Chapter 12

"August 16th, 2000," Astrid stated as she walked toward Mulder through Walter's lab. "That's the day that necklace appeared."

He stared at her. It had just been yesterday that he'd told Olivia about the cross. He'd shared its significance without any real hope of answers.

"How do you know? How did you find out?" he asked.

"I called the staff at the hospital and asked. The nurse who first noticed it on you found it noteworthy enough to write it in her diary. I've asked them to see if they have any surveillance footage from that day, but it's a long shot. Unless there's an incident or lawsuit, they only save surveillance footage for sixty days."

"August 2000?" he repeated.

"August 16th of the year 2000. Long time ago."

"It still sounds like the future to me."

Astrid smiled. "That has got to be weird."

"Were you even born back then?"

"Hey! I'm older than I look. By about six months."

Mulder chuckled. But his levity only lasted a moment. The date was something, but it wasn't likely to lead anywhere. He'd contacted Scully's mother to see if she knew anything. Mrs. Scully had wept over the phone—tears of happiness that her daughter's partner and friend had recovered mixed with tears of sadness at the reminder of her loss—but she claimed she hadn't heard from Scully since her disappearance, and that as far as she knew Scully's cross had disappeared with her.

Astrid interrupted Mulder's reverie. "I'm also getting reports for any ambulances reported stolen in October 1998. Again, it's a long shot, but I'll let you know if anything turns up."

"Thank you."

Mulder had a strange dream that night. It started with the night sky, the Milky Way. Among the stars were dark shapes, like black clouds. He stared at them, trying to figure out what the shapes were. Then he saw Scully's face. She looked back at him.

"Mulder?" Her voice sounds distant and slow, as if it reached him through water.

He reached for her, but he couldn't touch her.

Three days later Mulder got an invitation to meet with Nina Sharp at the Massive Dynamic headquarters in New York.

Her office was crisp and ultramodern, though with an understated elegance.

"Mr. Mulder, thank you for coming." She shook his hand warmly. "Please have a seat."

He sat back in the ergonomic office chair across the desk from hers.

"Nice office," he said.

"I'm glad you like it. I suppose you're wondering why I asked you here."

"Yeah, but I figure you'll tell me if I just sit here long enough. You're busier than I am these days."

"Quite possibly. As you know, Massive Dynamic cooperates extensively with Fringe Division. Astrid has shared what she found concerning your shooting and Agent Scully's disappearance with us. We have access to resources the FBI simply doesn't. We know the cross you're wearing now, the one you believe belonged to Agent Scully, was found around your neck by hospital staff on the 16th of August, 2000. They removed it and stored it with your belongings as a possible strangulation hazard. The date was interesting."

"Why is that?" he asked.

"Well, it's a long story. There is a group you may have come across if you've been looking into Fringe cases, a group called ZFT."

"Yeah, I read about them. They were behind some of the Pattern events."

"Precisely. They were trying to awaken an army of soldiers with special abilities. Paranormal abilities. Individuals who were treated with cortexiphan as children. Olivia was one of them. What we know from their records is that ZFT was not the only organization doing such experiments. On July 3l, 2000, ZFT broke into a hospital in Bulgaria rumored to be a front for experiments into telepathy and ESP. The break-in was unsuccessful, in that the responsible party destroyed their records before ZFT could get to them. The patients at the hospital-or test subjects if you will-many of them were sent to other hospitals with a variety of neurological symptoms. Others, a select few, were abducted by the ZFT operatives in an attempt to essentially reverse-engineer the experiments. But according to ZFT's own records, some subjects were able to escape in the confusion. We tracked down some of them, a few who made it back to their families. They'd initially disappeared after traffic accidents, hiking trips, political unrest...and many of them had something in common: they'd been reported as having some manifestation of psychic abilities before being taken."

"You think Scully may have been one of them?"

"The timing makes sense," Nina replied. "But I suppose you would know better than I would: did Agent Scully exhibit any psychic abilities these organizations might have been interested in?"

Mulder thought of the vision of her father Scully had the night he died, how when he'd been missing she had been sure for reasons she couldn't explain that he was still alive. Then there was the connection he had so often felt with her, a connection deeper than words. Someone familiar with their reports might have seen that.

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe."

"Well, food for thought," Nina said. "For my part, I certainly hope she is still alive. I would be very interested in what she has to say. Would you like to get in touch with one of the liberated patients?"

"Could you arrange that?"

"Most certainly. One of the former patients lives in Montreal now. Let me make a call and see when he's available."

Nina Sharp was a woman who didn't waste time. In twenty minutes, Mulder was sitting in front of a large screen skyping with the former test subject, a man named Faruq Karim.

"Thank you for taking some time to talk to us, Mr. Karim," Nina said.

"Anytime," he replied.

"This is FBI Agent Fox Mulder. If you don't mind recounting it again, he would like to hear about your experience in the hospital."

Faruq took a deep breath, and nodded. "I still don't remember very much. I was in a constant mental fog while I was there. I don't remember getting there."

"What sort of things did they do there?" Mulder asked.

"They gave me shots, they put wires on my head, they kept me in a tank with no light and no sound. They kept me in that tank for...hours, I think. It felt like days. You can't keep track of time in there."

"Sensory deprivation," Mulder muttered.

"Mr. Karim, do you happen to recognize this woman?" She held up a picture of Scully, an enlarged version of her ID badge photo.

He looked at it, then nodded slowly. "I think she may have been at the hospital, but her head was shaved. But yes, I'm fairly sure I recognize her face."

"Did you talk to her? Do you know what happened to her?" Mulder asked.

"I didn't talk to her. They tried to keep us separated. I didn't see her the day of the escape. I'm sorry I can't be more help."

"You've helped us more than you know," Nina said. "Thank you, Mr. Karim."

After the call, Mulder sat lost in thought. If Faruq Karim was right, Scully hadn't been killed, she'd been experimented on. But if that was true, what happened to her when ZFT interrupted the experiment?