X-Files: "Falling Stars" an original fan story by Julie Fortune Disclaimer: I have absolutely no right to use these characters, just an abiding admiration for the creative work of the cast and crew of X-Files. All rights to all characters within this story are owned by Fox (that's television, not Mulder) and the fine folks who created and slaved over this series. Although the story is original, it is a "derivative work" and I claim no copyright. No profits are made in any way in the writing or distribution of the work. It is written solely for creative enjoyment. The room is dark. A thin line of moonlight slices over an empty desk, cuts across a carpeted floor, stops abruptly, as if frightened, near a black corner. There are shapes in the darkness -- the humped back of a bed, the long reach of a couch -- but nothing moves except the lazy flashing of a red light near the door. The red light blinks, like a sleepy eye, an instant before the telephone hums for attention. It goes neglected, and the red light blinks more rapidly, then brightens. There is a man's voice in the room, disembodied and ghostly. "This is Fox Mulder. Please leave a message." The beep is long, shrill, painful. When it ends, there is another voice, a woman's, sharp and fast. "Mulder, if you're there, call me back on my cell phone." A click. The answering machine hums to itself for another few seconds and rewinds. The red light goes back to a slow, steady blink. For a full minute, the room holds its silence, its darkness, its breath. The door slams open, crashes loudly against the wall and bounces forward again, stopped by an outstretched hand still holding tight to a cellular phone. The hand searches for the light switch hiding coyly out of sight in the shadows. The lights blaze on, erasing the shaft of moonlight, the red blink of the answering machine, revealing the woman who stands in the doorway. Special Agent Dana Scully holds an automatic pistol in the FBI-approved two-handed position and sweeps the room for a target. Finally, she relaxes. Sounds of her light footsteps, muffled by the carpet, as she moves into the living room, then into the bedroom. She is methodical, quick, and practiced, but in the end she returns to the living room and examines the desk, gun still held forgotten in her right hand. She touches the empty desktop with her fingertips, and for the first time since kicking the door open she seems uncertain of how to proceed. Behind her, the red light stops blinking a second before the phone rings. She whirls and stares as Fox Mulder's voice enters the room again. "This is Fox Mulder. Please leave a -- " His voice is interrupted by a long electronic tone. The answering machine responds by whirring. "You have sixteen messages," the machine says, in a too-precise voice. It starts the first message. "Hi, Mulder, this is Scully -- " Scully lunges for the phone, knocks it off the cradle and fumbles it to her ear. She shouts over her own voice. "Mulder! Mulder, it's me. Where the hell are you?" The answering machine stops in the middle of her message, chopping off her recorded voice with an electronic squeak. It clicks three times and begins to rewind. She clutches the phone close, knuckles white around the receiver. "Mulder?" she asks, and the uncertainty is as quiet and insidious in her voice as a shadow. "Are you there?" After another few seconds she hangs up and stands there, eyes closed, one hand still touching the phone as if it might ring again. It does not. After a while, she turns the lights out, and the door closes quietly behind her. The darkness is quiet, and breathless. Waiting. Scully is not often angry -- does not allow herself to be. She swallows back the urge to shout and stares steadily at the man she wishes to shout at; he is in his late forties, lean, hard, smiling at her with a politician's brilliance. He sits behind a battleship of a desk, and the photographs on the wall behind him are carefully chosen to reflect the current political mood and causes -- here, he shakes hands with a popular black leader -- there, with an outspoken and presidentially favored political satirist. The picture of his wife and children looks so perfect that she wonders if it came with the frame. "Did you hear me, Agent Scully?" Deputy Bureau Chief Langstrom asks, and she swallows again, tasting anger and a little fear. "Yes sir. I just don't believe it." His politically correct smile curdles and slides away. "Special Agent Mulder has been particularly -- eccentric lately. Agreed?" He gives her a smile that shows teeth. "Forgive me. Perhaps eccentric is too harsh a word. Erratic." She chooses to say nothing. "You and Mulder had a disagreement in the hearing of at least six other staff members. Immediately after that, Mulder had a further disagreement with Agent Demarcos over the handling of a kidnapping case." "Demarcos goaded him," Scully says. "Deliberately. He's been baiting Mulder for weeks." The DBC stares at her for a few seconds. His reaction is as if she hasn't spoken at all. "Mulder left a message with my secretary that he wanted to take vacation this week. I fail to understand why you've become so -- obsessive about this, Scully. Mulder threw a tantrum and left town. He'll be back." There is an indulgent tone to his voice, but under that, contempt. The DBC has been against Mulder's interest in the X Files from the beginning, has been instrumental in assigning Scully as an impartial observer in an effort to have Mulder discredited. She has not pleased him. "I don't think that's the correct interpretation, sir," she says, and the DBC stares her down, and down, and down. "I think something's happened to him. I'd like to find out what." He slowly blinks and shakes his head. "I don't think that would be at all productive," he says, and smiles again. She feels the anger clawing its way up again, knows it would be a mistake to let it go, and chokes on it one more time. She rises to her feet. "Thank you sir," she says, and closes the door quietly behind her on the way out. She walks down a long carpeted hallway, nodding to a few agents who watch her go. She is becoming used to being watched -- not for her looks, which she knows are good, but for her oddity. Any friend of Fox Mulder's is an oddity. She pauses at a filing cabinet and pulls a yellow three-part form from a stack, carries it down two flights of stairs and down another long hall, this one quiet and empty. She opens the door on the office she shares with Fox Mulder and looks around for signs of his presence. There are none. Everything is just as she left it. She sits at her desk and fills out the yellow form, signs it, puts it squarely in the center of her blotter. She opens her drawer and takes out her purse and briefcase. Having done that, she sits for a while, staring into space, thinking. Her career is not something Dana Scully takes lightly; it is the center of her world. She hesitates. Finally, she picks up her belongings and leaves, shutting the door firmly behind her. The yellow form on her desk reads REQUEST FOR VACATION, FORM V-1221. She has filled in the space for starting date and left the ending date blank. She does not know when, if ever, she will be back. Mulder wakes slowly, drifting up out of a clingy darkness that tastes of mold. He hears someone mumbling, and it surprises him when he realizes that it is his voice, his recorded voice; it clicks off in mid-word when he turns his head to listen. When he tries to open his eyes he finds he can't; when his eyelids spasm he feels the sticky drag of tape. His hands feel like separate creatures, bloated and numb; he pulls his elbows apart and feels pressure at his wrists, where more tape tugs at the hair on his arms. He is sitting upright. He can't remember how he came to be here, on this chair, in this cold room. He is afraid, but the fear is formless and weak, like a newborn. Nothing seems to matter very much. There is someone in the room, beyond the darkness of his taped eyelids. He knows it. "I'm sorry about the blindfold," a voice says from somewhere to his right; he turns his head in that direction and the world tilts. He is grateful for the unpadded support of the chair. "I hope it isn't causing you too much discomfort." It's a male voice, deep, quiet. Soothing. Mulder knows he should be thinking faster, reacting, but thoughts slide away like drops of mercury. Drugged, he finally realizes, and a new bubble of fear rises, only to float away on the gray tide. He is gone for a few seconds, lost somewhere, and snaps back to reality as fingers brush his arm. His skin shivers to shake off the touch. "Hold still," the man mutters, very close now. A sting in his arm, and a warm rush. "There. That will help you." The drug hits Mulder's heart with the force of an electric shock. He sits rigid and feels his pulse skip, stutter, and race forward; heat spreads through his numbed legs, his arms, and finally his head. The tape is pulled from his eyelids, clinging tenaciously to lashes and brows. Mulder forces his eyes open and sees a wash of color, an impressionistic painting of a face, a room. He blinks and the room becomes a watercolor, misty at the edges, pastel. The man looks familiar, frighteningly so. Mulder's mind struggles and fumbles to match it, and fails. "--ryou--" Mulder mumbles. His tongue feels thick and useless. The man smiles. "I'm your friend, Mr. Mulder," he says, and from his coat pocket takes out another syringe, this one filled with a yellowish liquid. He holds it up to the light contemplatively. "I'm afraid this is going to hurt." Mulder's next-door neighbor has a paranoid's weight of locks on the door -- at least three deadbolts, ratcheting back one after another, and thick privacy chains rattling above and below waist level. Scully stands patiently, holding her identification at eye level as the door slowly, mistrustfully opens. There is no one at eye level. She quickly looks down and sees a young man glaring at her from a wheelchair. She lowers her ID to allow him a close look. He nods and spins the chair back to give her room to enter. "Sir, I'm Special Agent Dana Scully -- " she begins; he cuts her off with a scornful look as he wheels farther back. "Yeah, I can read." "May I have your name?" "Why, what's wrong with yours?" he snaps, and she smiles a little. "Sorry. Jesse. Jesse Vasquez. So you're a real FBI agent, huh?" The man is younger than she's assumed -- early thirties, Hispanic, good looking in a harsh high-cheekboned way. He wears his hair long, cinched with a leader thong at the back. His arms and chest look powerfully built; she can't judge the legs hidden under a pale yellow blanket. "Yes," she says. "I need to ask you a few questions." He stares at her face for a long few seconds before nodding toward the living room. Jesse's apartment is nearly bare -- a couch, a small coffee table supporting a half-finished frozen dinner and a nearly empty glass of beer, a television with the sound turned down. Bare wood floors, easier for a wheelchair to navigate. No clutter. Jesse's books -- and there are a lot of them -- are off the floor and in shelves, nothing higher than Scully's waist level. "So what you want to know? Can't be about that guy, he's up in Attica, right?" Jesse's voice notches up toward anxiety. "He didn't get out or nothing?" "Which guy?" Scully asks as she sits on the couch. Jesse gestures at his legs and shrugs. "You know. This guy. Richard Kelly. The one who drove his car into the park at lunch." Jesse's smile is darkly bitter. "Killed twelve people, man. Squashed 'em like bugs. Me, I just got my back broken." Scully holds his eyes with hers. "I'm sorry, Mr. Vasquez." It is a professional answer, and yet sincerely meant; she sees the recognition in his face, and lets the silence grow between them for a few seconds. "I'll try to find out something about Richard Kelly, if you like. But in the meanwhile, I need to ask you some questions about your next-door neighbor." "Over there?" He gestures toward Mulder's apartment, and she nods. "Him. Yeah, he's quiet, not there much. Long hours, I guess. I seen him in the hall a few times; he's kind of tall, wears suits. Some kind of lawyer or something, maybe." "His name is Fox Mulder, and he's an FBI Special Agent. I work with him," she says. Jesse's eyes open wide for a second, then narrow into a practiced, cynical disinterest. "Hey, I don't know nothing about him. So?" "So did anything odd happen in the past few days? Did you see anybody strange in the building, or near Mulder's door? Did Mulder act out of character?" "Hey, like I said, I don't know the guy much. Last time I saw him was -- " Jesse's eyes roll upward in thought. "Saturday. Yeah. I remember 'cause he was wearing around-the-house kind of stuff, jeans, a T-shirt. He was taking out the trash." "Did he say anything to you?" Jesse's answering look is impatient. "Nobody talks to nobody in the halls, lady, what you think, we live in Disneyland? Anyhow, that was the last I seen of him." He studies her. "You the one broke his door in yesterday?" "Did you see anybody else in the building you didn't know, didn't recognize? Somebody near Mulder's apartment?" Jesse's gaze immediately leaves hers and richochets around the room. He wheels his chair in a tight circle; rubber wheels squeak against wood as he goes toward the kitchen. He pauses in the doorway to look back. "Hey, you want something to drink? Water? Beer?" A bachelor's choices. She smiles and shakes her head, listens to him rummaging in cabinets. He only uses the lower ones. She can just see the sink from where she sits; it is a struggle for him to reach the handle to turn the water on, but he manages, face tight with frustration. He comes back with a glass of water and holds it like a shield between them. "Why are you scared, Jesse?" she asks, and the water slops out of the glass to form a dark circle on the yellow blanket. "I'm not -- " Jesse stops talking and looks away. He is seeing something else, and it twists painfully in his face. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. Maybe I get nervous, you know? I never used to be scared of nothing. Cholos, gang bangers, man, nobody messed with me. I took care of myself. Then I'm just standing there, you know, and God just takes my legs away. Just like that, 'cause some asshole banker gets pissed off in traffic. So yeah, I get scared. I got all these locks on the door, and on the windows, and sometimes I just think -- you know -- I just imagine things." "Did you imagine something about Mulder?" "No." Scully waits while he takes a sip of water that he doesn't want. Finally, he nods. "Yeah, okay, maybe. I wake up, and there's somebody outside on the fire escape, you know? I see the shadow through the blinds, and I think, oh man, here it comes, God's coming for the rest of me. Only when I open my eyes again it's gone. So I get in the chair and I go over to the window, and you know what I see? I see some guy walking down the steps, and he's got this other guy over his shoulder. Passed out, you know? Like, unconscious." Jesse shrugs. "So I go back to bed and think, hey, I dreamed it all up. I dream freaky shit like that sometimes, like there's a car in the apartment and this gringo pendejo's face all shiny like a skull grinning through the windshield. So I don't know. Maybe I dreamed it. Maybe." Scully leans forward, willing him to look up and meet her eyes. "Jesse. Jesse, can you describe the man you saw? I think it may be very important." Jesse turns his chair and wheels across the room to a bookcase. He pulls out a sketch pad and tosses it to her; she catches it and begins leafing through the pages. Jesse is good; the sketches are close-ups, portraits of tough-looking Chicano youths in headbands and hairnets, glaring intensely out of the paper. About halfway through, the sketches change, take on darkness and shadow; violent drawings, disturbing. A hair-raising sketch of Jesse crawling, a huge black Cadillac roaring toward him, white face grinning maniacally behind the wheel. Three more pages. She finds the last sketch in the book. Even in pencil on the rough rag paper, Jesse has captured the sense of menace. A man, pausing on the fire escape to look back over his shoulder, face blank and yet somehow frighteningly intense. He is in his forties, has short dark hair, small eyes, a rather weak chin. She knows him. She has, in fact, been in his office not two hours before, and listened to his condescending reasons for doubting Mulder's danger. Deputy Bureau Chief Langstrom is carrying Fox Mulder's unconscious body over his shoulder. Scully is on her way to her house when her cellular phone buzzes; she fumbles it out one-handed, steering with the left, and for a hopeful second believes it might be Mulder, relieving her of this burden of confusion. It is Deputy Bureau Chief Langstrom. "I got your vacation request," Langstrom says; Scully is going through a bad cell, and his voice distorts and fuzzes on the phone. She concentrates on steering around a battered VW with peeling pastel flowers on the doors. "You used to be a hell of a lot smarter than this, Scully. What the hell's the matter with you?" "I'd like to take some time off, sir." "Scully, that's --" " I have time coming," she continues doggedly. "Scully." His voice is as firm as a brick wall; she feels a tight knot of tension move like a living thing in her stomach. The light ahead is still green; she presses the accelerator, and the car leaps forward toward the waiting intersection, escaping. "Listen to me. I understand that you're worried about Agent Mulder, but don't throw your career away for him. Fox Mulder is a sinking ship. Abandon him while you still can." The coldness is shocking; she imagines his too-wide smile, and fights back a surge of rage so pure it glows in her skin. He knows. He knows where Mulder is, and what's being done to him. "Damn it, Agent Scully, did you hear me? I'm ordering you to get back here." She doesn't reply. As she is about to break the connection, she hears him say, "Scully, I didn't want to have to break it to you like this. We've found him." The rage disappears, blown away on a cold wind of shock. She puts the phone back to her ear and steers her car to an empty space at a curb. The engine hums quietly, like the tension in her muscles. "Where?" "As best we can determine, Mulder got in his car Saturday night and drove to Connecticut. He joined a group of about sixty people in a vigil on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere. They think the Great Pumpkin is going to rise up out of the fog, or the aliens are going to land, or some damn thing -- anyway, when the meeting broke up early Sunday morning about seven of them started having seizures. Turns out that whatever mind-expanding substance they were using was cut with industrial strength rat poison." The DBC bursts into coughs that rattle wetly in her ear. "Sorry. Look, Mulder was one of them. He's in a hospital outside of Hartford, and they don't think he's going to make it." "Oh my God," Scully murmurs, but it's reflex; her mind is still methodically turning, gears clicking. "What hospital? " She hears pages rustling. "Saint Mark's in Baytown. All of the victims are there." "Sir -- " "I want you back in here, Scully. We'll talk about it when you get here." The click of disconnect stops her question. She lets the phone slide away from her ear. For a few seconds she just sits, eyes closed, trying to reconcile what she's just heard with what she knows to be true. "No," she says aloud. "He didn't go there. He didn't take any drugs, you son of a bitch." But she knows she is the only one who will believe it. Unless she can come up with the truth, Mulder's career -- Mulder's life -- may be over. She puts the car in gear again and heads toward the turnpike, and Connecticut. Mulder is happy, very happy. He hums to himself and studies the green rainbows shimmering around the lights; from time to time, some sad impulse will shoot through him, and make him shiver, but on the whole he is really very, very happy. He has been talking aimlessly for more than an hour about his childhood, about his sister, about anything at all. "Fox," a voice says; his fountain of words dribbles to a stop. "Fox, let's talk about something else now. Let's talk about -- oh, some other little girls, not your sister. Some little girls you met last year. Remember? You called them the Eves." Mulder's reaction is immediate and violent; no more happiness, no more green rainbows. The lights are now ringed with shadows, black moving shadows that seem to fill the room. He shivers, and the sweat on his body feels ice-cold. "No," he says, and the cold bites harder, freezing him. "Can't." "Two little girls who looked exactly alike, remember? Their names weren't important. What they were -- that was important. Why don't you tell me what you know about them? About the Eves?" No more barriers left to protect him. Words make a hard pressure in his chest, like a held breath. Have to stop this, he thinks incoherently. But there is no stopping. No hiding. Not from the voice, quietly digging into his mind. An overwhelming feeling of loss washes over him. The rainbows around the lights are worms, wriggling; he feels them cold on his skin. "Can't tell you," he says aloud. "I'm afraid you really have to, Fox. It's very important that you help me. I need to know about those little girls, and any other Eves you may know. I need to know where they are." "They killed their fathers --" It's too late, the story escapes, words tumbling over each other, raw anguished words colored with helplessness and fear. He is aware of nothing but his own misery until the voice speaks again. "Very good, Fox. And now they're locked up with the other remaining Eve, is that right? And you can tell me where?" "Yes." "Can you tell me more about the Litchfield experiments? About the scientists? About the research?" He tells what he knows -- about the genetic research, about the identical little girls named Eve, the identical boys named Adam. About the disastrous psychoses that developed when the children turned on each other, and the world. Toward the end his voice feels sharper in his mouth, more like a tool. He deliberately slows the words down, and knows that he can, if necessary, stop. For a while. The drugs are wearing off. "Tell me where the remaining Adams are, Fox," the man says. Mulder doesn't have to try to control his answer on that one. "All dead." There are no rainbows at all above now, only bare electric lights hanging overhead. "No," the man says. "That's a lie. I know a lie when I hear one." He moves his head to the right and sees him sitting there, within touching distance. The face -- the face is so familiar, he can almost reach the memory -- The man smiles and takes another syringe from a tray beside him. Yellowish liquid. Mulder's skin crawls with revulsion and he tries to break free, but his hands are still tied. The prick of the needle is extremely painful, the rush of drug into his body like being set on fire. "I don't think you understand, Mr. Mulder. I'm not prepared to settle for lies," the man says. "We'll start again, shall we?" The smell of the hospital is familiar and nostalgic, like baking cookies. Scully breathes disinfectant and reads a six-week-old article on epilepsy, and wishes for a cup of coffee to cut the growing fog of exhaustion. Just like being a resident again, she thinks. Exhaustion, coffee and tension. Langstrom hasn't lied to her -- there are poison victims here. But there is no FBI presence, as there should be, no effort to find out what's happened to Mulder, no protection, nothing. She can almost hear his excuses, cheap and flimsy. Couldn't get a team there -- still a local matter -- "Special Agent Scully?" Scully looks up to find an overweight, bright-eyed young man bending over her. "I'm Doctor Rajneesh. You are looking into the poisonings?" "Yes sir, seven people admitted early Sunday morning. I understand they took drugs cut with rat poison." "Hmm." Doctor Rajneesh looks thoughtful, taps his chin with a pudgy finger. "Yes, the police have already been here. Forgive me, I did not work on those cases, but I know where to find the records. Will you come with me, please?" She climbs up from the too-soft couch and follows Rajneesh down the hall to a small nurse's station, where one weary-looking RN is checking off boxes on a chart. Rajneesh pulls a handful of folders out of a metal tray and flips through them, frowning. "Ah!" His frown clears. "Yes. Here. Oh my." Scully reaches over and takes the folder from his hand. CHARLES, ANGELICA the admission form reads. There is a red stamp in the right-hand corner. "I'm afraid this one has died," Rajneesh says in embarrassment, as if Angelica Charles has committed a social faux pas. "Oh dear." He look over the next two hands her the folders for GLENN, CORY L. and HATCHER, JUDY. She waits without comment as he finishes looking over the rest. By the last he is shaking his head. "I am so very sorry," he sighs, and she takes the folder from his hand. MULDER, FOX. There is a red stamp in the corner. "It seems he is dead as well." She stares at the uneven, dispassionate type for a second, then reads the narrative. Respiratory arrest -- cardiac arrhythmia -- pulmonary edema -- She closes the folder and hands it back. Her hands are steady, though her heart is thumping loudly in her ears. "I want to see the body." Doctor Rajneesh begins a protest. "Now." The man looks enough like Mulder to pass a quick visual identification, and to be sure -- she knows how much death can disguise -- Scully takes fingerprints. She faxes them to Quantico for a matchup with Mulder's records, and waits by the machine until the response comes back. The body is not Mulder's. She hadn't believed it, anyway. But if the imposter hadn't died, if she had been effectively derailed by the DBC, the charade might have gone on for quite some time. She really has no choice, no leads. Jesse Vasquez's drawing is in her left-hand pocket; she unfolds it and looks it over. She doesn't allow herself to think about Mulder, and what the elaborate coverup might mean is being done to him. Access. The poisoner must have had access to the group on the hilltop. He must have been with them, or close to them. Scully goes in search of Doctor Rajneesh. No rainbows, when Mulder's eyes slowly open -- only darkness, so thick he can taste it on the back of his tongue. He is afraid for a second that his eyes are taped again, but his lids move, up and down, nightmarishly slow. Just dark, then. Only dark. The fear is all out of proportion; he concentrates on breathing, on warm air filling his lungs, but then he thinks he is drinking in the dark, drowning in it, and the thought brings him close, so close, to screaming. He swallows the impulse, along with a mouthful of thick saliva. "Mulder?" For a long dark second he is sure he's hallucinating, but the voice comes again, closer, louder. A woman's voice, familiar, sharp with worry. "Mulder?" "Scully -- " His first attempt is a whisper; he swallows again and tries harder. "Scully! Here!" Footsteps in the dark. The creak of a door swinging open, the glare of a bright flashlight in his eyes. Whiteout. "Mulder?" Still the same tone, worried, sharp. The light holds steady. "Can't move," he says, and tries hard to find words that make sense. "Careful -- he's still here -- " It takes him a few more seconds to realize that she is not coming toward him -- that she is just standing, spotlighting him, freezing him in the glare. The light moves, travelling slowly over bare floor, to shine on black tennis shoes, blue jeans, a sweat shirt with a UNLV logo. Not Scully, of course. A man, the same damned man; he puts the flashlight under his chin and casts his face into deep, dramatic shadows -- pits for eyes, a death's head with flesh still attached. Mulder knows that he knows him, and the name is maddeningly familiar and unreachable, blocked off by drugs that are still making his perceptions unsteady. FBI? Yes. The man is FBI, from the office -- L-- L-something -- The man holds up his other hand, and shows Mulder a pocket tape recorder. He presses the PLAY button. "Mulder?" Scully's voice says again. "Mulder?" "She has a nice voice," the man says, and presses PLAY again. Mulder closes his eyes. "An interesting voice. Do you find her interesting?" "No," Mulder says. He feels infinitely tired and hollow. "Lies, lies, lies. You're quite the liar, aren't you? Lots of practice. Do you know where I got this voice?" The button on the recorder goes down. Mulder? "She was quite close to me when I recorded it. Do you want to know how close?" Mulder? He feels a sick twisting sensation in his stomach. "I'm through playing games with you, Mr. Mulder. Tell me what I want to know or I'll have to start believing you're working for him." The hate is undisguised this time, vitrolic, almost unbalanced. The white face in the light twists and shivers with it. "But of course, you are working for him, aren't you? And you know it. You picked up the Eves for him, and you would have found me, too, except I found you first." Harsh, rapid breathing. The light trembles, and the face smoothes out to a bland mask again. The voice turns soothing and darkly smug. "I think I might tell you what I did to Scully. Later." Mulder manages to stay quiet, somehow; there is nothing, really, he can say. The flashlight abruptly clicks off and leaves him stranded in the darkness, surrounded and helpless. A dry click, a scrape. The door shuts. He flinches as the tape recorder that sits on the floor near him activates. Scully's voice comes again, nearer, looped endlessly back on itself. Mulder? Mulder? Mulder? Scully sits in the dim chill of a living room with another of the UFO group known as the Watchers -- her fifth interview of the new day. "Yeah, I remember him," says Connie Regallon; her eyes are swollen and inflamed, her nose a cheery burst of red on her pale face. The trash can next to her desk is filled to the brim with damp crumpled tissues. She stares dully at the drawing Scully holds out, Jesse's sketch. Langstrom. Genuine grief, Scully thinks; tears can be faked, but not even the most methodical actor empties a tissue box doing it. "Do you know his name?" "Yeah -- um -- Jerome. Jerome Colwick. He came to a couple of Watcher meetings, and then to the hill. I think he left before dawn, though." Before seven of the group turned up dying of poison. Scully slowly folds the paper back into a neat square and puts it back in her pocket. "Was he alone?" Connie Regallon nods and dabs at her eyelashes with a tissue. "Do you know his address?" "He filled out a card that said he was from Wisconsin -- I thought that was funny, because I live just down the road from the hill, you know, and I saw him at the Torrance cabin. He was carrying boxes. Maybe you can find him there." Connie Regallo's expression turns hard. "I didn't like him. I suppose you think he may have -- " "I'm just interviewing everyone," Scully says quickly. "How far away is the Torrance cabin?" "About seven miles, right off the main road to your right. There's a big red mailbox. Can't miss it." The directions are surprisingly accurate, Scully finds as she continues driving past the gravel road, the red mailbox. She pulls off on the shoulder a quarter-mile away and goes back on foot, keeping to the treeline and deep shadows. She is glad she's taken the time to put on jeans and sturdy shoes, because the underbrush is thick and unforgiving; it punishes her for coming too close with red scratches on her face and hands. The gravel road stretches for what seems miles, and she takes it slowly, staying out of sight as best she can. It curves right and reveals a cabin, apparently deserted, one window white with cracks. She waits there, watching, but sees nothing. Ten minutes later, the wood of the cabin is rough at her back; she checks her automatic and chambers a round before easing up to the cracked window. A quick glance inside tells her nothing, except that if Jerome Colwick is living there he is a terrible housekeeper. The room is deserted, dusty, scattered with yellowing papers and scraps of broken furniture. She tries the door and finds it open. There is no one in the cabin at all. She begins to comb through the papers, methodically, finding twelve-year-old magazines and bills and an out-of-focus snapshot of someone -- it could have been man or woman -- waving at the camera. Another dead end. She picks up a label, peeling at the edges; it has come off of a box. ALDEN CHEMICAL COMPANY, the name at the bottom reads, and in tiny letters, the address. It is only a mile or two away. She starts to let it fall back down to the carpet, but it clings to her fingers. Sticky. New. She drops the label and sprints for the door. As she runs away from the cabin, down the gravel driveway, Deputy Bureau Chief Langstrom steps around the cabin and draws his gun. He chambers a round, aims at the center of her back, an almost certain kill -- She darts off into the trees -- not as if she's sensed his presence, more as if she's seen a shortcut. Langstrom's lips thin in annoyance, but he shrugs and flicks the safety back on before holstering his weapon. He goes back into the cabin and picks up the label, transferring it meditatively from one finger to another, smiling. "Langstrom," Mulder says as the light blazes on overhead; the drugs are mostly gone, faded to a thick woolly blanket on his tongue. He narrows his eyes against the glare but keeps his expression blank, and the man standing in the doorway gives him a strange look. "You look younger in those clothes. All you need is a leather jacket to pick up the chicks." The man comes into the room and sits in the other chair, hands dangling limply between blue-jeaned thighs. He looks weary and exhausted, and the lines around his mouth are etched deep and dark. "My name is Langstrom," he repeats. "How interesting. That would be Harold Langstrom, the Deputy Bureau Chief, I suppose. I had his name, but not his picture. An oversight. I never imagined he'd get so high in law enforcement. My mistake." The chances of Langstrom having a long-lost twin are so remote that Mulder doesn't even consider them. He stares at the man for a long time before making the right guess. "Which Adam are you?" The Adam gives him an unstable smile. "Call me Adam 9, that's what they did at Litchfield. Too bad they didn't call me Adam 12. That's got kind of a ring to it, don't you think?" "How many of you are there?" Mulder asks; he is trying not to remember Eve 6, and her insane desire to chew eyeballs. He is not comforted by another smile, all teeth and trembling lips. "Now? Two." "You and Langstrom." "He's been trying to find me for ten years, you know. Pulling strings, asking favors, sticking guns in people's faces when no one was looking. He's crazy. We're all crazy, you know. Loony as tunes." "Most bosses are," Mulder says. Adam 9's smile disappears and leaves something hungry in his bright eyes. "Don't screw with me. You're already a dead man, Mr. Special Agent man; I had to kill a few extras to get the one I wanted, but nobody's going to look too hard at a dead crazy FBI agent, are they? Particularly not Deputy Bureau Chief Langstrom. You must have been making him real nervous, you and your spooky little projects." Mulder feels sick at the news of the deaths, but not surprised; he remembers the two juvenile Eves smiling bright-eyed as he sipped at his poisoned Diet Coke. "So now you kill me, fade into the woodwork, and leave your brother to clean up after you. Or take the blame." "Whatever is most convenient. I'm made sure people saw me. He'll have a hell of a time covering this little episode up. Not that you'll be here to enjoy it, of course; I'd hoped to get him to show up in person, but I don't think I can wait for that any more." Adam 9 smiled again. "Sorry that you're going to die." Mulder watches his eyes and knows he's serious; this Adam is just as psychotic, if slightly more controlled, than the Eve he'd last seen in a windowless cave of a cell. Adam 9 shrugs and walks over to the steel tray lying on the floor; he takes a fresh syringe and a vial of something ominously bluish; he fills the syringe with an expression of pleased concentration. "You didn't tell me about Scully," Mulder says as Adam 9 taps bubbles from the needle -- smiling at the perversity of it. He dreads hearing it, but talking is better than dying. "What about her?" Adam's smile turns enigmatic and cruel. "She was delicious." "Did you kill her?" Mulder's eyes are on the syringe, blue-tinged like cyanotic lips, that floats toward him. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, Mr. Mulder, it's been a real pleasure, but I think I've worn out my welcome. Do tell Hoover I said hello -- I'm sure he'll remember me. He came and visited Litchfield once." The syringe moves slowly toward Mulder's exposed forearm, the vulnerable blue veins. It adjusts itself like a spaceship ready to land. The needle gleams brightly; Mulder feels his shoulders pressing backward into the hard chair in a futile attempt to scuttle backwards from death. "When I've taken care of Mr. Langstrom, I think I'll take a little trip back home. Maybe I can pick up one of the Eves, who knows? Get a little house with a picket fence, raise some kids. Conquer the world." Mulder's breath hisses sharply between his teeth as the needle burrows slowly, so slowly under his skin, a black line edging toward the vein. Adam 9 looks up into his eyes, only inches away, and Mulder is able to see his own reflection in those eyes. "Bye bye," Adam 9 says, and presses the plunger. Mulder sees the red hole appear in Adam's arm a split second before his ears register the roar of a shot; Adam's eyes, still avid, blink, and his hand spasms backward, leaving the needle buried under Mulder's skin. The plunger has only gone down halfway. Adam holds up his left hand -- his right hangs useless at his side -- and backs off to the corner. Mulder starts to turn his head and feels a sudden sickening lurch of disorientation, worse than before, numbing and blinding. "Mulder?" Scully's voice. The tape. He sees it lying on the floor by his feet. "Mulder? Oh God -- " The tape hadn't said that before. He blinks dimly at it and feels her hands on his arm as she pulls the needle out and drops it to the floor. He manages to open his eyes and look. She is pale, eyes wide, face tighter than he has ever seen it. She touches his cheek with the back of one hand and looks over at Adam 9. Adam lunges for the door and attains the safety of the hall as she brings her weapon up. Scully hesitates, then lowers her gun and begins tugging at Mulder's ropes. She frees one arm, then the other, squeezes his shoulder and disappears out the doorway, down the hall. Mulder leans over to untie his ankles and stays there, gasping for breath under a great gray pressure in his head. Going to die, he thinks. Might as well do it lying down. He slips from the chair to the floor and lies there, face down, on the cool forgiving concrete. "Sorry," he whispers. He is not sure who he's apologizing to. Scully turns right down the hall, the way Adam 9 disappeared; she is only a few steps away when she feels someone at her back, and knows it's too late to turn, too late for anything but regrets. Never should have left Mulder, she has time to think, before she hears the explosion of the shot. No pain, no dizziness; she completes the turn and braces her gun two-handed as a man falls to his knees only a step or two away, eyes wide and disbelieving. He has a knife, not very long, just long enough. "Langstrom," she murmurs, and looks up to see who's saved her life. Langstrom. This one is dressed in a suit and tie, his traditional FBI costume, while the dead one at her feet is dressed in jeans and a bloody sweatshirt. Deputy Bureau Chief Langstrom comes calmly down the hall toward her, passing the room where she left Mulder. Scully lowers her gun. "I told you not to go down with the ship, Scully," the DBC says, and before she can react he's got his weapon up and aimed for the center of her chest. "Thanks for helping me clean up all the loose ends, though. This one, Mulder, you -- I think that pretty well takes care of things. Sorry." Behind Langstrom, Scully's voice speaks. Mulder? Mulder is standing in the doorway, clinging to it. He is holding a small tape recorder, and as Langstrom turns he drops it; it explodes in sharp-edged plastic fragments. Scully brings up her gun and fires, point-blank, at Langstrom's back. Two shots, clean and precise. Langstrom falls, one hand over his identical twin's back, as if sharing the fraternal embrace of death. Mulder slides down to a sitting position and watches the room go colorfully gray. Scully's face is framed by clouds and faded rainbows as she kneels next to him. Her mouth moves, saying his name. I'm dead, he thinks. It seems oddly unimportant. The room, and Scully, go away. The funeral is large and impressive. Mulder stands near the back of the crowd, sharing an umbrella with Scully as the gloomy March rain beats down. DBC Langstrom has merited a military ceremony -- folded flag, taps, a twenty-one gun salute. The Bureau Chief has given a stirring speech about duty and honor and commitment, all fiction. Mulder wonders if he knows the truth. "I can't stand this," Scully says softly; her face is tense and nervous, her eyes haunted. "Mulder, I've got to go. Cover for me, will you?" "Sure," he says, and catches her elbow as she starts to duck out into the rain. "Thank you." She is uncomfortable with it, with him, with any reminder of it. She walks away into the gray drizzle and quickly disappears. Mulder detatches himself from the graveside throng and walks the opposite direction, to where an older man in a raincoat and hat stands alone next to a cracked centotaph. "Is she all right?" the man asks -- Mulder has never known his name, and does not ask. "Yes." "And you?" The man's eyes are dark and soft, deceptively gentle. "I'm fine. Two weeks of drug therapy does wonders," Mulder says; his voice is light and acidly dry, hiding a wealth of pain. "Is this your doing?" "The funeral? Yes, I thought it would be for the best. Killed in the line of duty, and all that. Somebody had to clean up the mess." "You never told me there were any Adams left alive. You said they'd all died." "No, I didn't, I just allowed you to think so. I knew there was at least one Adam, probably highly placed, but I didn't have any way to get to him. You did that for me, Mulder. Thank you." It sounds cold, and it probably is. Mulder smiles humorlessly. "So what's the official story? That Langstrom died saving Scully's life in a shootout?" "That's it." "What about the bullets?" "I understand," the man says, "that the bullets were too damaged to make a match. Accidents happen." Mulder walks with him, listening to the tap of rain on the umbrella. "That's it, then. No more Adams. No more Eves." He doesn't get an answer. The man sighs deeply and keeps walking. "Are there more?" Mulder presses. He finally stops at the edge of the cemetery, and the man continues to walk to a black sedan. Mulder watches until the car is out of sight before he returns to the grave. Locks rattle, and Scully waits patiently until the last one clicks back and the door edges its cautious inch open. She meets Jesse Vasquez's eyes and after a second he waves her inside. He shuts the door; locks click back on with practiced speed, giving her time to shut some of the pain out of her face before he looks at her again. "Want a beer?" he asks, and she nods. "Sit down." His wheelchair makes whispering squeaks in the kitchen as she waits on the couch. He comes back with two full glasses of cold beer; she takes the one he offers and drinks a thick gulp. Two. Three. Jesse stops to stare in astonishment. "Whoa, lady, slow down. I ain't got too much beer in the house, you know?" His smile is real but uncertain. "So what's up? You find your friend?" "Yes," she says, and takes a piece of paper out of her pocket. She traces the folded edges with a fingertip. "Jesse, I wanted to thank you for your help. He would have died if you hadn't told me what you remembered." Jesse nods, uncomfortable but unable to look away from her face. She meets his eyes. "Richard Kelly is scheduled to be released from Attica next month. I thought you ought to know that." She holds the paper out to him; he unfolds it and finds his drawing of Langstrom and Fox Mulder. "And I thought you should have that back, too." Jesse holds it out to her in return. "You can keep it if you want," he offers. "I gotta lot of nightmares." She stares at the picture, the face, and her arm aches at the memory of the recoil of two shots, fired in Langstrom's back. "So do I," she says. For a second the pain blinds her, and then she feels Jesse's hand on her shoulder, steadying her. The coolness of tears on her face startles her, and she wipes her cheeks with shaking fingers. "Oh, God, I'm sorry. I didn't mean -- " "It's okay," Jesse says, and offers her a tissue from a box next to the couch. "So, you -- you -- " They stare at each other for a few wordless seconds. Jesse swallows. "You want another beer?" Scully, much to her surprise, discovers that she might at that. ### end ### Email: juliefortune@attbi.com