Chapter Two - Extreme Incredulity
August 19th, 2000
6:03 a.m.
The weight of a strange arm pinning him to the bed made Mulder's heart jackhammer in his chest. For three seconds he squeezed his eyes more tightly shut, imagining the worst. It was the alien bounty hunter, returned to finish him off. Or perhaps he'd fallen into the hands of the smoking bastard again, who was unsatisfied with kidnapping Scully for wild goose chases of late, and thought that his brain was needed to be prodded again. Or maybe it was Krycek come to bump off the competition or-
Hair tickled his nose, and he nearly sneezed. None of the villains likely to attack him while he was helplessly asleep had long hair, and even if they did they probably wouldn't get any closer than they needed to shot or stab him, so he at last cracked his eyelids open. And come to think of it, most villains probably wouldn't have the silk sheets he'd felt under his fingers all along. When he moved to crane his neck to see her, Scully mumbled something in her sleep and pulled away from his chest, but burrowed against his side. Which might have been nice if it wasn't already 75 degrees out and rising.
Still, he grinned as he let his head fall back on the pillow. There was no need in the world to tell Scully that the first emotion he'd upon waking in her bed was fear. Knowing her, she probably wouldn't have been terribly surprised. He stretched his legs and contemplated hiding her clothes so they'd be late for work.
"Mulder, have you seen my bra?" Scully looked up at him as he put his pants on, and he had to make his face a mask of innocence.
"I don't think so, no."
"I don't know what's wrong with me, I keep losing things. I swear that I left it with the clothes I washed yesterday."
Mulder shrugged. "I lose things all the time. I misplaced my favorite Knicks jersey for six months last year."
"But your apartment is a mess."
Rather than protest, he simply nodded. There was no sense lying to either of them about the state of his place. "At least I can find the fish every day."
"At least."
"Hey, it's not like they're dogs or cats, they can't alert me with noise if there's a problem."
"Good point," Scully said with a slight smirk. "Don't ever let me ask you to water my plants."
"That's not fair, I'm dependable. And children and animals love me."
"Especially cows."
"Now you're just being mean," he groused. But his eyes were smiling. "Maybe if you're having memory problems you can try some of that Ginko Biloba stuff they're always hawking on TV."
Scully wrinkled her nose. "No thanks. That sort of thing isn't regulated by the FDA. Just help me find my bra, would you?"
Hoover Building
8:15 a.m.
Everything went to hell almost as soon as they stepped into the basement. The phone rang, and it was Skinner with the terse message "My office. Now."
After sneaking a quick look at a poker-faced Scully, Mulder shuffled his feet and walked to the elevator. He let her push the button.
Standing in the elevator he kept meaning to talk to Scully. If they were going to be called to the carpet for fraternization they should strategize. Form some sort of defense. He glanced at her quickly. Did she even know why they were being called up stairs? She should be as nervous as he was, if she knew. She didn't look nervous.
A bing sound announced their floor, and Scully stepped out without hesitation as soon as the doors swung open. Mulder trailed after her like a duckling. A nervous duckling.
The air in Skinner's office was already fraught with tension the second they stepped through the door. At his desk Skinner was quietly fuming, and one look at him made Mulder wish that the ground would open and swallow him. They were screwed.
Skinner cleared his throat. "The local police called me this morning to help deal with a situation."
Mulder blinked in confusion; he couldn't think of a reason that the DC police would have any interest in his personal life.
"What situation is that, sir?" Scully asked calmly. Mulder quietly admired her for that.
"Philip North turned himself in today." Skinner fixed them with a fierce look. "For the murder of the identical John Doe cooling his heals in the morgue. Did he say anything yesterday that would have suggested that this revelation was coming?"
"No sir," Scully said before turning to look at Mulder.
"Not us," he blurted out in relief, earning strange looks from both of them. "Um, that's to say that if he'd told anyone about his intentions to confess it hadn't been information he'd shared with Agent Scully or me."
Skinner nodded "I suspected that would be the case. However I'll need you to sit in on his statement. The police haven't taken it yet, in anticipation of your joining them."
"We're on our way," Mulder assured him before beating a hasty retreat.
"Why are you acting so weird?" Scully hissed as they reached the car.
He gave her a sheepish grin. "I thought he was on to us."
"About what?" she asked blankly.
"You know, us," Mulder stressed the last word.
"Oh Mulder. He doesn't suspect a thing."
"He doesn't? Why not?"
"We're discreet," Scully explained.
This came as a surprise to him, but he kept it to himself.
For once, the police seemed glad to see them. Mulder suspected that it threw off their world views when they didn't have to hunt for the bad guy but had him show up ready to be arrested. He didn't blame them; it would have surprised him too.
North had been left alone in an interrogation room, and he looked like a wreck, kneading the bill of his baseball cap. They hadn't cuffed him, and they'd given him a soda, which made Mulder suspect that they didn't think it was a genuine criminal they had on their hands. As he and Scully took their seats across from the man, he had his doubts as well.
An officer with a tape recorder gave North a bored look and said, "Go on and tell your story now."
"It was kill or be killed," North claimed in an anxious tone. "I was waking my dog in the woods when it happened. Casey suddenly went crazy, barking like mad and surging ahead so vigorously that she nearly pulled my shoulder out of the socket. I looked where here eyes were fixed, and immediately noticed that something was wrong. It's kind of hard to explain, but there was this haze, and a guy was in the middle of it. And it was me."
He looked up with glassy eyes. "I couldn't believe it, there was an exact duplicate of me, and the look in his eyes, it chilled me. I wasn't surprised when I saw that he held a gun, or when he flew at me. There was a scuffle and...he got shot. I didn't mean for it to happen, but it did."
"Could I talk to you outside, Mulder?" Scully asked, standing abruptly.
"Um, sure." Mulder shot North an apologetic look before following his partner.
He caught up with her in a dark corner that the only appeal of seemed to be the bench she was perched on. He had a fleeting image of another appeal a dark corner could have, but tried to erase it from his mind and focus on work.
"So...what do you think of his story?" Mulder asked, testing the waters.
"I think this story is crap. Whatever his connection is, it can't be as simple as 'I saw my crazy double and had to shoot him'." She frowned when he didn't immediately agree with her. "You don't believe him, do you?"
The question led to some mental squirming. On one hand he wanted to agree with her to make her happy because they were involved which heightened his desire to please her. On the other hand he didn't actually agree with her... "I don't know. The story does sound somewhat contrived, but what if it did happen?"
Scully put a hand on her hip." And what if horses grew wings?"
Her remark made him wince a little. "So you're thinking it was just murder, then, identical killer and victim not withstanding?"
"I think North is being dealt with by the right people - the police."
"There's no X-File?"
"There's no X-File, Mulder. We'll tell the police this is there problem, then go back to the office and write this up for Skinner."
On the surface it seemed to him that she was probably right, but as they drove back he couldn't rid himself of a nagging feeling that there was more to the death of John Doe that couldn't be explained away through a normal police investigation than could be.
August 21st, 2000
Basement Office
1:12 p.m.
A noise interrupted Mulder's admiration of his pencil collection in the ceiling. He glanced over at the door and noticed that there was someone, probably a man, standing in the shadowed doorway. Whoever it was, he shouldn't have been there.
"Excuse me, you can't be down here," Mulder said, causing his uninvited visitor to turn. When he did, Mulder saw that "boy" would have been a more accurate description than man, since he guessed that the lanky kid with spiky brown hair was in his late teens.
"It's the right guy," the kid muttered himself before turning a blue-eyed gaze to the irritated FBI agent. "You're Fox Mulder aren't you?"
"Special Agent Mulder," Mulder snapped. "And you are?"
"Where's Dana Scully?" the kid asked instead as he took a few steps towards the lone desk.
"Doing an autopsy." Mulder glared at the young man; the police had begged her to double check the John Doe's cause of death, and he wasn't happy about being reminded of that. "Who did you say you were?"
"Oh, I guess I didn't. I'm Charlie Jr, but most people call me Chip." He extended a hand, which wasn't taken, and let it drop to his side again.
Mulder studied him for moment. There was something familiar looking about him, even though he was sure they'd never met. "Are you related to agent Scully?" he asked, remembering that years before while on a case in Pennsylvania that Scully had mentioned having a nephew before Matthew's birth, which mean the mysterious Charles Scully must have had children already since Missy certainly hadn't.
Chip's head bobbed. "I'm Dana's nephew. Yours too," he added.
Mulder spoke slowly, trying to maintain his relatively calm exterior. "That's not possible. My only sibling died as child. Unless you're under the mistaken impression I'm married to your aunt Dana," he suggested, feeling stupid for having jumped to the conclusion he had.
"No, I know you're not married..." A storm of emotions crossed the boy's face as he obviously tried to think of what to say. "Perhaps I've misspoken. You're famous for keeping an open mind. Do you really?"
"I like to think so," Mulder reluctantly admitted. He wondered how he'd gotten the reputation that the kid spoke of, however. Had he been the subject of gossip at a Scully family dinner? He just couldn't picture Scully laughing at his antics at the dinner table.
"I am the nephew of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. But not your nephew, exactly," Chip added.
"Well that clears things up," Mulder groused. "Do you mind explaining how that could be possible?"
"Have ever read novel 'The Gunslinger' by Stephen King?" the boy asked, rather abruptly and bizarrely in Mulder's opinion.
"No, I think I missed that one."
"At one point Jake, who is dying, says to the main character Roland 'Go then- there are other worlds than these.' And he's right, there are other worlds."
It took Mulder's brain a couple of seconds to figure out where the boy was going. "You believe that there are other worlds, other Earths?"
"Yes."
"And that you're from one of them?"
The boy's eyes lit up with what was clearly unanticipated delight. "Yes! That's exactly right. My mother was right, you are really smart."
"Your mother, my sister Samantha Mulder?"
"Well, a Samantha Mulder anyway," the boy agreed. "Samantha Scully, though, now."
"Did someone pay you to come here with this story?" Mulder asked, keeping his tone conversational. "I'm not mad at you, but it's not considered polite to do this sort of thing to a government agent."
The boy didn't catch onto his suspicions at first, because he said. "No, I volunteered-" Then he looked crestfallen. "You don't believe me."
"Would you believe you?" Mulder asked.
"Since I am me, I guess I would."
Mulder shook his head to himself before trying again." Okay, what if you were me?"
"Yeah...maybe not," Chip agreed. "But maybe if I gave me, I mean you, proof, I would."
The conversation was beginning to make Mulder's head hurt. A lot. "Do you have some sort of proof?"
"Maybe?" Chip sounded a little doubtful, which Mulder didn't think was a good sign. "Okay, how about this. You've got a case right now that you can't solve-"
"Which is hardly unusual," Mulder pointed out.
Chip seemed not to hear. "And it involves someone who was murdered, but they're still alive."
"How did you know that?" Mulder's eyes widened. They hadn't released any information to the public yet.
"I know that because someone disappeared completely from my 'world'. The living person? That's not someone from this world, it's someone from my world."
"Not according to them," Mulder said faintly.
"Of course not, they don't want people to know that they assumed their this-world's counterpart's life. That's a good way to get into the loony bin."
"You don't seem worried about that..." Mulder muttered.
"I don't have a this-world counterpart." Chip remarked before narrowing his eyes." Look, the person who created my world, you knew him when you were a kid."
"Who?"
"James Nightwoods."
"Jimmy disappeared the year before my sister did," Mulder said.
"He didn't. He made our world by accident. In 1972," Chip said emphatically. "1972, do you understand now?"
"No, but I'm pretty sure that you're going to tell me that my sister was never kidnapped or murdered in your world," Mulder said without humor.
"She wasn't. But she's in trouble now, we all are."
"If my sister exists in your world, does that mean I do too?"
"Yup," Chip agreed. "And so does Dana."
"So why don't you get them to help you with whatever the problem is?"
"For one, they're not FBI agents in our world. And for another, they're dying. All the adults are." Chip gave him a rueful smile. "At least I think they are, anyway. Potentially dying. I'm not an expert, but I know this thing is trouble."
Mulder blinked. That wasn't the answer he was expecting. "They're dying? Of what?"
"Some sort of disease. It's been kept hush hush, but I found a picture...things grow in people and tear them apart. At least two people so far."
"The alien virus," Mulder breathed, not realizing that at some point he'd stopped humoring the boy. "But Scully and I ended that."
"Only here," Chip said sadly. "No one was looking out for the danger in our world. Look, James asked me to bring you and Dana Scully back to help, will you?"
"You're saying I can go to your world?" Mulder asked in disbelief.
"Sure. I know exactly where to go. It's not really all that far from here."
"How could I possibly-"
"Mulder?" Scully's voice called from the doorway. "Who are you talking to?"
Not knowing what else to do, Mulder pointed at the boy. "This is our nephew, Chip Scully."
"Our nephew?" Scully asked, but didn't wait for Mulder's reply. "Charlie's son is only eight, and his name is Aaron, not Chip. What year were you born, anyway?"
"1982," Chip answered, confirming Mulder's suspicions about his age.
"No. When you were born Charlie would only have been-"
"Fifteen. My father was fifteen when I was born. My mother was eighteen," he added.
"My sister wouldn't have seduced a young boy," Mulder said flatly.
"What? Your sister? He means Samantha?"
"Yeah. It's a long story, but Chip claims to be Samantha and Charles' son. But my sister would never have-"
"You only knew her until she was eight, so how can you be sure about what her choices ten years later might have been?" Scully asked. "Not that I believe any of this," she added as a disclaimer when he scowled at her.
"If there was any seduction, from the way my parents tell it, it was mutual." Chip shuddered a little, apparently as unthrilled as any other teen to be privy to details about his parents' sex lives. "Dad was just about failing math, so his parents hired a high school student to be his tutor, because she was a math wiz-"
"Samantha always got As in math," Mulder muttered mostly to himself. Chip stared at him a moment, wondering if he had something else to say. It didn't seem like he did.
"They got along. Really well. I arrived about a year after they first met."
The look on Scully's face was one of disgust. "How did the grandparents take it?"
"About how you'd expect them to. They were pissed. There was talk about putting me up for adoption, but of course once I was born, they loved me." Chip grinned at them. "Mom and I lived with Grandma and Grandpa Mulder. My parents had to wait to get married until Dad was sixteen. Apparently I slept through the wedding."
"What happened after they got married?" Scully asked, suddenly looking more fascinated than disgusted which surprised Mulder. Maybe she could picture her little brother sleeping with his tutor more easily than Mulder could think of his sister playing a role in that. "Did your dad drop out of school and get a job?"
Chip shook his head. "Grandpa Scully gave Dad an ultimatum - they'd only let him get married if he promised to finish school. So he did. He was the only guy in his graduating class with a three-year-old."
"Wow." Mulder tried to picture his sister at twenty-one, holding a little boy on her lap as she watched her eighteen-year-old husband receive his diploma. Suddenly disgusted by his turn of thoughts he wished he could take a walk to clear his head. Since he couldn't, he decided to poke holes in the boy's story instead. "Now tell Scully about how you're from another world and want to take us there." He commanded before turning to Scully. "See, it's not your real brother or my real sister he thinks are his parents, but people from another world."
"Oh, please."
"It's true!" Chip cried desperately. "I can show you too. Look, just let me take you there and James Nightwoods can explain everything to you. I can't believe he didn't tell me that this would be so hard."
"Jamie?" Scully asked. "I haven't seen him since I was six."
"You knew him too?" Mulder asked in surprise. "I guess it's a small world after all."
"Worlds," Chip corrected. They both glared at him. "What do you have to lose from letting me show you? If I'm lying you can have me arrested. "
"Or committed," Mulder said.
"Or that. Doesn't it mean something that I'm willing to risk those things? It's only a few miles from here so you wouldn't be wasting much time, either."
Mulder expected Scully to insist that they just throw the kid out of the office, but she didn't. "What the hell, let's go with him."
"Chip, go wait outside," Mulder commanded. As soon as the door shut, he gave Scully a puzzled look. "Are you sure you want to encourage this sort of delusion?"
"Even I get tired of endless skepticism. Wouldn't it be nice if one of the weird theories you usually had nicely wrapped up a case for once? I went over my findings again, and found nothing new to explain this case, so maybe..."
"Do you have a fever?" The fact that she was willing to follow Chip to God only knows where minutes after meeting him caused Mulder to worry. She'd never had such a reckless desire for a case's closure before.
"No, I'm - " She smiled at him. "Just consider it a game, Mulder. This time I play the believer, and you play the skeptic."
He leaned over and nuzzled her neck before whispering. "Just as long as I get to pick the game next time."
"Even though there's only a million and one chance that the kid is telling the truth this is a good way to get rid of him" she whispered hotly into his ear.
"And that's the important thing," he agreed, already thinking about other games they could play later that night. Straightening up, he opened the door. "Lead the way, Chip."
"Really?" Chip's eyes were hopeful.
"What the hell," Mulder replied, motioning with his hand that they should get moving. It didn't take any more than that to get Chip going. He scampered ahead like a puppy, which might have made Mulder smile if he didn't have a sinking feeling in his stomach that something bad was going to happen because they'd agree to see what the boy wanted to show them. He let a hand brush his waist, reassuring himself that his gun was there, if it came to that. All he could hope was that the vague sense of threat he felt had nothing to do with Chip, since he sort of liked the strange kid already.
a/n: I'm posting more because I wrote several chapters before (nine? ten?), not because I've yet been convinced to finish it...