Friday
To: Cranesbill@zipmail.com
From: topaz@rift.net
I know this is sudden but I haven't been able to sleep for thinking.
Theoretically we've got time, maybe as much as another week, but if there's a sure way
to get her out of here, I can't afford to tell myself she'll
be safe with me a little while longer if we just play our cards right. Could you
meet me today or tomorrow? It would have to be somewhere within an hour or so of D.C., someplace I know
I can make the drive back from on my own.
Name a location and I'll be in touch.
-A
"You have any idea what time it is, Mother
J?"
Rita was sitting next to the living room window in the dark, hands folded in her lap as
if she were in church. Will came up behind her and set a hand on her
shoulder.
"Couldn't sleep, Will," she said quietly. "When I
can't sleep I sometimes get up and look at the stars. It helps to put things in
perspective. And sometimes things comes to me, maybe a thought I need to know, or think about."
"Any inspiration this time?"
She let out a sigh. "I'm flying blind now, Will.
Wondering if I'm doing the right thing. Nervous, too." She looked up at him.
"Maggie's the one who should be nervous... though it's probably a blessing she
doesn't know anything yet. Sometimes things are easier on you when they just happen--no forethought, no time for you to
worry about the possibilities, I guess, or see them looming on the
horizon."
"Sink or swim."
She nodded, sighed and looked out to the darkness
beyond the glass. "Let's hope there are some life preservers
floating out there in that sea of tomorrow. We all need to be able to swim
through this, Will."
"Mulder, what are you doing?"
Mulder glanced toward
the bed in the shadowed corner of the room. Scully was up on one elbow, squinting toward where he sat at the
table, illumined by the light of an emergency candle.
"Woke up hungry," he said, shrugging.
"Decided to have a little more of that potato salad you made." He
paused and finished chewing. "Didn't mean to wake you."
"No, you... you didn't. I mean I just... woke
up. I rolled over and you weren't here."
He grinned. "I can fix that." Taking a final bite, he stood, took his bowl to the sink and
returned to the bed. She held the covers back. "We sacked out so early," he said,
getting in and pulling up the sheet.
"You mean you sacked out so early."
"What, you didn't?"
"You fell asleep after a few minutes on the
glider, Mulder."
"And you?"
"I just sat there for a while, thinking."
"Worrying?" He rolled toward her and smoothed a hand
through her hair.
"It seems to be my default mental process
these days, doesn't it? No, actually I..."
"What?"
"I was thinking about three weeks ago, about
that night I"--she swallowed--"when I fell apart in the car, at the
airport."
He smoothed a thumb along her shoulder.
"And how... lost I felt, how utterly... cut
loose from everything around me I was, as if I were tumbling, freefalling. That
night at your mother's I went out into the alley--Mulder, I don't even know now
what drove me to do it." She scooted up higher on the pillow and eased him
into her arms. Her chin settled against the top of his head. "But I was
also thinking about how much my life
has changed since that night, how much stronger I feel now--grounded--in spite of
everything that's going on--the tension, my mother's safety..."
Her fingers trailed through his hair. Mulder closed
his eyes.
"Guess one of us has to feel grounded."
He rolled free of her, onto his back. "Scully, I--" He let out a heavy
breath and stared up at the shadows on the ceiling. "I keep trying to
figure out why, or how far she'd go, or what her motivation is, working with
Smoky. She's incredibly determined in a... non-passionate sort of way. She just
keeps on going until she finds what she's looking for. She--"
He stopped abruptly and frowned. Like she wanted
to hear this. It was the same territory that had set them at odds a dozen times
before. Not to mention the reason she'd ended up on the couch the other night
when Dale had brought her over.
"Go on, Mulder."
He sighed. "Didn't bring you out
here to get into this again. Remind me never to apply for a job as a recreation
director, Scully."
Silence, then the quiet hum of the refrigerator
and a lone frog outside, calling into the dark.
"Mulder, I've made decisions, too... in
the past. Decisions
about trusting people, about taking them into my life that... It's so easy to get
carried away with the...needs of the moment or... or your own hopes for what a
relationship will be, a fulfillment of something, or a sanctuary, or... And maybe
the facts are right there in front of you. I don't think they were for you,
Mulder. But you go ahead anyway, trying to fulfill that... that need or
attraction you're feeling, even though..."
"Though what?"
"Though you sometimes know you shouldn't.
When the reasons weighing against what you're doing should be more
compelling than the ones leading you into it." Her voice was distant. It wasn't any theoretical
she was speaking in. "I guess I've always... craved security, and
there was a time in my life when I was attracted to people--figures--I thought
could give me that."
"Men."
"Men. Father-figures. Men who I thought
had the answers. Or the answer sheets. Who could tell me if I was on the
right track."
"Sorry. No security here, Scully." He gave her a
sheepish smile. "But I guess you've noticed after all this time."
"No, I don't think there is any real
security, not in the kind of life we lead. But that's just it, Mulder. You don't
look at me like a... a pupil. You expect me to make my own contribution, to have
thought about it, analyzed it." She paused. "But when we look back at decisions
we
made in the past, we think, 'I should have seen this'--the logic of it, and
the factors, the way we do now. But at the time the things we saw were
different
things."
"I hope that letter of Rita's does the trick,
Scully. Because otherwise Diana's going to keep digging. She may not have any
personal investment in this assignment, but if she needs the information she'll
stick with it." If he needed the information: Smoky. Scully could be
pointing that out but thankfully she wasn't.
"I keep thinking about it," he went on, "that if we
were to end up face to face over this, on opposite ends of things, weapons drawn...
What
would I do, you know? Would I shoot her? Could I shoot her? Hell, I couldn't
even shoot Smoky when I had the chance. Or would I do it out of spite, or... Or
would she shoot me? I just... I don't know."
He rolled onto his side, wrapped an arm around her and buried
his head against her shoulder. "This theoretical guy you were talking
about, Scully." He looked up at her. "He doesn't work for Smoky,
does he?"
She paused a moment, smiled suddenly and shook
her head. "No, Mulder, I guess that's one thing we don't have to
worry about." She sighed and pulled him closer.
"It's good, you know," he said, not
wanting to drop the ball.
"To know there's at least one thing we don't have to worry about."
"Yes. Yes, it is."
Her fingers played in his hair. A smile lit her voice.
A fast food bag sat
tantalizingly close inside the dumpster, though try as she might she couldn't
quite reach it. But she was hungry, so very hungry. And cold. Strange day,
that it should be warm and bright, and
yet she was shivering. She reached down over the edge of the dumpster
and tried again, fingers straining. Suddenly her legs were out from under her and
she was tumbling, falling. A jolt of adrenaline and her eyes opened abruptly to
darkness.
Home.
Night.
She was in her own bed. She hugged herself against the cold.
Alex. She was here with Alex. She was...
She and Alex.
The imprint of her body began to fill her consciousness,
not just its coldness but the length and shape of
it: the smoothness of her skin, the length of her legs, the curves and hollows
and places where their bodies had met. She swallowed against
the sudden heat of the memory. But he wasn't here, he was... not downstairs; he was up here, sitting...
against the empty left wall. She rolled and sat up, pulling the blankets close around
her shoulders. A wash of low moonlight revealed him sitting on the floor halfway down the
length of the room, his back against the wall.
"Alex?"
As if he were carved from stone. She got up and
went closer. He acknowledged her in his head--a nod, a touch and then nothing.
She knelt beside him. His head rested against the
wall. A pale silver trail ran down one cheek.
"Alex?" She swallowed. Suddenly her lungs were tight, as if all
the air in the room had evaporated. "Oh Alex, no."
"I meant to say," Scully said,
struggling with the words as the thickness of sleep took her, "that
I'm grateful, Mulder. That you stood by me all that time when I was so... so
swept away."
"Scully, it was--"
On the far side of the room the refrigerator
stopped its low humming. A lock of hair was lifted carefully from her face.
"Scully, what else could I do?"
"You're shivering," Alex whispered,
dry-voiced,
against her hair. But he was shaking, too.
"I know. I'm so cold." She pulled back
and sat up straighter. "I know it's not that cold, but--"
He rubbed her arm to warm her.
"You're cold, too, Alex. What are you doing
here?"
He shrugged. "Figured I'd probably wake you up. Didn't
want to." A pause. "Tracy, if there were"--he looked up at the
darkened ceiling and sniffed--"some other way, any other way--"
"I know. I'm not complaining."
"I wrote to her. About half an hour
ago."
She nodded. One side of him was in shadow, almost
invisible; the other was lit by the pale glow of the moon. His fingers lingered
near her elbow.
"Alex, don't worry about your thoughts
keeping me awake. It can't be helping you to sit here like this. Come back to
bed. Let's just be together--"
While we can.
She pressed her lips tight and refused to say
the words. After a moment she stood and offered him a hand. He let her pull
him up and lead him back to the bed in the darkened corner where they'd
pushed it a few hours earlier.
"Do
you mind if I move it back under the window?" she said, turning to him. "So
I can watch the clouds?" The thunder and lightning were past now.
Silently, he helped her move the bed to where it had
been before. The window with its dreamy scene beckoned her, drawing her to the
ledge. White-edged clouds drifted
slowly in the darkness outside the glass. Below, the orchard lay frozen in mute silver
light, a waking dream in black and white. How often she'd wakened in the middle of the night to look out
over this same scene, tracing the shapes of the shadows the trees made. Sometimes
on warm nights she'd gone outside and run between them in the slow, cool light.
So little time--a day at most, or possibly just
hours--and she'd leave here for the last time. Strangely, it was no surprise.
The thought had been there for a while now, maybe a week, the way she'd sensed
yesterday that she wouldn't return to her little room on the floor above Alex's.
Leaving. In the past few
weeks his room and the man who inhabited it had come to be the world she lived in, breathed in.
Found purpose and
shelter in. Her fingers pressed
hard against the window ledge.
"Nena--"
She swallowed and turned to find him already
under the blankets, wedged into the corner where he could see out over the room. He was
waiting. She glanced out again: the overgrown vegetable garden, the orchard with
its frozen shadows like dancers out of time, the broad expanse of empty field to
the right and the swathe of silver-tipped trees that circled the edge of the
silent valley. Finally she turned to the bed. Slipping her blanket
off, she spread it quickly on top of the others and climbed in. Alex's arm came out and gathered
her
against him. Her throat ached, stretched tight and hard. She wrapped an arm
around him, shivering, and let him warm one of her
legs between his.
"Better?" His hand smoothed across her
back, cool at first and then warming, comforting.
"Mm." She held him harder. Her spirit ached, as if some
essential part of herself was being torn away.
A stubbled cheek pressed against hers. "Could
you--?"
Sing.
Just something. For a little while.
Anything would do.
She started to hum but the lump in her throat
squeezed the sound dry. Her eyes stung; she squeezed them shut and burrowed her
face against the side of his neck.
Dyshi, krasavitsa. Breathe.
Careful lips settled against her cheekbone and his
hand smoothed down her back. Gradually she felt
herself relax into the comfort of his body, and the care that circled her
like a shawl.
Breath and quiet: a tiny world within a world, steady and soothing.
Eventually she smiled. What better than to do something positive now, to offer him something rather than
dwelling on the pain to come?
"Thank you, Alex."
"For?" he said, puzzled.
She only smiled, settled closer against him
and sought out his fingers. "What does it mean, Alex? Nena?"
"It means 'little girl'." A kiss
against her forehead. "It means lover. It means... whatever you want it to
mean. Somebody you care about." His lips against her temple, and then his
nose, nudging her softly. Sing.
She smiled and let a clear note slip into the
quiet.
Teena rested her fingers on the edge of the
keyboard and reread her response to Alex's latest mail.
Whatever would make it easier for him. Though apparently
whatever accommodation she was able to offer would not be enough to make this
process completely painless for her newfound son. It was almost too much to ask,
or perhaps a matter of reading her own hope into his message, that this still vaguely-known child would turn out to have
at least a measure of heart and
conscience his father would never know, that somehow Leland had been unable to
inject his venom completely. Unless this entire scenario was a cleverly
constructed trap, Alex was giving up something he very much valued, as well as
practical help he needed, for the sake
of this girl's safety. What kind of person would find herself inside this man's defenses and circle of protection?
In only hours she would find out.
Teena clicked 'send', waited to see her message
gone and drifted to the window, her pulse ticking away the tightening seconds.
First light tinted the sky. Everything was packed and ready. The motion that was
about to begin--that would surely begin and take them all on some unanticipated
journey--sat poised and waiting. The three of them against Leland. Or so it
appeared.
If she'd seen the situation clearly. If Alex was
who and what he seemed.
If Fox would cooperate and put aside the hurt
Alex had so obviously done him.
So many ifs.
The bed sagged slightly. The covers were pulled
back and then quickly brought up again. A cold hand settled against Scully's hip.
She rolled instinctively.
"Mulder, what--?" She opened her eyes
and blinked at the early morning light. "What time is it?"
"Six-forty," he said quietly.
"You've been up again. You're cold."
"I know."
"Doing?"
"Thinking. Maybe thinking too much."
"About?"
"This. Smoky. My sister."
"Mulder, it sounds like we've switched
places here. Sometimes it's all too easy to forget that the world turns,
that... that life goes on without our consciously willing it to happen."
"While we sink ourselves in the quicksand of
the theoretical?"
"Mmm. I plead guilty."
"Yeah, well I think I've had it with playing
that game. For now, anyway. You never win, you're always down by"--the
pillow beside her was lifted and then set down--"at least two-to-one"--now the blankets were moved--"and that's at the outset. The more you
play"--he rolled away slightly and looked behind him--"the
farther and farther behind you get."
Scully pushed up on one elbow,
puzzled. "Mulder, are you looking for
something?"
"Yeah, I"--he turned back to her--"I think I left a lover in here somewhere." He raised an eyebrow.
There was a familiar gleam in his eye, and then a smile. His hand slipped up her
side. He leaned in closer, mouth capturing hers. "Hey, I think"--a kiss, lingering, against her neck, then
another, lower, making her shiver--"I've found her. Is that her,
Scully?"
She smiled, lay back against the pillow and gave
him a mock-critical look. "I don't know, Mulder. Maybe you'll have to--" A knee
insinuated itself between hers. "...investigate that possibility a little
further."
"You mean"--his body came closer, sending
tantalizing heat through her--"a thorough investigation?"
"Thorough is"--she slipped her arms
around his neck and pulled him down against her--"the only acceptable
way."
"By the book."
"Yes. By the book."
"By my book."
"How is that different?"
"Let me offer you a little... demonstration,
Dr. Scully."
"As a professional courtesy?"
"As a very
private... professional... courtesy."
"Four hours and counting, gentlemen." Byers paused in the doorway, waiting
for a response.
Frohike was
busy at the stove. The top of Langly's yellow mane showed from behind the
morning paper on the far side of the table.
"I assume you two have done your part,"
Byers went on.
"Rani's gotten me into security as a
replacement," Langly's voice came from behind the newspaper. "If the
Smoking Man's cronies are in there, they're bound to say something that will give
them away. If not, if they've got some kind of remote access--"
He let the newspaper fall and stopped abruptly,
his mouth half open. Frohike turned around at the sudden lull in the
conversation.
"Don't say anything," Byers
warned, waving a finger in warning. He colored in spite of himself.
"Well," Frohike shrugged. "The
beard'll grow back. And it's for a good cause."
"Nice touch with the hair." Langly
nodded. "Anybody trying to remember you is going to think redhead. Kristen
loan you that?"
Byers nodded.
"Crazy Kristen." Frohike said,
smiling. "Gotta love that chick."
"You're ready for parking lot duty?"
Byers asked.
"Binocs and video camera ready,"
Frohike said, his focus returning to the eggs he was pushing around inside a frying pan. "If they catch
on early and try to follow, they're gonna be on candid camera."
"And you'll tail our target all the
way?"
"Until Maggie's signed, sealed and
delivered."
"Good." Byers reached to rub the beard
that was no longer there. His hand hesitated and dropped to his side.
"What about you?" Langly said, nodding
toward Byers.
Byers frowned and cleared his throat. "Ready
as I'll ever be," he said. "Hopefully I won't have to use too much of
that instruction Rani's wife was giving me. Besides, she'll be there, too. She's
around the hospital enough that she won't seem suspicious to anyone." His
brow wrinkled. "I do hope this plays out well for Mulder's
and Scully's sakes. They certainly deserve not to have to worry about this on
top of everything else." He stared past them at the far wall.
"With any luck," Frohike said,
"we'll catch 'em on video and be able to track 'em down. Let's see how the
sons of bitches like it when somebody starts trailing them."
"Remember, it will be to our advantage,
gentlemen, not to become overconfident about this. This man's ploys are the
reason Mulder was dismissed in the first place. He and Scully could easily be
dead by now if not for some extraordinary effort and a good dose of luck. Maggie
almost was." He paused and looked at nothing in particular. "Certainly
enough other people have died because of him."
Byers turned and left the room.
Langly and Frohike
exchanged glances.
Frohike shrugged. "Eggs?" he said.
"Sure. Eat, drink and be merry."
"Shut up, Goldilocks."
Tracy pulled the plug and watched the shadowed
water drain from the bathroom sink. Alex was upstairs, still asleep; he hadn't
noticed when she'd slipped away and out of bed. She'd wrapped herself in a
blanket, gone downstairs and checked their clothes in her mother's room--dry
finally--and then ventured outside barefoot in the mud, circling the vegetable
garden, the orchard, the pond: places that had once formed the boundaries of her life.
The sweet pea vines again. The desperate urge to take them down was gone
now. There was a second flower on the other side of the
trellis from where Alex had discovered one yesterday; now it sat tucked above
her ear. It wasn't until she'd reached the poplars that she'd realized what she
would look
like, wandering the orchard wrapped in a blanket, if anyone were to see.
If
Nathan were to come across from the other side of the ridge...
Tracy stiffened.
She didn't want to begin to think about what Nathan might say, or do.
Especially if he found her here with someone else. With a man.
She'd turned then and headed quickly back toward the house,
emotions swelling and beginning to sag like a balloon being slowly filled with water. Her
feet were filthy and her stomach was a small, hard thing that clutched greedily
at the thought of the jar of applesauce waiting on the kitchen counter. There
was a dull soreness from last night, an ache mixed with the distilled
sweetness of their union--need and joy and giving made flesh. So many things had
come, in the last few weeks, to load her life with meaning, but now they were
poised, every one of them, to be whisked away as if they'd never been. She could feel them waiting, tensed and ready. Now
was the time to call on her inner strength. It was there, somewhere under
the layers of mixed-up circumstance and emotion. He'd made her see that.
In the bathroom she'd run water in the sink and
washed all her essential parts and then her muddy feet, slowly, as if time were
a movie passing a single frame at a time.
A low gurgle sounded in the pipes, shaking her
from her thoughts, the last of
the water escaping down the drain. She was cold, shivering. Quickly she
reached for the towel and rubbed her skin dry. The yellow dress was ready in the
other room. She picked the blanket off the edge of the tub, adjusted it around
her and looked at her reflection in the mirror by the dull glow of the candle.
Refugees looked like this.
To the right of her reflection, deeper within the mirror's view,
the bathtub sat in deep shadow. In her mind she
could see herself splashing there as a child. She'd been a daughter in
this house, a companion and confidante. A provider and a strong arm. A lover,
now. You're a woman, Alex would think to her in a
back corner of his head where his thoughts lay only half-disguised; it's okay to feel like
one. And what would she be tomorrow? An orphan? A widow? An unsupported support?
But he
was still here; they were both still here. Her memory of her mother was much
more at peace than it had been before she came. It was Alex who had helped her through it.
Led her. Stayed patiently beside
her while she sorted out the tangled threads of memory and emotion.
Her stomach hard and achy, Tracy blew out the candle
on the sink's edge and went out into the
kitchen. Alex would tell her to eat rather than wait for him, to get
something inside her because her body needed nourishment considering the state
it was in. He'd been feeling especially ambivalent about the baby since the focus had
shifted to getting her away safely. How could the child she carried prove
anything but a
hindrance, making her own survival more difficult? A handicap not unlike the
arm he was missing. Or the unexpected complication he'd presented to
his mother's life, a minefield he'd just begun to recognize.
Her stomach growled. Tracy reached for the
jar of applesauce at the back of the counter and took last night's clean dishes
from the drainer. The sound of muffled footsteps passed by overhead. She turned
to see Alex standing at the top of the stairs. He started down toward her.
Quickly she turned to open a drawer
and began to search through
the utensils for the jar opener while something hummed, tightening inside her.
"Hey," he said, coming up behind her,
his hand settling against her waist, tentative.
How was she doing?
She shut the drawer and looked up. "I went
outside and got all muddy like a little kid running around--" She tried for a
smile but it caught, unexpectedly sharp and painful, in her throat. The seconds seemed to
stretch and finally to pause completely. She looked down until a finger lifted her chin.
Tracy.
"Alex, I--"
A sudden wash of something she couldn't hold
back. She closed her eyes and leaned against him, sobbing now--a child's crying,
undisguised and painful in the room's quiet. A hand smoothed back through her
hair and then his arm went around her and pulled her close.
"Nena." The word was quiet against her
temple. He rocked her slightly; she let herself be held, soothed by the
movement. He was still here. But he was worried now. Maybe they'd taken
things too far, nice though it had been--no, amazing in some quiet, understated
way he couldn't quite pinpoint. Still, it had been all too easy. Maybe he
should have kept his head, reined them both in for her sake.
"Alex, it's not that; it's... everything, I
guess. Leaving. Being here. So many things at once." She looked up. "Not
last night." Especially not that.
He studied her a moment, solemn. Finally his expression
softened and he wiped a lingering tear from the corner of her eye with his
thumb.
Another day's growth of stubble; she liked the way it looked
on him. She smiled, the tightness inside her finally gone, and reached to
kiss his chin. Her lips brushed prickly skin and drifted until his mouth came
close and paused. He wore the hint of a smile at the corner of his
mouth; he was waiting for her not to be able to resist. He
knew a little was all it took; a little taste and she'd reach. She leaned
closer, lips barely touching his. Then the closeness and current and the
slippery, beckoning wetness were working their magic, neither one able to
resist, neither wanting to.
"Get something to eat," he said finally,
breaking away, shaking
his head with a grin.
He made himself step back beyond arms' reach. He
had to check his mail. Had to stay alert.
Alertness was what kept you alive.
To: topaz@rift.net
From: Cranesbill@zipmail.com
Quite unexpected to receive your request so soon. Apparently you weren't the
only one kept up late--or waking early--over speculation about this matter. Yes, I can accommodate
today.
Would Baltimore work? Or is another area better? Does that suit your travel
requirements for afterward? There is a place available to me in Baltimore that
will not require leaving identification that could be traced.
Let me know of anything that will make this
easier for you. Awaiting your prompt reply as travel time is involved.
-M
Tracy scooped the last spoonful of
the applesauce from her dish, savoring the rich sweetness it spread inside her
mouth. In her mind she could see her mother, her face unlined and smiling, coming through the doorway with a box of
apples and setting it on the table. The ghost-woman ran a hand back through her hair,
leaving it behind her ear. There was something about her, as if she were a
different person, a much younger woman than the mother she'd known. A wife once, a lover, carrier of a child:
not so very different from herself. How hard it
would have been to come from Pasadena, from her father, to this.
But then how had she
hid the
regret, the empty ache and longing she must have felt? It had never lain there in her mind the
way it did in other people's, exposed and obvious.
Warmth close behind her--Alex--and a hand against
the side of her waist.
"We've got about three hours 'til we need to
go," he said quietly when she turned. He paused and let out a reluctant
breath. "She's going to meet us in
Baltimore."
To: Cranesbill@zipmail.com
From: topaz@rift.net
Location sounds good. Send specifics. Will 1:30 work? This is going to be tricky, so I
appreciate the help.
-A
Most likely he was referring to the logistics and the fact that he'd have to pass the test of
Leland's skepticism with whatever story he chose to give out about the girl's
disappearance.
Or perhaps he was becoming more transparent.
Teena sighed and placed her fingers on the
keyboard. Fox had said he'd have some friends find a way for her to access her
funds without their being traceable, but in the meantime Trudy's Baltimore condo
would provide a safe meeting place. Trudy must have known something even then,
years ago, when she'd offered her the key and said to use the place if there was ever a need.
Next week Trudy would be in Baltimore but the
condo was vacant for the time being. It was the perfect place to leave a note
letting Trudy know...
But what exactly could she say that wouldn't
thoroughly alarm her sister? Though she had to leave some sort of message before she disappeared. She'd told the
neighbor boy, Paul, the one who'd helped her navigate the new laptop, that she'd
be gone to Maine for the next three weeks. He was to bring in the mail and water
the houseplants and do the mowing. But if she was still gone then?
What if she never
returned? She'd taken nothing she believed Leland would note as a significant
absence: no pictures of the children, no keepsakes, none of Bill's old papers. Only enough
clothing to be appropriate for a three-week vacation. How else could she
prepare? Surely Fox would give her further advice when she talked to him. If
he'd talk to her. What would he say, and how could she work around the reaction
he'd surely display at her having agreed to receive the girl from his closest
of enemies?
Teena shivered. There was a tightness in her
chest, a tremble that ran through her arms and down to the tips of her fingers.
This had the feeling of a dangerous liaison, the way slipping away with Leland
had been dangerous. And the risk of alienating someone with her actions loomed
just as large as at that time years ago... except that this time it would be Fox she risked offending.
The red car came to a dusty stop in the front
yard. Sandy glanced from the bathroom window back to the mirror and quickly
flushed her mouth with more of the water pouring from the sink, letting it carry
away the awful, bitter taste. She grabbed for a washcloth, held it under the water,
squeezed it out and wiped the sweat from her forehead. Hopefully she wouldn't
look as pale--or as bad--as she felt. She glanced out the window again. Her
mother was already out of view.
Almost immediately the doorbell rang. Sandy closed her eyes
momentarily, then turned and went down the hall to answer
it. Her heart pounded.
"Hi." Raylene looked down slightly and
hesitated, then held out a white bag. "I brought you a couple of doughnuts.
Guess I got up kinda early."
Obviously, it was a peace offering of
some kind. Sandy's stomach turned at the thought of the sweet doughnuts but she
swallowed the feeling and opened the door wider. "Thanks."
She took the bag from her mother's outstretched
hand and went to the kitchen counter, her mother trailing behind her. Raylene pulled out a chair and sat down at
the table. She looked at her fingernails.
"Something happen, Mom?"
Raylene sighed. "Yeah, I guess it did." A twitch
at the corner of her mouth. "I had this little revelation
yesterday."
Sandy gave her a quizzical look.
"Long story short," Raylene said after a long
pause, "I told Joe to have himself and his stuff out of the house by
Sunday."
Sandy came around to the table, pulled out a
chair across from her mother and sat down. "You two have a fight?"
"No, I... This didn't have anything to do
with Joe." She sighed. "Maybe it never has. I think it's all been in my head. The whole time. Everything."
Sandy traced the grain lines on the tabletop and
finally looked up.
"He don't love you, Mom. I don't think he's ever loved anybody but his own
self in his life."
The corners of Raylene's mouth wavered. She
pasted a smile on. "Yeah, I think I finally figured that out."
The kitchen clock ticked loudly. Sandy glanced up at
it. 8:40. She needed to start for Adrie's. Her toes poked against the chair leg,
tapping a silent beat against it. Raylene continued to stare at the tabletop.
"I'm going to have to be going," Sandy
said quietly. She let her teeth press into her lower lip. "I've got a job
to get to." Brace yourself for the big flood of questions, girl.
Raylene got up from the table quietly and pushed
the chair in. Her fingers smoothed over the curved chair back.
"I thought of something else," she
said. "I didn't mean to be an 'I told you so'. I guess it sounds pretty bad
when you're on the receiving end. I just--" She looked up, out the window,
and swallowed. "I guess I just was so scared that it could've been you and
not just Roddy in that car that night." Raylene's lips pressed into a flat line.
Sandy stood motionless, as if someone had called
'freeze' in a game of statue.
Krycek frowned. "I blow it?"
Tracy shook her head against him: No. He
took his hand from her back and lifted a few stray hairs from her forehead, out
of beads of sweat, and smoothed them back past her ear. He searched her face for
clues but there was no reading it.
"What then?" he whispered against her temple.
"I just--"
They were still glued together, her arms were still tight around him. She'd
seemed obvious enough a minute earlier. It had seemed good for her--way past good.
And he'd done his best to be careful. Obviously he'd overstepped somewhere along the
line.
Her eyes opened and she looked
at him. Smiled. She was
beautiful, all flushed like this.
"It was--" Overwhelming, she whispered close
to his ear. "In a good way," she added, keying off his lingering
puzzlement. "But it's
almost scary, Alex--to feel yourself want something so much that everything else falls
away, everything else you should be thinking about."
"Some things aren't meant to be analyzed."
He kissed the bridge of her nose and rested his cheek against her head.
Like the last twenty-four hours.
Strategically, coming here seemed like the last thing in the world he should
have been doing. But there were times when some wild chance you took ended
up keeping you alive on the inside. This was going to carry him for a long
time.
"Would you take it back?" he said, staring
toward the far end of the room. "Just now? Hell, any of this?"
"Not for anything."
He grinned and let his fingers wander through her hair,
sensing like blind men's fingers. "Me, either."
"What will you do now, Alex?"
He shook his head and looked up
into the swirls
of wood grain on the ceiling. The room seemed to chill around him. There'd never been any question. A clean break
had been the only thing that made sense, the only way to guarantee safety for
either of them. Security was paramount.
He closed his eyes and let out a slow
breath. There was a dull ache in his side under the mask of the pain
medication, and he was shrinking, about to slip out of her. He started to
ease himself away but her hand against his hip stopped him.
"Not yet, Alex."
They never lasted, windows of
opportunity. Blink and they were gone.
A couple of hours left. He
stretched carefully and brushed a kiss against her shoulder. Her leg was heavy
over his. He memorized the shape and weight of it, a hedge against the bleakness
that lay ahead.
To: thelark@zipmail.com
From: Redwall@zipmail.com
Thought you should be apprised of the current plans. The operation is scheduled
for 11:30 this morning, to coincide with the activity of the lunch hour. Her
doctor has talked at length with the caregiver at the new facility, the location
of which was heron3's brainchild and should afford more security than the usual
options. Every precaution we can think of has been taken. More details to follow
as the plan unfolds. I understand that it will not be easy to sit on the other
end just waiting to hear, but be assured we will make every necessary effort on
her behalf and yours.
-JB
Scully sighed and closed her eyes. Two and a half
hours and then however long it would take them to pull off their plan and carry
her mother to safety. If only there were something she could do to help. But
what had she told Mulder not three hours ago about the world turning--life
unfolding--without having to make it happen? She looked up, as if inspiration
might be hovering above her.
Light footfalls sounded outside and a knock came
on the metal paneling beside the door.
"Sandy?" Scully pushed the chair back and turned. Sandy
stood outside, a plastic grocery bag in her hand. She seemed edgy. Scully got up from her chair and held the screen door open.
Sandy came up the stairs and inside. She gave a
small, ambiguous smile that promptly faded.
"Feeling nauseated again?" Scully said,
motioning her to the bed.
Sandy sat down on the edge and set her bag on the
floor. She nodded. Scully sat down beside her and leaned forward, elbows on her
knees.
"It could be a good sign," she said.
Sandy wiped beads of sweat from her forehead. Her mouth opened but
nothing came out. "My mom came by," she said finally, her
voice dry.
Scully waited, but nothing more seemed forthcoming. "How did it go?"
"It was... It wasn't bad. She's lost, I
think. She's throwing Joe out." She held a breath, paused and finally let
it out. "She gave me these doughnuts." She pointed to a white paper
bag inside the shopping sack and smiled briefly. "I don't think I could
keep one down but maybe later. You're welcome to one if you like."
Obviously there was more.
"She said"--Sandy shook her head at
the memory--"that she'd been so afraid that... you know--what if it'd been me in
the car that night, with Cy and Roddy--" Her mouth curled at the corners. Her
shoulders heaved and she leaned into Scully's embrace. "Annie, I've been so busy
hurting that"--she gulped--"I'd never even thought, never even stopped to
consider--"
Scully smoothed a hand across her shoulder.
"That you could have been there, too?"
Sandy nodded against her. "I guess it's
pretty creepy, but when something like that misses you--you know, even just by a
fraction of a hair--you just pass it off and don't think about it no more. You look at it in your mind like that: that nothing happened,
nothing woulda." She sniffed.
"You know what else it means," Scully said after
a moment. "It means your mother loves you. She's concerned about what happens to
you. I'm sure she misses Roddy, too. Sometimes when we
hurt, we only see our own pain. Other people around us may be hurting, too, but
we don't realize it; we don't see that far."
Scully looked down, at the shopping bag on the
floor.
The girl straightened and wiped her eyes with the
back of a hand. "I picked up one of those tests," she said,
the corners of her mouth quivering. "I couldn't bring myself to do it at
home all alone."
"You know you're supposed to do them first thing
in the morning."
"I know. I waited. I'm about to burst."
Scully smiled. "Then go," she said
quietly. She reached into the plastic bag for the test kit and handed it to Sandy.
"Go on."
Sandy took it and stood. She went around
the bed and into the bathroom. The door clicked closed.
Scully closed her eyes. Whatever would happen
would happen. As in her mother's case, there was nothing she could do to affect
the outcome. Sandy deserved this second chance, but what was deserved seemed to happen so
infrequently. Mulder deserved to find his sister alive and well, with a faithful
brother clear in her memory. Melissa deserved to be alive. They deserved to have
their careers back. Even Alex Krycek deserved to have had a better start than
the one he'd had; maybe then his actions would have been different.
The muffled sound of the toilet flushing came
from beyond the wall. Scully opened her eyes. The door opened slowly and Sandy's
face appeared. It showed nothing.
"Well?"
The girl shook her head. "I couldn't look.
Sometimes I'm the biggest chicken."
"And sometimes you're very, very
brave." Scully paused. "Do you want me to check it?"
Sandy nodded and sat down on the edge of the bed. Scully went
into the bathroom, her breath faint, as if she weren't pulling in enough air.
She made herself look at the little plastic test unit on the counter. The
corners of her mouth pulled up.
"It's good news," she said, returning
to the bedroom.
"Very good."
"Oh, my." Sandy's shoulders heaved
again. She looked up and smiled through red eyes. "Ohmigod. Oh--" She
looked away. "I wish Cy were here. I wish--" The girl's eyes closed.
Scully went closer and smoothed
a hand through her hair. "He is, in a way. A little bit of him, anyway."
Sandy nodded against her.
"Why don't you lie down, Sandy? For a little
while, until your stomach settles. I'll watch Adrie until you're ready."
"Thank you, Annie. Oh--"
"Rest."
"Adrie's building a little house or
something on the
barn floor."
Sandy lay back and curled onto her side. She
closed her eyes. Scully watched her a moment--long, wavy brown hair, tan
muscular legs, the scabs from her run-in with the bushes in the Savers Mart
parking lot gradually healing--and slipped quietly out of the trailer to look
for Adrie.
Grimacing in anticipation, Mulder dropped the pieces of shattered bottle
carefully down the side of the plastic trash bag.
It was crazy. Scully would go ballistic if she knew, but what other way was there?
Something was going on with the Connors kids; the feeling was too strong to
ignore. Even Scully'd admitted that not a single instance of shock among three
diabetic kids was a red flag. And nobody was going to be leaving patient records
lying around in lockers or bathrooms where you could just pick them up like
discarded paper towels.
He looked at the jagged points of
tightly-stretched plastic on the side of the bag, set his jaw, closed his hand
over the place and squeezed.
After a cursory glance around the room, Langly set his binder down on the desktop and
made himself comfortable in the chair. It swiveled, a definite plus. The bank of
monitors in front of him showed hallways, rooms with sleeping patients, a
recreation room. Not much of anything that could be called action. He glanced
over at the man in front of the intensive care monitors, then behind him at the
third worker, a curly-haired twenty-something who was slipping a deck of cards
from a shirt pocket. Curly gave him a nod.
"Bradley got bronchitis again?"
Langly shrugged. "They don't tell us
anything. They just yell for help when they're short."
Curly grunted, laid four cards out in front of
him and looked up at his monitors. Langly glanced to the right. The corner guy
had a headset on. It could go to a Walkman, or it could be something else. He
turned back to his own monitors, eased his chair back and looked up at the clock.
One hour and counting.
Mulder bit his lip against the pain. His eyes had
teared over but as far as he could tell he'd done it right--nothing too deep or
dangerous, it just hurt like hell. He'd washed the bottle before he'd broken it,
and the rag he'd grabbed when the blood started to come was clean as far as he
knew. Hopefully there were no cleaning solvents on it, though any added
stinging would have been hard to notice. As it was, the arm throbbed all the way
past his elbow.
"Hold still, Mr. Wallace."
He made his arm stop moving and focused on the
two computer monitors on the far side of a low bank of cabinets. It was better
than looking at his palm, and closing his eyes only made the pain focus like a
laser. His hand throbbed a steady beat, as if it had a heart of its own.
The tweezers closed in on his palm. He set his
jaw.
"And how did this happen again, Mr. Wallace?
A trash can? Emptying a trash can?"
Mulder nodded stiffly. "Yeah," he added
as an afterthought, spitting the word out.
"From a bathroom?"
"No... basement. The basement."
"Good. That eliminates some potentially nasty
bacteria."
The doctor talked with a smooth delivery, calming
like Karen Kosseff though not as saccharine. What would the Bureau shrink think of Scully
now? Would she wonder what had become of her or would she be
too busy with her own caseload to give his partner a second thought?
Tweezers bit into his ragged palm. Mulder swore.
A firm hand held his wrist. "Sorry. You'll have to keep it still. Better
to get it all now than have to go back in later."
Mulder bit his lip and nodded. He focused on the
doctor--her hair, cut nearly like Scully's but light brown, thin and slightly
longer--and the way her glasses slipped slightly down her nose. She was probably
in her mid-forties, smooth-skinned, pleasant if somewhat detached. Vanek, her
name tag said.
"I believe that's everything," she
said, looking up. "You're fortunate the glass didn't penetrate anything
vital. You just barely avoided stitches, too. This area here is messy"--she
pointed--"but there's nothing stitches are going to do for it." She
gave him a look. "I'll bandage it up. You'll need antibiotics and something
for the pain. You should stay here for a while--lie down and just ease up a
little."
"Joe's going to be docking my pay."
"We have priority here. We'll interface with
Joe."
"Kind of like a note from the school
nurse?" He managed a weak grin.
She nodded as she worked.
"Essentially."
She wrapped gauze around the pad on his palm.
"I'd say to come back tomorrow, but it will be Saturday. If you have trouble
over the weekend, check in with Casson Urgent Care; we contract to them. And
drop by Monday morning. I want to make sure this is progressing properly."
Mulder nodded and tried to focus on the room, the
two computer terminals and the general layout. There seemed to be just Dr. Vanek and one
other doctor or technician, a balding man in his fifties who'd left with
a freshly filled coffee mug just as Mulder had come in, hand clutched in the
maintenance rag, escorted by Danny Contreras who he'd happened to pass in the
courtyard. Tough break, Danny had said, wincing in sympathy. The hand had hurt too
damn much to do anything but let Danny lead him over here.
"There," Dr. Vanek said, reaching for
the pen hooked to her clipboard, jotting down something he didn't try to follow.
She had a habit of focusing on the wound rather than the patient. "Beds are over there,
behind the curtain." She pointed. "Luckily you've got the place to
yourself right now so take your pick. Just lie down and I'll bring your
medication."
Mulder headed slowly for the green-curtained
area. No other patients; it was a good thing. He reached for the top of a
curtain and slid it back. Vanek was at a glass-front cabinet on the far side of the room,
working a key in the lock. He sat on the bed--cot--eased himself down onto
his side and tucked a small pillow under his head. Hopefully whatever she was
going to give him would work quickly.
He closed his eyes. His palm burned, the pain
echoing through his wrist and arm.
"Mr. Wallace--" She stood above him, tablets in a little plastic
cup in one hand and a paper cup with water in the other. He pushed up on one
elbow, gulped down the contents of the cup, then the water and lay back down.
The curtain was closed around him. He looked up and started to count the curtain
hooks around the top of the track, listening to the doctor's retreating
footsteps.
Quiet.
She must be sitting down. She'd been reading
something when he came in. Mulder eased himself onto his back and studied the
ceiling. Scully would be in her little trailer, sitting at the laptop wanting to
check her mail, rationalizing why there wouldn't be any yet, going through
possible steps the Gunmen might take in rescuing her mother. If her mind
wandered, she might consider Diana's possible strategies for locating the author
of the e-mail to Beeson--if Rita's fake mail didn't satisfy Beeson and take the
heat off. Or she might think about this morning. He smiled in spite of the pain.
At least they'd been back on the same page in the end.
Mulder closed his eyes, paused... and opened them
again. He flexed his bandaged hand. The pain had faded; he must have dozed off for
a few minutes. Made sense; the sleep he'd gotten last night had been off-and-on
at best.
A door closed beyond the curtain, then
nothing--no sound. Maybe she'd stepped out. Perfect opportunity.
Mulder paused a moment, then sat up and slipped
his feet to the floor.
Tracy watched the pulse in
Alex's neck, the steady
rhythm it kept, the curves of his ear and the growing stubble that covered his
cheek and upper lip. Things she hadn't allowed herself to focus on before, though
she hadn't realized it at the time.
Before: when he'd been nothing more than a
post-surgical acquaintance of the terrible old man, a wary schemer who slept
with his back to the wall and endured pain soundlessly, and she'd been a runaway
teetering on the knife-edge of simple survival. She'd gained so much since
then.
Dust specks drifted, slowly settling through the
light above them. She lay back and let her hand slip up his side to where a scar
ran diagonally across his ribs. Sunlight burned lazily through the window. He
had that smell--of sunlight on skin, the kind you got from working outdoors. She
buried her face against the side of his neck, breathed in, closed her eyes
and tried to imprint the scene in her mind.
But it was time.
"Alex."
He reached instinctively for her hand and opened
his eyes. A drowsy smile and then clearing, cold consciousness.
"We've got about an hour, Alex. We should
probably straighten things up, get ready."
A pause and he nodded. His eyes closed
momentarily. "I fell asleep."
"I know. You needed it."
"You sleep?"
She shook her head. "I was just lying here.
Watching you."
He leaned back against her, his fingers
tightening
between hers. "Felt you back there." He turned to look at her.
His eyes were dark now, wide open. He cleared his throat.
"It's going to be obvious that somebody's been here. But it'll be easy
enough to make it look like it was just an intruder, some vagrant--"
"We're vagrants," she offered in spite
of his gravity. Despite her own.
He rolled onto his back, shook his head and pulled her against him. A few seconds
later he nudged her with his
nose. Up. Work to do.
"You don't want it to look like it was you
who was here. If
anybody should try to trace you"--he shook his head--"don't give yourself away. Don't give them
anything they can work with."
She sat up. He pulled himself up beside her.
"You okay?" Her body, he meant.
"A little sore. I'll be okay. Come on, there's a
lot to do."
A hand smoothed through her hair and settled against the back
of her neck. Their foreheads came together and they paused, a moment of silence,
of union.
"Go," he said quietly.
She crawled toward the end of the bed.
"Toss me my pants?"
She went to the chair. He didn't watch;
watching would only make him want to pull her back under the covers and forget
the reality that hung over them, and it was critical now to stay on course.
"I remembered something," she said. "While you were
sleeping." She tossed his pants onto the corner of the bed.
"Yeah?"
"I was thinking about Pasadena, Alex. Maybe I did have a brother."
Byers pulled into the staff section of the
hospital parking lot and slipped into a space between two minivans. Turning off
the motor, he found himself motionless, staring straight ahead.
"John, you look as dubious as I feel,"
Rita said into the quiet.
"I guess raw courage has never been my
forte," he admitted, half-glancing at her.
"I don't think there are many of us ready
for what we have to go through at times." She sighed. "I suspect it's
more often a case of being pushed off the side of the pool than diving
in."
"You're probably right."
"We match," she said after a pause, a
smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "The hair, I mean."
"It does seem odd, doesn't it? But it will
get us out as different people than we'll appear to be going in."
Rita pulled down the visor and looked at her
curly wig, gray tinged with that slightly blue highlight older women sometimes
favored. She shook her head.
"I imagine we'd better go on in," she
said.
Byers nodded and opened his door. "You know
Langly will be watching the
monitors. All you have to do is lie there. If he notices that someone's caught
on to the ruse, or if he sees anyone coming to your room, you'll be alerted and
I'll be on my way. After Maggie's gone you'll be my one and only concern. We
need to hold to this presentation as long as we can, but once it's discovered
I'll retrieve you and we'll be out of here. I know it won't be easy, but longer
is better. If they don't realize what's happened until Maggie's safely
delivered, then"--he paused and let out his breath slowly--"we
should have a pretty good chance. And so should Mulder and Scully."
"I imagine I should go first so we aren't
seen together," Rita said. She forced a smile. "I'll see you in
there, John Byers. I'll be counting on you just as Maggie will be counting on
me."
Rita pulled on her door handle and got out. An
adjustment of her skirt, a push to close the door, a deep breath and she was on
her way, eyes straight ahead, footfalls automatic, slightly distant, as if she
were walking above the ground. In her mind she pictured the sleeping man she'd
found slumped against the column of her porch several Sundays earlier, his
earnest eyes and his tale of conspiracy that had sounded so implausible at the
time.
Mulder clicked on the sidebar and scrolled awkwardly down the
list of names. In his focus on creating the accident, he'd reached for the bag
automatically, grabbing it with his right hand. Now, working the mouse with his
left, the cursor insisted on skittering away from the scroll bar on the right
side of the page. He swore quietly, clicked on the screen and
hit 'page down'. The display in front of him went momentarily out
of focus. Mulder blinked hard. Whatever it was she'd given him...
His pulse thumped a frenetic
backbeat as he hit 'page down' yet again.
Approaching footfalls in the hallway stopped abruptly at the door.
The handle turned. Adrenaline surged and Mulder clicked desperately to close the
screen. Stubbornly, the mouse insisted on veering away from the little X in the corner of
the page. Another jerky push of the unaccustomed hand and the screen closed to
reveal the blue logo of Beeson-Lymon. Dr. Vanek was standing in the
doorway, watching him. His heart pounded.
Swallowing, he gripped the edge of the table.
She didn't look happy.
"Mr. Wallace, you're supposed to be lying
down." Her arms were crossed in front of her like a displeased kindergarten
teacher.
"I know. I--" He stopped and blinked
again. "I was feeling kind of... I don't know... fuzzy, dizzy... lying down so
I decided to get up and try to walk it off. These colors on the monitor--the
green and blue. They're not supposed to be strobing, are they?"
She came closer and frowned. "They appear to
be strobing? That's what you're seeing?"
He nodded--slightly. It made him lightheaded.
"What was that you gave me?"
"It was just acetaminophen, Mr. Wallace. And
the antibiotics, of course. You've never had any sort of reaction like this
before?"
"No."
The monitor began to float in front of him.
Mulder gripped the table edge harder.
"Look, you'd better lie down again. We can
elevate your head; it should help. But you shouldn't be running around the
office when you're feeling like this."
"Yeah."
There was a hand on his upper arm, guiding him to
an adjustable bed behind another curtain. He eased himself onto it and lay back.
Dr. Vanek reached for the controls and brought the head of the bed up. "Better?"
"Yeah, I think... I think so." He closed
his eyes. It was like floating in a swimming pool.
"Open your eyes a moment."
He did as he was told. The doctor's face came
closer. She looked into his eyes, then shined a penlight into them.
"What is it?"
Her mouth pressed into an irregular, unreadable
shape. "I'm not certain. It's not at all typical. It could be anything,
even a quirk in the manufacturer's batch of the drug. It's been known to happen,
though it's rare. Usually the mischief's found out and taken care of long before
the product reaches the market." Her lips relaxed momentarily; one hand
went into the pocket of her lab coat. "Or it could be something completely
unrelated. Rest a while, Mr. Wallace; I'll be right here. If you notice any
change at all in your symptoms, let me know right away."
"Yeah, okay."
She pulled up the bed's railing until it
clicked into place. "You might find yourself more comfortable on
your side," she said, turning to go. "Oh, and in the future I'd
recommend leather work gloves. I'll see that Joe gives you a pair."
Mulder watched as she walked away. A moment later
he curled onto
his side and reached for the bed rail with his left hand. His fingers slipped
around the bar and held on. There was only a dull ache in the bandaged hand.
A hard knot formed in his stomach. Not since the
'treatment' room
in the Tunguska prison camp had he felt this kind of... something. Foreboding. Not the
expectant terror that had permeated that room, that had been palpable even
before the screaming started, but uncertainty--the shadow of an ominous unknown, not
knowing where it would lead, this strange reaction to the drug.
Second opinion. He wanted a second opinion from
someone he could trust--his own doctor. She was sitting in a trailer now,
probably trying her damndest to be rational, to wait out the time until notice
came that her mother was safely hidden away.
Had Vanek seen her files open or not? He'd
been trying too desperately to get the damned screen to close to know for sure. The
look she'd given him--it was a definite look. She could have seen. Or it
could just be a doctor's frustration at seeing a patient up and wandering.
Scully might have had the same reaction. The medication had made it hard to tell.
The door had been... open; it was open before he managed to click out. But she'd
said nothing about it, hadn't questioned him or seemed curious.
Mulder closed his eyes. The floating feeling
came and then settled slightly. His fingers gripped the cold, smooth bar that
bordered the bed. In his mind she was standing in the doorway, frowning as he
shoved the mouse, slow-motion and jerky, toward the little X in the corner of
the page.
From the landing Krycek scanned the upstairs
room one final time. He'd wiped off the front of the armoire, the desk chair,
the window ledge, the window latch--anything they'd touched. His DNA was on the
sheets, but nobody was likely to check them. Well, Mulder might. He had no
reason to come here, but if he did, he'd do that kind of thing.
And if he were
to test them?
And if he were to test them, what? He'd find
what he'd find. It didn't matter what Mulder thought.
Krycek placed his rag over the end of the
landing's banister and rubbed, then started down the stairs. The humming in his
gut--the old familiar tension of alertness--was reassuring on the one hand, but
with it came a certain distance, a closing off--closing in--that was liable to
shut her out, too. It wasn't what he wanted, but he had no idea how to temper
it. Until now, he'd never had any need to, and anyway, it was too tightly woven into his
survival
instinct.
Three stairs from the bottom,
he paused and
watched. Tracy was wiping around the sink and cabinet area, apparently
unaware of his presence, which meant that her head was full
of her own worries. When he cleared his throat, she turned.
"You about ready?"
She nodded. "I wiped all the doorknobs like you said. I hope the blankets upstairs look right--you know, the way you want them.
I hid one bowl and spoon so there's only one set in the sink."
"Good thinking. Arms of the rocker?"
"I got those, too. And the
edges of my mom's bed where I pushed it."
Earlier, he'd gotten the doorways, the front of the linen
closet, the bathroom.
"Guess that's it." He nodded toward her
backpack and she picked it up.
She was fighting to keep it inside but something was eating at her, some loose end.
It was obvious in the set of her mouth.
"What is it, Tracy?"
She looked toward the window.
"Leaving, I guess. I'm not sure, really." She turned to face him. "Maybe knowing I'll never be
coming back here."
He shrugged. "You don't know that for
a fact. Maybe a few years
down the--"
But that wasn't what she was talking about. There was
something, maybe one of those things she was
sensing somehow; she had senses he couldn't even comprehend. Whatever it was, it
made him want to move past the subject quickly, like crossing an unlit alley.
He came closer and rested his hand on her
shoulder.
"C'mon," he said quietly, urging her toward the door.
They went out, secured the front door and started across the wet ground,
Tracy slightly ahead, their path taking them toward the garden again.
Reluctantly, he let her lead. Through the
gate, up to the sweet pea vines. No big surprise.
Stopping in front of the trellis, she reached
out tentatively to touch the dried leaves, circling the edges lightly with
her fingertips.
"Look, I--" He let out a slow breath
and reminded himself to be patient. "If they weren't such a red flag, I'd help you take them down
myself." A pause. "I would. You know I would."
She nodded and continued to stare at the vines.
"Anybody who knows this place and sees them
down--they're going to know right away that someone's been here. When you're on the run you can't afford
to leave your mark, you can't... commemorate, you can't... You've got to slip in
and slip out like you were never there. Whatever you want to take, you've got to
find a way to carry it inside you."
Slowly she nodded and looked up at him.
"C'mon," he said gently. He held out his hand and she took it, her
fingers working their way between his and gripping tightly. They left the garden
and started up through the orchard toward the car,
feet skimming wet green weeds, grasses and yellow mustard flowers, one foot and
then the other, settling into an easy pace, their strides even and measured.
"I've been thinking, Alex," she said after they'd passed a
dozen trees, "what it would have been like for my mother to come here after my dad died. How much that must have hurt. How could it not have,
being separated from someone you love? But I never saw anything in her--nothing like that. She never talked about it.
I went looking in the cabinets and closets this morning, Alex, and there aren't
any
pictures. Not a single one from the time before we came here. And the more
I think about it, the more I can almost picture that little boy. I can see
myself holding the back of his bicycle. He's trying to learn to balance and I'm
holding the back of his seat. We're running along the sidewalk and we pass that
window, the arched living room window."
"And now you're wondering why she didn't tell
you the whole story?"
"We were like... like two people who were
one, Alex. We shared everything." She glanced up at him, eyes shiny.
"At least, I thought we did."
He looked away, up to the horizon and cleared his
throat. "Don't doubt her, Tracy. You knew who she
was.
If she was a fake, you wouldn't be the person you are. If she knew things she couldn't
tell you, she must have had a reason, or--"
Something tightened inside him.
She hardly needed to be told about women who'd been taken and experimented
on.
"I thought maybe I'd see her again. You know--her
ghost, or whatever it was." She paused. "She saw you, too, Alex. What do
you think it means?"
He shrugged and opened his mouth but no words
came. What did he know about ghosts?
They were in among the apple trees now. A few
late, pink-tinged blossoms showed between pale green leaves. He'd
check out her story, though, about her dad and the place he'd worked. That,
combined with her mother's lack of memory, seemed to fit an all-too-familiar
pattern. To say nothing of the gaps in her own memory. Implant or no
implant, the implications made something in his gut go cold.
He made himself look up. Broad poplar leaves shimmered in the breeze just ahead of
them. He paused. "You need
a minute here?"
"How are you doing, Alex?"
"So far, so good."
This was the prime part of
his cycle with the pain pills. He'd taken one after he'd eaten, then had spent
an hour lying upstairs with her until the groggy period had passed. Then
they'd made love and eventually he'd fallen asleep, a good rest to set him up
for the journey ahead. He was going to need the strength.
"Then let's go," she said. "We
should go."
They started in again along the path they'd taken the
day before, rising slightly toward the woods. He looked ahead, searching the shadowed
trees for signs of the car.
Maggie's bed
rail was lowered with a clank. She opened her eyes to see a smiling face
leaning toward her.
"It's your bath day, Mrs. Scully. We'll be
able to wash your hair this time, too."
Maggie pulled up slightly, squinting. The fluorescent
lights: they were always the same, never any indication of day or night, of how
long it had been since she'd last been awake or how many days she'd been here. She had
been here for days. Maybe even weeks, she had no way of telling. Life was a
repeating sequence of bright lights, drifting off, coughing herself awake. Hell must be
like this. Hopefully that wasn't what this was.
"Now you can just relax, Mrs. Scully. Rob
and I are going to lift you onto the gurney here and we'll take a little trip
down to the shower room."
Maggie lay back against the pillows. A tickle in
her lungs and the coughing came, hard and racking. She curled onto her side and
closed her eyes. Streaks of red and yellow flashed behind her eyelids. Her ribs
ached.
"Mrs. Scully?" A pleasant
voice. Different voice.
The nurse held out a glass of water and tipped
the straw toward her. She drank. Beads of sweat covered her forehead.
"A bath's going to feel very nice," the
pleasant voice said.
The sheet was pulled back and her gown was smoothed
out. Strong hands went under her shoulders and lifted; another pair of hands
lifted her legs. Then she was on the cold gurney and being covered again. A
second face looked down on her now, a man with auburn hair tied back in a
ponytail. He smiled briefly at her.
"It won't take long," he said.
"You'll feel much better."
She nodded weakly. She supposed she would. How
long had it been? The man's voice was soothing, oddly familiar.
"On our way," the voice said, and the
gurney began to move.
Maggie gripped the edges and blinked. The top of
a doorframe passed by overhead, then the air was cooler, with a different scent
breezing past her as doors and windows and hallways slipped by. Ceiling tiles
and then a doorframe, a turn--she gripped the edge harder--and different tiles,
the bright white of recessed light fixtures, a nurses' station on the left and
then a set of doors that pushed open on either side of her head. Tile walls. The
gurney came to a stop.
"Maggie?"
She looked up to see the familiar-sounding man's
face.
"Maggie, do you know where you are?"
"The hospital. St... St. Anne's."
"Do you remember how you got sick?"
"It was..." She puzzled. Her mind was
thick, out of practice. "It was... I felt like I had the flu. Will Wilkins was--"
The face above her smiled relief. "You
remember Will?"
"Yes." It was beginning to make sense now.
"Where is Will? How is he?"
"He's improving. You'll be able to see
him soon. Maggie, do you remember what Will told you about how you got
sick?"
She tried to think. There was the wallpaper,
and... And John Byers had come to the house. It was about Dana--Fox and Dana.
The man in the overcoat, the one who'd come to the door to tell her
Dana was missing.
"John?"
Relief washed Byers' face. He took her hand. His expression became serious.
"Maggie, this is very important. We have to
move you from the hospital for your own safety and for your daughter's. We're
going to do that right now. It's important that no one see you leave, so a sheet
will be put over you and you must lie very still. Your gurney will be set in a
hallway for just a few minutes. I'll be watching you while you're there. Two men
will come to pick you up. When they do, the sheet will still be over you. You'll
be put into the back of a car and when they're away from the hospital, you'll be
able to see where you're going. We're taking you to a facility where
you'll be more secure."
"Is Dana--?"
"She's safe. She and Mulder are both safe.
But their continued security may depend upon moving you now. The important thing
is to lie very quietly without moving. We'll do the rest." The hand squeezed against hers. "Do you have any questions?"
She paused and shook her head. It was confusing--too
much too fast. But Dana's safety depended on it.
"Are you ready?"
She nodded. She was lifted again--strong hands
under shoulders and legs--onto another gurney. She shook, cold or nervous, she
couldn't tell which. A warm blanket was brought down over her and tucked close
around her. Gradually her body eased.
"Maggie?" John Byers held a sheet above her and nodded at
her, questioning.
She paused. Her fingers curled into her palms and
tightened. She returned his nod and the sheet came down over her head.
Langly tucked a piece of gum between his teeth
and cheek, then pulled it back out and began to chew again. He rocked the chair
slightly, back and forth and back again. The man in the corner with the
headset--the one who had Maggie's room on his screens, had seemed unmoved by her
exit from the room. So far, so good, except that he'd strained something in the
back of his neck turning around so often to watch. He pressed his fingers
against the
place and rubbed.
He glanced across his row of monitors again. Just
his luck that they hadn't given him either floor Maggie would be on. His fingers left his neck to trace the wire
inside his shirt.
"Nada so far on this end," came
a slightly muffled voice in his left ear. "But they should be in view
any minute. Let's hope there were no traffic jams or flat tires." Frohike
cleared his throat. "Any action on your end? One tap for yes, two for no."
Langly tapped the mike twice.
"Good. I'll..." A pause. He could hear
the static of Frohike shifting position. "Damn, I thought it was them, but
no. Well, I'll yell when I see 'em. 'Til then, keep your eyes peeled."
Langly pushed his chair back casually. Curly had
the ground floor monitors where Maggie would be stored and shipped. He stood up and
approached the card player. Curly glanced up at him and then quickly at the row
of monitors, then back at his cards.
"The food here any good?" Langly said.
"Or do I need to plan on going out somewhere for lunch?" His eyes went
methodically from one monitor to the next. No sheet-covered gurneys.
"Strange to say, the cafeteria's pretty good
here," Curly said, making another visual round of Langly, the monitors,
his cards. "I've got a friend who comes here like it was a restaurant.
Cheap, too, if you stick to the employees' cafeteria." A card was turned over.
"Oh, and if you happen to like tapioca pudding, their stuff's killer. Don't
miss it."
Another round: Langly, the monitors, the cards.
"Yeah, tapioca's cool," Langly said.
He turned to go. Out of the corner of his eye he
caught movement, a gurney being wheeled past a monitor pushed by a man with a
ponytail. He waited until it passed the camera, turned away and tapped once
against the mike.
"I feel like a kid being sent home sick from
school," Mulder said, giving Angie a sheepish look. He lifted his head slightly from the headrest to look at
the passing streets. "I really appreciate you taking the time."
"No problem." Angie glanced at her
passenger. "I'm just sorry the seats don't recline for you."
"No, it's... it's okay. I just... Weird
reaction. Never had that happen before. Not like this, anyway."
"On top of grabbing a handful of
glass."
"Yeah, on top of that." He managed a
brief smile and glanced out the side window. "Your kids have Dr.
Vanek?"
She nodded. "She's very good. Certainly
liberal with the appointments."
"She seems to be a
good... technician."
Angie gave him a questioning look.
"You know, really focused on her work."
"A little dry, you mean? Not the first one
to volunteer for the potato sack races at the company picnic?" Angie
grinned. "Medicine's her life. She's been good for the kids."
"How long has she been here?"
She shrugged. "Five, maybe six years. Came from
somewhere else. I mean, when she came she had just a tiny bit of an accent. It's
just something I tend to notice, but it's gone now. Some people live in this country
fifty years and never get rid of their accents. My father-in-law was like that.
Greek."
Angie slowed and pulled into Dale's driveway.
Mulder reached across with his left hand to work the door handle. "Kind of
inconvenient..."
"The kind of thing you don't usually think
about," Angie said. She watched him exit the car. "Well, enjoy your
few hours off. Hope this doesn't bite into your weekend."
"No, I'm feeling better... pretty much. I'm
just not a lot of use with a mop at the moment." He shut the door.
"Thanks again."
Mulder watched the station wagon pull out onto
the street and drive away. Carefully he turned and went inside. It was still there--the
floating feeling. But nothing more serious had happened and Vanek had checked
him several times without seeming alarmed in any way. Still, he wasn't in any
shape to be pushing a broom or cleaning toilets and she knew that, so home he'd
gone. Evidently not even Joe dared to argue with her.
Mulder sat down at the desk and turned on the
computer. He reached for the keyboard and paused abruptly. Now there was an idea
straight from the edge: Test Krycek's sincerity by asking him if he knew
anything about Vanek. But it was crazy. After all, if she was on Smoky's
payroll, just asking the question would pinpoint their location and there was no
percentage in trusting Krycek with that no matter how helpful he'd wanted to
make himself appear lately. And what about the girl--the Stair Sprite? What kind
of snow job had Krycek done on her to have her running his errands the way Skinner
said she was, or writing to them on his behalf? It seemed all wrong, her mixed up with Krycek. What was wrong with this picture?
He pulled out the keyboard shelf and logged onto
the Net. Maybe there was some information to be found about Dr. Maria Vanek. But
first a little note. He turned to look behind him and immediately clutched at the edge of
the shelf, bracing against the sudden dizziness. He turned back to the keyboard and wrote, tapping
awkwardly with the stiffened index finger of his right hand.
To: thelark@zipmail.com
From: DaddyW@zipmail.com
Need to see you ASAP. I'm at home and carless. (11:41 a.m.)
Krycek glanced over at Tracy in the driver's
seat. She was sitting fairly comfortably, but there was something in her face, the
kind of determination that said she was going to make it through this nightmare
no matter what, and that's what it was: a nightmare.
Not that he could blame her. Beyond having to wrap her
mind around leaving so suddenly, she'd been blindsided by the doubts starting to surface about her mother.
And the memory of the boy who might
be her brother. Then there'd been his own speculation about her father and what
might have happened to her mom, if she'd picked up on it. It was only one short step from there to including
herself in the nightmare equation. No easy thing, realizing you'd been
manipulated that way. As if she didn't have enough to deal with already.
It was the only thing that had ever made sense: survival of the
fittest, sink or swim. The people who couldn't cut it washed out and it was all
for the better in the end. The old man would stand there with that smug
little smile of his and warn him that his time with her had blinded him, that he
wasn't seeing things clearly. Probably he was right. But that didn't solve her problem, didn't make her safe or
catch her when she stumbled.
Krycek eased his left leg up against the dashboard,
slouched farther down into the seat and stared at the pattern in the headliner
until it went out of focus.
Byers glanced across the hallway at two covered
gurneys and then out through the glass door at the hallway's end. Nothing yet.
Maggie was doing a good job so far, keeping her breathing shallow, staying
still. But Frank Lazare should have been here by now and he'd heard nothing
from...
"We're in business," Frohike's welcome voice
came into his ear. "Just coming into the parking lot." A pause.
"Now circling toward your entrance."
The sudden, ragged sound of coughing erupted from
beneath the covering of the parked gurney.
Byers froze, his blood pumping madly.
"Say, you got change for a dollar?"
Curly looked up.
Langly shrugged. "Soda machine won't take
my dollar bill. Those things never work."
Curly dug around in his pocket.
On one monitor, two gurneys showed clearly along
with a pony-tailed orderly leaning against the far wall. No movement, then a
sudden spasming on one of the gurneys. Langly gulped. He glanced at the figure
against the wall, its body language speaking panic. Curly was caught momentarily in his card strategy. The monitors had no sound, but
it was obvious what was going on. Byers was a wizard behind the scenes, but he
was anything but quick on the draw in situations like this. Rambo he definitely wasn't.
"Your change..."
Langly forced his eyes from the monitor. Curly
was holding out a handful of quarters, waiting. Langly reached out and took them
absently.
"What? Something happening?" Curly spun to look at the bank of monitors. None
showed activity but one, where an orderly was apparently caught in a fit of
coughing, half bent over. Curly reached for his phone.
"Thanks," Langly said, and hurried
from the room.
Maggie felt the quick motion, wheels being
collapsed under her and the gurney being slid into a dark, enclosed area. She
tried not to move, or shake, though her arms were far from cooperative. In
her mind she pictured the man who had shown up on her doorstep, the same one who had peered into her
hospital room window, his face calm as he pronounced the alarming news about her
daughter that didn't
seem to move him. Was this where she was supposed to be? The right place, right
people? But John Byers had described this very scenario. Still, it felt ominous, everything distorted and dreamlike.
Beyond her feet, the vehicle's rear door closed with a deep latching sound. Then nothing: no movement, no sound, no one evident
in the front seat. The closeness of the sheet made her breath sweaty against her
face. She'd been unable to hold back the coughing in spite of her efforts. If
someone were watching... Had someone been in the hallway besides John Byers? Was
it really John's people who had her now?
Maggie's hands curled
tight, her pulse throbbing through her
fingers. A click. A door swung open, the car dipped slightly to one
side--driver's side--and then closed again.
"Hey," a voice said softly.
It seemed as if whoever it was--a man--had turned
around to face the space where she lay. Her body stiffened and refused to move
or allow her to speak. Survival must feel like this: foxholes or hiding on a
darkened field of battle. Had her husband known this kind of fear?
The engine was started, revved slightly and they
were moving, slowly at first, making a turn, stopping and then going again almost
immediately. The car's suspension was soft and she rolled slightly from side to
side in the turns. The sound of jazz came from a radio speaker beyond her head,
the driver humming along. It was hard to tell if his voice seemed edgy or
relaxed. Inside, her heart beat a syncopated rhythm against the music.
"Got our first green light."
The voice came from close beside her. Maggie
jumped, adrenaline washing her. Her heart pumped harder. Gripping a wad of
blanket beside her, she squeezed hard.
"Cool." It was the driver's voice.
Sudden fresh air and light confronted her as the sheet was
pulled back. Maggie looked up at the somber, quilted ceiling above her and then at a
brown hand offering a bottle of water. She stared hard at the face that went
with it and let out a little gasp.
The face broke into a smile.
It was Will.
Tracy lay in the car's back seat and tried
to focus on nothing, to slow down the too-rapid passage of time. To clear
her head and rest. An hour of driving time left: a single, fleeting hour until
she'd be on her own, not left watching as Alex
faded into the distance but headed for a new chapter herself, a chapter of
hiding and caution, of being a small morsel of prey who dared not expose herself
to the view of a lanky, stalking cat. She pictured herself alone in a
strange, empty world.
A slow movement slid across her middle and
then faded. Instinctively she started to reach for the place but stopped, her hand returning
to her side. She'd been able to ignore the larger reality of the
baby until she'd met Alex. The morning nausea had been like a vague,
undetermined illness, but now the tiny life had begun to assert itself, stretching and turning.
More
than that, it was the concern in Alex's mind that fed her with a constant
uneasiness now. How likely was she to be able to provide what a baby would need?
A tap against the car door and she looked up to
see unkempt graying hair and a mustache under a rumpled hat. But there was a
familiar sharpness in the man's eyes. She reached up and pulled up the lock
button and Alex got into the seat in front of her.
"How are you doing?" he said, settling himself. "I got a couple of apples, some sandwiches and a carton of milk.
You want anything?"
"In a minute," she said, and closed her eyes.
Already he seemed almost a memory, half-transparent.
She'd wanted to walk, to get out and wander
through the green, fragrant trees at the side of the road, but the sight of their car stopped
along the roadside could bring attention neither of them could
afford. In the end they'd pulled over behind a gas station at the
edge of Chambersburg and Alex had retrieved the hair and hat disguise he kept in
the trunk. It aged him a good dozen years and made him look disheveled
enough that if anyone noticed the prosthesis, it would seem a natural enough
part of the man that he wouldn't be as likely to stand out in someone's memory.
She'd lain down in the back
seat to relax while he went looking for food.
Now warm fingers came awkwardly searching
along the seat edge beside her
shoulder. She opened her eyes to see his arm reaching between the seat back
and the door, and
took his hand. He was facing forward, in case anyone was looking, thinking
about the gnawing in his gut and the sandwich in the paper bag on his lap.
"You okay?" he asked, his thumb smoothing
along the side of her hand.
She tried for a smile--one he couldn't see, or
feel the way she could--and squeezed back against his fingers.
"What would your mom tell you?" his voice
came after a moment's silence.
She knew what he was doing, trying to guide
her back to the trust that had always fit her like a second skin. "She'd say to
look up at the sky and see what's really there. To let yourself rise until you
can look down on your problems and see how small they actually are."
"She knew what she was talking about."
He paused and breathed out. "She gave it to you straight, Tracy. Nothing's worth more than that."
He was watching two men beside a
truck who had turned and seen their car. He was thinking about having his stomach
full instead of empty, so it would quit taking his focus. He was trying, for
the sake of alertness and both their safety, to disentangle himself from what
they'd become.
His thumb continued its
path, slow and soothing.
Knocking came at the back door. Mulder eased himself carefully from the couch
and padded across the floor to answer it. His eyes followed the pattern in the
carpet runner, hand throbbing a quiet backbeat. When he looked up, he blinked.
Reaching for the handle, he stopped himself and grabbed it with the other hand,
waiting for the swirl of dizziness to settle. Sandy stood outside.
"That was quick," he said,
swinging the door wide. "I didn't expect--"
"What happened?" she said, nodding
toward his bandaged hand.
"This?" He shook his head--not a smart
move--and quickly grabbed to steady himself against the door frame.
Sandy gave him a concerned
look.
"Just another one of those half-assed, impulsive things Annie's going
to have to save me from, I think." He glanced carefully over his shoulder
into the living room and then back at Sandy. "Look, can you take me up
there? You didn't sprint all the way down here just now like the bionic woman, did
you? You drove here, I hope?"
Sandy rolled her eyes. "I've got Heather's car. David lets me
use it if I need to."
"Good."
He stepped outside, locked the door and they got
into the car. Sandy started the engine and backed out into the street.
"Think I'll recline this," he said, working to
grasp the lever with uncooperative fingers. His hand banged against the door,
making him wince. "No point in offering ourselves to the local gossip network." The seat back went down abruptly.
Sandy glanced
over at him. "What happened?"
"Grabbed a trash bag with a broken bottle in
it," he said.
A pause. "That ain't the whole story, is it?"
He paused a moment and grimaced. "Not much
slips by you. You really ought to consider the Bureau someday, you know?"
"Yeah, right." She gave him a look. A
pause, a blush and she recovered. Her brow furrowed. "This has
something to do with your investigating, don't it?"
"I hope so," he said. "I hope I
didn't do this for nothing."
Langly paused for breath at the bottom of the
stairs and opened the door cautiously. The hallway was empty. If Curly had called
in, Byers could have been hauled off already--at least by someone thinking he'd
had a medical emergency. What would the poor guy do, confronted by people
wondering what had come over him? Maybe the sheer volume of sweat would help him
pass himself off as sick.
Stay down here long enough, somebody's going to
miss you. You'll send up a red flag of your own.
The click of a door handle sounded close by.
Byers' head appeared from an entry marked 'Electrical'.
"Psst." Langly opened the
stairwell door just a little.
Byers glanced toward him. Relief lit
his face. He glanced overhead, checking for camera positioning, then slipped into the
hallway and approached. Langly eased himself back into the stairwell and let
his friend pass.
"Whew." Langly sagged against the
wall. "Thought you were history there for a minute."
Byers looked up at him, red-faced. "You
weren't the only one under that impression."
"But you pulled it out. Hey, it looked great
on the monitor. I don't think Curly even noticed the gurney."
"I have no idea what came over me. I froze
when she started coughing; I couldn't think of anything and then there I was,
just doing it, pretending it was me. I didn't even think until afterward that you
wouldn't have audio, that only the motion would show." He shrugged.
"Survival instinct, I guess."
"I guess. Anybody come down here looking for
you?"
"Not that I can tell. I eased off after a
minute and took a drink at the water fountain"--he pointed toward
it--"so I guess they figured I'd come out of it."
Langly glanced up the stairwell. "I should
fly. They're gonna miss me upstairs."
"And I've got to position myself for
Rita."
"Let's hope we get some lead time here to work
with."
Byers only nodded. He leaned forehead first
against the wall.
"Hey, you okay?" Langly stopped five
stairs up.
"Yeah, I... Yeah."
Langly continued up to the landing and glanced
down. Byers was still in the same position.
"Good work," he called down.
Byers looked up and nodded.
The
Baltimore skyline streamed past the car's back window at a crazy tilt. Krycek watched it
from where he lay on the seat below. Given the fact that the old man was
hunting for Mulder and Scully, there could be someone tailing his
mother, so caution was imperative. And however this went down, there'd be at
least an hour's drive home afterward. His strength should hold--hopefully
the pain meds along with it--but there was the stress factor, and however
Mulder's hospital escape plan might intersect his drive. And you could never discount the possibility of heavy
traffic. He'd never driven in this kind of shape before to have any solid idea of how it
might go.
Welcome back to the real world, Aleksei.
There's always at least one more ball to juggle than you can handle, but hey,
isn't that the way it's always been? Still not up to speed? Only half-recovered? Ah, can't be helped,
you poor bastard.
Tracy must be absorbed in her own
worries. If she weren't, she'd have been listening in on the mess inside his
head, but she seemed not to have noticed. It made sense, though. This little hand-off
was going to take all the readiness they could muster, every bit of their focus. Later--an hour afterward, a day or a week, or in those half-coherent moments just before
sleep took you--who knew how it would hit? He'd gotten so used to falling asleep with her sitting on the edge
of the bed. To say nothing of being able to wake up with her warm beside
him.
"How much farther?" he said, rising up slightly
to catch her eye from between the seats.
"It should be just a few blocks."
Nearly show time.
Something inside him tightened.
Two sets of hand lifted Rita from the gurney onto the bed. A moment
later warm blankets came down around her and were tucked in.
"See," the face above her was
saying--Rani's wife's face. "I told you you'd feel much better, dear."
There was a squeeze against her hand. She nodded,
but not too energetically. All she had to do was look sick, and she'd spent
enough time watching Will go through this disease. Maybe all her observation would
turn out to have been good for something.
Carefully Rita glanced toward the door. The orderly was
pushing the gurney outside into the hall. Rani's wife came back to the bed.
"Your hair's still a little damp but it will
dry soon, Mrs. Scully," she said.
The blankets were pulled back. The IV was hooked
up, the sensors for the monitoring equipment, the oxygen tube fitted in place. A
knowing look--supportive look--came from the face above her and the blankets
were brought up again, light and comfortable.
"Warm enough?"
Rita nodded, though she was shaking slightly. A
firm hand smoothed down her arm, comforting her, and then was gone. Rita turned to watch
the uniformed figure leave, pulling the door halfway shut behind her.
She wanted
to close her eyes but she couldn't. Somewhere, someone was watching.
"See you inside," he said, touching her fingers
briefly.
"There doesn't seem to be anyone with her,
Alex. She's wondering if we're some kind of trap."
He nodded. Half-swallowed. "You okay?"
Yes. Just go.
Then he was gone, threading his way between
parked cars and along the sidewalk. Tracy took her foot off the brake and
pulled ahead, passing him and finally turning into the parking lot that faced a
row of modern brownstones. If anyone were watching his mother, she should be
able to hear them when Alex went up to the door. She'd listened carefully as
they'd sat in this parking lot earlier and had noticed nothing, but it was
important to
be sure.
Now she watched him come into view
walking toward the group of brownstones, his pace casual
but his body slightly taut. Until just a few minutes ago it hadn't actually hit
her: He could be in his own bed right now, nominally safe within the confined
world of the old man's group. Instead he was risking his own recovery, out on
the street and willingly exchanging his own security to purchase her escape.
He'd told her to stay with him, inside his head,
so he could let her know when it was safe to come in. They would draw less
notice if each of them approached the home separately, though it meant he
would
be aware of her constant presence in his mind, a witness to his every fear and uncertainty.
He hadn't said goodbye, or even
thought anything personal, but it wasn't the time or place. Hopefully when
they were inside, there would be a moment or two. The last eighteen hours
had been a swollen stream, life and sensations and feelings carrying her far
from where she'd stepped in. And now, it seemed, she was about to wash up on a barren, unfamiliar shore.
It
was time. Alex had paused in front of the stairs to the house, looking up. This
was the way he'd felt going into Buzz's interrogation. Or standing on his
mother's porch in Greenwich.
He made himself step up. Knuckles against the
door, he counted the seconds. At three, he heard footsteps inside. Then a
curtain in a window was pulled slightly aside.
His legs were like water.
Taking a deep breath, Teena opened the door.
The air outside was bright and she squinted into
it. The man on the doorstep had neatly combed salt-and-pepper hair, but his face was that of
her enigmatic son. He wore jeans and a long-sleeved blue T-shirt and at least a day's growth of
beard. He seemed as nervous as she was, waiting, each of
them, for the other to make the first move.
She opened the door farther and stood back.
He nodded slightly.
"Come in. Your friend?"
"She'll be along," he said as he passed her
and went inside.
Teena hesitated and finally closed the door behind him.
He glanced quickly around the room: at the
entrances to various rooms, the sliding glass door leading to the back patio, up the stairs to the
second floor landing.
"Sorry, I've got to check this."
She stood uncomprehending a moment, then stepped
aside. Of course. He'd expect someone hiding, spying or worse.
"Certainly. Go... go ahead."
He turned immediately and looked into the dining
room, the guest closet, the kitchen. She took a few steps into the living room
and sat down on the edge of a love seat. He worked methodically, opening every
door, exploring every opening.
After a few moments he appeared through the kitchen door,
passed her and started up the stairs, his pace slowing noticeably as he went. He'd been
injured, after all. That was what the girl had been there for--to aid him while
he was recovering. She pictured him going through the upstairs bedrooms, the
study, the bathrooms. Then the sound of his footfalls on the uncarpeted stairs
that led to Trudy's roof patio.
Teena got up from her seat and went into the
kitchen. It had suddenly occurred to her when she was nearly here that they
might not have eaten, that certainly she and the girl would need food for
the evening. She'd stopped at Trudy's favorite market and then had picked up a bouquet
of purple and white stock as an afterthought. Their spicy fragrance had
seemed a welcome distraction from the tension inside her. When he'd knocked, she'd
left them lying on
the counter.
Now she picked up the kitchen shears and snipped off
the ends of the stems, slitting them lengthwise at the base. On the window sill
over the sink was a cobalt blue vase. She filled it with water and arranged the
stock in it. When the trimmings were cleared away, she took the vase into the
living room. He was just coming down the stairs, moving slowly, tired from the effort, or the
strain of tension, his mouth straight, giving nothing away.
"Is there anything else you need to
check?"
He shook his head, came closer, stopped and
sniffed. "What are they?"
"Stock. I thought the fragrance would be
nice since the house is closed up so much."
He nodded toward the
vase. "She likes stuff like that. Flowers."
He paused and the moment turned awkward.
Obviously the thread of this conversation had unexpectedly reached its end. Finally he glanced away,
through the sliding glass door that overlooked the small enclosed garden. Teena
made herself continue to the coffee table, set the
vase on it and turned around to find him facing her. She nearly jumped.
Carefully she straightened up and smoothed a non-existent
wrinkle from the front of her blouse. "Come sit down," she said.
"Tell me whatever it is I'll need to know."
He nodded and waited for her to move first. Teena
retreated to the sofa and sat carefully. After a moment he came around the coffee
table and sat down on the love seat opposite. His eyes were sharp, his
expression wary.
"She was a runaway," he began. "He picked her because he figured she'd be
an easy throwaway when the job was
finished, when I didn't need the help anymore." He cleared his throat.
"Chances are he'll look for her, but I can't say how long or how hard.
She needs to be somewhere he can't find her." A pause. "And
you probably have a pretty good
idea of how
far his arm reaches."
Teena stiffened and nodded.
"I'm not trying to dump her on Mulder; I
know he's got more than enough to deal with already. But he's the only
one I know who can keep her safe, keep her where the old man won't be able to
find her."
"May I ask how old she is?" Her voice
sounded strange, distant. "You said--"
"Eighteen." Almost. "She's"--he shrugged--"kind of an old soul.
Hard to explain. And the
baby... the more she says, the more it sounds like she was... like somebody got
to her--maybe not the Project but somebody else out there. Tell Mulder that.
There are too many parts of her life she's got no memory of at all. Sounds classic. Textbook."
"I can't guarantee," she started, "that Fox will
agree to take her. I can't--"
"If he doesn't, let me know. I'll figure out
something. The point wasn't to put you on the spot, I just--" A pause,
almost a swallow; his voice lowered. "Appreciate you giving it a try."
"Alex, how are you?"
He shrugged and seemed to
loosen a little. "Doctor says I'm doing
pretty well, considering."
"Are you going to be alright without her
help?"
For a fleeting second his mouth, which had begun to open, froze
abruptly. An expression she couldn't read passed over his face and was
gone. The corner of his mouth twitched. "Not much choice now."
"Alex, I'm sorry this is so awkward, for
both of us. I know that"--she took in a quick breath--"if I'd made a different decision years ago, it wouldn't be
this way." Exhaled. "But let me help you now. What do I need to know to help your
friend?"
A measured breath and he seemed to loosen. "When she came to D.C.
she ran into Mulder on the Mall; that's where he knows her
from. Then, I don't know how, he found
her. Saw her somewhere, a park or something, and figured he could use her--the
perfect disposable caretaker." His jaw set, a sign that the proffered explanation was at an end.
Silence enveloped them. Teena looked down at her
fingers, then up at the painting on the opposite wall. There was too much air in the room with its high, high ceiling.
"Alex, surely she must be wondering what's taking
you."
The expression he gave her was curious: half smile,
half smirk. Finally he shook his head. "Guess that's something else you should
probably know. She can read people. She's kind of... psychic. It throws
you at first, but try not to let it get to you. It's not anything she can control."
Teena opened her mouth, puzzled.
Her son's expression turned suddenly intense. "If he finds out what she can do, he'll squeeze her dry.
That's another reason she's got to get out of here."
Teena managed to close her mouth. "Then you should...
you should tell her to come in, Alex. If
you're ready."
He cocked his head slightly, as if hearing a
distant conversation,
then nodded. "She's on her way."
It was only when he stood up and started moving
toward the front window that she began to realize what had happened. A
shiver passed through her.
"Do you mean--?" she said, getting up and following
him.
He turned back. "Like I said, it takes some
getting used to. Just... give her a chance. She deserves it."
"I'll do my very best--"
The doorbell rang. On Alex's cue, she
stepped past him
and pulled on the handle. In the brightness beyond the door stood a tall, thin blonde girl in a long
yellow dress.
"Aunt Jane?"
Rita swallowed and moved her head slightly to the
right, toward the wall. Was she supposed to be able to speak, and if so, how
well? Someone listening might notice the difference in her voice and was the
room bugged, or were they only watching from a silent monitor?
The voice--a woman's voice--hovered above her now. She
looked up. A short red-headed woman in a green blouse and khaki slacks stood near the
bed.
"Aunt Jane--" The visitor stopped
abruptly and reddened. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I can see I have the wrong
room. This is"--she glanced back at the half-open door--"412. I
was looking for 421." She set her hand on the bed railing. "Oh, I hope I
didn't wake you."
Rita shook her head carefully.
"Well, I hope you'll be feeling better soon.
So sorry for the interruption."
The woman smiled an apologetic smile and turned to leave. Rita
stared at the ceiling, flushed with a fine coat of sudden
perspiration. The woman hadn't seemed alarmed, though, or reacted as if
something--the patient, especially--was out of place. Though she herself had
received quite a jolt at the beginning because at first glance, her mistaken visitor had
looked quite like Agent Scully.
Dr. Vanek set aside her coffee mug, reached for
the
ruler lying on the desk and set it against the line on the page where she'd
stopped reading. Staring out the window onto the parking lot below, the
cars blurred and became an image of Wallace and his exaggerated reaction to the
medication. The sodium oxybate was something she gave out as a matter of course.
In most cases it was more effective than acetaminophen and satisfied patients
generally weren't ones to ask questions. And the drug was easy enough to obtain
with Spender's help. The FDA's reservations were of a political nature for
the most part. That was usually the case, and what was the point in pandering to
yet another bureaucracy while patients were in discomfort?
But the janitor's reaction had been eerily
familiar. She'd had to stop using the drug herself once she'd been given the
Tunguska vaccine, and for precisely the same reasons: the fuzzy feeling Wallace
had
described, the floating and the persistent, aggressive dizziness. What had he
been doing at the monitor in the first place? Was he searching her records or
had he merely grabbed at a convenient surface to steady himself? At home... At
home there would have been immediate cause for suspicion--spies of one sort or
another, one group always playing off the other's advantage. But in this
country things
were much less sophisticated, less dangerous. Quieter. It was the whole point of
being installed in this facility. It was unobtrusive, just a factory in the
country's heartland, nothing associated with high-technology research, with
genetics. Or topics beyond human genetics.
Assumptions of innocence could be dangerous,
however. If only her parents had been a little more wary, a little less drawn in
by the uncharted possibilities of their work, she might still have parents. She
would not be here, in this terribly provincial little town.
It was time to look more closely into Mr.
Wallace and his background. Every step documented. Every possibility eliminated.
"Mulder, can you walk?"
Scully leaned in toward him through the open car
window, concern etching her expression. Apparently he'd scared her on top of the tension
she was already feeling from worrying about her mother.
"Yeah, Scully, I'm not dying. It's been
wearing off, but--" He lifted his head from the head rest and opened the
door. After a pause he stood up carefully. "See?"
"Let me see what she's done with your hand."
He offered his palm for her inspection. She
peeled away the tape and carefully lifted the pad covering the wound. Her mouth
shrank to a small, tight sign of displeasure. She looked up at him and
swallowed.
"Mulder, do you know how close you came
to--?" She looked away. He thought he saw her blink.
"Sorry. Didn't mean to scare ya." A
finger, careful, under her chin. She frowned at him. "I just... I needed
an excuse to get in there. Something's happening with those Connors kids,
Scully, and it's not just diabetes." He paused at her frown. "What?"
Scully glanced toward Sandy, who was standing
beside the driver's door.
The girl cleared her throat. "Maybe I just
oughta leave you two alone for a while."
Memory jolted him. It wasn't just him, though;
both of them had just spoken each other's names. He gave Sandy a self-conscious
smile. "It's okay. Hey, you had to figure we'd be using aliases,
right? No sense giving ourselves away."
"Yeah, makes sense, I guess. I mean, nothin'
that's happened around here in the last month has made much sense, but yeah,
under the circumstances--assassins and spies and bad guys... I don't mean to say
you two are spies."
Mulder grinned and shrugged. "Yeah, but we
are."
Sandy glanced at the door frame in front of her.
Scully cleared her throat; she'd put back her
most professional, collected face. "We need to find out what you've been
given. It could be just a fluke, but considering the circumstances I'd rather be
safe than sorry." She turned to the girl. "Sandy, could you take him
over to Dr. Wykoff's? I can call ahead and let him know you're coming."
"Sure."
"Go, Mulder." She urged him back into the car and attempted a
smile. It seemed to be hiding mixed emotions--joy and sadness, worry and
contentment.
"What?"
She shook her head. "I'll talk to you later.
Just tell Dr. Wykoff exactly what you remember and let's see what he can find
out."
Mulder fastened his seat belt and leaned back
against the head rest. "You going to be okay?"
She nodded and didn't quite bite her lip. "I
just want you back in one piece."
He reached his hand--injured hand--up through the
open window. She caught his fingers carefully and then let go. Sandy started the
car and backed up to turn around.
"You know what's going on with her?" he
said as they started down the driveway.
"I think I might have an idea." She
paused and glanced over at him. "I think you'd better ask her,
though."
He shrugged. Obviously some kind of girl
thing. "Okay."
"It's nothing you did. I think it's got
something to do with me."
He looked forward again and reached carefully for
the lever that reclined the seat.
Both of them watched as Teena disappear into the kitchen.
"You tired, Tracy?"
A thumb traced the inside of her wrist. He was
leaning back against the white sofa cushions. She sat close, leaning forward,
staring out the window that led to the back garden. Watching the patterns in the
sky: surely they must have a message for her if only she could manage to focus
on what it might be.
"A little." She worked
her fingers between his and let the contact strengthen her. "You should
stretch out for a few minutes like she said, Alex. Before you've got to do all
that driving."
"You know I'm not going to be able to relax
here."
"I know. But sometimes just spending a few
minutes stretched out helps your body even if it doesn't rest your mind. Try to
eat something. Just a little. It will make her feel better, Alex. She's trying
really
hard."
He nodded. He'd defer to her not because she
was a woman, or because she was his lover, but because he was completely out of his depth
in this kind of diplomacy. She'd know better than he would what he should do to to get past the awkwardness that held
him and this woman who was his mother.
"Maybe there's a razor here somewhere so you
can shave," she said. "So you won't go back looking like you've been
away somewhere, out in the woods."
"Good idea."
"I'll go ask if you want."
He offered a silent thank-you and let go of her
hand. Tracy stood and went into the kitchen where Alex's mother was busy setting
out food she'd picked up at the deli, hoping her son would find something he'd
like, wondering whether sitting across a table from her might make him
uncomfortable. In her less conscious mind she'd drifted back to her own kitchen, setting a sandwich on a
glass plate, cutting through it diagonally, giving the plate a critical eye and adding
a piece of pickle. A small offering to a son
so thoughtlessly given away.
Everything he'd need was in an upstairs bathroom,
she said, relieved to be of some use. First door on the left. Tracy thanked her and returned to the
living room.
As he started up the stairs, Alex turned back. "You coming?"
"I thought you might need some space."
"I'll have plenty of that soon enough." He held out his hand.
She went to take it and followed
him up.
"What?" he said, looking into the
mirror at her as she sat balanced on the edge of the tub a few minutes later. His face was soaped
with shaving cream.
"Just watching. I liked it, the
way it was this morning." She pictured him momentarily grinning, hair rumpled,
lying in a stripe of sunlight on her bed. "Don't mind me. You need to look the way you always
do at home."
Home, he was thinking: what a concept. It
had always been his place, his apartment. But home? Home
was...
No. Better not to even
think about it.
"I know about the money, Alex. Thanks. A lot.
I--"
He frowned into the mirror at her reflection. He'd wanted it to be something she'd find out later.
"Sorry. The other day I figured maybe I should
try the ATM card, to make sure it worked. The balance was on the receipt."
Smart move, he was thinking. Planning ahead--it
was a good sign. 'You'll need it' was all he said.
She studied him from where she sat: the shape of
his shoulders, the way his shirt hung. The contour of the hem caught against the
back of his pants, the length of his legs. The way he tilted his
chin as he shaved it.
"Alex, I know--"
He turned to look at her. She looked down and
studied her shoes. After
a moment he
turned back, wet a washcloth under the running water and used it to wipe away
the last of the shaving cream. He looked at himself in the mirror, stretching
his neck to one side and then the other. This was
stupid, he was thinking. It felt wrong, out of sync for the two of them.
Finally he sat down beside her on the edge of the tub.
"We can't afford to
leave any kind of trail--anything that connects us. One wrong move... you know
that's all he's waiting for."
He leaned forward, ran his hand back through his hair, then let his forehead
rest against it.
He sat up again and stared at the ceiling. They
should just make the break, not hang around killing themselves over the
possibilities, losing their edge by being bleeding hearts and making
themselves vulnerable in the process.
"I understand, Alex. Just--" She stood
up. "Hold me. Please. Just for a minute."
He stood and gathered her in against him, and she
closed her eyes. They swayed slightly, the reassuring movement of bodies
breathing against each other. Slowly she slipped a hand up under his shirt, to where he was warm and smooth
and uncovered.
"When the kid comes," he said finally, "when it's
time--"
"I think I can reach you, Alex. I don't
think it will matter where I am."
A sharp breath beside her ear. A pause, then
a shake of his head and his voice, barely a whisper. "Can't wait that long."
"I know. Me, either."
Her arms tightened around him. She closed her eyes
and focused on the imprint of his body against hers, the feel and smell of him,
the memory of the night before, crawling across the bed, his blanket opening to
let her in and then closing
around her like a tent. The sensation of being pulled in against the smooth, welcome heat of his
skin.
"Alex?"
"Mm?"
"If you could just keep one moment,
one memory... what would it be?"
His breath came in soft bursts against her temple. "You first."
"It's hard to pick. But... this morning, I
guess. Lying behind you, watching you sleep. It was so warm and quiet and
peaceful, for just a little while there." She looked up. "What about
you?"
He looked past her. "All of them."
"Alex, that's not...You're not playing
fair."
"That's who I am, Tracy. I don't play fair.
I don't"--his mouth finding hers, warm and desperate--"play." He paused,
his lips settling beside her ear. His arm was
hard around her.
Rita raced barefoot the last few yards to the
stairwell, heart pounding, one wrist caught in John Byers' now-iron grip, the
other arm dangling behind, grasping for what must be the too-open back of a
patterned hospital gown, wrist aching from where the IV had been hastily pulled
out. She felt the flatness of her feet hitting the hard, smooth floor, the chill
of the air passing her, the sheer terror of hasty flight. John's wide-eyed
expression had been sufficient to instill the fear she felt now. The short,
Scully-like
visitor would be enough to send the Smoking Man's henchmen in to investigate and
unless she wanted to end up a hostage facing the questioning of the horrible man
himself, it was time to flee in the most ungraceful but effective way possible.
Though even Andy would shake his head in wonder at this.
Abruptly she was yanked into a stairwell and hurried, feet
flying, to a landing halfway between floors. She and Byers collapsed panting
against the wall, neither venturing to look at the other, her heart pounding
like a jackhammer.
"I apologize," Byers panted, red-faced,
"for the suddenness..." More panting. "Couldn't take the
chance on them... coming in... If they'd seen you, they... would have taken you
for... for sure... for whatever information they could get." He looked up, toward the ceiling several floors
above them.
"Well"--a gulp for air--"I do
appreciate your not leaving me there... to be the sacrificial lamb... though truth
be told... I don't plan on getting myself into another predicament like this...
anytime soon." She leaned forward slightly and attempted in vain to swallow
away the dryness in her throat.
"At least your clothes...are there..." Byers pointed toward a brown paper grocery bag
that she hadn't yet noticed, set into the shadow of the corner.
"Thank you, John."
His eyes were closed. They opened now, wide, as
if the wideness might help him take in more of his surroundings. "I'll..." he started,
"go
down... to the landing and wait. When you're changed, signal me. I'll go down
another floor and out; you... take your bag upstairs, put it in a trash container
in the lounge, and go out through the main entrance. I'll be in the car
waiting."
She nodded. "Yes," she added, since he
was affording her the blessing of privacy.
Cautiously Byers started down the stairs. She watched until
he reached the landing and stood peering through the little window in the door
there. All clear, his
waving hand signaled behind him. She took the two steps to the bag and opened
it, fumbling quickly for her volunteer's outfit with shaking arms. There'd be an
end to this undercover crusading nonsense as soon as she got home. Will would
grow strong again and she'd return to Owensburg and Bethy and play out the role
she was meant to have.
She snagged a stocking with a fingernail and
paused a moment to consider the result. Skirt and blouse... and hair--it
certainly was a sight but it would tuck under the wig, and the wig could be adjusted
in the reflection of the little window on the landing above. She straightened up
and pulled at her waistband--some underlayer was twisted--and slipped her feet
into her shoes.
When she was finished, she peered over the
railing to where John Byers stood watch by the downstairs door.
"Psst," she called down.
Byers hesitated a second, looked up at her,
nodded and started down the stairs to the floor below.
"You look about as patient as I feel,"
Mulder said, nodding toward the magazine Sandy had flipped quickly through and
tossed onto the cardboard box beside her.
"Yeah, well I guess I just like being able
to do something, you know, rather than sitting around waiting and
waiting."
"Yeah, I do know." He pushed up on
one elbow and waited for the slight dizziness to dissipate. One eyebrow went up.
"Thanks for coming along to play babysitter, by the way."
"No problem." Sandy pulled one leg up
under her. "How are you doing? You had any more of that dizziness or
anything? I'm supposed to be monitoring you, you know."
"No, just... just that little bit when we got
here, and then if I move suddenly." He lay back down on the cot and stared
at the bank of filing cabinets that lined one wall of Dr. Wykoff's back room.
"You ever find out anything about our good plant doctor from your blind
friends?"
"Not really. But maybe that says something
right there," she said.
"How so?"
"When people hang around Owensburg, Ray and
Debbie know about 'em. Usually quite a bit. You know, people think that just
because blind people don't see that they don't have things figured out and it
just ain't so. Those two--" She sighed. "Anyway, nobody seems to know
much about her. Dr. Vanek, I mean. She's got a house over on Spring Street--she
owns it, doesn't rent--but she seems to spend most of her time at the plant. And I guess she
goes into Lexington or somewhere on the weekends sometimes. Doesn't seem to have
anybody she hangs out with here in town."
"Single?"
"Yeah, as far as anyone can tell."
"Angie said she had an accent when she came
here."
"I don't know. I've never met her that I know
of." Sandy paused. "What?"
Mulder sucked in his lower lip and shook his head
carefully. "Nothing."
"Didn't look like nothin' to me. You got an
idea?"
"I shouldn't. Annie'd kill me." He
paused. "I'd probably kill me."
"What?"
"Just... thinking of sending someone
around--maybe someone she doesn't know--to... I don't know, just an excuse to
take a look around. They could say they were"--a shrug--"selling
magazine subscriptions or something." He gave her a look. "But not
you. You've got your battle scars. Anyway, this doesn't have anything to do with
your interest in this case."
"You don't know that for a fact."
A momentary smile crossed his lips. He wagged a
finger at her. "I started out like you--hotheaded, impatient..."
"I just want some kind of justice for Cy and
Roddy. If I can. I want to find out--"
"I know." Mulder eased himself onto his
back, then glanced at her. "Believe me, I do."
A pause.
"Annie told me. You know, that you've been
looking for your sister."
"What did she say?"
"Just that she'd disappeared and nobody'd
ever been able to find her, that there was no ransom note or evidence or
nothin'. I know it's gotta be hard." She looked down at her hands, fingers
laced together, then back up at him. A tentative look, careful.
"Rita said... you know, when she first got ahold of me after all
this... after Andy and Cy and Roddy... that someone at the FBI had a theory about
who'd done it--you know, who'd killed them. That they knew. Or thought they
knew. That was you, wasn't it?"
Mulder's eyes closed. A breath came out slowly and his eyes opened again. "Yeah. I guess you could say I've got
a... history with this guy." He half-laughed and stared at the ceiling.
"We've butted heads for a long time. Years."
"And they can't catch him?"
"He's slippery, a rat who just disappears
back into the woodpile. Anyway, he works for the guy who's behind this whole
thing." He shifted slightly. "When it gets him somewhere, anyway.
People like that have ways. They have their ways of staying out of jail."
"But how can anybody be like that, go
around killing innocent people? Don't it get to them after a
while?"
Mulder shrugged. "There are any number of
abnormal psychologies. Maybe as many as there are criminal minds." He
glanced over at her. "You know, reasons why people do what they do: serial
killers, rapists, people who become terrorists. Mostly they learn to block it
out after a while, rationalize it. Desensitize themselves."
"And this guy? You got him figured
out?"
Mulder shook his head, stopped and winced. His
fingers went to his temples and pressed against them.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, just... Yeah. Guess I should
know by now not to do that."
"So this guy...?"
Mulder shrugged. "I used to think I had him
pegged. He's always dealing--whatever will get him somewhere, buy him something,
buy him time, whatever." His mouth tightened.
"But..."
He focused on her.
"You said you used to think you had
him figured out."
He shrugged again. "Lately he's done some
things that don't fit the profile."
"Like?"
Mulder's lips twisted. "Like he warned us about
something his boss had planned." His eyes roamed the fronts of the file
cabinets. "Information that probably helped save Annie's
mother."
"Why would he do that?"
"Beats me." He glanced over at her.
"He never gives you anything unless he wants something in return. There's
always something he's negotiating for. Guess I haven't figured out what it is
he's trying to buy from me this time. And if you don't, he'll take you for a
ride, guaranteed." He pushed an imaginary sunflower seed against his jaw.
"Big ride."
"He needs to know what he's doing to
people's lives," she said, her eyes suddenly hard. "He needs to know
that for himself. What it feels like, what he's doing to people."
"About your mom," he said, clearing his throat and pulling
back enough to see her face. "You stick to
what you know. Nobody could be a fake and raise a kid like you. It's not
possible." He came closer again, his cheek brushing hers. "You get out there,
things change. It throws you.
Wants to, anyway. But you can't let it. So stick to what you know. No matter
what comes at you."
Tracy nodded against him.
A kiss against her temple and he moved back. His
hand trailed
down the side of her cheek, ending in two fingers at the tip of her chin.
Dark eyes studied her, memorizing her face, gauging her strength. "C'mon. She's going to be wondering."
She let go of him, followed him into the hallway and
they started down the stairs. Half a dozen steps down, his cell phone rang in his back pocket. Tracy flinched. Quickly he pulled the phone from his
pocket and flipped it open.
"Yeah."
She stood back and let him go first.
"You got tapes? What do you have?"
His mother appeared in the kitchen doorway,
curious.
"Check your video. Back to when she left the
room. You got cameras on the exits? Shit." He glanced up at her,
then at his mother who turned to go back into the kitchen so she wouldn't seem
intrusive. "Check agencies for nurses. Check oxygen suppliers. Get back to
me. Yeah. Question the doctor. We'll find her... Yeah, we'd better."
He took the phone from his ear, let out a sharp
breath and pressed 'off'. "Sure hope Mulder's covered his bases."
He glanced toward the kitchen and went toward it.
His mother turned around as he approached.
"They're moving. They've taken Scully's
mother. Can I use your laptop to send a mail?"
Teena hesitated, caught by the possibility of his using it against Fox
and his partner.
"Look, I just want to let Mulder know they're onto
him."
Relief washed her face, followed by
self-consciousness. She flushed. "Certainly. It's here, in the dining room."
She led him to where it sat on the table. Quickly
he turned toward the living
room and caught Tracy's eye. She slipped in, squeezed the latches and flipped up the
screen. His mother stood back, a puzzled expression on her face. Alex sat down in front of the computer,
pressed the power button and waited for the desktop to load. Inside, he was
wound tight, buzzing.
"Look, I'm going to have to get out of here. Don't
want anybody tracing a call, finding out I'm out of town."
His mother nodded. "Alex?"
He glanced up.
"Would you like me to pack some of this for
you to take along?"
He frowned and started to shake his head but caught himself,
remembering Tracy's words.
"Yeah, sure. Thanks."
"Tracy, perhaps you can help me?" To
pick out something he'd like. She knew, his mother did. She suspected, at least.
She followed Alex's mother into the kitchen. Her
hands moved quickly, packing food into small containers, setting them in a cardboard box,
adding napkins and a plastic fork. He'd have to set the box beside him on the
seat and work from it at stoplights; he couldn't eat and drive. The
prosthetic hand could hold the steering wheel steady for short periods but he
made it a practice not to depend on it. Though his mother had no way of knowing. Alex had been
deliberately careful not to draw attention to the arm. The last thing he'd wanted was for her to notice
it and pity him.
Tracy smiled when she needed to, answered what
was asked of her. It was dream-world, thick and strange, the way it had seemed
the night before when she'd woken to find Alex sitting against the wall. Only this was worse: it was
really happening, only minutes until he'd be gone. In the dining room, Alex
was waiting for the Internet connection to go through, wondering what Mulder's
reaction would be to his warning, whether his usual cynicism would reign or
whether he'd stop and think more deeply this time. But why should he believe?
Tracy reached for the bottle of lemonade in the
corner of the box, twisted off the cap and replaced it barely tightened. His
mother was watching, her curiosity growing.
"I think if we put it in a plastic grocery
bag," she was saying. Teena opened a lower cabinet and produced a bag.
Tracy slipped it under the box and pulled the handles up. Her arms felt weak,
distant. Her head was filled with a low fizz of static and the chatter of too
many minds.
The dining room.
Alex was finishing his message, his hand moving
smoothly back and forth across the keyboard. He never thought about it anymore,
the way he typed; he wouldn't notice his mother's growing curiosity. Now he looked
up and turned around, searching for her. What did she think? She came up behind
him and read over his shoulder.
To: DaddyW@zipmail.com
From: topaz@rift.net
2:03 p.m. Hunt's on. Make sure your people know.
She nodded. He hit 'send'.
In his mind he was on the road already, halfway
back to Washington.
"Oh. The food, Alex." She turned and swirled into the kitchen. The air
seemed thick, as if she were swimming through it. She took the bag from the kitchen counter
and brought it back to where he stood talking to his
mother, quiet.
"... yeah, thanks. I owe you."
His mother only nodded in return, unsure of what
to say. Her spirit was full, overflowing, but there was no way to fit words to
what she felt and there was no time. Not now. He needed to go.
"Let me know how it goes," he said.
"You know how to erase the mail off your hard drive?"
"I--" She shook her head.
"Tracy will show you. Don't leave anything on
there."
His mother nodded again, solemn. She wanted to touch
him, to reassure him or herself, to make him real, but she was afraid of how he
might react.
Alex turned from his mother and looked at her now, wordless,
beyond thought. The moment seemed frozen and then his mother retreated a step.
He came toward her, led her to the front door and then turned around, his back
to it. His arm wrapped around her shoulders--comfort--his cheek smooth and warm
beside hers, the soft pressure of his body a living pattern against her. She
slipped a hand around his waist; the other held the dangling plastic bag. She
seemed to have no breath. "Be strong," he whispered against her ear. His lips grazed her forehead and he was moving back, taking the
bag, working the door handle, stopping to nod once more at his mother. Then he
was gone, the door standing ajar.
The air in the room sang in loud silence. Breathe, nena, she could hear him in her head. Be strong.
She took a step forward, closed the door and let
her forehead rest against it. He was crossing the parking lot, stopping and
setting the bag of food on the roof of the car while he dug in his pocket for
the key.
He needed to focus.
She needed to let him go.
Tracy turned and looked at the room spread in
front of her--white carpet, white sofa and loveseat, perfect flowers in a blue
vase on the polished glass coffee table. Nothing was quite real, the essence of
the scene in front of her squeezed away.
"Tracy?"
She looked up.
"Could you show me...?" How to erase
the e-mail.
She started toward the dining room,
walking slowly through vacant air.
Scully let the cursor hover above 'get mail' and
finally clicked. It was only natural that there would be a delay. The Gunmen would
not only have to move her mother but watch afterward for signs that they'd been
discovered, or if they were posing in some undercover position, stay long enough
not to arouse suspicion. She glanced behind her at the old starburst clock
beside the door. 2:12. Sandy and Mulder had left for Dr. Wykoff's over an hour
ago.
There were no messages.
Her lips pressed together. She got up, went to
the kitchen window and looked out, fingers smoothing absently along the counter's edge.
He'd given her that little boy look out by the car. He hadn't deliberately set
out to scare her; it was just the accumulation of everything, this morning
especially. His injury was one thing, but the reaction he'd displayed to the
medication...
It
seemed unlikely there could be anything deliberate about it. Any physician
confronted with a job-consistent injury would naturally focus on treating the
wound and on pain control. Mulder had his suspicions, of course--one of his
hunches, that something was going on involving the Connors children--but nothing
had been proven yet, and in any case his suspicions would hardly affect the way a
physician would approach an injured worker, especially one she had no way of
knowing. Maybe, as Mulder said, there was something to be found on the
Internet about Dr. Maria Vanek.
Scully poured herself a glass of water and drank
half of it. Her fondest hopes used to be for achievement, for mysteries solved,
for solid medical detective work that made a difference; her worries, that
Mulder would overstep, that their work might be curtailed, either by bureaucrats
or darker forces working within the Bureau. Now her hopes were much more
basic: a chance to live without being pursued, to be able to go out in a car
without lying in the back, hidden. And her fears: that something might happen
to the only companion she had in this surreal-seeming world.
She swallowed and felt her face tense, the skin
taut. Scully closed her eyes and forced her muscles to relax. After a moment she
returned to the computer and sat down, hand taking the mouse, finger lingering
over it. It wouldn't hurt to check Mulder's mail in case the Gunmen wrote to him
first. She clicked to switch accounts, entered his password and waited. Mulder's
reaction could have been an anomaly, or perhaps...
Whatever the cause, they
needed to understand what had happened to him. Dr. Wykoff would be their best
avenue of information.
One new message. She clicked quickly, the
realization of the sender's identity hitting her just as the message was displayed.
Short and terse, the way Krycek's delivery had always been. She forced herself
to exhale and take a fresh breath. Her mother was gone and the Smoking Man's
forces had been alerted. She glanced at the clock again. Krycek's message had
been written only minutes earlier. She clicked on the 'write' screen and quickly
typed a message to the Gunmen, then waited for it to send.
Krycek had done it again, but why? What was it he
stood to gain from helping them?
Teena climbed the last few steps to the roof patio
and paused at the top. Above the clear glass enclosure the branches of four young willows
dipped and swayed in the breeze. To the east the harbor was visible below a sky
of palest blue. She ventured forward a few steps. Her guest was asleep in the rope
hammock under the potted willows, a tall, thin slip of a girl in a yellow dress,
pale hair fallen across her face. Undoubtedly if Alex were here he would come
close and carefully lift the hair away.
The tone of their relationship had been
obvious from the beginning, Alex pulling her quickly inside the door and then
struggling to let go of her hand. They'd stayed close to each other the entire
time. Certainly, their feelings for each other were clear in their
parting, Alex gathering her against him in a way she was obviously used to, the
two of them close, tender, saying nothing, as if everything between them was
already understood. And here she was, the girl, asleep with a throw pillow in
front of her, arms tightly around it as if she could keep Alex with her even as he
sped toward Washington.
It was almost impossible
not to make assumptions.
By Alex's own admission they had known each other only a few weeks and the girl was, quite obviously, little more than half
his age. But he'd seemed
anything but manipulative or controlling around her. And the girl, while she
would certainly be impressionable, didn't seem the type who had focused her
world around the goal of obtaining a man. Unless something substantial had bound them, Alex would
surely not have put himself in jeopardy to buy her safety. Crises, Bill used to
say, forge strange bonds. Perhaps that dynamic had been at work here. In any
event it had surely taken a leap of faith for
Alex to bring this intimate secret of his to her of all people.
Teena looked toward the harbor, at the small,
thin clouds, then at the cheerful pots of bright geraniums that dotted the
patio, and finally at the girl. Alex would want the transfer made as soon as
possible, to make sure the girl's safety was assured. But what could she
say? How could she even introduce the subject to Fox without appearing to have
sold out to a bitter enemy? She had, after all, already accepted the girl. She'd
trusted Alex that far and there was no way to make it appear otherwise.
"Will--" Maggie stretched a pale hand toward the figure in the recliner
next to her bed. "If I hadn't seen you
there, in the car beside me, I don't know what I would have done." Her eyes
watered; she looked up at the pale yellow ceiling. It had been a hearse,
not a car. The whole trip was still impossible to believe, like something from a
jumbled dream.
"That's why I decided to go along." He raised an
eyebrow. "I figured it
would be strange enough, you being moved like that. Confusing to say the least."
"And we weren't followed?"
"Not as far as they've figured out." He wagged a finger at her. "But you know they're going to
be looking. The old guy, he's not one to give up, but I think we've got you as
safe as anything we can find, right here."
"Does Dana know?"
"The Gunmen will be telling her the whole
story."
"I coughed. I couldn't make myself
stop."
Will turned his head to see Keneesha Taylor enter
the room, a tall, dark woman with close-cropped hair and a face that bespoke
patience. A four-year-old
trailed close behind her. Keneesha approached Maggie's bed.
"How are we doing here?" She had a
slight drawl, a soothing voice.
Maggie looked up at her. "I..."
"Don't strain yourself." A careful hand
passed her forehead, followed by a smile. "According to these readouts
you're doing pretty well, considering." She turned to Will. "Good
thing your buddies had access to this equipment."
A tickle inside. Maggie flinched against the
sudden coughing that tore at her lungs. Torment was followed by lingering pain
and sweat, then a hand, soothing against her shoulder.
"You hang in there, Mrs. S. You're going to do
alright. We'll get you through this. A little time and you'll be just fine,
ready to see that daughter of yours." She poured a glass of water from a pitcher
on the bedside table and held it while Maggie drank, then turned to Will. "She
really needs to rest now. You're welcome to wait on the sun porch. Grandmama's out there."
"Old Rose," a small voice interjected.
"I'm Rose, too."
Her mother gave her a look. "Anyway, Old
Rose will be happy to talk your ear off if you let her." She smiled and gave
him a knowing nod.
Will raised his chair back and stood slowly.
"Take care of yourself, Will," Maggie
said.
"Rita's taken good care of me. You'll have
to meet her."
"I'll have to thank her. For all she's
done."
"I promise you'll get the chance."
Will turned and walked toward the door. Maggie
shifted slightly in the bed. Keneesha was pulling down shades in the tall
windows, leaving the room bathed in hazy parchment light.
"Now you get some rest. And anything you
need, you just let me know," she said, turning. She gestured to the little
girl playing hide-and-seek at the foot of the bed. "Come on, New."
The little girl ran to follow her mother out of
the room. The door closed behind them.
It had been like a movie--like being in a movie--tension and rushing, fear
and the overwhelming relief of escape. There must be a way to get a message to
Dana. How would she be, Dana, worrying about her all this time, hidden, pursued?
But Fox was there. At least she had him to depend on. She closed her eyes and
ran a hand across the softness of a blanket. An old clock ticked away the
seconds high up on the wall as Maggie drifted toward sleep.
Krycek maneuvered the car into an on-street
parking space and cut the engine. Sighing, he let his head fall back against the headrest
and glanced at the clock. 3:17. Not bad. The old man's lookouts had called once,
not with any actual progress but so he'd know they were making an effort; they knew well enough how the old man dealt with
slackers. He glanced around the car: front seat, back, floors. There was nothing
to show she'd been here. It was the way it always was, the
way it had to be: a clean slate, no signs, no traces, nothing left behind.
Finally he leaned forward, pulled the door handle and got
out. His legs needed stretching but more than that he needed to lie down. The wound ached, a
growing murmur in his side. Probably hadn't helped that they'd done it twice,
engaging muscles he was supposed to be resting. As if he'd have chosen to take a pass, even knowing the consequences. The memory brought a smile to his lips
that lingered, then gradually faded to grimness. Hopefully she was hanging in there. She would
be. When the chips were down, she'd rise to the need and be strong.
He locked the car, checked the trunk a final time
and started down the street to his building, the laptop heavy under his arm.
Times like this would be a bitch without Ché's help. Colorful, Tracy had called
him. He'd ribbed her about it and she'd come up with that thing about a
brother. No brother, but then later she wasn't so sure.
There could be another
group, somebody operating out of Southern California. A group that had
somehow slipped under the consortium's radar. It bore looking into. Players were like weeds
and weeds were
always springing up, a natural thing. Maybe Mulder had heard of something. If he
could get through to Mulder. If he'd listen. Maybe when he had Tracy, he would.
Maybe she'd get him out of Mulder's doghouse, make Mulder see whose side he
was actually on.
Krycek shouldered open the entry door to his
building and stopped in front of the elevator. One floor down to the
laundry. Only yesterday he'd gone out the window there, across the old lady's
yard to the back street where Tracy'd picked him up, but it seemed like years. Two or
three months from now the old woman would have flowers blooming in her yard and
she'd never have a clue where they came from.
But he'd know. And how would it hit him when he saw
them?
A ding and the elevator door opened. He got in,
hit '2' and leaned against the wall. The old man would have to be told about
Scully's mother, but it would wait. Give it a little time; the delay could be chalked
up to the search. Hey, I was hoping to have this thing cleaned up, no need to
bother you. If he played his cards just right the old man would buy it. If
he seemed
eager but not over-the-top. Committed to the old fucker's projects and their
rightness.
Krycek's stomach sank slightly and the elevator door slid
open. He put his key in the lock and let himself in. Nothing different
but it felt that way, a big, ringing emptiness.
He couldn't afford to
think of her now.
He set the laptop on the bed, clipped the
phone cord into the back and pushed the power button. Then he eased himself onto
the mattress and lay back against the pillows to watch the computer power up.
Diagnostics, wallpaper, program icons. His eyes closed. The trip from Baltimore ran
through his head again: changes of lanes, off-ramps, intersections. The low
clicking of the hard drive stopped. He eased himself onto his side and tapped on his
Internet connection.
To: che774@telcom.com
From: topaz@rift.net
Left the car half a block west. Need it re-parked ASAP and cleaned of any signs
of recent use. Also verify return flight information. Prompt payment and some
prime data in return.
He hit 'send' and fought the urge to lie back
down. His body was starting to shake--nothing bad, just a little trembling in the arm and
legs. He ought to take the meds first. Ought to check her room,
too--make sure
there was nothing lying around, anything telltale. But it could wait. Unless
the old man had moved things up, he had a day's cushion; old man wouldn't be
back until tomorrow. Ché would verify the scheduling, whatever it was.
Krycek eased himself up and stood, slightly stiff now, and made his way into
the bathroom. Yellow plastic cup, toothbrush, orange container with the new pain
meds. He took out two, gulped them down, chased them with a cup of water
and returned to the bed.
Maxed out again, legs weak, a bass thrum where
the wound was. He slipped his shoes off, pushed the laptop to the side and eased himself in between the sheets.
The familiar pattern of cracks spread above him on the ceiling. He pulled the
covers up higher. It was cold in here--maybe just cold alone--but sleep would come soon
enough and take away the pain of consciousness.
To: thelark@zipmail.com
From: Redwall@zipmail.com
Target has been delivered, apparently none the worse for wear (I hear she asked
about you, a good sign.) No overt hitches, though no doubt the evidence will be
sifted carefully so we're continuing to watch our backs and analyze our moves.
Evidently JB put on a great performance in a corridor, but I'll leave the
telling to him. Got your mail. I've been watching since the beginning for signs
of any activity against us, but so far nada.
More as it happens. Peace.
The thin, waving willow branches overhead
gradually replaced the poplars from her dream--home's poplars.
They were gone.
Alex was gone.
Around her the air was cool, the shade too deep. Tracy sat up.
She set
aside the throw pillow and felt her wrists and stomach cold against the moving
air. Her head was thick, as if she'd only begun to fill the need for rest. She
could bury herself in sleep, burrow into it and hide from the emptiness around
her. But that would be no help
to Alex. If nothing else, she could help set his plan in motion and at least
ease his mind about her safety.
The feeling wasn't the same as when her mother
died, the wrenching ache that came from the certainty that she was gone beyond
all recall. Alex's absence echoed, hollow inside. Together, she and Alex had
formed a strength only
beginning to be exercised, and he was still out there, somewhere, even though in the end he
might prove just as inaccessible as her mother. But lingering in the pain of her own loss would do nothing for him. If they
meant anything to each other, now, even more than when they'd been together, was
the time to do something to help him.
Tracy stood and walked to the edge of the glass
enclosure. In the distance to the east she could see water and the masts of
boats. Rooftops, some with patios, dotted the landscape. Alex's mother would
have some delicate negotiating to do trying to convince her other son to take
this girl she'd just received, an unknown quantity to her. She'd sensed his
mother's fear: fear of losing both her sons because of this.
One hand on the
polished, honey-colored railing, Tracy started down the stairs. She could see down into the living room, but it
was empty. Teena was--she let her mind reach out--in the enclosed garden behind the
living room. She continued down
the stairs to the landing and paused. Something about her backpack, which Teena
had suggested she put in the guest bedroom, first door on the right. She
went to the room. The backpack lay on the bed, tilted slightly, its faded red
color a contrast to the rich brown spread. Carefully she sat down beside it. It seemed
fuller than she'd remembered. She took hold of it and pulled the drawstrings.
Inside at the top was a brown paper grocery bag, something
inside it packed neatly into a thick rectangle. She took out the bag and
unfolded it. Red showed from inside. Carefully she reached inside and pulled it
out. The red dress she'd told him she liked so much. She swallowed and ran her
fingers lightly over its soft surface. Slowly she stood and held the dress in front
of her, letting it unfold. Something dropped out of it onto the floor. A book. She picked it up.
On the front was a drawing of a red-headed girl
with pigtails sticking straight out on both sides. The girl stood on a beach
with palm trees around her. Inside, on the first blank page, was Alex's
handwriting in black. Like you, she can do anything, it said.
She held the dress and book against her and
drifted to the window, filled to overflowing with a fierce ache. She closed her eyes and leaned against
the window frame. Hot trails ran down her cheeks. Breathe, he'd remind her. There'd be a hand on her shoulder
and the warmth of his body close against her left side.
Sun spilled across her
face. She breathed in and out, in and out, trying to even out the rhythm,
waiting for the ache to subside. Finally she opened her eyes, brushed the back
of a hand across her cheeks and
returned to the bed, spreading the dress out on it, smoothing the ridges where it had been folded. Opening the book, she read his
inscription again. In her mind she could picture him writing the note she'd taken to
Raul, working carefully, the paper wanting to skitter away.
But there was something more.
Her hand dug into the pack again, taking out the
long johns, taking out her mother's sweater, reaching. Toothpaste, brush,
soap... a piece of paper. She took it out. Plain peach-colored stationary,
heavyweight, a single sheet folded once. It was her mother's paper. Inside
was Alex's handwriting. She sat down on the edge of the bed and read, then
closed her eyes and leaned forward, tangled in fine, thin pain.
To: thelark@zipmail.com
From: heron3@zipmail.com
Glad to report that I've seen her and that the operation seems successful on
this end, though we know vigilance remains necessary. Transportation was generously
provided by a friend with a hearse. I thought she might find her surroundings a
little disconcerting so I arranged to ride along. You would have appreciated the
look on her face when she realized she was indeed in the right place and among
friends.
She is settled now, appears to have weathered the trip reasonably well
and has asked about you. I believe the three musketeers may be able to provide her
with a laptop in the near future. Meremaid played decoy to help fill out the
ruse and while all went well, suffice it to say we've all filled our adrenaline
quotas for one day. Hoping you and Ben are seeing progress in your work.
-Will
To: DaddyW@zipmail.com
From: Cranesbill@zipmail.com
I don't really know how to start this; there seems to be no way to do it without
someone getting hurt. As you can tell from this mail, I am with your mother.
Alex has put himself at risk to help me get away before the old man decides I'm
no longer useful to him, since the plan was to dispose of me once Alex
was strong enough not to need my help. Alex was hoping I could stay with you. I
know you are in hiding and I don't want to put you in further danger, but the
old man is very determined in his pursuit and you are the only one Alex trusts
to be able to keep me safe from him.
I know the things you have gone through in the
past with Alex and that you will likely suspect this is some kind of trap or
trick. You might think that I'll let Alex know where you are, but he doesn't want
the old man to find you anyway. Besides, I already know where you are. I had a
vision yesterday of the girl, the mother of the little dead boy who is pregnant again, and
you were in her thoughts. I didn't tell Alex. Actually, he asked me not to tell
him anything the old man might be able to draw out of him.
Please don't fault your mother for agreeing to
take me. She only wants to help and Alex thought it would be easier for you
this way
than meeting with him face to face. I don't want to put your mother in danger, either, so
please let me know as soon as possible if you are willing to have me. If not, I
understand your need to protect yourselves and I'll leave so your mother is
free to go on her way safely.
I might be of some help to you, but of course the
decision is yours. Please let us know as soon as you can.
-The Stair Sprite
"I'm afraid Fox will think I'm hiding behind you, not writing
to him myself," Teena said ruefully as Tracy closed the cover on the
laptop.
"He has reason to be suspicious. Alex has caused him
a lot of pain. It's been the old man behind it, but still." She paused. "He--Leland--thinks your husband betrayed him
and their work with his views, with his
refusal to go along. In return he tries to break your sons. Both of
them, just in different ways."
"If only there were a way for them to learn to work
together."
"There has to be some way to make them understand
each other. They both have hearts. They both have strength."
In the kitchen, a phone rang. Alex's mother
hurried to listen for a message, hoping it wouldn't be the old man having
somehow found her. She feared him as much as Alex did.
Tracy looked around the spacious, quiet living
room with it's high, high ceiling and pulled the
peach-colored piece of stationery from her pocket. The edges were slightly
curled now, as if the paper had spent hours or days or even weeks in her pocket,
though it had only been minutes. He must have written the note last night. She hesitated, her fingers
tentative on the edge of the paper, and finally opened it.
Nena--
I know I'm not much with words and I don't usually need them with you; you can
just pull them out of my head and save me the trouble. But by the time you get
this that's probably not one of the possibilities. Wish it were.
Can't even
begin to tell you what you've done for me, and I just wanted to make sure you
know that you've kept me going in more ways than one. For the last year my life's
been on the skids, and then this gunshot happened and who would have figured
something incredible would come out of it.
But it's the way you've got to face life--take what it throws at you, pull whatever
you can from it and let it make you stronger. Take good care of the kid. I hope
some day he realizes how lucky he is to have you. Keep following that little
voice but look ahead, too; sometimes it's the only way. Most of all, always be
what you are inside. There's nothing better.
Burn this as soon as you've read it,
no excuses. If you want to keep it, keep it where I know you keep me, inside,
and know I hold you there, too. You can lean on that if you feel yourself
starting to slip. 'I love you' doesn't begin to cover it.
-Alex
The paper trembled slightly in her hand. She
folded it in half, then in half again and curled it into her palm. It felt warm,
as if it had a heart and life of its own. On the coffee table was a clean marble
ashtray with a box of matches in it. Hesitantly Tracy reached for the
little box.
Outside in the garden patio she unfolded the paper carefully and knelt down close to
the bricks. She held the letter a moment, feeling the warmth of the paper,
picturing Alex the way she'd found him in the middle of the night, sitting
against her bedroom wall, stiff in his grief, then reaching out to pull her
close. Taking the match by the stem, she ran the head across a brick. A small sizzle and a flame ignited,
large and pale yellow. Touching it to the edge of the paper, she watched as it
caught and flared, beginning to spread and eat its way across the sheet of
stationery. The edges darkened and curled, forcing the burning paper into a
ball. Moments later there was only fragile ash.
Tracy stood and watched the air current begin to
pull at the thin, black fragments.
"Well, at least we know they got
your mom away and that she's safe," Mulder said, rereading Krycek's mail.
"I was hoping to find something from the Gunmen when I checked your
mail and this came in. What do you think it means, Mulder? All this information Krycek's been feeding us?"
"I don't--" He turned carefully and glanced at her. "I don't know. Sandy and I were talking
about that. About Krycek, I mean."
"Sandy?" She frowned. "Mulder, what did you tell her?"
"She asked, Scully. Rita told her someone
from the Bureau knew who killed her husband. She figured out it was me." He
turned to glance out the window above the bed. "Wonder how long she's been
carrying that question around."
"And what did you tell her?"
"About Krycek? I told her... I said I had a
history with the guy. How's that for understatement? I told her that he's always after
something, always dealing." He caught his lip between his teeth momentarily. "I just
can't figure out what the hell he wants this time. What about you, Scully? Got any
theories?"
"No, I..." She shook her head.
"No. I have no idea. But I did spend some time searching the Internet for
information on your Dr. Vanek."
"And?"
"All I found was that she's listed as having
received a degree from American University--1988--though there's no specific
information about her in their medical school database--no residency, no
specialization."
"1988--that's awfully late. She must be 45,
Scully."
"Well, I'd say maybe she was just a late bloomer,
but that explanation seems a little less likely after this other information I
found." She reached past him, took the mouse and
clicked on a minimized file at the bottom of the screen. Mulder leaned forward.
"These must be her parents, Scully--Jan and Ludmila Vanek."
"Czech nationals."
"The ages seem right."
Scully moistened her lips. "Both of them
geneticists. Both killed in what is described only as a 'laboratory accident' in
a little town outside"--she paused briefly--"Krasnoyarsk, Russia.
June 23, 1983."
"Krasnoyarsk?"
"Deja vu, Mulder? It looks like you were
right. For whatever reason, if this is what we suspect it is, Dr. Vanek may be here
in sleepy little heart-of-the-country Owensburg at the behest of the Smoking
Man."
"Yeah, but not at the behest of his group, I'll bet."
She frowned. "What do you mean? If she's
a defector, someone with
valuable knowledge of the Russian program--"
"...the Consortium would have jumped at the chance
to have her," he said. "Exactly. And she'd be working at
some sizeable facility somewhere, not hiding out in a beryllium plant. Which is why I'm guessing Smoky's doing something a little more
private here."
"Like?"
"A while back my mother mailed me with
something she remembered my dad saying--that Smoky's downfall would be his
greed, his inability to let go of anything he'd gained, or achieved. My dad described Smoky as a monkey with his fist caught in a jar." He turned to
face her. "I think he's got his own little program going, something
personal. My mother said that if he were drowning in a shipwreck, he wouldn't
hesitate to fight everyone else for the only available life preserver. Scully,
he was too jumpy back in D.C. when Wilkins and his partner were here
investigating. The Consortium may be pulling beryllium out of here but there's
more going on than that. Smoky's action against Skinner, his threat to you...
all that was overcompensation if beryllium was the only thing at stake." He
raised an eyebrow. "I think he's got a little
secret here he doesn't want anyone else to know about."
A chime sounded on the laptop.
"I didn't know you were still online, Scully."
"I... I signed on to your account to check
your mail and then I went looking for the information on Dr. Vanek. Then
you and Sandy came. It's your mail, Mulder. Look."
Mulder clicked on the mail flag at the bottom of
the screen and waited.
"Probably the Gunmen." Scully pursed
her lips. "I hope they haven't been followed."
She turned away and went to the kitchen window.
Hazy sunlight filtered through the trees. When she turned around again she could
see Mulder's lower lip sucked in.
"What?" She came up behind him.
"What is it?"
He pointed at the screen. "When it rains, it
pours, Scully. What do you make of this?"
She leaned over his shoulder and read.
The strange girl again.
To: Cranesbill@zipmail.com
From: topaz@rift.net
Just thought I'd let you know I'm back here and still in one piece. Thanks again for
being part of this. Contact me as soon as you hear anything about the
arrangements. Hope she's doing okay. Appreciate it if you'd let me know.
To: topaz@rift.net
From: Cranesbill@zipmail.com
She took it upon herself to send the request, believing she'd have a better
chance of being convincing if you and I were left out of the equation. She seems
to be a brave, unblinking young woman, a trait I know you must certainly admire
that in her. She found the things you left for her and is bearing up, but I
understand now why you said this would be difficult. We are awaiting a
response and will let you know as soon as one is received.
-M
"This could be the connection,
Mulder." She glanced from the laptop to the bed where he was propped
against the pillows. "She says Cancer Man hired her to take care of
Krycek. That would explain why she was running messages for him, like Skinner
said."
"Yeah, but why would he put himself at risk
to help her escape? What's in it for him?" He sat up and paused
abruptly, frowning.
"Dizzy again?"
"Just... a little, yeah." He blinked.
Scully frowned. "I understand this isn't the
kind of town where you can get a tox screen analyzed in a hurry, but Dr. Wykoff
did promise me he'd go to the lab in Lexington himself. I'm hoping he'll be able
to get back to us this evening. Whatever she gave you isn't wearing off in any
normal way."
"Just my luck. Frying pan to the fire." He eased
himself to the edge of the bed and stood, then came up behind her and looked at
the screen again. "What's in it for him, Scully, doing this? There's got to be
some kind of payoff. And my mother. Unless Krycek dropped her off on Mom's
doorstep--"
"But then he'd have to get back to
Washington, Mulder, and he's not recovered yet. I don't think he could make it
that far on his own."
"Which means Mom must have agreed to meet him
and take the girl." His mouth tightened.
"What do you know about her, Mulder? This
girl?"
He shrugged. "Like I said, she seemed like a
nice kid. Friendly. Maybe a little too open for a place like D.C. But we only spoke a couple of times."
Scully sighed and shook her head. "She seems
very... straightforward in this mail. Either that or this is a story designed to
reel us in, the perfect bait, the perfect--" She paused. "But it
doesn't track. There's no pressure, no threat. No consequence if we decide
against it."
"Other than that she's with my mother, making Mom
a target for Smoky." He pointed at the screen. "What's this,
Scully--this 'vision of the girl'?"
Scully leaned in and read. "I didn't... My
god, Mulder. She's talking about Sandy."
"Yeah, but it says 'pregnant'."
She looked up. "Sandy is pregnant. She's suspected it
for a few days, but she didn't find out for sure until this morning. Mulder,
I... I don't see how... Who else would have known that? Skinner did seem to be
under the impression that she has some psychic ability, but--"
"Then she could function like a wire for Krycek, let him know everything that goes on here, whatever we do, everything
we're thinking."
"Do you think she'd be likely to do
that--from what you knew of her?"
"I don't... Scully, I don't... No." His
mouth was small.
"Mulder, I hesitate to even suggest this. I
don't trust Krycek any more than you do. But that night in your apartment, when
he called me and told me to come, to... take care of you..." She paused and
looked up. "There
was... there seemed to be... something there, in him. Something... I don't know.
Not the way he'd been before."
"Yeah, then a week later he held a knife to
your throat, Scully."
"I know." She sighed. "I
know. I can't explain it, either." A pause. "Why
don't you ask, Mulder? Why don't you ask your mother, or the girl. Or Krycek?
Would you like me to write to your mother?"
Mulder bit his lip. "You ran interference
for me last time, Scully. I think I'm going to have to do this myself."
To: Cranesbill@zipmail.com
From: DaddyW@zipmail.com
Important that I know what you know about this deal and what made you decide to
agree to a meeting. Awaiting your reply.
To: topaz@rift.net
From: DaddyW@zipmail.com
Looking for some straight talk about this deal of yours. What are you
looking for here? I'm sure I'm not seeing all the pieces.
To: DaddyW@zipmail.com
From: topaz@rift.net
What you see is what you get. There's only one piece here and she's it. She's
gone through a hell of a lot to take care of me while I've been laid up and she doesn't
deserve to end up as seagull food in some landfill.
To: topaz@rift.net
From: DaddyW@zipmail.com
You shoot two-year-olds.
Why the sudden change of heart? Make me
see why this isn't a trap.
"Maria?" The man in the lab coat looked
up from his notes and smiled. "Didn't expect to see you until
tomorrow."
"It's Friday. Maybe I've finally been infected with
the 'weekend' phenomenon."
"I don't see why. You've probably never
spent
a non-working weekend in your life." He offered a small grin that she acknowledged
with a raised eyebrow.
"When research is your life..." She
came closer. He put an arm around her and kissed her cheek lightly.
"...then it's not work. Anyway, I have a favor to ask."
"Shoot."
She reached into the bag she was carrying and produced
a sealed plastic bag, a blood-stained piece of gauze visible inside it.
"Could you run me a simple DNA
fingerprinting on this?"
"New project?"
"A little investigation."
"Ooh, the researcher turns detective."
"Medical detective, yes." She paused.
"How long will it take you, Brian?"
"In a hurry?"
"Yes, actually. You know I'm an impatient
person."
"Impatient but always fascinating."
She blushed.
"Maybe tomorrow," he said. "If I
sit up late and don't get a bunch of rush work in here in the next two hours.
And if
I'm not... distracted. You staying?"
She shook her head. "Not tonight. Somebody
in Owensburg might notice and start rumors. No, it's more definite than that; they would. They feed on speculation. It's like a sport to them." She
smiled briefly. "I prefer to keep my life private." She turned to go.
"Can't understand why." He gave her a
wink. "Until tomorrow, then."
"Until tomorrow."
To: DaddyW@zipmail.com
From: Cranesbill@zipmail.com
I was contacted yesterday regarding this matter with the understanding that help
would be needed within a week or so, then again, unexpectedly, very early this
morning. I have nothing that you might call 'hard evidence' on which to base my
judgment of his sincerity, only his words and tone over the phone. I realize
that with the experience you've had with him, these things must seem
laughable to you as indicators, but having the girl here, both beginning to
become acquainted with her and seeing the effect she appears to have had on him,
I can only say that she seems well-deserving of our efforts to keep her hidden
from L. I realize, however, that she could prove a distinct burden to you logistically. If you feel
it's not wise to accept her in your situation, I would be willing to keep her
with me.
I know this situation will seem like a point of
division between us. I heartily wish it were otherwise. You must do what you
think is best. Let me know of your decision. Should you have further questions,
I'll do my best to answer them.
-M
To: DaddyW@zipmail.com
From: topaz@rift.net
No argument I come up with is going to convince you; you need to admit that to
yourself. But think--if it weren't some abstract, if it were your sister or your
partner, wouldn't you put yourself on the line to keep them out of his reach?
Even if it meant going to someone who'd laugh you into the next state? If I had
any other way, I wouldn't be bothering you but I don't and she's worth the price
of your disbelief. I don't think I need to spell it out any further than that.
"What do you think, Scully?"
Her hands went up in the air. "I'm stumped,
Mulder. I don't know what to say."
He leaned forward, elbows on knees. "There's
got to be something here we aren't seeing."
"Well..." She cleared her throat.
"We seem to have three possible courses of action. Take the girl, which
presents logistical problems... and of course we're not sure what Krycek's
stake--or agenda--is in this. Or leave the girl with your mother--"
"We can't do that, Scully. It's going
to put Mom in danger. If Smoky's searching for the girl, if she knows
something--she probably does know something incriminating--what would he do
if he found Mom hiding her?"
Silence. He looked up at her.
"The third course is to do nothing. She's
offered to leave your mother."
He shook his head. "She's not going to have
the street smarts for that. She was like... like a bird that
would fly right into your hand."
"If in fact it's all some elaborate plan of
the Smoking Man's, she wouldn't be in any real danger, though." She pursed
her lips.
"What?"
"I can't see Krycek helping to set up your mother
in this. If it were the Smoking Man's setup, the girl could have written
directly to us and"--she shrugged--"and said she was running away
from Krycek. That would be a story we'd be more inclined to believe than this,
what Krycek and your mother are telling us."
Mulder shifted on the edge of the bed. She
watched his lower lip push forward.
"I don't..." He looked up, at the
panels in the ceiling. "So if we assume that she's actually on the run, in
danger... then I can't see sending her off to fend for herself, or leaving her
with my mother--for both their sakes. Krycek's got no love for Smoky. I mean, he
stole the DAT tape; he set that recorder in my apartment--the tape that caught
Smoky. So she's on the run, she needs shelter. But it still begs the question.
Why is Krycek sticking his neck out to help her get away? Because if Smoky finds
out--"
"Krycek's a dead man."
"So why's he doing it?"
Scully sighed. "Why don't you ask the girl?
If she's as open as she seems, maybe she'll tell us something that will make more sense
of this."
Krycek pushed the third floor button and watched
the elevator doors close. He sagged slightly against the wall. Too little rest, but he
was awake again, the pain gone for a few hours but his head thick, stomach edgy. The old man's
team was poring over the surveillance tapes, though he'd nixed the idea of
having them file a police report. Better to force the doctor's hand by making
him do it. He was likely to be in league with Mulder's people, but he'd have to
file. At least to keep up appearances. Hopefully he'd have his act together and be able
to come up with a plausible story that wouldn't reflect back on him or give
anything away.
With a low groan the elevator settled and the door slid open. His
mother said Tracy was 'bearing up'. So probably she knew. She was smart enough to put
the pieces together, but beyond that she was a woman; they had their radar
dialed in
to that kind
of thing. 'Brave young woman' she'd said. She hadn't called her a girl. She
wasn't saying what the hell are you doing messing around with a girl?
Sounded more like I
understand what you see in her.
He stopped in front of Tracy's door and pulled
the key from his pocket, his pulse a distinct beat in the background.
Turning the key in the lock, he opened the door to sunlight and shadow. The T-shirt she
wore to sleep in lay folded on the unmade bed. The dresser held her big metal bread bowl, a comb and a hair tie beside it. In the bathroom there was
the end of a tube of toothpaste, no
toothbrush--have to pick one up--a tiny bar of soap beside the
sink, clear yellow, and on the edge of the tub a bottle of something. He picked
it up. Shower gel. He flipped up the cap and sniffed. Something honeyish--honey
and something else. Maybe almond. It smelled like her, the way she'd smelled under the blankets, just a hint, something
that drew you
in and made you want more. His eyes closed
involuntarily but he forced them open again and set the bottle back where she'd
left it.
Returning to the bedroom,
he went through the
closet--white dress hanging, wire hangers, plastic bags stuffed in a larger one,
her old worn shoes on the floor. And the dresser: bag of flour, measuring cups,
yeast, salt. A pair of underwear with blue butterflies on them. His gray thermal
shirt, folded carefully. He picked it up, held it to his nose. It would be a dead
giveaway. She probably wished now that she'd taken it with her, but that
was the way things happened: before you knew it, circumstances exploding in front
of you and all you could do was duck and cover, or run, or whatever you could
manage that would keep you alive and going forward.
He looked up and scanned the room. It reminded him of Afghan villages
he'd been through: abandoned houses as place markers for abandoned lives. People on the run
in order to survive, the props of their existence left behind in silence to tell the story of a moment. That
was what he could say: that she'd just disappeared. He'd sent her out
for... something--takeout or pills or groceries--and she'd never come back. Foul
play. It wasn't the greatest neighborhood. It was plausible. A lot more so than
that she'd simply taken off. The old man wouldn't buy that in a million years.
Krycek went to the window and looked out. He'd
sat here--she'd sat here--the night they'd let him back out of the hospital, an awkward, invisible wall between them. This was where she'd stood, days later, when she'd
said that there were things you remembered, things that would stay with you over the
long haul.
The corner of his mouth pulled. Like Victor lying in a Marseilles alley, his life trickling away red between
the cobblestones, or the sight of the old man's pants and shoes appearing in front of him
unexpectedly in the foggy cabbage field.
Or the mountaintop. Or her, the way her
breath caught when he touched her, as if no two people had ever touched, or
kissed, or made love before.
He pushed out a heavy breath and leaned against the wall.
There was the chance that she'd come sometime, the way she had when he was
in the hospital. She hadn't suggested it and neither had he, but if she'd done
it once, it might happen again. Not yet, though. For now they both needed to
focus: take stock, test the wind, stay alert. Right about now Mulder would be sitting somewhere with Scully, tied in knots trying to
figure out what the hell he was up to, whether to take Tracy and then, when he'd
decided, how to justify it to himself. If Scully balked he wouldn't cross her
but in the end she'd come around; she was a defender, too. The two of them had
that in common.
Krycek crossed the room, set the thermal shirt on
his shoulder to free his hand, pushed the lock button and drew the door nearly
closed behind him. There should be some remnant of her here, some image, but there was
nothing. He pulled the door closed and started down the stairs, step and pause,
step and pause. His hand pulled up involuntarily, as if there were something to
grasp.
To: DaddyW@zipmail.com
From: Cranesbill@zipmail.com
I can't really explain the way my life goes, but I think from your own
experience you may be able to understand a little. Maybe it's like a series of
hunches--when you know something the evidence doesn't back you up with... yet. I
felt like I was drawn to Washington. I didn't know why at the time but I think
now that it was to be there when the old man went out looking for someone to
take care of Alex. I found Alex frightening at first. He's led such a dark, dark life. But
when I got there he was in a situation that was a nightmare for him, too. He was
forced to trust my help, to depend on me, to let me watch him eat or stumble or
go crazy from the pain. If you think about it, that's a lot for a very private
man
to face. I didn't betray that trust, in the same way you didn't betray the
possibilities of the weary blonde woman Lucy when no one else was willing to
look beyond the mistakes in her past.
I believe what he's gone through during this recovery has made Alex look at some things in his life in ways he hasn't
before. I know he values the fact that I didn't betray the trust he had no
choice but to put in me. But beyond that, it's worked both ways; there were things in
my life I'd been too afraid to look at, much less deal with, and Alex stepped up
to support me so I could begin to sort them out. Do you remember how you felt
when you discovered in your partner someone you could confide in without fear of
being betrayed as a person? It's a very powerful feeling. Though it's a concept
your mind may want to fight, the situation is pretty simple: Alex is grateful.
He just wants to know I'm safe and going on with my life. The problem
is that I'm a liability to the old man. At least, he believes I am.
I realize you have your partner's safety to worry
about, so all I'm asking is that you consider the request. If it doesn't work
out for you, I've been on my own before and I'll understand. But for Alex's
peace of mind, I'm asking. He trusts your knowledge of the old man, and your
dedication.
-Tracy
"What are you doing, Mulder?"
"Trying something."
"What?"
"Seeing if Krycek's willing to give me a
little information. Everything lately has been his offering, but I wonder
what'll happen if I ask for something."
"Such as?"
"Information on Maria Vanek."
"But Mulder, if he's in with the Smoking Man
that's going to give him our location."
"It could." He bit his lip. "But
my guess is Smoky doesn't trust Krycek enough to tell him any more than he
absolutely needs to. And besides, if my guess is right, Smoky hasn't let anyone
in on this little secret. If Krycek doesn't know Vanek is here, it doesn't tell
him anything. Besides"--he shrugged--"we've got Diana snooping
around and maybe Vanek herself suspicious of me. We may have to move out of here
pretty quickly anyway."
Scully frowned. She rubbed absently at a spot on her shorts.
Eventually she sighed and
nodded. "Being somewhere I could actually walk out in the sun without fear
of being seen doesn't sound like such a bad thing, as far as that goes."
"Besides, Krycek seemed to be pretty chummy
with the people running the vaccine program in Tunguska. I think it's more than
just a stab in the dark that he could know something about her."
Mulder pulled the laptop toward him and typed.
To: topaz@rift.net
From: DaddyW@zipmail.com
Looking for some information. Came across a name I'd like to know more
about--Dr. Maria Vanek. What can you tell me about her?
He hit 'send' and looked over his shoulder.
"Let's see what kind of response we get. What?"
"I just--" She got up off the edge of the bed.
"It just struck me today that everything I have here--my life, such as it
is--will fit into that one green bag. Though if we do have to do, I'll be leaving so much behind:
Sandy, the people we've met here who have helped us." She came up behind his
chair. "Have you ever stopped to think how over the years we've devolved into
this... insular existence, both of us: investigations, research, more
investigations. What kind of true community have we been attached to? But here
we've had Sandy, Rita, Dale... Adrie and Bethy.
Even David for all his nervous desperation, and Heather."
Mulder reached for her hand. "It's
been a good thing, Scully--a good thing for you. It's been good for both of
us."
To: DaddyW@zipmail.com
From: topaz@rift.net
Haven't heard that name in quite a while. Actually she used to go by her
husband's name--Ivanov (that would be Ivanova for her.) The name you have is her
parents' name. I heard that her split with her husband was the reason she left
the research over there, though that could just be a cover-up they floated. Her
parents got too close to a gestating specimen; that was what pushed her from
genetics to vaccine research. Single-minded (or
committed, obsessed, like an alligator--take your pick)
but maybe given her stake in things it makes sense. Word was she turned tail and disappeared into the woodwork of
conventional science, but if you've heard the name I'm guessing she's still out
there pushing her cause. Makes more sense than having her suddenly give it up
over her ex.
Question for a question: Do you know of any hybrid/vaccine
interest group operating out of the Los Angeles area? T exhibits
some big gaps in her memory--whole portions of her life as if they'd been
completely erased. She hardly remembers a move she made when she was eight, or
anything before that (ditto for how she ended up pregnant.) Said her dad died
just before that move, that he worked as a researcher at Cal Tech. No telltale
implant, but some of the things she says track way too close to shit both of us
have seen before. A lot for a kid to have to carry with her. Let me know.
To: topaz@rift.net
From: che774@telcom.com
The deed is done, car's reparked. A little dusting of particulates for good
measure--the professional icing on the cake. The vulture lands at 2:47 p.m.
tomorrow--brace yourself, my friend--but will reconfirm after the flight has left Paris-Orly.
You're getting generous in your old age, comrade--what's up? But scratch that
if it will make you reconsider.
"What do you think, Scully?"
"I--" She shook her head. "I
don't see that she's lying. I think... She seems genuine, Mulder. At least from
her own perception of her situation." She cleared her throat and paused.
"Do you think something was actually implanted in her?" She moistened her lips.
"Or that she might somehow be... like Emily?"
"I don't
know. I... We've only seen them using older women as surrogates. But it could be like Krycek said,
some group none of us has heard of. Like he said, it would be a lot for her to
have to deal with."
"I think it's safe to say she's more than
just 'a kid' to him, Mulder."
He frowned at her, quizzical.
"His heart's on his sleeve in these mails,
Mulder. In his own way. Look at what she says. I admit it's hard to imagine
Krycek having compassion for anyone, but--"
"Strange alliances are made under the stress of
circumstances, eh?" He breathed into cupped hands, then sat up slowly.
"What about you, Scully? How are you doing?"
She gave him a questioning look.
He patted the space on the bed beside him.
"I mean"--he put an arm around her as she sat down--"all this talk about
babies. Tracy--funny to finally have a name for her--and Sandy."
She leaned her head against his
shoulder. "I'm very, very happy for Sandy, Mulder. It's such a
reprieve from having lost her whole family. An unimaginable gift. She was afraid
to find out for sure. Afraid it might not be true."
"Pregnant twice by nineteen."
"I know. I think about that sometimes--how
many teenage girls end up pregnant when they don't want to, how easy it
seems for them when--" She looked away.
"Hey." A thumb smoothed a drop of
moisture from
below her eye. Mulder moved farther back on the bed and settled against the
pillows. "Come here, Scully."
She curled down beside him. A warm hand smoothed
past the side of her face. "There's got to be a way for you, Scully.
Somehow."
"Mulder, we live lives that no one should
bring a child into."
"I mean someday. When the timing,
the circumstances are right."
Soft lips touched her hair and his arms tightened
around her. She closed her eyes and abandoned herself to the gentle in-and-out
of his chest against her. In her mind she could see the scene outside the
kitchen window--the descending hillside and the far ridgeline in the hazy
pastels of late afternoon.
"Do we take her, Mulder? We need to write
back to your mother."
"I don't know how safe we are here. If Vanek
suspects me, if she's going to start asking around about her new patient. But
I've got to get to the bottom of this, Scully. I'm sure whatever she's doing is
our ticket, the key to finally tripping Smoky up." He shifted slightly.
"Diana--we have no idea whether Beeson's still on her to find the source of
the e-mail or whether he bought Rita's letter."
"I talked to David this afternoon; he called
while I was up at the house with Adrie. It's made him very nervous, this whole
thing. He checked again with his parents. So far no one's contacted them. Unless
Diana makes that connection, she has no way to know to look further. To look
here."
A pause.
"I guess"--his chin rested against
her shoulder--"I want to make sure Krycek's not pulling the wool over
our eyes again. Or maybe I just don't want to believe he's capable of what it
looks like he's doing here--just helping someone who helped him."
"No, caution makes sense, Mulder. We could
meet them somewhere, just one of us make the contact, and evaluate what we
find."
"Where? We don't even know where they
are."
"If you figure Krycek had to be able to make it home
from the meeting point on
his own, they couldn't be very far from Washington."
"They could fly. We could meet them in
Cincinnati. It's not that far and we wouldn't be giving away our location if it
becomes an issue."
"You should let her know, Mulder. She'll
need to make arrangements."
"Mmm. In a minute." He pulled her
closer. "I'm just taking a minute. We don't take enough of them,
Scully."
"Yeah." Krycek tucked the phone against his shoulder.
"We've gone through the surveillance tapes.
She was taken out of the room at 11:30 for a bath. Or so they said."
"Who took her?"
"Two orderlies--woman and a man."
"And then she disappeared?"
"No. Well, not that we realized at the time.
By 11:54 she's back in, nothing remarkable until just before we called you--two
o'clock. A woman walks in--short, redhead. We thought it was our target at first
but it turned out to be somebody else. Had the wrong room. Then about two minutes later the same guy who took her out before comes in
fast, undoes everything--IV, the whole business--and the two of them high-tail
it out of there. We lost 'em between a couple of monitors."
"Fuck. So it was someone else. A plant."
"Either that or the broad's just been lying
there all week on an extended vacation. No, she took off fast. Too fast for a
sick woman."
"And then?"
"We caught him again--the guy--on a downstairs
monitor. Looks like they took her out as dead. But there are no cameras
on the entrance the mortuaries use."
"So find out which funeral homes pick up there. Check them
all." The phone started to slip. Krycek grabbed it and shifted slightly.
"What about this guy. What did he look like?"
"Medium build--small side of medium. Auburn
hair tied back in a pony tail. Nothing standout."
"Get a still. Have it enlarged." He looked out
the narrow window. "You check with oxygen suppliers yet?"
"We're doing that now."
"What about the doctor? Did you talk to
him?"
"Yeah. Well, I didn't; Bishop did. Seemed
really upset. He'd already contacted the police and reported her missing."
"Good. Maybe they'll do some of our work for
us."
"That's it, I guess. When's he coming
back?"
"Tomorrow afternoon. We've still got time to
pull this thing out if we hustle. Oh, get a still of the woman, too, and enlarge
it." He paused. "You couldn't tell it was somebody else?"
"Hey, it was a sick old lady. You
know--messy hair, wrinkles. Sick faces lying in a bunch of
bedcovers all look pretty much the same."
"Yeah, I hear you. But you know he isn't
going to
buy it so easily. Especially not with his prize gone. Keep working on it. And stay in touch."
"Will do."
The phone clicked and went off. Krycek pulled up, put it back on the charger
and pushed out a breath. How familiar was this?
Push hard enough to make it look good to the organization, hopefully not hard enough to expose
the pieces to Mulder's plan. Play both sides and hope not to get caught, like a
pedestrian between two cars.
And the stakes
were higher now than they'd ever been. From here on in, Mulder and Scully's safety would be
Tracy's safety, too.
He turned and glanced at the clock. 5:48. No word
yet from his mother.
Four hours but
it felt more like four days.
He eased himself back down against the pillows.
Sunlight came through the narrow window, splashes of brightness penetrating the
spaces between the leaves on the tree outside. One patch settled near his
shoulder, another on his hip. He'd been drifting this morning, two states and a
lifetime away, on his way out but
still conscious enough to notice her hand carefully
peeling the blanket back until he lay naked in the warmth of the sun
coming through her window. How many nights as a kid had he fallen asleep curled tight,
aching with cold? And there he'd been: stretched out, safe, loose inside a kind
of lazy, penetrating warmth, touched only by the light and the reassurance
of her body behind him. Absolute quiet.
Rare moment.
Rich moment, she'd say. She made him feel that way.
To: Cranesbill@zipmail.com
From: DaddyW@zipmail.com
How soon could you meet me in Cincinnati? Check your options and let me know. We
talked before about ID that will allow you to move more securely. If you're in the area
I think you are, I may be able to arrange for what you need to be delivered to
you now. Let me know ASAP.
To: topaz@rift.net
From: DaddyW@zipmail.com
No knowledge of any group in the area you mention. Is she missing current blocks
of time or just a space in childhood. Anything easily attributed to repressed
memories, etc.?
To: DaddyW@zipmail.com
From: topaz@rift.net
Stranger than that--she barely remembers her father or how he died, thought at
first she had no siblings but said this morning she might have had a brother.
Has occasional 'visions' where she taps into people at long distance. The first time it
happened she was sitting near me and looked pale, like she was going to be sick. Yesterday
it happened again and I found her collapsed outside in the rain. Seemed to come
right out of it, acted like it was no big deal, but still.
Keep an eye on her.
Have some personal information for you when this
current thing has blown over. They're watching hospital security tapes now,
talking to people but so far haven't hit on anything vital. Make sure your bases
are covered.
Sandy pushed in the drawer of baby
clothes, stood up and ran to answer the ringing doorbell.
"Figured you might like some pizza,"
Raylene said, a familiar flat box in her hand. "Anyway, Joe's banging
around, packing. I'd just as soon not be there while he does it." She
smiled--an offering. An opening.
Sandy opened the door wider and let her mother
in. She went to the kitchen and found napkins and cups and got soda from the
fridge.
"I guess I haven't been thinking about food
much," she said, sitting down across from her mother. "But yeah, it
sounds kinda good. It's been a long time."
"How are you doing, Sandy?" Raylene opened
the box and held it out.
"I'm..." She shrugged. "I'm not used to this.
Lord knows I don't want to be used to it, don't want to have to
be, but..."
She turned away and swallowed a jerky breath that
was halfway out. When she looked back her mother was staring out the window onto
the hillside, absently picking at a green pepper strip on her pizza slice.
"I don't think he ever really loved me, you
know? I think I was just... in love with the idea--of having a man, of being part
of a couple, I guess. Not me all by my lonesome." She took a bite from the
narrow tip of the slice. "What about you? Do you think Cy...?"
Sandy looked down, at the table grain, and
nodded. "Yeah, I know he did. In his own way. Sometimes when they do, even
then they don't really know how to show it. But yeah, he did."
Raylene shook her head and traced the ridged
interior of the pizza box with a finger. She smiled slightly.
"What?"
"I saw something the other day. Somebody who
knows how to show it."
"I like the pink best," the little girl
said with a vigorous nod of her head.
Maggie looked out at the sunset colors beyond the
window. "I like them all, pink and yellow. The peach is very nice. In the
hospital there were no windows, only electric lights. It makes all the colors
seem more beautiful when you haven't been able to see them."
"The slaves came in ships," the girl
said, big-eyed. "They had to lay down. There was no light, either. Old Rose
said."
"Is that why your mother calls you New? For
New Rose?"
The small head nodded, serious. "The stars
will come out when the sky's dark. Do you know the drinking gourd story?"
Maggie shook her head. "I don't think so.
Will you tell it to me?"
Another serious nod. Small pigtails bobbed with
colorful barrettes. New set a small, dark hand on the sheets. "You have to close your eyes," she
said. "So you can see the sky. It's very, very dark. Are you
peeking?"
"No. My eyes are closed."
"It's nighttime and the drinking gourd is
in the sky. It's stars. It looks like a cup with a long, long, long
handle." A pause. "You see it up there?"
"I think so."
"There's a second set here," Frohike
said, pulling a small envelope from his pocket and taking out several more ID cards.
"Different. If you think they've caught on to you, you can switch." He
spread the cards out before her like a salesman. "Right down to the library
card. They should do what you need. Just keep 'em in separate places."
Teena picked up the cards and looked at the driver's
license. Tracy moved a step closer and peered over her shoulder. It was
important to let Frohike see her. Not to hang back. Mulder had sent the small
man to deliver the fake IDs to his mother, but he was a scout, too, meant to
take a good look around, to let Mulder know if the situation was what they claimed it
was. It wasn't, after all, just his own safety, but Scully's at stake.
"If you need to switch," Frohike said,
"send us an SOS so we can coordinate. Otherwise you should be okay."
Teena rose and offered her hand
across the table. "I very much appreciate this."
"Lucky you were in the neighborhood. No
sense letting the bad guys get a jump on you." He shook the hand she
offered. "Give 'em both our best when you see 'em."
"I'm sure they're very grateful for
your help."
Teena led the short man to the door. Tracy hung
back a few steps. Frohike was trying to figure her out. He knew Alex had put
himself on the line for her. He'd guessed at his motives, but it was an ordinary
guess, the default guess any man might make. He was dedicated to Mulder and
Scully, though. Even though his visions of Scully were ones he'd rather have on
posters he wouldn't want Mulder to find him with.
Tracy went to the dining room window and watched
Frohike go down the stairs and cross the street to an old VW bus. Teena turned
the door lock and glanced at her.
"I think we passed the test," Tracy said. "Mulder asked him to
bring the ID but he was looking for a second opinion, too. He
wants to make sure that this is safe."
"It must be difficult for you, being able to see inside people
and having to reconcile that with what they present
themselves to be. I can't imagine how you'd deal with people, already
knowing the things they'd never admit to."
"People's minds are full of contradictory
things, the best and the worst you can imagine," Tracy said, tracing a
circle on the window glass. "But it's the heart that counts. If you can
find their
heart, then you know who they really are. I think it was that way with Alex
when I first met him. His mind was so dark, so"--she shook her head--"full
of calculation, of the things he'd done and the things that have been done to
him.
"You can fool your own mind," she
went on. "Convince it your motives are other
than what they really are, that things mean something besides what they
really mean. But your heart--it stays separate from that somehow. It is what it
is. There was something there, inside him--a spark, a little flame." She
turned to look at her hostess. "I went in wanting to feed it, but I found out all it needed was a little air, a chance to grow on its own. I don't know how to explain it, even to
myself sometimes, the things Alex has done and then the way he's treated me.
He's given me so much."
A hand settled on her shoulder. "Apparently you've done
quite a lot for him. He's told me that."
"If you have the opportunity, Mrs. Mulder,
don't miss the chance to get to know him."
Scully pulled into the parking space and switched
off the lights and the motor. Beyond the windshield a 747 sank slowly behind a terminal
building, landing. Lights of distant planes winked red and green in the darkened
sky. Scully leaned back against the headrest and stretched.
"What time is it, Mulder?"
He glanced at the truck's clock. "9:22.
We've got at least half an hour. If they're on time. If they're not, we've got
more." He pulled his seat back up straighter and squinted out across the
parking lot. "Are we doing the right thing, Scully?"
"I think we've analyzed ever angle." She sighed.
"In the end all we're left with is instinct. All the indicators we've seen are
positive: the mails, Krycek's apparent--though admittedly puzzling--lack of self-serving strategy. Frohike's impression.
We aren't committed, though. We can walk away if it doesn't look right."
"And leave my mother hanging."
"She wouldn't willingly play the Smoking
Man's pawn, Mulder. She's probably got a bit of strategy of her own up her sleeve. Still, we'll be
careful. You should stay out of sight--a restaurant or some place out of the
main traffic area--until I've checked it out." She leaned toward him.
"How are you feeling?"
He sat up. "About the same. A little
better." He turned his head quickly and winced. "Not as bad but it's
still there."
Her lips pressed together. "Dr. Wykoff said
he'd pressed a colleague at the lab for a favor." She smoothed one
hand along the edge of the steering wheel. "At least your symptoms haven't
gotten any worse. He'll leave the message with Sandy when he finds anything out.
If they're able to get results tonight."
"Coffee?" he asked, offering her a styrofoam
cup.
"No. I'm okay for now." Her head went back against
the headrest.
They settled into silence, the only sounds the
occasional click of the engine cooling and the periodic roar of aircraft
landing or taking off.
Everything was coming together too fast:
a solid lead after weeks of nothing but mopping and
toilet cleaning, and then on the heels of it having to maneuver around Diana's search.
Then
the mysterious Dr. Vanek. Maybe she hadn't seen him at the computer. But then
again, maybe she had. And if she was the ex-gulag scientist Krycek was describing,
more likely than not she'd have her radar up for potentially suspicious intrusions into her
work. He let the scene replay again: the sound of the door opening, his clumsy efforts to
close the data window, the look on her face when she approached him. If only he
hadn't been so messed up by the medication.
Then, like the final domino falling,
the girl trying to get away from D.C. And still, amid all the fireworks, the
pressing need to get to the bottom of Smoky's little project, whatever it was.
"I've got to make this connection,
Scully. Whatever it is Smoky's up to with Dr. Vanek. It's got to be what we've
been
looking for. He's got something to hide here, something he doesn't want even his
syndicate cronies to know about. He obviously hasn't told Krycek."
"Would you tell Krycek if you were
Smoky?"
"No. Though you've gotta
figure: if Krycek's playing this straight, he's got a lot to lose by putting
himself on the line for the girl. He'll even have a vested interest in keeping
Smoky from finding us if she's with us. Unless he's just throwing her at us to
slow us down, to hamper us."
"Why would he do that?"
"Who knows? Who knows why Krycek does anything?" He stared out into the black of night. His hand
ached, a dull pain unless he was careless and hit it against something. A plane
rose suddenly from behind the terminal. He watched it lumber slowly into the
sky. When it was gone he turned to glance at Scully. Her head was against the
driver's side window.
"Tired?"
"Thinking," she said.
"About?"
"Airports. How far I've... both--we've
both--come. How much things have changed since the last one we sat in."
"You scared the hell out of me that night, Scully.
In one sense. But it showed me you were alive, too, not Ms. Bionic
Investigator who never breaks down." His lips came together, pressed
forward and relaxed. "Maybe you needed that as much as I did."
She nodded at him in the dark, smiled and held
out a hand. He took it and pressed it briefly against his cheek.
"And then it gets personal," he went on.
"You start to wonder how far you'd go--how much you'd cut back your
investigating--just to keep what you've got, not to endanger that. Would you put yourself out on a limb
to save some poor guy or help bring about justice or further some cause, maybe
even some favorite personal cause"--he glanced at her--"if it
might meaning leaving that person you're attached to--that person you need--to
go on alone? How much do you compromise your goals or cut back your reach
in order to preserve the personal? Or how do you tell the
difference between altruism and self-interest? Is it more altruistic to put
yourself on the line for that bigger goal, that larger vision? Or were
you only looking for the personal payoff, maybe looking to feel righteous? Is it
selfish to put family, friends, partners above that bigger goal so they'll be
there for you? Or are you doing it so you'll be there for them?" He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a
sunflower seed and slipped it into his mouth.
"I think"--she cleared her throat--"that
people have been grappling with those questions since the beginning of time.
Soldiers, certainly."
"Navy captains?"
She nodded. "Any kind of law enforcement. Revolutionaries.
Look at the founding fathers."
He slipped a second seed into his mouth and bit
down.
"Even terrorists, Mulder. Even... Krycek had
to be doing some of that, deciding that this girl who's taken care of him, that
her life's worth more than the assurance of his security."
"Mmm." He opened his door and spit a
seed onto the pavement. "What time is it, Scully?"
"9:34. We should go in and take our places.
I'll wait by the gate. When I'm sure it's okay, I'll bring them to you. It's
probably better if we're not seen together anyway, but I don't want you pushing
yourself, Mulder. Not when you've been feeling like this."
He nodded and swung the door open.
"Mulder--"
He looked back.
"You going to be okay?"
After a pause he nodded. He reached into his
pocket for another seed and stepped out into a bright pool of overhead light and
the pervasive scent of jet fuel.
Teena stood and waited for the other passengers to
clear the aisle. After a moment Tracy stood up beside her. The girl had never
been on a plane before. She'd found it fascinating in the way a third-world
inhabitant might, everything about the flight and the plane itself completely novel. She seemed more than ready to be on the ground now, though. A
strained expression crossed her face.
"What is it, Tracy?"
"Too many voices--thoughts--like so much
static." She wore a tired look.
Teena gripped the back of the seat in front of her. In
her mind she could hear the harsh raspiness of Fox's voice, the bitterness. Who
is my father? he'd demanded. It was an accusation, not a question. His face had
matched his voice. He could have pinned her to the wall with those eyes: Bill's
eyes, with all Bill's anger filling them. And then she'd deflected the question,
the way she'd deflected so many others. What sort of reaction could she expect? How could she
expect anything different now, knowing how harsh his experience with Alex had been?
He could only see her as a traitor once again.
A hand touched her arm. "You're doing the right thing,
Mrs. Mulder."
If only Fox would see it that way.
Mulder looked up from his menu and cup of coffee
to see the girl coming through the restaurant door, not pausing to search the
customers but knowing immediately where he was. She wore a yellow dress--not the
one she'd worn on the stairs, though that, too, had had yellow in it, and as he
recalled there'd
been a yellow sweater as well. She carried the same faded backpack, though. She smiled
when she saw him. He made himself smile back.
"It's been a while," he said as she
approached the table.
He started to stand--a slight wash of
dizziness--and offered his hand, which she shook. It was apparent now how little
they'd actually talked before, how little they knew each other. He motioned for
her to sit down. The backpack came off and was set on the chair between them. Mulder
glanced toward the door.
"Your mom and Scully are talking," Tracy said. "I
thought I'd give them some space, and a chance to catch up. I--" She looked down
and traced the fork handle in front of her with a finger, then glanced up. "I
want to apologize--for putting you all
through this. I just... I don't think I had much time left back in
Washington."
There was obviously more, but she didn't
seem ready
to open up.
"No, it's... You're right to worry," he
said. "Respect for human life isn't one of Smoky's strong suits."
He could see it again, the impression of a thousand things passing
through her mind that she couldn't or wouldn't bring herself to say.
"It's not a trap," she said finally,
"though I know you'll need to see that for yourself. Alex has no stake in
having the old man find you."
Her hands curled together, a gesture he'd seen
her make once before on the stairs when he'd turned around, surprised to see her
watching, after Diana had left. Suddenly she gripped the table and went wide-eyed.
"You okay?" He reached toward her.
She closed her eyes a moment and nodded. "I think
it's just--"
"Krycek said you'd been having problems."
"It's not that. I think it's just... I'm
really tired. It's been a very long, really trying day and I think I take other
people's emotional burdens on myself: Alex's concern, your
mother's worry about alienating or hurting you, or--" She looked down at her
hands. "I talk too much. I always have. I should learn."
A waitress passed by, two oval dinner plates on
one arm.
"Guess it could get awkward sometimes. You
know--knowing what other people are thinking." He remembered watching Gibson
Praise. They'd never had a chance to really explore the cause of his abilities.
"You tend to take the responsibility on
yourself, for saving them or making things turn out right. Do you--?"
She glanced up, into him. "You do understand, don't you?"
He bit his lip and nodded.
"I don't want to be a burden," she
said. "Maybe there's some way I can help you."
"You going to be okay, Mom?"
Mulder set his mother's bag on a chair in the row beside them
and rested a hand on her shoulder.
"I believe so. I've got the identification
your friend delivered. I have the laptop." She sighed. "You can't be
around Leland without learning something about hiding. What about you, Fox? It
seems every time I see you lately you're injured in some way." She glanced
again at his bandaged hand.
"I--" He shrugged and looked toward
the ticket counter. Five minutes until boarding.
"Sit," his mother said. "We have a
few minutes."
She took the chair beside her bag. He sat in the
one next to her.
"I think I'm onto something, finally."
He leaned forward and spoke quietly. "After weeks and weeks of nothing.
Garbage--literally garbage--and then something clicked that you said in a mail, about what
Dad said about his greed." He bit his lip. "And I think I'm onto
something, just on the verge. The pieces are almost..." He breathed into
cupped hands. "If our luck holds, if I get just a little more time before
everything... implodes around us. It's a small place." He turned to her.
"You know the way small towns are. Nothing stays secret for very long. We're working against the clock and Scully... She's been my lifeline. I don't
know how I would have made it this far on my own."
"She seems much stronger now, Fox. More grounded.
I'm sure you're part of that foundation."
He nodded absently. "We've had help, too.
We've had a lot of help along the way."
"I think you'll find Tracy will help you,
too. She's certainly willing. And it must have taken a great deal of courage,
knowing what she knows, to take on the assignment of caring for--"
Mulder's mouth tightened. He looked away.
"I don't want to compromise your safety,
Fox--yours and Dana's. But there was something in the way he asked." She sighed.
"I realize I've only got a mother's intuition to guide me and mine is admittedly
very, very rusty--"
"I can't figure out why the hell he'd put himself on the
line like this."
"I think he's been touched deeply by her help." She paused. "Perhaps he's discovered something in himself
he didn't know was there before."
Mulder's left hand--good hand--curled into a fist.
He forced a bitter smile. "Great. Rogue gets religion." He stood
abruptly.
"It doesn't cancel out the things he's done. His slate
doesn't wipe clean."
"Nor does mine, Fox. I don't expect
you to forgive me the things I've done. They are what they are and they can't be
changed. But sometimes people change. They wake up to something they
haven't seen or known before. I feel that's what's happened to me
lately." Her hand settled on his arm. "You shouldn't forgive his
actions that are wrong. But perhaps you can give him the opportunity to show
what else is in him."
Mulder stared ahead. After a moment he
shrugged.
"You must follow your heart, Fox. You've
given me a chance, and I know that's been difficult for you."
The PA system came on, announcing boarding for
Teena's flight. She stood.
"I've felt like a child, taking baby steps.
But it's meant more than I can say to have this opportunity."
Mulder nodded. His mother's arms went
around him. He put an arm around her and kissed her forehead. "Be careful, Mom. Stay in touch."
"I will." She paused. "Be safe,
Fox--the three of you. If there's anything at all I can do, I will. Don't
hesitate to ask."
She squeezed his hand and turned to go. He
watched her disappear through the boarding doors, went to the window and stared
out. The scene outside was out of focus, an impressionist canvas of red,
green and white lights on black. When the plane taxied away from the terminal he
turned to go. Glancing carefully around him, he strode toward the exit to short term
parking.
His stomach growled and the injured hand throbbed quietly. After the
reaction he'd had, he hadn't wanted to take anything else for the pain--not until they
knew what he'd been given. He'd survive until then. His feet moved
automatically, left and right and then left again, through the cool terminal
air, then through the warm, damp, fuel-scented darkness outside. He counted the rows
to where the truck was. Scully was already in the driver's seat, her head against the
side window. She sat up and smiled softly when she saw him
approach. He'd rarely been so glad to see her.
"How did it go?" she whispered when
he'd opened the door and climbed in. She put a finger to her lips and pointed
through the back window to the camper shell beyond.
Mulder turned and looked. Tracy was asleep in the back, wrapped in Dale's
utility blanket.
"It was okay," he said, nodding.
"Pretty good." He paused.
"Still not convinced?"
"I don't know. What do you do, Scully, when your head and your
gut tell you opposing stories."
To: topaz@rift.net
From: Cranesbill@zipmail.com
Your parcel has been safely delivered. Hopefully this knowledge will be of some
comfort to you. I am on my way, but please keep in touch. If you need help again
I will do whatever I can. You remain in my thoughts.
-M
Krycek read the mail a second time and hit
'delete'. Finger on the power button, he pushed and waited for the laptop to go to standby.
Seconds later the room went dark. Easing himself back against the pillows, he looked out
the narrow window.
In the Madrid apartment, lying on the couch in the dark at two in
the morning, he'd been able to hear Paco and his wife whispering quietly to each other
on the other side of the thin apartment wall, off in their own
little world, one that didn't include the rest of humanity or anything
beyond the two of them lying in that narrow bed together. It had been a mystery
then: how you found someone like that, someone you'd actually want to open up to,
somebody you'd be that comfortable with. Mi costilla, he'd called her: my
rib, a reference to the Adam and Eve story. Now it was beginning to make sense.
Even if he'd never live the kind of life that
would make it work.
Krycek closed his eyes and pulled the pillow closer under
his head. When the old man arrived--another 16
hours--that would be the time to tell him. He'd buy the fact that they'd been
hustling, working hard to find Scully's mother and get her back, all in service
of his 'greater plan'. The old man seemed to buy his own importance
far too easily. Sure, he had the connections, and he probably knew more than all
the stuffed shirts in the board room put together. But what was he, after all,
arrayed against the Oil?
He hadn't even been able to make himself go up to
the roof in spite of the fact that it would be good exercise, or a logical
escape from the closed-in walls of this damned room. She'd
probably be outside somewhere herself, if she could, looking up into the sky. It was like her. Stars, or the wind, or rain on her face.
She
squeezed meaning from such insignificant stuff.
He pulled up, slipped his feet into his shoes and
stood. Fishing the key from his pocket, he locked the door behind him and started
up the stairs.
"Dale's ready, Mulder."
"Mmm. I know." He refused to open his eyes. Even dizziness
wasn't so bad this way, his arms wrapped around her, hers tight around him, every curve of
her body imprinted against his. All they needed now was to be lying down
instead of standing here, but it was Dale's house and some propriety was
required.
"Mulder, you're not making this easy."
"Uh-uh." He grinned.
"Mulder, I have to go. If I could stay, if
it were safe--" She stretched up; warm lips touched his chin. "You
know I would. But Dale's right. There are too many eyes in this town, and now of all times we
need to be careful."
He opened his eyes and looked at her.
"Besides," she went on, "Sandy may have some information
for us. We need to find out what you were given."
"You're right." Reluctantly, he took his arms from around her and stepped back
slightly, cupping her face with both hands, mouth finding her mouth, then her
cheek, then the side of her neck. "Guess I'll have to subsist on this
morning." A smile crossed his face, one she returned.
"There will be another night, Mulder."
"I know." His lips brushed her forehead. He turned her
around, hand against the small of her back, and led her out into the living room and
through to the back door. Dale appeared behind them.
Ready? his expression said. He gestured toward
the car.
Scully nodded assent. She pressed Mulder's good
hand with her own and followed Dale out to the truck.
Mulder closed the door carefully behind them and
watched through the small window in the door as Dale pulled out into the silent
street, Scully lying on the seat so she'd be hidden from the eyes of Owensburg's
hardcore curious. It had become the immediate, vital goal of his work now, the
carrot dangling in front of him: to expose Smoky and
bring him down so she could walk in the sun again, drive a car or go into a
restaurant or a grocery store without fear for her life.
A moment later, the street was empty. Mulder turned from the
darkened door and went toward his room. He glanced at the couch but the girl wasn't
there. She'd been here a minute ago when they'd come through; he'd thought she
was asleep. Curious, he made his way to to the sliding glass door and looked out into the yard.
Tracy was sitting on the low wall at the edge of the patio overhang, looking up
at the darkness overhead. Carefully he opened the door and stepped outside.
"Couldn't sleep?" he said, coming up
behind her.
She shook her head. "You can see so many
more stars here," she said. "In Washington, even up on the roof at night, you
can hardly--" She turned away and hugged herself, though the air was
warm.
Mulder sat down beside her. He moistened his lips and leaned
forward, elbows on knees.
"I was thinking about the stairs by the
lake," she said. "The woman who came, Diana.
When she left and you looked at me, I turned away. I know you wondered why. She was so full of mixed
emotions, but it would have hurt you if I'd told you the truth about her then. The time wasn't right."
He cocked his head, curious.
"She's always known about this future Alex sees.
She grew up with it. He told her when she was just a girl."
"Who told her?"
"The old man. He's her father."
Mulder's eyes closed. He shook his head.
"She grew up that way, preparing. You were
supposed to be part of that preparation. But when she met you--actually knew
you--you gave her something she'd never known before: hope. You made her... grateful and confused. It's not
that she wanted to betray you. But the shadow of the future hangs so
heavily over her." She turned toward him. "She doesn't know any other way
to fight it."
Mulder pursed his lips.
"I wonder now," she said after a
moment, "if I've done the same to Alex, given him false hope, something
that will only confuse him."
"My mom doesn't seem to think so." He cleared
his throat. "In the end you've got to stay with what your gut knows to be true. Sometimes all the reasoning can
just spin you around until you don't know which way you're headed. Then you've
got to go back to what your gut knows, and stay with that."
Suddenly her eyes were full, brimming.
"What?"
She shook her head, smiling through the tears. "Thank you."
"For what?"
"Just... thank you."
She leaned forward and rocked slightly. He could
see her shaking in the pale light of the moon.
"Sandy's light's on," Dale said, nodding toward
the darkness beyond the truck's window.
Scully sat up from her position on the seat and
looked out through the windshield. A warm glow came from Sandy's living room
window.
"Want to just stop now and see if she's got
your information since we're already
here?" Dale said. "By the time you get up home and to the phone she
could be in bed."
"Very possible. Okay. It should only take a
minute."
Scully ran her fingers through her hair and
straightened the shoulders of her blouse. Dale slowed and pulled off into the
driveway. He eased the truck up close to the house and waited for Scully to get
out. After a moment the old black lab came drowsily up to greet her. Scully offered her hand,
then patted the dog's head and continued to the darkened stairs and up. She
pushed the doorbell and waited. Seconds later muffled footsteps approached and
the porch light came on.
The door opened to reveal Sandy's mother. A
startled look of recognition spread across her face.
(End Chapter 17)
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