|
|
10 X 1: RESURRECTION Gibson Praise has vanished, Reyes and Skinner are left for dead, Mulder and Scully begin a journey in search of the truth, and Doggett is set on the trail of a shadowy new enemy devoted to "saving" mankind and a possible threat to humanity. |
I’ve come
to realize that there many more things in this world than I care to know.
But I also realize that, now, I have to care.
John Doggett
"Wake up."
The voice was quiet but insistent in the breaking light of dawn.
Mulder struggled against the comfort
of sleep to open his eyelids at the sound.
There was a pleasant weight resting against his back, an arm
curled around his waist. He could
feel her even breathing against his neck, and heard an occasional soft snore
from behind him. The voice had not
come from Scully.
"Mulder, you have to get up."
The voice was more persistent now, almost pleading, but
Mulder could not fathom where it was coming from.
"They're going to kill him."
At those words, Mulder forced his eyes open
all the way, to glance around at what surroundings
he could see without dislodging himself from Scully.
There was no sign of the man who had spoken the words.
He was still in the same dingy motel room in
Mulder turned, careful
not to wake the still-sleeping Scully, and regarded the other half of the
room. He saw nothing at first
until a slight motion near the door caught his eye.
In the corner, hidden in the shadows of the retreating night,
stood Alex Krycek , ominous yet strangely
reassuring. He took a step forward
and the faint light from the window illuminated one half of his body.
"Who's going to be killed?"
Mulder whispered.
"You need to get to him."
Krycek glanced at the window, then back at
Mulder .
"Who?!"
His voice was more demanding, but he kept the volume low.
Scully nuzzled against his shoulder, and
Mulder hoped she wouldn't wake to see him speaking to ghosts.
"Your son, Mulder.
You have to save him."
Mulder felt his heart jump
into his throat.
William…no. Just then,
Scully stirred against him, and Mulder glanced
down to see if she was awake. She blinked
her eyes open at him, smiled, then closed them
again, burrowing further into the covers.
When Mulder looked up again,
Krycek was gone.
Mulder was angry that the
apparition had disappeared so quickly: There were questions that needed to
be answered now, obstacles he had no idea how to bypass.
How could he save his son?
They had lost everything -- all their contacts, all their credibility.
They were being hunted by God knows how many mystery men:
Shadow government agents, alien supersoldiers
, shape-shifting bounty hunters... the list went on and on.
"Mmm... were you talking,
Mulder?" Scully's voice
was still saturated with sleep; it was early, before six.
Mulder ran a hand over
her hair. "No," he whispered.
"Go back to sleep."
He needed time to think as she slept, to figure out how they were going
to begin to solve this problem, not to mention how on earth he was going
to explain all this to Scully, how he would tell her where his tip had come
from.
**
"I understand, Mulder.
I'm hurrying." Scully
sighed as she pulled her shirt closed and began buttoning.
"I just don’t understand why, all of a sudden, we need to tear
out of here so fast."
They had to.
Gibson Praise
had been silent for nearly 400 miles, content merely to view the transition
from East to
Gibson Praise’s
brain generated a lifetime of sensory output in a minute’s span, using neurons
most of the rest of the human species had long ago retired from genetic
expression. The scientific community called it “junk DNA,” a misnomer Praise
found abstractly amusing: Men had schemed and many had died to collect the
“junk” in his skull. According to Fox Mulder
, one of his few friends outside the tribe and a close colleague over the
past several months, Praise’s gift, Praise’s curse (truth be told, Praise
thought of his glorious junk in neither context) held the clues to an invisible
universe beyond Man’s puny yardsticks and scales, and indeed the key to Man’s
ultimate salvation.
|
For details on ESP, psi waves, and other
psychic theories, visit: |
He thought now of Mulder, who had been able
to comprehend Praise’s feeling of detachment from the rest of humanity, and
his friend Scully, who if failing to totally understand Praise, was willing
to offer up her life in his defense. The man and the woman in the front
seat held a similar commitment, Skinner out of duty and loyalty to the now-departed
Mulder and Scully, Reyes out of a more maternal
impulse. Praise was beholden to
both agents, but chose to trust more in Skinner’s stable sensibilities than
Reyes’ potentially risky emotions.
Skinner was deeply
concerned about his friends and former underlings, who’d been forced into
exile by government and alien forces. He knew Mulder
had concealed a monumental, even apocalyptic revelation from himself
and everyone else he trusted. He knew Mulder
and Scully would be erased from existence should the shadow conspiracy
find them. What Skinner did not know was what awaited him upon his return
to Washington and the FBI. It was a large part of the reason why, when Praise
asked to return to his “home” in the desert, the assistant director had readily
agreed to personally shepherd him to his doorstep rather than risking air
or bus travel.
Praise once had
felt it wrong to invade the thoughts of others, but the atrocities inflicted
upon him in the name of science and, often, under the guise of friendship,
had convinced him that psychic investigation was essential to sorting allies
from enemies and assessing risk. Later, as he learned to trust
Mulder and Scully, he learned his telepathic skills were as essential
to protecting others as they were to safeguarding himself. He had demonstrated
this at Mulder’s military tribunal, exposing
the extraterrestrial presence in the FBI.
Reyes, in the
seat next to Skinner, was glancing at a book on Native American animism,
but her mind was focused instead on the uncertain future. She worried about
the missing Mulder and Scully, of course, but
she was even more preoccupied with the fate of the X-Files, which she felt
was somehow crucial to mankind’s survival, and with her partner, Doggett,
whom she loved more deeply than her conscious mind would allow. While she
respected Doggett’s professional savvy and abilities, Reyes now wondered
if they had made the right decision, assigning herself as shotgun to Skinner
and Doggett as the X-Files’ eyes and ears back in Washington. Neither the
agents nor Skinner had yet received any word on whether the government-ravaged
files would be restored, though Doggett had told Reyes the evening before
that he had been summoned to a lunch meeting by some highly-placed but
unidentified federal official.
Gibson Praise
returned his gaze to the road, or rather his thoughts. They now were crossing
the desert, and Praise was vaguely calmed by the arid, spare environment that
so aptly reflected his own life, free of extraneous feelings and attachments.
Gene Arnsen’s expertise in psychology
was accredited by no major university or agency. It had evolved in the
arid vacuum of the desert, amid shelves of beans and dried beef and racks
of now-faded caps and T-shirts and battered coolers of soda and water (the
pop distributors were Gene’s single regular conduit to the outside world
and, beyond the Direct Satellite dish nailed to the roof of his general
store/diner/home, his major source of world news).
And when you had occupied most of your adult life baking in the sun,
waiting in silence to service the next minivan,
Jeep, or SUV or feed or supply the next carload of Yuppies and Yup-Pups
or bus full of seniors, you had to grab off all the human insight you could
until the next contact.
Gene pretended
to peruse the
The “mother,” a pretty young gal, was conversational, warm, polite when
served; the “father,” a towering guy – ex-Marine, probably -- with a
cueball skull, silent and coolly responsive. Not unusual – take
Archie and Edith on Nick at Night, or Raymond and Debra on Monday nights.
But no physical spark passed between the two – no pecks on the cheek, no
playful swats to the ass, not even any of the sharp words or looks that
connected most couples. They definitely had some sort of relationship, but
not personal: Their conversations, low and serious, abruptly halted when
Gene approached with the burgers and ketchup.
And there was the boy. He gave Gene the royal blue-blooded creeps: He
went straight to the table when his “mom” and “dad” entered the store, and
he didn’t look up when Gene took their orders and brought the food. Except
for the once: Gene had been thinking what an odd duck the kid was (didn’t
look anything like the Earth Mother or the Marine), when the boy glanced up
sharply and then returned hastily to his sandwich. Like some kid
outta Stephen King (the miniseries, not the books – Gene didn’t
take to reading).
Family, my ass, Gene thought, climbing the stairs to the stockroom for
a new carton of bottled water (he still nearly shit his pants laughing
thinking about the price folks paid today for good old H-two-oh). Can’t
put one over on Gene Arnsen, he thought – I
oughtta be one of those FBI profiler guys
like on TV.
The shots rang out while he was wrestling the yuppie water toward the
stairs. Gene’s heart jumped, but he instinctively knew not to yell out or
drop his load, or whoever was shooting up the main salon would be up here
in a beat. Two shots, he noted, not three. Hoped it wasn’t the Angels, popping
the dad and kid and taking the mom for a ride to nowhere.
The storeroom was windowless, but a few moments later, he heard at least
three sets of tires tearing at the gravel out front. He nonetheless waited
in the dark loft, hands ludicrously full of spring water, until he could
ascertain the shooters were gone and he could hustle down to help whoever
might still be helpable.
They were on the dusty wood floor, halfway between the booth and the
cash register, blood seeping from the Marine’s gut and the upper left quadrant
of the woman’s chest.
“Jesus fucking mother of shit,” Gene breathed, dropping to a creaking
knee to check their signs. The man was out of it, but he still had a pulse.
The woman’s eyes were filled with agony, and blood seeped from the corner
of her mouth as she tried to speak.
“Praise,” she whispered hoarsely, wincing from the effort.
“Yes, ma’am, I sure will,” Gene promised, trying to get up for the phone.
She grabbed his sleeve and croaked something else that sounded like “Give
some praise.”
“I will, honey,” he said, patting her arm and pulling her fingers from
him. The kid was nowhere in sight. “I’ll pray to the Lord for all of you
after I get the state cops movin’.”
Three minutes later, Gene cradled the ancient rotary phone. There hadn’t
been a lot of explaining necessary: His store wasn’t exactly hard to locate
amid the sand and saguaros. But he knew how long it might take for the
state boys to get there, and he didn’t want to give odds on the couple
sticking it out that long.
He was trying to work out just how to stop the man’s gut from bleeding
when the bell above the door jingled. Gene stumbled to a sitting position,
waiting for the silhouetted man in his door to blow him to hell. Instead,
the man, older, with a haggard face and kind eyes (an odd thought for Gene,
who’d never really thought of eyes possessing such qualities), stood over
the trio.
“Please move away,” the man requested, as if ordering a cheeseburger.
Ramon Yoruba
recommended the coq au vin with the vichyssoise,
and John Doggett dutifully ordered it. Yoruba, a blocky but handball-tightened
executive of a man, was a man of quietly powerful bearing, and Doggett
already was somewhat intimidated by the cut of his suit and the expense
of the limo that had delivered the
Yoruba ordered
a white wine pronounced excellent by their waiter. Doggett knew better,
and requested coffee, black.
“Did my office
give you any indication of why I asked you to lunch, Agent Doggett?” Yoruba
asked, mocha eyes intent behind two crisply clear lenses.
“Uh, no, sir,”
Doggett murmured.
“Good. This needs
to stay just between us, Agent – mano a
mano, as my people would say.”
“I
gotta...I have to admit I’m a little at a loss, Mr. Secretary,”
Doggett confessed. “You could have an assistant director, probably the
director himself, here without the cost of a pricey meal.”
Yoruba smiled,
gently twirling his wine. “Good. Direct is what I want. And call me Ramon...John?
Not being falsely democratic, John – just establishing that what I’m going
to ask of you is out of the line of conventional duty.”
Doggett’s gut
tightened. Yoruba wanted his own private cop for something. Many agents would’ve
welcomed the opportunity for such a weighty deposit in the career favor
bank; Doggett wasn’t one.
“And what would
that be?” the agent asked.
Yoruba held up
a hand, as if to ward off Doggett’s anxiety. “You were recommended to me
as a man of integrity, of persistence, who cares deeply about children.”
There was an
unspoken “and” hanging at the end of the sentence. “And,” Doggett provided.
“I guess there’s
no use trying to play footsy here,” the transportation secretary sighed.
“I was told you were a man who wasn’t out to make a name or take over the
Bureau someday. In short, that you were willing to piss on your career if
it meant doing what was right or necessary.”
It was such a
blunt, unflattering appraisal that Doggett laughed. “Jesus, you put it that
way, it’s kind of a downer.”
Yoruba shrugged,
grinningly grateful the comment had been received in the spirit in which
it had been intended. The Cabinet official then grew sober. “I would like
to ask you to look, confidentially, of course, into a rather delicate and
urgent matter. It’s my niece, Melinda – she seemingly has disappeared.”
Doggett frowned
silently as the waiter placed his coffee before him. “I don’t get it,” the
agent said. “We got a Bureau full of guys who specialize in missing persons,
not to mention the D.C. cops. There something hinky
about this case you aren’t telling me?”
Yoruba breathed
deeply. “My brother’s daughter has never been a happy child. She’s brilliant
– Melinda excels in her studies – but she was never quite...in synch, I guess.
What I say here doesn’t leave the room, right? Well, Melinda had a shot
at Harvard, full ride, but she decided she wanted to ‘hang out’ for while.
She went goth, body piercings
, death poetry, the whole nine yards. Then she got into raves, and she
wound up with a couple of DUIs . It didn’t stick
to my nomination – nowadays, everybody’s got a Billy Carter or a Roger Clinton
in the woodpile – but Rick was concerned, and he got her into therapy.”
Yoruba’s brother,
Enrique, also was CEO of a high-profile energy corporation, and he felt
any repercussions of family indiscretions all the way up his Dow Jones,
Doggett mused. He smiled encouragingly.
“We thought she
was doing pretty well. Given her erratic behavior, Harvard had politely suggested
a university environment closer to home and ‘exerting less stress on Melinda’
might be of benefit to Rick, and she’d transferred to the
“You call DCPD
Missing Persons?”
Yoruba was silent.
“Why don’t you
just tell me why, with all the resources you gotta
have at your disposal, you’re buying me a fancy lunch and airing your
family’s laundry?” Doggett prodded gently.
“It’s the X-Files,”
Yoruba exhaled. “There are some unusual dimensions to this case, and I
fear – I mean feel – that we need someone of your expertise.”
Doggett nodded.
He should’ve figured this out: Whenever the freak show came to town, he and
Monica the head barkers. He’d come to this juncture by accident, attached
to the X-Files primarily only to locate – and, as it turned out, get something
on -- the missing Fox Mulder. Soon, he’d wound
up tagging along with the wary and reticent Agent Scully on bizarre cases
that ended as much in mystery and frustration as in any resolution he could
feel comfortable in committing to a report. When they finally located
Mulder, Doggett thought he finally could return to the world of
the sane, but then, with a handshake, Mulder
had sealed his fate and promptly fell back into the black hole.
Monica had joined
this confederacy of madness by then, drawn by her thirst for the unknown
and, Doggett knew, her need to help provide him with closure in the case
of his son’s murder. Doggett had become infected by the low-grade madness
that surrounded him, only to discover through Mulder’s
arrest and kangaroo trial that this was a terminal madness that could
end only in futility. Mulder and Scully were gone
with whatever monumental secret Mulder claimed
to harbor, leaving Doggett and Reyes and, indeed, the X-Files, to an uncertain
fate.
Even if somehow
the FBI’s most unwanted – a class to which A.D. Skinner, too, had resigned
himself – managed to survive, Doggett couldn’t imagine how he and Monica
could continue to feel about in the darkness without Dana Scully’s hybrid
scientific rationality-paranormal intuition to steer them. Doggett despaired
of continuing period without Monica, but a part of him concealed the hope
that the ax would fall and he’d be transferred back to investigating terrorist
threats or tracking drug movements or busting bank robbers.
This was it,
Doggett thought: Time to let the freak show leave town without him. Thank
Yoruba for the fine chicken, wish him well, and find the exit.
“Why?” Doggett
heard himself ask, a hollow sound of doors closing.
**
“Melinda was only about seven when it happened for the first time,” Yoruba
began. “She’d gone away to a summer camp in Virginia, mostly kids of CEOs
and undersecretaries, and one day, Anita had a horrible dream. Daydream,
I should say, because she was wide awake in the middle of the day. Or maybe
a vision, I don’t know any more. They only told me about this, and everything
else, after Rick sent her for therapy.
“Anita dreamed or saw a huge white horse, a winged horse, like the movie
studio logo or that old Greek creature, you know, a
pegasus. But there was something evil, something wrong
with the animal. It’s eyes were red, and it had claws where hooves should
be. And somehow, Anita knew she had to call the camp, that Melinda was in
danger. So she called, and they put Melinda on the phone, and she said,
no, everything’s fine and I’m loving it here, and Anita laughed it off
as some kind of early menopausal quirk.
“Rick got the call the next day at work. Melinda and a couple of the
other campers had been riding, when her horse starting acting snappish
and bucking. It threw Melissa and stepped on her arm before a counselor
could get control of it. No lasting damage, thank God. It turned out the
horse had contracted some disease, some kind of equine encephalitis, I
think it was, and they had to put it down. But Anita couldn’t shake the
feeling that Melinda had sent her a message. With her mind.”
“There are cases, or at least stories, about mothers sensing when their
kids are in danger,” Doggett suggested. “Maybe some
kinda maternal bond, like that psychic connection twins are supposed
to have.”
Yoruba shook his head assertively. “Don’t you see? Melinda wasn’t in
danger when Anita had that vision. I know it sounds insane, but it’s as
if it was some kind of involuntary thing – like Melinda’s subconscious
sent Anita a message of impending danger. But how would she have known that
horse was ill, was dangerous? Wait, John; I’m far from finished.
“When Melinda was 13, her school had a spring dance. She was in charge
of decorations – this is relevant – and she spent several days in the rafters
of the gym, hanging banners and streamers. Anyway, at dinner a couple of
nights before the dance, Anita has another one of these dream/visions, this
time about ghosts – a gymful of dead kids, dancing
with each other to some song she’d never heard before. Again, she had this
irrational feeling that Melissa was in danger, and she refused to let her
attend the dance.”
Doggett felt his chest contract. “Don’t tell me...”
Yoruba held up a hand. “The gym roof collapsed hours before the dance,
after school let out. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but Anita was convinced
Melinda ‘felt’ something up there in the rafters – something she subconsciously
communicated to her mother.”
“Coulda just been a—”
“Coincidence? I think Anita would’ve been happy to believe that, except
about a week after the gym collapse she heard the song. The one the dead
teenagers were dancing to. It was coming from Melinda’s room, a CD. Melinda
had just gotten a dubbed copy from a friend at the school, who’d been mailed
the original by a cousin in Oregon. It was some studio group from Portland,
a homemade album. No chance Anita had heard it booming out of somebody’s car
or flipping past MTV.”
Doggett wished fervently he’d gone to Mickey D’s today.
“When Melinda was a senior, her mother had a horrible dream about a boy
from Melinda’s school, basketball player. He was some kind of werewolf, ripping
women apart and eating their flesh. Two weeks later, they arrest this kid
for a couple of rapes. One of the victims was a friend of Melinda’s.”
Tell him to call the D.C. cops and walk away, Doggett told himself.
“...and a couple of days before Melinda’s second DUI – her last one --
Anita nearly cracked up on the freeway when she had this sudden vision
of living trees, trees attacking her, snapping at her. That last
DUI’s of Melinda’s, she drove into a grove of trees off some country
road, very likely would’ve killed herself, but luckily she hit a couple
of utility barriers before she reached the trees.”
“What are you saying?” Doggett asked. “That somehow, this ESP, this whatever
it is, is connected with your niece disappearing?”
Yoruba rubbed his face with a well-manicured
hand. “Anita had another dream. The night before anyone last heard from
Melinda.”
10:
They had actually driven over a tumbleweed
not too long ago as they accelerated through a field filled with cacti
and desert shrubs. The SUV had crushed
its brittle gray thistles beneath its left front tire and sped unstintingly
down the deserted road.
Even at rush hour, only two or three other cars had crossed their long
straight path. Scully wished she
could say she was surprised, but after nearly two months of similar towns
and roads and tumbleweeds, she didn't think much of it.
She sat in the passenger seat now, folding and unfolding the map nervously
as Mulder took them further south.
Mulder nodded, listening
to the near-constant crinkling sound of the paper as Scully checked over
and over again how far they needed to go.
He knew she didn't like this little jaunt out of their way,
but they needed to be rid of this SUV, and quickly.
They'd moved south from Brady to the border, hoping to throw
off anyone who was looking by making them believe they had headed into
A man at a local diner just outside the last town had informed them of
a “dealership” in
It was still early yet, and with any luck, they would be done with the
trade and back on the road by lunch time, assuming everything went well.
It should, Mulder thought.
Their SUV was new and in great shape.
A reliable replacement should be quick and easy to find.
"We'll be there soon, Scully," he assured her.
After their stop, they would take their new car back on the
road to
5:21 p.m.
“There were flowers
everywhere – big yellow flowers, miles of them as far as the eye could
see,” Anita Yoruba said, eyes wide as she examined Doggett’s face for any
sign of ridicule or wariness. He sat on the edge of Mrs. Yoruba’s very expensive
couch, across from the transportation secretary, willing his features into
neutrality. “There were hands...coming out of the earth, from under the
flowers. They were scratching, clawing. A few of the, um, buried people
had their heads above the flowers. No faces, just the tops of their heads.”
Doggett looked
to Yoruba, who was nodding encouragingly to his sister-in-law. “But you’re
daughter wasn’t anywhere in this...dream?”
Anita’s jaw tightened.
“I recognize how absurd this sounds to you, Agent Doggett. But after nearly
eight years of these messages, I no longer question them. I felt the same
sense of anxiety, of dread, as the other times. My daughter’s in danger,
and we’re asking you to help us.”
“I told your brother-in-law I wasn’t sure what I could do,” Doggett said.
“I’d really recommend you take this to the police.”
“They won’t listen,” Anita hissed, nearly frantic. “If I told them the
basis for my suspicions, they’d have us all committed. And with Melinda’s
history...Ray?”
“John, please,” Yoruba entreated. With his position, he likely could
pull a few strings, but his eyes were sincere, his voice low.
“I don’t even know where to start,” Doggett finally sighed. The
Yorubas relaxed with relief. “I’ll need the boyfriend’s name,
any professors or friends she might’ve shared things with. Oh, and—”
His cell phone trilled, and the agent held up a delaying finger as he
barked, “Doggett.”
“John, this is Deputy Director Kersh.” The
director’s voice rumbled with his usual official aplomb, tinged this time
with a strangely solicitous note. “I just received a call from the Arizona
State Police. Agent Reyes and Assistant Director Skinner apparently have
been attacked, shot.”
Doggett’s right hand fumbled for the arm of the couch. “John?” Yoruba
inquired, concerned by the agent’s white face.
“How did...? Are they, are they...?”
“They’re alive, John, but I don’t know too terribly much more at this
time,” Kersh said. “I want you to get out there
and find out what’s going on.”
“Yeah. Sure.” Doggett’s mind could barely process what his superior was
saying.
“And, John,” Kersh added gravely. “This isn’t
the time right now, but once we know their condition, I am going to want
to know what your partner and Skinner were doing out there. You’d better
get moving, Agent.”
“Yes, sir,” Doggett responded numbly, but Kersh
already had ended the call.
Phoenix
9:37 p.m.
Monica and Skinner
had stabilized, if that could be considered the correct term.
“It’s nothing short of astonishing – that’s all I can say,” Dr. Paul
Morales told Doggett as they stood in the ICU corridor. “The wounds your
colleagues sustained were potentially fatal, in the case of Mr. Skinner’s,
almost inevitably fatal. But somehow, while there’s no question these were
fresh gunshot wounds, the usually entry damage is inexplicably minor, and
the healing process appears to be well underway. Your friends certainly
are not yet ambulatory, but they’re in far better shape than we would have
had any reason to expect.”
Doggett frowned, relieved, of course, but confounded. “Can I see them?”
“Of course, but not for long,” the physician cautioned. “C’mon.”
Monica smiled weakly as her partner pushed past the curtain. She was
drawn and bone-white in the overhead fluorescents, an IV plugged into her
arm, but Doggett agreed she looked far better than he would’ve anticipated,
given the report he’d received from the state police commander who’d met
him at the airport.
“You got any Maalox on you?” she asked, squeezing back as he grasped
her hand. “I think the cheeseburger I had for lunch is bothering me more
than my wound.”
“So I noticed,” Doggett murmured, mystified. “I was told you two were
shot point-blank. But you look like maybe you had your tonsils out. You got
any explanation for this miraculous recovery?”
Monica looked up. “I have a thought. The doctor told me a man came into
the general store after we were shot and, according to the store owner, checked
us over. Then he left before the EMTs could
get there.”
“What are you saying?”
Doggett’s partner paused. “Do you remember when we found
Mulder? That man who’d healed all those UFO abductees? The man
Dana thought could save Mulder? Jeremiah?”
Doggett released her hand abruptly. “Whoa, Monica. The guy Scully said
was an alien or something? Look, even if this Jeremiah was some
sorta extraterrestrial George Clooney, I thought they took him
away. The, ah, aliens.”
“I don’t know, John,” Monica sighed. “I’m just trying to put this altogether.
By all rights, Skinner and I should’ve been dead. Jeremiah seemed to be
working with some kind of alien resistance. Who would have grabbed Gibson?
What if somehow the aliens were shadowing us, and Jeremiah Smith was trailing
them, maybe trying to protect him.”
Doggett dragged a chair over to the bedrail and slumped into it. “Listen
to what we’re saying with a straight face, Monica. Mind-reading kids, aliens,
miracle healers... This is what you two almost got killed for, what we’ve
chasing around in the dark for.”
“John,” Monica said intensely, her eyes sharp. “You’ve seen it firsthand.
You know these things are true.”
“What if they are?” he murmured. “What if they are, Monica? Where does
that take us? Mulder took the roadmap with
him. Why? ‘Cause he knew that whatever it is that’s going on, we’re not
the team to stop it. We’re out of our depth, and I’m beginning to think
that the sooner we see that, the sooner we can get back to our lives. Get
our lives back.”
Monica’s eyes were shining. “We can’t walk away, John. We’ve come too
far, we know too much. There are things to do.”
“We’re not the people who can do it, Monica,” Doggett said with finality.
“Not me, at least. Look, I’m going to look in on Skinner. Think about it,
Monica – is this worth everything we’ll probably never know?”
He left the room before she could answer.
**
“This is really
what you want, John?” Skinner answered, adjusting slightly in physical discomfort.
“Yeah,” Doggett
sighed. “I feel like I’m running in circles, and somebody else is turning
the hamster wheel. I gave it the old college try, but it’s time for a change.
The X-Files is dead – even if we knew what the next step was, they’re going
to close us down.”
“Look. John,
think it over,” the assistant director urged. “It’s going to be
a fw days before I can get out of
here, and a few more before I’m back in D.C. You working
anything?”
“Yeah,” Doggett said grimly. “An X-File.” He described
the particulars, including the muscle behind the case.
“You go back
home, get on it,” Skinner said. “We’ll talk transfer when I get back. I’d
just ask you to think about one thing, John. Mulder
sacrificed everything for the X-Files: Career, friends, security, family,
maybe even a piece of his sanity. For nearly a decade, it was his life.
But when the time came, even though his work was far from done,
Mulder walked away. He put his life’s work in your hands.”
Doggett smiled
grimly. “You’re calling me a quitter? Fine.” He began to turn away, and
muscular fingers seized his forearm
“You’re not listening
to me, Agent,” Skinner said, low and stern. “Mulder
put his life’s work in your hands. That was a supreme act of faith.
He saw something in you that I don’t believe you see in yourself. Look good
and hard at yourself before you just toss it all in.”
“You’d better
save your energy,” Doggett advised, gently. Skinner released his arm, and
the agent disappeared into the corridor.
12:34 p.m.
Mulder suspected it was
more than fertilizer that the man shipped in and out, but made no comment
as he shook hands with the small, smiling entrepreneur.
Who was he to judge a man who had the patience and the stomach
to bury illegal substances in wads of animal dung?
Scully also shook the man's hand and smiled politely as he commented
on her “lovely eyes.” He eyed their
Ford SUV excitedly as they introduced themselves and explained what they
needed before ushering them inside the enormous warehouse type building.
José led
them through isles of stacked fertilizer bags that reeked despite being sealed,
all the way back to his office where it was quiet, comfortably cool, and
thankfully scent-free. There was
a window air conditioner groaning and clicking away just to the left of his
desk, spewing cool air and dripping fat cold drops into a bucket that stood
below it. When he indicated to the
pair that they should sit in the two stuffed chairs facing his desk, they
complied promptly.
Mulder and Scully wanted to make this fast and painless.
"You drive a very nice car.
New." He smiled toothily as he
spoke, revealing two gold incisors.
"I am assuming it runs well..."
He sat back in his chair, folding his hands out in front of him.
“Yes," Mulder said.
“It's a very smooth ride.
Only about nine-thousand miles on the odometer."
“Ah." José grinned. "Good."
The dark-haired man reached into his desk and pulled out a stack of papers.
He leafed through them briefly, licking his thumbs to get a
grip on the paper, before pulling out the sheet he was looking for.
“Here," he
said, turning the paper around to face them, “are the cars in your trade-in
price range." As
Mulder and Scully looked down the list of relatively new and nice
cars, José pulled out another paper and began filling in blanks with a
blue ballpoint pen. From the window,
the air conditioning made a sputtering sound and nearly quit running before
the choked noises stopped and it continued to drip and grumble.
José looked
back at the air conditioner, then smiled at
the couple holding the list. “She's
a bitch some times, but she always comes around."
Mulder smiled at him.
"Sir, I think one of these Outbacks
would be best for us." Scully had
nodded in silent agreement when Mulder had tapped
on the name. They didn't want another
SUV that would eat up gas, and a smaller car would look too much like a
fleet sedan, an obvious choice for two former FBI agents.
But a station wagon would be wonderfully inconspicuous, perfectly...suburban.
The best disguise this odd-ball couple could possibly conceive
of.
“Would you like the maroon or the black?"
The dealer began filling in the make and model on the second
piece of paper he had pulled from his desk.
Mulder and Scully looked at each
other, then back at the short man. “The maroon
one has a CD player," he added with a smile.
Mulder's lip quirked up at the thought
of picking up a few CDs on the way down the road.
“We'll take it," he said, without a second glance to the woman
beside him. Scully looked at him
with an amused expression on her face, not having spoken a word since she
had stepped out of the car.
"I'm assuming
it runs well...," Mulder repeated the words
the other man had so recently spoken.
The smile on José's face grew even broader.
“Of course," he said. "Only twenty-three-thousand
miles on the odometer. It
has had a recent tune-up, and also a recent oil change.
It will give you no problems."
The salesman handed Mulder the blue
ballpoint and turned the second paper to face him.
"Good," Mulder said, accepting the pen.
"I will just need your name and information here, please, with a
signature at the bottom." José tapped
the line he referred to then sat back again in his chair.
The sound
of the ancient AC was the only noise in the room as
Mulder and Scully made silent eye contact over the paper between
them on the desk. Scully's look was
cautionary; Mulder nodded and switched the pen
into his left hand, carefully and slowly writing out a false name and false
information. Scully sighed deeply,
and whether it was from nervousness or relief, even she didn't know.
When he was
done, José smiled even more brightly and led the two over to a locked cabinet
which, when he opened the small padlock holding it together, revealed hundreds
of tiny hooks filled with keys.
He pulled off a pair with the number 37 taped above it and turned, dangling
the small metal objects in front of the two well-dressed people.
Mulder reached up and took them,
offering the keys to the SUV in return.
All three of them headed out to move Mulder
and Scully's belongings from one car to the other.
When they were done, the couple shook José's hand once again
and said their goodbyes.
Before they
left, however, Mulder added one last thing.
"If anyone asks..." He
looked at Scully in the passenger's side of the Outback, then back at Mr.
Consuelinas.
He left the words hanging, but other man nodded, as if the unspoken
request was something he heard every day, which Mulder
supposed it was.
"You, Mr.
Carlson, are a delightful balding Italian man, and your wife...
" he looked in on Scully,
"…is a gorgeous blonde who is nearly taller than you."
Mulder grinned and shook
the man's hand again. "Thank you."
"Any time,"
José said, then watched as the station wagon
drove off, headed east.
9:55 a.m.
“I guess this
looks kinda insensitive, me meeting you in the
Grill between classes like this,” Steve Griggs inquired as he played with
the straw in his Coke. Doggett was aware of the looks he was getting from
the passing throngs – the kids knew a narc when
they saw one. “Guess you major in psych, you realize there’s no use making
hollow gestures, stopping your life in midstream just because something
traumatic happens.”
“Makes sense,”
Doggett agreed. “Mr. Griggs, can I ask how close you were, you are, with
Melinda Yoruba?”
“Steve, man.
Isn’t that kinda personal? Not that I care,
I guess.”
“Steve, I just
want to get a line on how frequently you two communicate, if she confides
in you, that sort of thing.”
“Mm.” More twiddling
with the straw. The psych major finally noticed it, and stopped with a
self-conscious grin. “We were kind of between the slept together and commitment
stages, I guess. We did a lot of stuff together, so on a physical level,
we were pretty connected. On any deeper level, she was like in California.
Very detached, very moody sometimes. Every once in awhile, she’d just leave.
Mentally, know what I mean?”
Doggett nodded
and sipped his coffee.
“Probably the
psychic shit,” Steve concluded, bringing Doggett’s head up with a snap. His
grin grew. “Melinda was a true believer. Told me these spooky-shit stories
about some kind of subconscious early warning system she had in her head.
Said she wanted to learn how to ‘harness it,’ send direct messages instead
of this psychic garble she said she transmits.”
“What do you
make of that? Doggett asked after a group of giggling sorority types trampled
past.
Steve looked
incredulously at the FBI agent. “I make that Melinda’s folks never gave
a shit about anything she did growing up, so she comes up with this crap
about special powers. I mean, she believes it – makes her feel exceptional,
connected with something bigger.”
“Your major’s
showing,” Doggett smiled.
Steve rolled
his eyes with a laugh. “Yeah, after a while, we all start
psychobabbling like this. Anyway, I told her she
oughtta see a counselor, but she just shook her head like I didn’t
get it. Instead, she signed up for some research project with Gale Lower.
He’s in social anthropology, but the last few years, he’s been into supernatural
shit.”
“So you don’t
think such things exist, huh?”
The boy shrugged.
“What do you
think happened to Melinda?”
“She’ll probably
pop up in a few days. She probably funked out,
took her Toyota, and drove up the coast.” Steve did his best to look blasé,
but after a second, he broke eye contact with Doggett. “I hope.”
**
“Agent Doggett!”
Doggett halted,
and a pair of grunged-out students nearly rear-ended
him. He glanced around the campus quad, and spotted a familiar face – bald,
spectacled, eyes spread too wide apart, pleasantly homely. The man strode
rapidly, seemingly ready to break into a jog but willing himself not to.
“Dr. Burks?”
Doggett ventured.
“You remember,”
Chuck Burks said, seemingly pleased.
“I don’t come
across shapeshifting Indian holy men who disappear
from locked interrogation rooms every day. Surprised you gave me the time
of day – I believe I was pretty rough on you at the time.”
Burks waved it
off. “Old news. Agent Scully was breaking you in at the time, and it all
must’ve seemed pretty weird. How is our Scully, anyway?”
“Ah, she left
the Bureau recently, her and Mulder,” Doggett
said simply.
“I’d heard
Mulder was alive again,” Burks said, as if
Mulder had returned to the neighborhood bar after a long absence.
“I hope everything’s all right with them. What about yourself, Agent? You
visiting the groves of academe on an X-File?”
“
Sorta.” Doggett paused. Why not?, he thought – as long as I’m
in Bizarro World. “Doc, what do you know about
telepathy, psychic powers, that kind of thing? I mean, I know you’re in, what,
digital imaging? Seeing stuff that isn’t there?”
“Close enough,”
Burks chuckled. “Actually, it might be right up my alley. You have a few
minutes?”
**
“There are at
least three major scientific theories that might validate the existence of
supernormal mental abilities,” the pudgy scientist began as Doggett gazed
around his cluttered lab. On a nearby monitor, multi-colored blossoms seemingly
exploded and faded as Doggett looked more intently at them. A pair of computers
“chained” together displayed the same image – Adolf
Hitler shouting and gesticulating to a crowd of loyal Germans. Except one
monitor showed scratchy digitized file footage, while another displayed an
odd aura floating about Der Fuhrer’s head. “Agent
Doggett?”
“Uh, yeah. Sorry.”
“Anyway,” Burks
continued, gesturing the agent to a deskless
oak desk chair, “you familiar with the four basic dimensions? The various
dimensions we see in space, and time. Well, one popular model postulates there
may be eleven or 26 or even an infinite number of dimensions, one of those
being human consciousness. What we view as psychic phenomena may actually
be just an invisible area of that fifth dimension of consciousness, or even
a separate dimension unto itself. Nobody’s been able to back that up with
any physical evidence, but it would make a neat episode of Next Generation.
“Then there’s
the quantum theory. Matter behaves differently than what we see at the subatomic
level – if it even exists as matter. Say an electron and its antimatter
analogue, a positron, collide. You know what those are?”
“Good Kirk and
Bad Kirk,” Doggett offered drily.
Burks blinked, then smiled broadly. “Good, Agent Doggett. Very good.
The electron and the positron collide, annihilating each other and sending
two photons off into space. Scientific evidence indicates that Photon A
would possess no physical qualities such as spin or speed until it’s observed
by an outside party. At the moment the observer notes the direction in which
Photon A is spinning, Photon B will acquire the opposite spin. In layman’s
language--”
“Please.”
“In layman’s language, Photon B could be said to ‘know’ what Photon B
is doing. We therefore could theorize that human consciousness may work the
same way, and that’s how a person with supposed psychic abilities could instantaneously
see a train wreck 500 miles away. The person and the event are connected
at a subatomic level. The physics of it appeal to me, and the spiritualist
would appreciate the idea that the universe is connected in some hidden way...”
“But?” Doggett’s temples were beginning to ache.
“But I tend to prescribe to a third theory. Maybe it’s because of my
own particular fascination with sound and light and everything beyond them.
You’ve heard of the electromagnetic spectrum? Well, we know that low-frequency
waves such as radio signals exist at the low end of that spectrum, x-rays
at the high end. Visible light and heat, which we can see, and ultraviolet
and infrared light, which we can’t, are located somewhere in between.
“What if there are ‘psi’ waves – invisible,
low frequency transmissions which can only be received by people with the
right tuning equipment, i.e., psychic abilities?”
The agent frowned. “But if any of those theories is true, you still haven’t
explained why only certain people are supposed to be able to read minds
or move stuff with their brains.”
“Why can dogs hear sounds beyond our human range of hearing?” Burks posed.
“In the words of Albert Einstein, it beats shit out of me.”
The man in the dark suit rode silently in the helicopter, listening
to the navigator bark orders into the radio, demanding current locations
and road names. The men inside the
helicopter, along with several other similar teams, were searching nearly
the entire southwestern United States for two people whose lives had become
more valuable, and more dangerous, than anyone had ever expected.
Their orders, once the missing persons were located, were simple,
and did not include bringing anyone in for questioning.
The Suited
Man reached into his pocket and drew out a silver dollar, which he flipped
into the air and caught. He did
it again and again, but never checked to see which side had landed face
up. The metallic 'ping' of the
flipping coin was lost in the sound of the helicopter's blades and engine,
and eventually the man grew bored and dropped it back into his jacket pocket.
He was older, perhaps in his early sixties and his face was marked
with lines that spoke of his age, but his eyes... they were a staggering
shade of blue that somehow made him look younger.
"We've found them, sir!"
the man behind the radio called out.
"Headed east into Duncan."
"Good," he said with a nod.
He wanted this mission over as soon as possible.
They had more important things to get back to.
**
The woman
in the passenger seat had fallen asleep hours ago, hadn't even stirred
since a few miles out of
This one
was more suited to them, they both agreed.
Her partner was driving now, tapping his fingers on the steering
wheel to the sounds of classic rock coming from the radio.
Suddenly,
a flash of light nearly blinded the man behind the wheel as a helicopter
dropped down abruptly in front of their car.
He slammed on his breaks.
"Shit!!" he
yelled. "Wake up!
They've found us!"
His partner
jerked awake, both at the man's yelling, and at the bright light that burst
through the windshield of the car.
"Oh, God!" she screamed as the car came to a stop and men in black uniforms
surrounded the car. Their doors were
pulled open and the two people dragged out to be brought before an older
man in a black suit. He had a coin
in his hand which he was flipping casually as he waited for them to be brought
closer. When they were finally within
his view, his eyes immediately narrowed.
He grabbed the woman's face, pulling it closer to him before shoving
it away.
"It's not
them," he said, anger apparent in his voice.
"But sir, the car!
It's the same car!"
One of the uniformed men, presumably the one who had spotted the couple
initially, protested eagerly.
The dark
suited man walked over to the car and peered into the back.
Stuffed under the seat he saw bags of what he assumed to be
cocaine, as well as a few stacks of bills.
He backed away from the SUV quickly and walked back to the
helicopter.
"What should
we do, sir?" one of the men asked.
"Take them
in and question them. Find out where
they got the car." As he was climbing
into the small seat behind the pilot, the man approached him again.
"What should
we do once we find out what we need to know?"
The young man held a large gun and wore a black helmet that
matched his uniform.
"Get rid
of them," the Suited Man said quietly as he slid back into the seat and locked
his seatbelt around his waist. This
had not gone well. His superiors
would not be happy when the found out Mulder
and Scully had successfully eluded them again.
It would set them back a few days, locating their new destination
and finding their new car. Still,
the suited man was sure it would only be a matter of time before they were
found...and killed.
Washington, D.C.
1:23 p.m.
Doggett tried
to clear his mind of its last germ of apprehension as he crossed the threshold
of Deputy Director Kersh’s office. “You wanted
to see me, sir?”
The director
continued to scan a report on the blotter before him. “Please come in,
John; have a seat.” Doggett took the chair to the left of
Kersh’s center as the older man closed the folder. “You’re well
aware of the Bureau’s reorganization in the wake of the whistleblower’s
allegations.”
After a female
agent came forward with charges indicating some sloppy Bureau handling
of what appeared to be some rather crucial pre-Sept. 11 terrorist intelligence,
the FBI brass had initiated a major facelift of the agency with an eye toward
a high domestic security profile.
“Yeah, sure...”
Kersh smiled tightly in his approximation of warmth. “Well, John,
you have an opportunity to come back out of the basement, maybe undo some
of the damage these last two years have done to your reputation with the
Bureau.”
“I wasn’t aware
my work had been criticized.”
Kersh’s smile frosted slightly. “Not your work, John – just your
focus. Now is the time to refocus. The Director is looking for someone to
head up a new task force on terrorist profiling, and I recommended you.”
Doggett studied
the man before him. A few months earlier, Kersh
had confounded his perception of the deputy director by aiding in
Mulder’s escape from a military facility, where the former head
of the X-Files had been awaiting execution. Then,
Mulder and Scully were ambushed by the military, or some shadow
branch of it, at an Anasazi Indian village in
the desert. They, Reyes, and Doggett had barely escaped following the bizarre
death of Knowle Rohrer, apparently some kind
of genetically engineered “ supersoldier.”
The X-Files had been ransacked in the quest for any information that might
lead to Mulder’s apprehension, and the parties
conducting the search had been none too gentle. Files were confiscated,
furnishings damaged, and even Mulder’s “I
Want to Believe” poster had been ripped in half and thrown crumpled into
a corner as a sign of the contempt.
And at the heart
of it all, Doggett wondered if Kersh’s role
in Mulder’s rescue had been some sort of ploy
designed to shadow Mulder to the source, to
whatever secret he and the government were holding.
“Well, John?”
Kersh said. “Ready to come back to the world,
quit chasing your tail, and do what you were trained to do? You were a top-notch
agent, John. You have the opportunity to be one again. It’s your move.”
“Let me think
about it,” Doggett murmured.
“I know where
to find you,” Kersh said, calmly.
26 hours later
Scully had driven most of the day while Mulder
napped, and now Mulder was behind the wheel.
He was exhausted. It
was after
Now they
needed sleep -- real sleep. They
were almost into West Virginia, and they'd be in D.C. by tomorrow.
Mulder spotted a sign for a Motel
6 and pulled in, yawning as he parked the car.
He leaned over to Scully, who was still sleeping beside him, and
ran the back of his finger over her cheek.
She stirred, but did not wake.
"Scully," he whispered before placing a kiss against her forehead.
Slowly, her eyes blinked open and she turned her head to see
him.
"Where are we?" she asked.
"Still in
She nodded and covered her mouth as she yawned.
"Sleep?" She raised
her eyebrows at him and Mulder smiled back.
"Come on," he said, "let's get some rest in a bed for a change."
He unlocked their doors and climbed out of the station wagon.
**
Scully dropped her bag onto the floor of the motel and headed for
the bathroom, toothbrush in hand.
On her way there, she was startled by her own reflection in the mirror,
and she paused to examine it further.
As she studied
herself, she noticed Mulder walk out of the
bathroom and spot her looking at herself.
He came up behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders and
squeezing gently. She watched his
own reflection, noting how different he looked as well.
"I'm still not used to it," she said.
Mulder leaned down and placed a kiss on the top of her head. "I like yours. I'm not so sure about mine, though." He ran a hand through his now-blonde hair and Scully smiled. She had dyed h