Alvarez led Mulder to an industrial squat on the opposite side of the street from the Lawdon diner. He shot one thousand-yard stare down the road, then took a small silver key from his pocket and opened a metal door. The building had once housed a convenience store, but it had gone under when the town went under. Wickham's soldiers weren't the first people to squat here, and they wouldn't be the last. The windows had been blacked out with boot polish and the garage's doors. There were rags and candle stubs and empty booze and chip bags on the floor. It smelled of motor oil, poverty and inadequate ventilation.

Alvarez led him through the convenience store and through another metal door that was partially eaten away by rust. On the other side of the door was a small garage. The doors had been boarded shut. Inside were two men: one very young, practically a boy, sitting on a bucket, with a rifle slung over his shoulder; the other in his mid-twenties, solid, dull-eyed and casual, cleaning his fingernails with a short knife. Both looked up, but neither one startled when Mulder and Alvarez came in.

But Scully did.

She was sitting on a threadbare couch that sat against the far wall, pretending to read a paperback book. She looked unhurt—and possibly unharmed, though it was sometimes difficult to tell with Scully. When she recognized him, the book slipped from her hands, and a complex series of emotions crossed her face: relief, affection, worry.

They hadn't even tied her hands.

#

For about twenty seconds, Mulder got really ridiculously stupid. His thoughts slowed to a crawl and the slight ringing in his ears became difficult to ignore. The edges of his vision went blurry.

Maybe she saw it, or maybe she just had her own agenda weighing on her mind, because she leaned forward slightly and said, "Fox."

Scully never called him by his first name. He snapped back into the moment, feeling his crisis training take over. He couldn't afford to feel anything close to relief. He needed to be absolutely focused and organized. They were now in the middle of what could quickly transform into a very complex and dangerous hostage situation. If Mulder was right about what was going on here, then these men were the opposite of a guy like Duane Barry. They would never act out of anger, spite or fear. But that didn't make them predictable or stable. For them, the use of violence would depend on a cost-benefit analysis that Mulder could neither understand nor predict. It didn't conform to the normal rules of psychology. In fact, Mulder had been on firmer ground with Duane Barry. But the similarities did not escape him. Neither did the potential outcomes.

Scully kept trying to get his attention. She sat bolt upright and tapped her fingers on the table, her jaw set.

Quantico had been fairly clear on how to deal with these types of incidents. Be deferential, but don't simper. Humanize yourself, but don't turn into teacher's pet. Give the hostage-taker an out; don't escalate the situation. The problem was, if Mulder asked for permission to take Scully and leave—if he asked these guys' permission to do anything—it would change the power dynamic. He had come in here as an authority. He still had his gun. All that what's-your-name-sir and we-all-want-the-same-thing-here stuff wouldn't fly.

If he started acting like a hostage, they might start treating him like one.

So he didn't ask permission, but he did change the situation. He glanced once around the room—to make sure he hadn't missed anything—and sat beside his partner. Was that an escalation? He had come all the way into the room, which suggested a personal investment, and he'd sat down, which suggested he might be here for a while. On the other hand the world always seemed slightly more sensible when he looked at it from this perspective.

Her book was sitting open on the table.

She said, "What happened to you?"

"Nothing." He leaned over to look at the title page. Success in the 90s: Proven Strategies for Professional Women. He chewed his lip. "Just getting my ass kicked across North Carolina."

"Uh-huh. What did they use, a brick? Are you dizzy? Nauseous?"

"I'm fine." He paused. "My ears are ringing."

"I bet."

He could tell she wanted to do something for him. He didn't mind. He was feeling pretty pathetic and wouldn't mind being fretted over. But there were unspoken aspects to this conversation. Superscript and subscript. Mulder was paying close attention to the men and learning all about success in the 90s, while keeping pace with the conversation. He realized his hands were shaking.

So did she. She slipped her fingers between his and murmured through her teeth. "You are in outer space right now. What is going on out there?"

Winn, her bloodshot eyes an indictment; Jiang's twisted leaf; You don't want to be patient zero in a global epidemic. "Later."

"OK," she said. "But settle down."

Scully. Now there was a person who deserved to have only good things happen to her for the whole rest of her life. Not because of her intuition—though that could be very subtle, when she got out of her own way. Because while she steadied him with one hand, she rested a finger on her book.

It was covered in dense writing. Every inch of empty space on the inside cover and title page was covered with neat, dense notes. A brief first-person account of Wickham's death. Descriptions of the men. A time log. And her personal notes and observations. Her own mini X-File. The sentence she was pointing at was: Mulder there is something medically wrong with them. Underneath she had slipped into medical jargon, noting a substantial impairment of executive function—suggests significant/diffuse neurological damage—Gulf War Syndrome?

He shook his head. He found the pen she'd been using and wrote, IT'S POLITICAL.

Scully's look said: What does that mean?

"I'll show you," he told her. "I need a phone."

She blinked and spread her hands. So do I. Welcome to this situation. So glad you could join me.

He turned.

Wickham's soldiers were watching them like it was some kind of TV show.

"I said, I need a phone," Mulder repeated. He snapped his fingers and extended a hand. "Look, kids. I'm not really interested in handling your problems until somebody does something about mine. So unless one of you puts a phone in my hand right now…"

The men exchanged a three-cornered glance. Then Alvarez took a cheap-looking cell phone from his pocket and placed it in Mulder's open hand.

Mulder pressed the on button.

Then he hesitated. 911 would bring cops, ambulances, and a bloody firefight, just in time for the nine o'clock news. Two FBI agents were slain in a bizarre incident… Not good enough. Next on the list: an FBI crisis response team. They could be here in half an hour, but that meant a SWAT team, klieg lights, a chopper, a team of professional negotiators. And they be really pissed if they didn't get to shoot or arrest somebody by dawn.

Well. There was always Skinner.

Scully was staring at him.

"They want what everyone wants," he explained. He put his feet on the table and leaned back. He closed his eyes. His head still throbbed in time with his pulse but he felt easy and calm, skating over the surface of a dark pool. He did enjoy pulling a rabbit out of his hat for her every now and then. She let go of his hand, and he opened his eyes halfway. "Someone to tell them the right thing to do."

He made a decision and dialed.

#

Raleigh, North Carolina
7:05 p.m.

Starvation set in around dinnertime, which posed a problem, since they had planned for a conference and only packed a couple of jars of peanut butter. Frohike suggested pizza. That was a mistake. It stirred up the old debate about whether the pepperoni industry's connection to organized crime was more of a security risk or more of a social issue. If it was the former, all they needed to do was take the usual precautions. If it was the latter, then it was a question of whether the Lone Gunmen were more of a news organization or more of an ideological movement.

A large pepperoni pizza cost about fifteen bucks. Say a dollar of that went to the mafia. Did that compromise them? You know, ethically?

The positions were entrenched and battle lines drawn. Langley was a crusader, while Byers made a spirited case for engaging with some version of reality. Frohike sprawled on the bed, thumbed through Forensic Pathology, and sighed. Welcome to life as a professional paranoid in 1995. He wondered if Greenpeace got into these snits over genetically modified carrots. "Why don't we just order cheese?"

Byers and Langley stared at him.

Frohike lifted his head. "What did I say?"

A soft beeping noise interrupted them. By now there were half a dozen pieces of technology in the room that could make a noise like that. Frohike patted his pockets. Byers zeroed in on the ham radio—not Norma Jean, but the little one, the handy-talkie.

Langley won the prize. He said, "Huh. That's weird."

"What?" said Byers and Frohike at the same time.

Langley typed something into his laptop, smacked the case, then threw up his hands. "One of the burner phones just came back on."

"Just one?" said Byers.

The motel phone trilled. They all turned.

It rang again.

Pause.

Again.

"Well," said Frohike. "Who wants to pick it up?"

#

It rang thirteen times. Then Mulder heard the line connect. "It's me," he said.

Silence.

"I'm not kidding. Scully, tell 'em it's me." He held up the phone.

She folded her arms. "It's him."

Mulder clamped the phone between his shoulder and his ear. "How about that?"

Frohike said, "Wow. How'd she find you?"

Mulder rolled his eyes. "Do you still have that spare tank in the van?"

"We've got a functional range of two hundred miles."

"X marks the spot."

"We're on our way," said Frohike.

"Great," Mulder said, but Frohike had already hung up. Mulder put the phone in his pocket. "Scully, I have a question for you, and it's gonna sound a little crazy and maybe irrelevant, but just answer it."

"OK," she said, hesitantly.

"If these guys were sick, like with a virus, and then they got better, could they spread it now?"

"No," she said, eyeing the men. "Actually—no. If they were sick, but they aren't symptomatic anymore, then they'd be immune."

"They couldn't track it around on their shoes or something?"

"Well, that would depend on the virus," she said. "I mean if you're talking about something like a cold or… or the flu, then it can only live on surfaces for a few hours. Mulder—"

He held up a hand.

Alvarez slouched against the rusted door, looking nearly asleep. The kid with the rifle sat next to him, and the guy with the knife leaned against the wall. They read as a team but they were also difficult to engage. They defied empathy, even classification. They want what everyone wants, he'd told Scully, but that wasn't entirely true. The responsibility was bigger than that. They had a substantial impairment of executive function. They needed someone to make decisions for them. Eventually they would spiral out of control without an ordinary person at the helm.

When you were talking about trained killers, how could you abdicate a responsibility to be that person?

How could you accept it?

"All right." Mulder took a deep breath. "Here's what we're going to do."