Monica arrived at work early; she wanted to beat John into the office so she could take a minute and find her balance in there again. So at seven am sharp she opened the door and was more than surprised to see John already sitting at his desk reading over something. He saw her walk in right away and stood up, like the gentleman he was.

"Monica hey, I wasn't expecting you for another hour or so yet."

"Yeah well, I wanted to get back into the swing of things before the official start of the business day."

"Right, sure, how are you feeling?"

Monica looked at him suspiciously, she'd wondered how he was going to play this, whether he'd act like everything was ok and pretend things were just as they were. Obviously John didn't want to talk about what had happened when they left the beach that day he and Barbara scattered Luke's ashes, and if he was going to play it like this then so would she.

"I'm fine, thank you for the flowers."

"You're welcome, Dana said you were doing ok, I didn't visit much 'cause I didn't wanna disturb you while you were resting."

"Yeah, well I did plenty of that all right."

"I just didn't want you to think I was avoiding you or anything."

"Why would I think that?"

He looked at her and knew that he'd started this off on the wrong foot. He'd implied that he didn't want to talk about what happened that night, but he so very badly did. He'd blown it now, he didn't call her and he sent a lousy bunch of flowers when she was in the hospital. What a trooper.

"I don't know, I just wasn't sure if you were up to visitors I guess."

"Well, I'm back, and I'm fine. So what's been going on here?"

John filled her in on the situation with his mysterious messenger from the night before and Monica was intrigued. The name M F Luder sounded familiar to her but she couldn't put her finger on why. She wasn't a huge fan of the Lone Gunmen so when John told her he'd already called them and was dropping by that afternoon she was less than keen.

"They're harmless enough, I just don't know that they ever help so much as hinder."

"Well they're looking for the truth Mon, that's what it's all about down here, remember?"

"Yes I remember. But what I'm saying is it's a little odd that this would happen and that you just take it at face value without tracing this person."

"I tried that, there is no record of the messages sent to me last night in the FBI computer logs, nothing."

"Which brings us back to my original question, how late was it, and how tired were you?"

"I hope you're not insinuating that I imagined the whole thing? Because I think you know me better than that Monica."

"I thought I did,"

John resented the conversation they were having and was about to retaliate when the phone rang. He took the call without looking at Monica, and she took the opportunity to walk around the office and regroup. Working here for such a short space of time had had such a huge impact on her life, she hoped she was ready for whatever was going to be thrown at her next.

If something as common and containable as the flu could knock her down so bad, what chance did she stand against the powers that be down on the x-files? She knew she was being paranoid but she couldn't help it, maybe she'd come back to work too soon. Her thoughts were interrupted by John staring at her, she didn't even know she'd been daydreaming.

"What?"

"That was Skinner, he wants to see us right away."

"About what?"

"He didn't say."

"Well. Let's go." They left the office and John closed and locked the door behind him. He didn't wanna take any chances, Monica thought he was being paranoid, things had definitely changed.