Five
"Why me?" Mulder hissed as he sat in the mess hall. He and Scully had been attempting to have their semi-rare dinner in the communal hall when Michael had come over and started hissing into his ear. Opposite them, Scully was chewing on her slice of pizza and observing with raised eyebrows, her long hair out and wavy around the upper arms of her tailored denim jacket.
She knew Mulder was uncomfortable with the sudden violation of his personal space and she also knew Michael was pushing his luck asking her partner for favours. Since Michael had attacked her in her operating theatre at an opportune moment some time previously he had not been Mulder's favourite person. Or hers, for that matter, but she hid it better.
"What's going on?" she asked. Mulder leaned across the table still glaring, and Michael sat down beside him so he could listen. So much for a private conversation, they both thought.
"Michael thinks we should tell everyone here the situation."
"How much of the situation?" Scully asked, her gaze not drifting from Mulder. To her, Michael was no different from all the other people in their lives who had tried to get the 'inside track' on their partnership or their work by hanging around them either because they had been assigned or because they were curious. Scully had never, not once, allowed those types to get what they wanted, and she had already shared enough of herself with Michael. He could not draw her focus from the man who had spoken to her. He wouldn't.
"Not the alien plague bit, that would freak them out. But the plot to kill the supersoldiers," Mulder answered. He was staring back into her eyes but his expression was unreadable.
"How do we know there aren't supersoldier spies here?" Scully asked.
"The supersoldiers are an American invention," Michael whispered. "You're the only ones here who could be spies, and you don't think they haven't thought of that already?"
"Why would they think that?" Mulder asked incredulously, glancing over his shoulder at Michael and frowning.
"Because Dana hasn't died," Michael replied.
"You mean you didn't kill her," Mulder growled. Scully reached across the narrow table and let her hand rest over the top of his, her thumb slipping under his palm.
Mulder was pressing his hand against the table with so much strength and tension Scully knew her touch was almost useless, but it did quiet him. None of them wanted a scene. Nobody else knew what Michael had done in a moment of weakness, or perhaps a moment of truth; for all the time she had spent with him Scully still was not sure. Eddie proved to her that not all aliens were bad, but did Michael prove they weren't all good, or merely that they could be as ignorant of outsiders as an ordinary human?
"What would telling them achieve?" Scully asked. "The science is something Eddie and I need to work out."
"I thought we could harvest some other things to take to the humans," Michael reasoned. "I presume you're going to want more cotton to make bandages and things like that, right?"
"Oh," Scully whispered, blushing slightly at her oversight. "I suppose. I have plenty in storage but, well it depends on what sort of drop we're talking about, and when, and how."
"Once the supersoldiers are defeated that won't be a problem, will it?" Mulder asked.
"Can we wait that long?" Scully asked seriously, frowning with concern. "Eddie and I have decided to trial two methods of liquefaction and experimentation with magnetic fields, but even if one of those is successful we still need time to produce, well, a lot. We can only produce small amounts at a time. It might take a while."
"I don't think we have a choice. We can't just walk it in with the supersoldiers guarding the coast," Mulder explained. "Maybe he's right, Scully. Maybe we should tell them. Maybe 'you' should tell them."
"What?" she huffed, unimpressed. "Why me?"
"Because you're the only one here who can explain it without stuttering or talking in confusing circles," he replied with a small smile. "Because you're a natural teacher. You taught me."
"Oh please," she teased, grinning. She glanced at Michael and his smile widened at his sense of victory. "Call a meeting," she requested.
"Now?" he asked. She nodded, and in less than a second the entire second tower was filled with a low, rhythmic rumbling. It was a much less alarming than the high-pitched emergency signal she had heard before, and she knew from her instructions upon arriving that the low humming was a call for everyone to report to the mess hall.
Scully stood up and began pacing, running through a quick plan of what she was going to say. Michael went to talk but in her periphery she saw Mulder grab his arm to silence him. He knew not to interrupt her while she was rehearsing a presentation. And this time she did not even have anything to rehearse. It would be impromptu, she would be faced with a lot of questions, and she would need to be as diplomatic and as clear as possible.
Not everybody there spoke good English, and they were the only Americans. She knew the general opinion of the rest of the world, and she knew that a lot of them blamed America without actually knowing the truth. And somehow in less time than it took to finish a slice of pizza it had been decided that she, the only woman left in the complex, would have to confirm that truth which they all knew.
She gasped and jumped when Eddie came up behind her and touched her elbow gently. She spun around to face him and he smiled, taking a step back and letting her go but accepting her shock for what it had been, a normal human reaction to an unsuspected touch.
"Don't reveal us," he urged, his smile not leaving him. "Please."
"No, no, I won't, and I won't mention the real reason you're here but I will have to confirm the agreement, I think. I don't know what I'm going to say for how 'I' know though. I don't want to face any anger here, and my country wasn't necessarily known for its diplomatic tact."
"But you are known for it, are you not?" he asked hopefully. Scully smirked.
"I sure hope so!" she teased.
Some minutes later, Eddie nodded to her to let her know the room was complete. It was certainly full, she realised, looking around. The testosterone was stifling. She was surrounded by ninety-two men. It was like being back in Quantico. Although there had been other women there, Scully with her medical background had never quite fit in with them, and she had preferred solitude or being surrounded by men to segregating herself within a clique of women. She knew she could stand up to the room in front of her with the same cool composition that had allowed her to teach science and medicine to others, throughout her career in the FBI and later at her hospital in Virginia. There was just one, little problem, she realised as she looked around.
She could not see them all. Most of the men, none of them younger than thirty, were sitting at the long, narrow tables, but a few were standing around talking. Scully wanted to make sure they could all see her, that they could all look into her eyes as she spoke and trust in her voice and at five foot two in her flat shoes that was currently impossible.
"Scully," Mulder mumbled, suddenly beside her. One of his hands wrapped under the denim of her elbow and urged her towards the seat. She got the idea and glanced at him nervously. He smirked. I won't let you fall, he added silently, assuring her with his expression. She flashed a brief but wide smile in return and allowed him to help her step up.
All eyes were on her as she balanced herself with a wide stance, hands on her hips. She was glad she had left her lab coat in Tower One and that she had gone to their quarters with Mulder first to change before dinner. She knew she looked casual in her dark jeans and jacket and her black shirt, and she knew her orange hair, thick and wavy and long, always caught people's attention. Not that she really wanted them to see her as a woman. That thought made her too uncomfortable, being the only one. She was just glad she looked like them, with no white coat to define her or mark her as different. Because she wasn't, not really.
"Good evening," she stated, projecting her voice coolly and smiling. She knew for a lot of them it was merely lunch time, but it was her dinner time so she let her greeting rest as it was. Time was too complicated for anybody to start arguing. "Thank you to everyone who responded to the signal. I know it was the first time it has been used. I asked for you all to come here today so I could explain what we have been working on in Tower One and what our plans are. First of all, can everyone understand me?" A few men around the room nodded as she quickly scanned the group. All eyes were on her, and that was the most important thing. "If anyone has problems understanding my English I apologise, and you can come and speak to either myself or Mulder and we'll be happy to explain more carefully for you. There are two things I'd like to speak about tonight and I'll try to be brief because I know you all have places to be. But it's necessary that I update you in the work I've been conducting here, because as participants and residents at this complex you deserve to know the truth. As humans, you deserve to know the truth."
"Are you a human?" somebody called out. Laughter flitted around the room and Scully laughed. It wasn't anything she hadn't heard before since arriving.
"Yes I am human," she assured them. "Most of you know that I am a medical doctor. What you do not know is that for ten years I worked for the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, based in Washington DC in America, as a scientist, as a forensic pathologist, as a teacher and as a federal agent. That's relevant to my knowledge here and the role in which I have been afforded in what I am about to describe." Silence descended upon the room and Scully knew it was a stunned silence. Standing in front of them in denim with loose hair that stopped past her waist and needing to stand on a chair to communicate effectively with the room, she knew she did not look very much like a FBI agent. She decided to launch into her explanation, and they could ask disbelieving questions of her later.
"As most of you know you were brought here to help cultivate and protect resources of the earth which were taken from us by an alien race. I don't know how many of you believe in extraterrestrials, or how many of you believe in what you have been told has happened to our world. I don't know how long you have all been here, I don't even know how long I've been here, but I know there has been a lot of time to let it sink in and yet not enough time." A few more nods caught her eyes and she offered them all an understanding smile.
"Tonight I'd like to tell you about something myself and Mulder have been working on that may bring us some hope. What I need to begin with is this; the resources of the Southern Hemisphere have survived, but are being guarded. Not by aliens, but by something which we call a supersoldier. They are a human, made invincible, and were created first by the United States government as part of their defence program.
"They were to be used as soldiers in wars, soldiers who could not be killed by ordinary human weapons. I have seen these supersoldiers in my life before the invasion. I studied them and have fought them. They cannot be beaten by human means. If a bomb was dropped directly onto their heads they would appear to suffer the same fatal human injuries as we would, but very quickly they would heal and return to their normal bodies. They would not even have a scar."
"Are you one?" somebody called out. She suspected it was the same voice who had asked whether or not she was alien.
"Why do you ask that?" Scully pressed.
"Because you're the only woman who's been here who hasn't 'disappeared' or died," he answered. Scully scratched her head.
"I don't know what killed the two women who died sometime after my arrival, and I don't know what happened to the other women here. Nobody has told me. But I can prove to you that I'm not a supersoldier. She removed her denim jacket and held it out to Mulder. Their eyes locked at the sound of wolf-whistles and Mulder offered her an amused but concerned smirk. He did not know what she was going to do. Scully knew he thought she was going to hurt herself in front of them to prove she could not be healed, but what he had forgotten was that she had already hurt herself once, and the evidence was still plainly visible.
"I don't know how many of you can see this," Scully urged, holding her left arm out with the palm facing outwards and pointing to her wrist. The scar from where she had violently and deeply split her skin with a thick, jagged scrap of glass was raised and still a fleshy pink colour several shades pinker than the lily-white inside of her wrist.
"When the North was destroyed," she explained. "At the time I had been alone in my home in Virginia. I journeyed to DC where I had spent a lot of time in my profession and I discovered my mother's body. I believed Mulder to be dead also. In a moment of weakness I attempted to kill myself. A supersoldier would not have contemplated ending their life because their lives cannot end. If I was a supersoldier I would not have scarred at all, let alone so visibly, and I would have felt no emotion at being left alone in a world that had all but ended. I won't lie and say I wasn't distraught, but it turned out I wasn't alone, so I recovered."
Scully paused, glancing at their faces. Satisfied by their open mouths and the men squinting in the back, straining to see the definition on her wrist, she turned back to Mulder for her jacket and slipped it back onto her shoulders. It might have been denim, but she felt more professional in a jacket; she felt more protected. She wanted her wrist covered since she had drawn attention to it. She had never been so blunt about her personal life with strangers, but she knew it was necessary. She HAD to make them trust her.
"I've just told you a supersoldier cannot be killed, but Mulder and I do know of a way. We discovered it in our work with the FBI. There were people in our government who knew about this project but they were high up and most agents did not know. Mulder and I investigated these conspiracies, and I can confirm for you today that the American government knew about the planned alien invasion for many decades, and that it deliberately hid its knowledge from the American people and the rest of the world, though I suspect other governments had some knowledge of their plans at certain times.
"When Mulder and I found out about the supersoldiers, we were pursued by them, and we discovered a way that they could be killed. As I am speaking to you, the supersoldiers are colonising the Southern Hemisphere. They are a generation of invincible humans or robots, but they are controlled by humans. A supersoldier cannot think for itself; it is a machine and a weapon, and it needs a free-thinking instructor behind it, giving it a job or a role. This is one of their weaknesses. The other is a mineral iron oxide called Magnetite. It is found in naturally in several parts of the world. We have a storage of Magnetite here."
"I am currently trying to discover a way which this magnetite can be reproduced and delivered to the supersoldiers, to destroy them. Now before you ask any questions, and I know there will be a lot, I can also confirm that humans have survived in small pockets in the south in areas where Magnetite is contained within the earth. We estimate there may be as few as two thousand people left, but it is enough and we must do everything in our powers here to ensure their survival."
"What happened to everyone else in the south?" one man asked.
"They were killed by the supersoldiers," she replied. "In the North a virus cultivated by the supersoldier program was released to kill all those in the Northern Hemisphere, to allow the resources from those bodies to be taken by the aliens. It was part of the agreement between the aliens and the supersoldiers as to who got each half. In the south, the supersoldiers murdered millions of people because that is what they do, and they were ordered to do so. The supersoldiers know that some humans have survived but are unable to attack the remaining human colonies because they cannot get close enough, and they do not have the electricity required to power long-range missiles."
"So there are actually people still alive?"
"Yes," Scully repeated definitely. "If you have not noticed, this room is not filled with anyone capable of reproducing. If it was just us, we would be extinct in perhaps as little as forty years. The human colonies contain a large number of surviving families and young children. We believe at least one of those colonies is in central South America, and there are also colonies in southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand. They have no electricity and potentially no running water. As pre-existing human resources within those colonies run out, the standard of hygiene will decrease and the risk of communicable disease will increase. Medicine in the colonies is also finite. I suspect they will have access to medications from the local hospitals if there are any in the area, but these will also run out without means of importing or reproducing. We are in the process of getting together a large assortment of various medications and sanitary products to assist these colonies, and within each of your specialties we may require assistance in harvesting and packaging."
"So who saved YOU?" somebody asked. "Why were you and Mulder brought here so late? Was it to do all this stuff? Because you know we were lied to, to get us to come here."
"I know that may be the case with many of you," Scully assured them calmly. "I give you my word that this was not planned. When the invasion came I was in my home after a long double shift at the hospital I worked at, and as far as I was aware it was a normal night. I then survived in the desert for a long period of time by looting the homes of the dead for food and water, and for all that time none of the people behind this complex would have known I was alive. When I came further south with Mulder, we were told by a supersoldier that I would not be allowed into one of the human colonies, and that-"
"Why not?" Scully flinched at the question because it had come from Michael. He already knew. That arrogant little prick, she thought. She pressed her lips together and squinted towards the back wall, for the first time in her speech not making eye contact with anyone.
"The colonies contain many locals who survived in the area, but also a lot of refugee survivors who trickled in. Only those of childbearing capacity were allowed refugee status. I cannot have children." Scully felt her stomach turn at the words which, even after so many years since discovering the truth, still made her feel sick, made her want to curl up into a ball and rock because of her failure, because of what her government had stolen from her, and from Mulder. An embarrassed hush descended over the room and Scully glanced at her feet, determined not to let her voice break as she continued as though she had revealed something as mundane as her favourite colour, and not the most personal, devastating secret of her heart.
"We were told there could be a position as a doctor and a psychologist here. We had no choice but to come here. The alternative was to continue living in the desert until we ran out of water. Mulder is a real psychologist, for those of you who doubt him. He was the best criminal profiler the FBI had seen in decades. He helped catch some of America's worst serial killers, where most other agents would have given up, and he has been integral in our discoveries about the magnetite and the supersoldier program. He wanted the world to know the truth. This is his discovery more than mine. I just put the science behind it."
"How are you gonna use the magnetite to kill them?"
"I'm working on a way to deliver it in liquid form. It can be manufactured by combining iron chloride compounds and would theoretically be soluble in water. We could drop it on them like the rain. We would then subject the area to a magnetic field, activating the magnetite in the water on their skin. Magnetite itself is obviously magnetic; it's how it got its name. Magnetite attracts the supersoldier. Have you all seen those cartoons where perhaps the roadrunner sets up a very large magnet to try to catch Wyle Coyote who has a paperclip stuck to his tail?" More nodding, and a few chuckles. Scully smirked.
"That's the same effect the Magnetite has on the supersoldier. The supersoldier cannot fight it. In the case of nanoscale particles of magnetite suspended in water and subjected to a magnetic field, I believe all the cells in the supersoldier body will be drawn to all the places where the magnetite is, effectively causing massive internal cellular confusion. My hope is that, in subjecting them to this, the supersoldier's body will self-destruct. Once we achieve mass destruction of the supersoldiers, we can enter the human colonies and assist them with supplies."
"Can you show us?"
"When it's ready, yes," she promised. "Obviously we cannot test our project on a real supersoldier because they are hard to catch, but we have some small samples and at this stage we need to start trying something. I believe if we can make this work we could be successful. We are receiving help from outside Antarctica. One of the supersoldiers in the program reacted differently to the others. They have retained their sense of morality and some of their feelings, which they possessed as humans. They were kicked out of the supersoldier program for tipping off the FBI, for assisting me in our early investigations while I was an FBI agent.
"This person has recently killed a number of humans who survived working on the project. Without humans to give supersoldiers their orders, none of them will become the leader, as they have no personality differences like we do, and they don't socialise like we do. If they were all put in a room like this, nobody would be standing on any chair talking unless they were told by their superior to brief the group, and their superiors are all humans. They can all be killed, and they are being killed right now by a supersoldier who wants to help us fix this."
"How can we trust this thing?"
"Because she saved my life and the lives of my friends," Scully answered seriously. "I trust her with my life." There was a hurried whisper around the room and Scully knew why. "The fact that this supersoldier is a woman is the reason we suspect her treatment did not work as well as it has for the men. She was the first woman it was tested on, and it has not been able to completely override her sense of self. The other reason we can all trust her is that in her act of terrorism she demonstrates that she is not a complete supersoldier, for she is free-thinking and actively destroying those which created her. She does not follow orders. She first contacted the FBI because the program was going to contaminate United States water to begin priming women to breed a generation of supersoldiers, and she wanted to stop that. She did. Does that answer your question?"
"So what do we do now?" an older man asked.
"I have been putting in very long hours and will continue to do so. I am open to suggestions or questions, and will be happy to answer everything I can. Mulder also has knowledge of what we are doing and has been assisting me. I am in the process of making a list of everything we may be able to send to the human colonies and I will inform you all of what I may need you to collect from your stations."
"What happens afterwards? Say we kill the supersoldiers and help the colonies. Are we going to live there then, or stay here?"
"Yeah, will we get our countries back?"
"The north is uninhabitable," Scully stated clearly. "I do not know what would happen."
"What do you mean?"
Scully took a deep breath as she carefully thought out her words before they left her mouth.
"In order to do what we are doing, we have and will continue to use technologies provided to us by aliens. You all know this. I have been provided with all the chemicals of our world, and I have been provided the space in which to conduct this research. We will also need the use of alien spacecraft to deliver the antidote to the supersoldiers. This entire complex and its contents, our food, our sanitation, our lives, have been granted to us by this alien race, partly because there are members there who are sympathetic to our situation, and partly because they wanted us as negotiators, as middle men between them and the supersoldiers.
"The blunt truth is this. Our survival is consideration for this agreement that has halved the earth. If the supersoldiers are defeated, we may be allowed to survive in our small numbers and just do our best, but I'll be honest with you all; if the alien race which has afforded us this grace decides our resources are more important to their own survival than any agreement that we are not even party to, we will be powerless to stop the total destruction of our world and we will die. Humans will become extinct. That's all, um, that's all I wanted to say."
Scully tucked her hair behind her ears as tears stung her eyes, and she looked down and to the side for Mulder. He was still standing beside her and watching their audience intently, his eyes narrowed in focus. She crouched to put a hand on his shoulder for balance and once he sensed her moving he caught her around the waist and helped her down from the chair.
"Doctor Scully can I ask a question?" somebody shouted from the back. She reluctantly turned around at ground level, her face flushed with heat and her mouth dry.
"Go ahead," she called back, looking in the general direction of the voice, not able to place its origin until he continued.
"What's 'your' priority in all this? What's more important to you: killing the supersoldiers or saving the humans?"
"Both are my priorities," she replied quickly. She already had that answer sorted, for she had thought about it frequently. "The priority of my mind is that we find a way to defeat the supersoldiers and the rest will come from that. The priority of my heart comes from the knowledge that I have friends who have refugee status in one of the human colonies, who survived with Mulder and I from the United States, who we had to leave in order to come here, and I would like very much to make sure they are okay. I am working on both projects simultaneously, and I will keep you all updated as to our progress. If you'll excuse me-"
Scully turned and walked out before any more questions could be directed at her. They would only be questions about the aliens or her personal affiliation with them or her friends or her training and she really did not want to deal with any of that. Not that night. Not anymore.
She had barely begun ascending the steps, her shoes squeaking on their polished cream surface, when Eddie caught up to her, his long legs easily covering the distance she had strived to put between herself and the rest of the group.
"Hey!" he called, coming to a stop a very respectable three steps below her. He was still taller. "You were really blunt in there," he told her. "I think they appreciated it."
Scully knew tears had started leaking from her eyes and she felt ashamed of losing control of her emotions so easily just because she had admitted possible extinction. She was a scientist. Species had come and gone across the world for hundreds of millions of years, and she knew as a scientist she should have been able to accept that. But as a person extinction only reminded her that her life was worthless, that she could do nothing about the loss of her or Mulder's genetic bloodlines, and that she was just carbon. She did not want to be reduced to a carbon carcass. She did not think that was all she was. But she was not arrogant enough to think she was more than anyone else. And she was not naive enough to believe the aliens would save them. She and Mulder had been deceived too many times to embrace that fantasy.
"And I always wondered about your wrist," Eddie added more softly, watching her with curious interest. Scully felt her forty year old knees buckle then and she let herself walk down the stairs towards him, wrapping her arms around his firm, slim waist for a hug.
Eddie let his hands rest uncertainly on her back as she wept into his chest. He could not believe she was hugging him. He had seen her hold Mulder, and he had seen and read a lot, but he had never experienced the giving of human affection for himself. His people did not touch that way, they did not go to each other for physical comfort, but in his human body he felt more comfortable with the contact, and touching her on the arm to get her attention had become almost second nature. The feel of her hot tears against his thin shirt was also new, and his body shivered as it soaked up some of her emotion.
"Are you okay Dana?" he asked. She nodded but did not move, only tightening her grip around his waist. He had seen her reach up to hold Mulder around the neck, but Mulder almost had to lift her off the ground or lean far over for her to do that, and Eddie knew he was just too tall. "Why are you crying?"
"You've seen me cry," she whispered, pulling back and brushing her hands over her cheeks. Eddie stared at the way they had gone patchy, unnaturally pale in some places, bright red in others. Her blue eyes were wide, wet and bloodshot and she looked incredibly tired and very old, he realised sadly.
"It's okay," he assured her. "Don't stop on my account." She blinked back a few more tears and shook her head. "Did I do it wrong?" he asked honestly. Her eyes flicked up to him with an intensity he could only describe as human, and potentially something unique to her. He had not seen it in any of the others present at the complex. There was a vibrancy to her, and Eddie knew enough about the human concept of beauty to know that while she was not big-breasted or blonde or leggy, she was artistically beautiful; somebody famous on earth may have painted her. He had never really appreciated that for himself until that moment when her lips parted and she shook her head, bewildered by his innocent question.
"No, you didn't do it wrong," she whispered seriously. "Did I, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have. I just needed... I made you uncomfortable. I shouldn't have, I'm so sorry Eddie."
"Don't apologise," he replied, reaching out and touching her upper arm in the familiar way he was comfortable with. The touch was brief, and he let his long arm fall back down at his side. "I just have never hugged anybody before, and never a woman who is crying. I...did not realise when I followed you that you were so upset. I should have left you alone."
"Sometimes I don't do so well upset on my own," she announced with a derisive smile. "I'm not upset, really, just overwhelmed. I haven't briefed such a large number in a long time, and I have never felt the need to justify myself personally like I did in there. In my old life, I would have only explained my wrist if I had been forced into giving an answer, and I never would have told anybody about my infertility, and I never, ever would have even thought about the possibility of human extinction in my lifetime or the next, or the next."
"Your next lifetime?" Eddie asked, amused. "You were hoping to return? I thought you were Roman Catholic and believed in eternal life in Heaven."
"I do," she replied with a frown. "I mean I think I do, but I believe in other things. My beliefs live side by side. I suppose one of my dreams is that Mulder and I could know each other in another life and have all the things we would want out of this one that we can't have now."
"It hurts you to admit your infertility in public?" he asked.
"I had a child once," she confessed in a whisper. "He was a miracle, but not meant to be-"
"I know that Dana," Eddie told her gently. She frowned at him with immediate distrust and took a step back. "It's okay," he assured her. "I never wanted to bring it up because I didn't know...how you felt about what had been done. I...know that in the end he was no longer something which genetically represented a shared bond between your species and mine. Once I knew that, I stopped paying attention as to where he was. I assume he is dead." She nodded.
"I sent him to live with another family for his protection, another infertile couple who wanted a child," she explained, her voice shaking. "Mulder wasn't around at the time. He was in danger too. I...I made the decision to send our baby away on my own, and I don't think I will ever forgive myself and I think that, I suppose to answer your question, to think about what I can't ever get back physically hurts me, yes, it makes me sick. It's emotional torture."
"We do not have this bond with our children," he confessed. "It's very unusual but I know it is common here. Your other animals are all similar-"
"A lot of species on earth are like this," she replied. "Though not all consciously. It's part of the socialising system that's in our nature. I can't explain to you what an ape or a lion feels for its young, but for a human to have a child is such an overwhelmingly loving experience and I...would give anything to be able to share that with Mulder. I understand why you stripped the north of its resources to find a cure for your plague. I don't agree with the method, but I understand, because if Mulder and I were younger and there was a cure for what was done to me and we had to destroy half the world to find it, we might have tried."
"I assume there is not one upstairs in your storage." She shook her head.
"I uh, Eddie I'm going to go upstairs to my quarters now. Please don't tell Mulder I was so upset. I'm sure he's in there answering all these questions and I just walked out and left him-"
"He'll understand," Eddie mumbled. "Are you going to be okay?"
"Yes. I'm just going upstairs to have a shower and perhaps a cry, and go to sleep," she sighed, running her hands through her hair. "Suddenly I'm not feeling well."
"You should take the elevator," he suggested kindly. She shook her head. The speed at which the elevator rose to the top floor would only make her more nauseous.
"Eddie," she replied with a gentle smile. "How long have you been studying humans for?"
"Since long before you were born," he answered. "Why?"
"I just wanted to know if I could get away with this," she laughed, reaching her hands up to his face and urging him down. He bent forward, trusting her, and was surprised when she pressed her lips quickly to his cheek, the kiss so brief he barely felt it. "Thank you," she added sincerely as she released him. He stared at her in shock. "Goodnight, Eddie."
"Goodnight Dana," he echoed automatically, watching her turn and jog quickly up the spiral steps towards her home.
Eddie was still standing on the steps in shock when Mulder dawdled past him some time later. Mulder was so focussed he barely acknowledged Eddie on his way past, and Eddie watched him make his way slowly up the steps. There was no hurry on his part to get upstairs, and Eddie knew he was going home. Not often had he seen Mulder with slumped shoulders or a hung head, and he wasn't sure why but the image struck him as odd considering the message of hope they had just brought to the other residents.
Perhaps he was as saddened by what Scully had said, or perhaps somebody inside the mess hall had said something insulting to him, maybe about Scully. Eddie knew Mulder well enough to realise the man's existence revolved around the orange-haired woman. Mulder would not know how to live without her, and Eddie was just beginning to understand that despite all the rational training and science in her mind, Scully was exactly the same.
When the residents had dissipated, Michael came to stand beside Eddie in the hallway. They communicated telepathically, without words so as to shield their conversation from others.
'They don't trust us,' Michael began. 'Dana said she doesn't know what will happen in the end and inside just now Mulder confirmed it when asked again.'
'Because they do not know what will happen,' Eddie replied. 'She knows me, she knows what I want, but none of us are kidding ourselves. Mulder and Dana never had a say in their own government's actions, just as I do not have a say in mine. They think we will betray them. They think a few thousand humans cannot build a new world, and they think they will die. They 'feel' it; I can see it in their eyes, but they do not panic. They merely grieve. I do know they are getting more miserable as the experiments persist. They have gone upstairs, probably to cry together because they think they will die and they cannot have a baby.'
'Then they know our problem.'
'They do,' Eddie confirmed. 'But in return none of us could ever know their pain. You should not have asked Dana so directly when you already knew the answer and she had already implied the truth. That was cruel of you because it inflicted public pain upon them. If we defeat the supersoldiers, we cannot take their lives from them. I don't want to end this world. How can we help save them only to destroy it? Why prolong that sort of suffering?'
'You don't get to decide that. We have to follow whatever orders we're given.'
'But if there was no cure for us in the north there cannot be one in the south. It's scientifically improbable. The environments are too much of the same. What if it's not their time? What if it is simply 'our' time to become extinct?'
'That's just great,' Michael shot back, levelling Eddie with a sarcastic glare. 'Do YOU want to go home and tell them or should I?'