seat as the streetlights lit up the young driver's blue eyes. Paying with a two fives, she started wishing she had driven out here herself rather than taking a cab. Melissa had said she had lived inside a place that had gone out of business, but Ally was figuring something like a small loft in a reconverted warehouse. The cab pulled away and left Ally with her briefcase before the huge two-story structure built against the street. The wind picked up as out of the night air the wind blew a wild menagerie of dry and dead leaves around her feet, across the sidewalk and into the street. The mist formed from Ally's breath before her mouth as she tried to open the glass entrance. The doors didn't budge as she noticed an intercom by the door. She pressed SEND as it crackled to life.
"Yes?" A voice came from it.
"Melissa?" Ally lightly chuckled to hear her. "It's me Ally. I wanted to talk to you about your case?"
"Ally!" Melissa sounded excited. "I'll buzz you in!" The doors buzzed as Ally pushed against them.
"I'm in back!" Melissa called through the intercom as Ally entered the old civics center. The place definitely was deserted, but it also loomed over her like a haunted house as long shadows crisscrossed from abandoned sign-in areas and empty snack machines. Ally peeked her head into an exercise studio noticeably well used by the presence of Melissa's strewn clothes and towels. A former game room was made up like a living room and a well-lit stairway lead up to a refurbished second floor. Trying to overcome her feelings of dread, Ally pressed on as she heard signs of activity from the poolroom. Pushing against one of a set of double doors, Ally looked out across an Olympic-class swimming pool lit up only by random working lights and moonlight through bay windows and a dirty skylight.
"Ally," Melissa swam close to the edge where Ally was standing. "Grab an extra swimsuit from the locker room. We can talk while we swim…"
"Thanks, but…" Ally noticed a set of patio furniture at poolside not far from pool supplies for cleaning the pool. "I'd prefer to stay professional if you don't mind." She dropped her briefcase on a table at pool side and poked through it as her eyes strained in the reduced light. "Now, I talked to Hogan…" She continued "And I arranged a severance package if you decided to leave USI, but he said if you wanted to stay in your job, he'd appear in court to speak in your behalf. Unfortunately," Ally looked up as Melissa popped up and down in the water like a mermaid without a care in the world. "I can't do much on any probable resulting murder charges until the district attorney gives me something to work with."
"Ally," Melissa popped up quickly at the edge of the pool from twenty feet away. "Do I look like a killer?" She looked up at Ally looking down upon her. Hedging nervously and rolling her eyes, Ally appeared ill at ease as if the present circumstances were plying on her mind. The dark building as well as the fact she was alone with Melissa were trying her imagination.
"Are you uncomfortable around me?" Melissa wiped the chlorinated water from her eyes.
"No," Ally responded half-heartedly. "Well, kind of, almost." She pulled her hair back as she confessed. "But it's not your fault. The FBI Agent showed me some photos and documents that made it appear as if you were…" Ally giggled hesitantly. "A thousand years old or something…" She giggled a bit more. Shannen just narrowed her eyes a bit and lowered her head in thought to the rim of the pool. Vague thoughts plied her mind as she floated backward from the edge distantly.
"Ally," Melissa sounded less like her vivacious self and more cold as if it was her true personality. "How well do you know your mythology?"
"Um," Ally thought back. "Not well, but I dated this guy from Collinsport, Maine who had it memorized."
"According to one story," Shannen floated on her back as she talked. "Shortly after Hercules became a god, he was seduced by Aphrodite because she wanted to know if he was a better lover than Hephaestus, the smith-god."
"Sounds like something a god would do." Ally mumbled.
"Aphrodite had a daughter she named Leila, but she was often away doing the things that love goddesses do, and Leila was often left to her own vices. Some claimed in the beginning she was a goddess of vices and fetishes." Melissa vanished under the surface of the pool with barely a ripple and popped a bit closer. "Without knowing who her father was, Leila ended up raised by her Aunt Discord who raised her in her own special way." Melissa continued with just her face above the surface of the water. "Leila learned to use her godhood to get what she wanted and she became feared by the Thracians and the Phrygians. It seemed Leila liked the taste of mortals and often came down from Olympus just to eat more of them. Discord who had always liked her better than anyone else suddenly had nothing more to do with her."
"Interesting…" Ally hedged a bit at this lesson in Greek gods.
"There's more…" Melissa started wringing water out of her long dark hair. "In order to stop her from doing so, Hercules sealed her up in the underworld. It was his own daughter. His own daughter!"
"Melissa…" Ally shivered a bit afraid. "You're scaring me."
"That's where the Greeks left off…" Melissa continued with a psychotic look in her eyes. "Less than a century later, the Native Americans started telling the story about how Coyote, the Great Trickster, released a goddess from the underworld who liked eating mortals who offended the gods. He wanted her as a mate, but he couldn't control her, and he couldn't put her back…" Melissa drifted away. "The Cherokee Indians named her… Leilaniscanetl… The Darkness That Devours…" She dropped under the water in one slow movement. Ally watched her vague dark shadow sinking deep under the water.
"Melissa…" Ally called for her. "Melissa…" She watched as Melissa stayed under the water. Feeling alone, she waited for her head to pop up somewhere, but there was no sign of her. The water surged a bit and pelted the side hard as Ally leaned down to it. The level of it started rising as Ally became aware of it raising up over the surface of the pool and trickling around her feet. She started wondering where all the extra water was coming from as the entire pool area became submerged in a quarter inch depth of water. It was as if the vast pool house was filling up with water or else something was displacing enough area to push the water out. Wondering what she should do, Ally turned round as Melissa's ripped bathing suit floated around her on a half inch of water at her feet.
"Melissa?" Ally froze where she was. Turning completely around now, she became aware of activity at the far end of the pool where the light was at its dimmest. She thought she saw a huge shape emerging from the water that appeared human, but in any size she had ever seen before. It was taller and wider that any normal person. Gigantic and frightening to her mere mortal brain, it reared up out of the swimming pool like a person sitting up in a bath. Her eyes widened in shock and her feet lightly stepped back as it drifted closer to her sending a wave of water over the end of the pool. Slowly coming closer, Ally saw illumination falling on nude flesh and a vast physique as Melissa revealed her true form to her. She was sitting on the pool bottom and still towering twelve feet over the skinny lady lawyer in her true form as an immortal and psychotic god in a world of flawed mortals.
A scream raised from Ally's lungs as every nightmare she ever had left her. Nothing could measure up to the terrifying image of another individual of such monstrous proportion. She turned to the pool doors and pulled and struggled with them to open. Her hands gripped and pulled hard and the water being further displaced by the pool washed over her with the fury of a tidal wave. She heard the poolside crack as Melissa reared up on it to get even her immense arms within reach of the screaming lady lawyer.
"You can't go, Ally." Melissa's shadow loomed as the parent over a small child. "You know too much…" Ally screamed and pleaded to escape. She did not want to die like this. There would be nothing left to tell where she had gone if Melissa was the so-called god she had described. Hysterical, desperate and losing all touch with reality, Ally wanted to run, but she was trapped in this building. Something in her mind made her run toward the locker room doors and tried clawing at them. Not looking back, she realized everything around her getting dark and darker. Something was blocking out the lights of the pool over her. Gripping the door handle as hard as she could, she felt something curling around her body and molding to her frame. Fingers as thick as tree trunks bent around her and tugged her off the doors with minimal effort. Ally felt her fingers broken from trying to stay hold on to the door handle. The floor vanished from under her feet as she felt herself lifted off the floor and hoisted into the air to the rafters above the pool. Twenty feet under her, the poolside whirled under her and then the frightening face of Melissa Strickland ten feet wide opened her mouth to her bottomless gullet and held Ally screaming above it.
The pool doors crashed open below as Fox Mulder and Jason Smart crashed their way into the pool area. Mulder waved his gun and Jason froze trying to fathom what he was seeing. Melissa Strickland… towering over them in the dim dark bare-chested as if she were a naked Playboy billboard brought to life. Realizing she was not alone anymore, Melissa's eyes glazed over at her unwanted guests with the ferocity of a mad woman. His initial shock over, Mulder started firing his gun toward her massive head.
"Mortal cretins!" Melissa's five ton left hand struck down on top of him as Mulder stooped and rolled out of the way. Forgetting where he was, Jason stared at her in morbid shock unable to look away and then realized what was dangling from the giantess's right hand.
"Ally!" He felt useless as Mulder fired again, but not at Melissa's head. There was a wide shot of the veins in her wrists as the bullets firing from his gun broke the skin there and resulted in a torrent of immortal blood gushing from broken arteries as thick as cables. Melissa's hand unclenched out of reflex and Ally's lifeless body plummeted and bounced over a pile of pool floats.
"Smart! Do something!" Mulder continued firing and using up his bullets. Heaving her body up out of the pool, Melissa gripped her bleeding wrist briefly and started to pound Mulder into the concrete once more as an annoying insect with her intact left hand. As her arm reared back, he moved again from where he was and rolled against hard concrete out of the way of her pile-driving fist. Out the corner of Mulder's eyes, Jason stared at the ingredients used to clean the pool and had an idea. He noticed the words flammable and toppled the shelf over on to the concrete floor. On impact, all the plastic jugs of cleaner broke open at once. A match from his pocket struck against a scant dry area of concrete ignited the flammable ingredients in the noxious cleaner being carried by the chlorinated water across poolside. Within seconds, the dark pool area was illuminated in bright hues of red, orange and yellow dancing around them. Melissa screamed as the flames reminded her of the pit of Hades. She recalled them very well.
"No!" She jumped back from the heat in her face and hair as figures raced around her titanic frame and under her body. The iron ceiling cracked from her head as Jason grabbed Ally and flung her over his shoulder. Fox Mulder lead the way as they stormed through wet halls and saturated carpets to the exterior exit. From somewhere, an explosion surging through the old civic center knocked the three them off the front of the building and into the street. Mulder landed square to his chest as Jason flailed with Ally sideways on his shoulder. She rolled sideways off him as the street lit up with a fireball rising into the night sky. Nursing scrapes and cuts, Mulder turned his head to Jason cradling Ally's lifeless body.
"Ally, honey, wake up…." Jason shook her body. "I'm here. Please wake up…" Jostling her and crying into her, he tried to rouse her out of unconsciousness…
CHAPTER SEVEN
His left arm in a cast, Mulder had difficulty breathing from his strained and cracked ribs. The doctor insisted they weren't broken, but he felt otherwise. Sitting in a chair across from him near a lady knitting, Jason peered up across the hospital waiting room as a man waited for his wife while reading the newspaper. In a small article in the local section of the tabloid, one story read, "Vandals Burn Former Civic Center." Mulder peered at it and then turned distantly toward Jason and his bandaged ear. Part of his hand was bandaged up to the elbow as they looked at each other and tried to figure out just what they had seen and hopefully destroyed. Their names weren't even mentioned in the article, but the report was the fire lasted all night and finally went out just seconds before sunrise. No one reported anything about anybody more than twenty feet tall either. A worried moan in his lungs, Jason grieved a bit as the sounds of feet scuffing the hospital floor came closer. Dana Scully strided up between them as Mulder jumped to his feet.
"Please tell me Ally confirmed what we saw." He said first. "We are not crazy."
"She doesn't recall a single thing." Scully answered in an annoyed tone. "She doesn't recall anyone named Melissa Strickland or even knows why she's in the hospital."
"She blocked it out." Jason groaned hoping for answers. "She blocked the whole thing out than to acknowledge it."
"I'm telling you she was fifty feet tall." Mulder started as he had done so in the past trying to make his case without evidence. "She was trying to swallow Ally and most likely swallowed J. W. Drake which is probably how she disposed of his body so quickly."
"A giant vampire?" Dana scoffed a bit.
"Well," Mulder turned briefly to Jason then back to Dana trying to believe him. "I don't think she was a vampire, but then I'm not sure what she was. I do have the ARDVARC file and Jason was…"
"Mulder," Dana rolled her eyes as this murder case became seriously more far-fetched. "You can't call a computer as a witness. You created a highly skeptical scenario and the computer followed it. I could write a story about Abraham Lincoln being extra-terrestrial and ARDVARC would compile the data to make it believable."
"I'm not sure exactly of what I saw." Jason replied looking up from his chair at Dana as if she towered several feet above him in size. A much more rational person, he knew from his espionage experience that things were not always what they seemed, but still, he realized what he thought he had seen would never leave his mind. "All I care about is Ally. Is she okay?"
"Some of her fingers are broken." Dana turned to look at him. "She's partially burned from the fire and she's in traction."
"Can I see her?" Jason stood up.
"Briefly." Dana replied with an air of medical knowledge. "She was just given some sedatives and she'll be going to be falling to sleep soon." She watched as Jason turned quickly out of the waiting room. She unconsciously wished for a guy in her life that had the same concern for herself. Mulder was too much of a colleague to her and a frustrating one at that.
"There had to have been a trace of Strickland in the building as it burned down." Mulder started talking again. "Nothing could have survived the fire we started."
"Mulder," Dana rolled her eyes exasperatingly. "The fire inspector searched the building and had the pool drained. They found no body, six feet tall or sixty feet tall."
"Then she got out."
"A vampire out at sunrise?"
"She wasn't a vampire." Mulder repeated himself as he realized Scully was being facetious. "I don't know what she was, but I'm sure that Ally found out and now that answer may be buried deep with her mind."
"You try forcing her to remember and she could never be normal again." Dana crossed her arms exasperatingly.
"Ally?" Jason poked his head into her hospital room far from the waiting room. On the bed before him, she was being kept in traction from stress to her spine. One of her arms was bandaged with random fingers of both her hands kept immobile by steel rods. Her face peeked out from her partially bandaged head as her eyes turned to acknowledge his presence.
"Hi…." She replied drowsily. "You look like hell."
"I feel like it." Jason lightly kissed her lips. "I just want you to know that I'll take care of Maddie and getting her to school. I'll also be by your side as much as possible." He paused as she beamed up to him. "Do you recall anything from last night?"
"Only what I was told." Ally blinked her eyes. She wasn't comfortable being trussed up as she was, but at least she was going to sleep. "I heard I had a client who tried to kill me. I don't think I like forgetting something like that. Could you tell me what happened?"
"Ally," Jason was nearly on top of her just to look into her eyes. "Trust me, you don't want to know what I saw. I'm not even sure of what I saw to tell the truth. I can tell you that I came so close to losing you last night that I couldn't think of anything else. You've got this magic in you that I could never find again." Ally tiredly and wearily beamed up to him as he kissed her again.
"I can say one thing." Jason continued. "You will never have anything to fear from anyone named Melissa Strickland ever again."
PROLOGUE
The date on the calendar read January 9, 2149. Captain Johnathan Archer was in his Air Force uniform heading to his office as he perused and familiarized himself with a new craft being built called Enterprise. It was going to be the prototype for a series of ships capable of outer space travel. He was excited about it and his plans were to pick his own crew to man the huge craft. It was going to be bigger than an aircraft carrier on the planet and it was going to go faster than any Blackbird-class jet on the planet. Turning to his office, he looked at the backlog of files piling up on his assistant's desk and groaned under his breath out of frustration.
"Lieutenant Robinson," Archer turned to a uniformed officer in the hall. "Have you seen my new assistant? He hasn't arrived yet."
"No sir," Robinson paused before an old photo of a Jupiter-class sleeper ship on the wall of the corridor. The outdated ship was once used to send colonists to known habitable worlds in the known sector of space, but they were fazed out because of a loss of three crafts. One of which included distant relatives on his father's. "But then a lot of our personnel are constantly being re-directed at the last minute." He continued.
"Great," Archer mused with an irritated posture. "I would really like to finish up all my old business before my new command starts. Try and grab some ensigns for me, would you?" He strided past his assistant's old desk to his office.
"Yes sir," Robinson saluted and started to turn and then thought of something else and turned back to the seasoned captain. "Sir, if you don't mind me asking," He started. "Are you any relation to…"
"Doctor Samuel Beckett?" Archer recognized the request. "Not to my knowledge, but I do get asked quite often about my resemblance to the Father of Quantum Science." He mused a bit before noticing another presence behind the young lieutenant. Dressed in a current Air Force uniform, the enchanting young lady looked up with vibrant blue eyes and alabaster skin accentuated by her ebony black hair. Her face was strictly no nonsense, but a perfect Olympian sparkle danced through her rich azure eyes.
"Sir," She saluted him respectfully. "Lieutenant Allison Marie McBeal reporting for duty. I have been assigned as your new assistant." A mischievous glow filled her face as she started smiling at her new assignment.
END
SIXTH SEASON CAST:
Michael Germann - Mark Hamill
Deanna Germann - Carrie Fisher
Jack MacNichol - Harrison Ford
Carter Bellows - William Shatner
Jefferson Smith – Billy Mumy
Brenda Krakowski-Smith – Angela Cartwright
Courtney Ross – Zoe Trilling
Jenny Liu – Kelly Hu
Amy Shepard – Ashley Judd
STARRING:
Jason Alexander as J.W. Drake, Shannen Doherty as Melissa Strickland, Bill Mumy as Lt. Robinson and Scott Bakula as Captain Johnathan Archer