Bill Scully Residence Day 37 0725 hrs The sound of arguing woke her, but it was the smell of fresh brewed coffee that got her out of bed. Padding down the stairs she nearly tripped over half a truckload of gear spread across the living room floor. The front door was open and she could see Harris and Lewis off-loading more gear from Bill's minivan. She also could swear that she recognized the male voices coming from the kitchen. She paused in the doorway to absorb the bizarre scene before her. Tara was standing by the stove flipping pancakes onto a stack large enough to feed a fleet. Mulder's cellular was glued to his ear while he used his free hand to pour glasses of orange juice. By the stack of plates in the sink, the other five members of their little FBI army had already eaten. Bill, obviously co- opted by his wife, was mixing a large bowl of pancake batter while staring suspiciously at Langly as the Lone Gunman alternated between forking in a mouthful of pancakes and rescuing his hair from Mathew's fascinated grasp. In between mouthfuls Langly added his own high volume opinion to the debate raging between Frohike and Byers- both of whom were also working their way through stacks that would have done a lumberjack proud. The debate seemed to center around fiber optic cable vs...something. Byers caught sight of her and his eyes widened and he choked slightly. Frohike swiveled his head and grinned. "Fetching ensemble, Agent Scully." She groaned mentally. She should have known better than to come downstairs wearing only shirt and boxers. Truthfully, the barnacles in the basement had slipped her mind. She was just considering smacking Frohike for the way his eyes hesitated at breast level when she noticed that both Bill and Mulder were looking in the same place. What the hell? She looked down and froze. Oh shit. She had forgotten. How had she gotten this one? Damn Mulder's memory anyway. Oh wait...blue, blue...yes! She was in the clear on this one. She bared her teeth at her partner who was eyeing her with an oddly unreadable expression on his face. Langly looked up. "Hey! How come she's wearing your Knicks jersey." He yelped suddenly and from the trajectory Scully assumed that Byers was the one who kicked him. She tried to look kick-ass stern, she really did. But the look on Langly's face did her in. She started to laugh. "Because he bled all over my blue silk blouse, that's why." Three identical expressions said it all. What the hell was she doing wearing silk in the field? She almost sighed. Given Mulder's proclivity for bleeding over everything she owned as well as various trips through bush, sewers and gravesites, she was beginning to wonder about that herself. Tara had the right idea. Something less expensive and more disposable. Maybe she could find out where she had gotten those tank tops.... Mulder abruptly grinned at her, "I wondered where that one went." Scully picked through his words for hidden subtext. Did he know? Frohike grunted, "Looks better on her than it ever did on you." Scully met her sister-in-law's laughing glance and they both turned to study Mulder consideringly. Her partner suddenly looked uncomfortable and Scully gave into impulse and bent close enough to whisper in Frohike's ear, "That's a matter of opinion." She grinned as the Gunman started to choke. Grabbing the seat next to Byers she took the plate and juice that Mulder handed across to her and beat out Langly for the last three pancakes on the table. He looked mournfully over at Tara who just shook her head in amazement and grabbed the bowl from Bill's hands. Scully wondered if she should warn her just how much Mulder and the Three Musketeers could eat. Oh well, she would figure it out soon enough. She glanced over at Frohike and cocked an eyebrow. He gestured toward the equipment in Byers hands. From the looks of it, it was the same equipment they used to check for bugs. "Friend of a friend is a sales rep for a company which sells Lear jets. He was flying a plane down to a customer last night and offered to give us a lift." Byers and Langly were nodding. Then Langly piped up. "Yeah, like when Mulder said you needed someone good and we found out it was your family, we wanted to make sure it was done right. There are some okay people here, but..." He shrugged and Scully bit back a smile as she met amused hazel eyes over the top of Langly's head. Mulder slapped him on the back as she intoned solemnly, "Your kung-fu is the best." Langly grinned around a mouthful of pancake and triumphantly smacked palms with Frohike. Byers leaned in and cautiously touched her hand, "You can count on us. We brought everything we could think of. Just tell us what you need." Langly and Frohike both nodded earnestly and Scully had to fight back a sudden urge to cry. She settled for a smile and a soft "Thanks guys". They understood. She looked up to find her brother studying the trio with a mixture of confusion and disbelief and she found herself tensing with a surprising degree of protective defensiveness. The Gunmen were paranoid, geeky , more than a little strange...and they were some of the best friends she had ever had. She did not play Doom, she was not a member of the Hackers Club and they did not spend week-ends together. She was not quite sure how she would classify their relationship. But it occurred to her, that outside of Mulder, they were the people she could count on if she got into a jam. How very strange to suddenly realize that their loyalty extended past Mulder to her. But that was why they were here. For her. No questions asked. Ready to break laws, take names and risk getting their asses kicked. If Bill said one word to hurt their feelings he was shark bait. She cleared her throat, "Bill, in case Mulder has not had time to make introductions, I'd like you to meet arguably three of the best hackers in the country, if not on the planet. Better yet, they know more about surveillance equipment and security systems than the entire FBI Computer Division put together. They've assisted us on more than one critical case and excepting Mulder there's no one I'd trust more with my personal safety or that of my family." There it was. She might not believe that they had much chance against the bad guys when it came to the physical stuff. There was no doubt that their enthusiasm could lead them to be as headstrong and naive as Mulder upon occasion. But their hearts were in the right place. Where it counted, she trusted them. She really did. The Gunmen had straightened shoulders self- consciously and all three started to smile in surprised pride as her unexpected words of praise reached them. She locked eyes with her brother, smile fixed, eyes grim. She would take his shit toward her, and she would take his attitude toward Mulder. But she would be damned if she would let him hurt people who had come all this way just to help and whose feelings could be trampled a hell of a lot more easily. The Gunmen were oblivious to the undercurrents, but Mulder had shifted his stance slightly, wordlessly backing his partner. Since he was the one Bill had wanted to get down here in the first place, Scully assumed that his opinion counted for once. Bill's face went curiously blank as he absorbed both Mulder's and his sister's attitude. Neither agent was able to read anything of the thoughts raging behind that expressionless mask, but he finally stepped forward and offered his hand , letting the guys introduce themselves. Mulder relaxed and Scully smiled. Message received and understood. The next two hours were spent mapping out a basic plan of attack. Ignoring the incredulous look on Bill's face when he heard her ask the guys to do a baseline security sweep for bugs and surveillance equipment, Scully discussed equipment options with the trio while Mulder got on the phone. None of the missing items were valuable, but all had a position of some importance in the Scully household. A favorite book that was read to Mathew every night, a mug that Tara used for her morning tea, Bill's diary. All items that could have simply been misplaced...but which they were sure had not been. The very blankness of her partner's expression told Scully that the nature of the items disturbed him. Hell, they disturbed her. If this was a stalker, this was something directed at the entire family and the choices suggested an intimate familiarity with the routine of the household. The bastard had not just been in the house, he had been watching it. Closely. Mathews and Harris had headed off to the local field office to collect the MethBomber casefiles that FedEx had delivered from Washington. It was determined that the easiest way to run the two investigations simultaneously was to set up the MethBomber command center here at the house and use the field office Command Center already set up for that purpose for the Navy case. Scully left Landers and the Gunmen busily measuring rooms and lines of sight and tracked her partner down. Bill had tagged along behind the Gunmen until he realized that they were seriously discussing the chances of Them intercepting the feed if they used remote camera equipment. When he had asked who They were , the Gunmen had just mumbled something about the government and left it at that. Scully did not try to explain. Bill had given her one disbelieving look, but mindful of her earlier warning had chosen to take Tara and Mathew to the base for the day. Vickery and Lewis volunteered for escort duty and Scully made him promise not to go anywhere without one of the agents as back-up. He was gearing up to protest when Mulder looked over and explained that if they did have a serial stalker on their hands, the change in routine might act as a stressor. Which meant that they had no way to know how he would react. Their presence could actually be the thing that triggered him. Bill had taken one look at his wife's terrified face and acquiesced. So she was alone when she was finally able to corner Mulder in the unfinished basement. Several tables and chairs took up almost half of the room and formed a rudimentary command center. Several large pieces of whiteboard and corkboard were already affixed to the cement walls and several taped together extension cords were strung across nails hastily driven into exposed joists. Bill had mentioned that the phone company was coming by latter today to installed cables and jacks for the computers which the Navy would deliver this evening along with half a dozen military cots and army blankets. She stepped around a pile of rolled up sleeping bags and settled onto a nearby packing crate-probably left over from the last move- and watched him as he prowled around the perimeter of the room. She did not get the feeling that he was actually looking for anything in particular, more that he too wrapped up in his thoughts to sit still. Mulder claimed that motion helped him think. He finally stopped dead and after staring into space for another couple of minutes, turned his head towards her. "Those last three items, Scully" Scully tilted her head as she thought about it. "Because they were taken so close together?" As far as Tara knew, things had been going missing for weeks. She could not even swear to which ones were actually missing and which ones were just misplaced. But the last three items both she and Bill would swear to. Mulder was shaking his head, "Because they are more personal." Scully frowned, "More personal than the missing clothes? The photos?" Mulder waved his hand in a general discarding motion," Think about it ,Scully. None of the earlier items embodied any risk, any knowledge of the family. They were general items found in the first few rooms he would have come to if he entered by either of the first floor doors. The living room, the laundry room. Basic snatch and run. But the others...he not only had to go further into the house, he knew those items had personal significance in the household routine." Dread shot down her spine. She believed him. He was too good at this for her not to believe him and it echoed what her own instincts were telling her. But she needed more than gut instinct. She had to consider the possibility of other options. "Tara claims that she never left the mug out, but if she used it every morning then it was probably in the first row of the most convenient shelf. He might have simply grabbed the first one he saw...that does not mean he saw her drink out of it." Mulder's eyes turned inward as he considered how this theory might affect the emerging profile in his head. Scully continued. "Tara read this book to Mathew every night. Maybe she placed it somewhere other than the bookshelf, or in a different manner than all the rest." "Drawing attention to it?" She nodded. "And Bill's diary would have been in his bedside table. According to him, there wasn't much else there." Mulder stood silent for a few seconds, then shook his head sadly, "It still fits." he told her softly. " The mug is a possible, but the book and the diary were actually in the bedrooms. Combined with the other two , he's watching them Scully. And he's getting closer. Further into the house. More risk of getting caught. Even considering the fact that we don't know for sure which items went missing when-there may even be items gone that we do not know about- these last three items vanished within the last two weeks." Mulder paused, then looked again at the image in his head, "He's escalating, Scully." She closed her eyes briefly. "How long?" He just shook his head and shrugged. While the Gunmen laid cable and installed cameras with Agent Landers, Mulder and Scully brushed off personal protection skills and moved furniture to eliminate blind spots and places where an intruder could lurk to catch someone off guard. Bill had previously taken several security steps of his own. Hedges and bushes were already trimmed away from windows and walkways. Motion-activated lights had been installed and the basement and bathroom windows replaced with glass block. While none of this had deterred the intruder, it at least meant that they were able to restrict their activities relatively unobtrusively to the indoors. Well, as unobtrusive as they could get all else considered. Bill's mini-van, Tara's Volvo, two government fleet sedans, a semi-permanent Pizza Pizza delivery car and the sudden addition of ten adults to the household were not exactly low profile. The senior Navy plumber blinked as he watched Scully duck and vault through an obstacle course of wiring and computer parts while his assistant stared open-mouthed at the shoulder rigs and weapons all of the agents present were displaying openly. The carpenters just kept their heads down as they dodged Mathews, Harris and fifty FedEx boxes, and lugged in more building materials. The Navy ratings delivering the cots and computers from the base found it more disturbing that no one seemed to be paying any attention to the male shrieks and screams coming from the basement. Mulder cocked his head thoughtfully. "Think the plumber shorted out one of the computers, Scully?" His partner just grinned. By late afternoon, Langly had installed a small satellite dish on the roof of the house. The fact that it gave a 360 degree view of the surrounding yard and street was something only the inhabitants of the house knew. Smaller cameras covered the blind spots missed by the "dish" and all of it, outdoor and indoor surveillance was connected to a bank of computer monitors set up in the basement. Once they were sure that the house was as secure as they could make it, Mulder went jogging - and not incidentally checking out surrounding streets and homes - while the Gunmen set up a surveillance post. After three hours, they were as certain as they could be that the no one was watching the house-assuming the UNSUB did not live in one of the surrounding houses. Bill and Tara came home just in time to see Scully lower herself over the edge of the roof, pop out the gable vent, and slither into the attic. Ignoring Vickery and Lewis, Bill charged into the house only to slam to a halt as he saw five people clustered around a monitor sitting on the coffee table in front of the couch. Bill had no way to know that the computer gave Mulder access to the same feeds playing down in the basement only in a more discrete and password protectable fashion. There was another one just like it in Scully's room. "What the Hell is going on here?!" Langly turned to him and frowned as he muttered something about motion sensors and time delays. Byers , Frohike and Landers ignored him while Mulder just grinned and waved a five dollar bill in the air. "Your sister is about to go down in flames." Bill's face reddened dangerously, "My sister just about broke her neck climbing off the roof!" All five snapped to attention satisfactorily and Bill almost felt vindicated by their dismayed expressions until Langly toggled the screen to another feed and squawked indignantly, "No way. No friggin' way, man. How the hell did she do that?" Bill's jaw dropped as Byers whistled softly in admiration while his sister's idiot partner wavered between looking chagrined and looking ridiculously proud as Frohike turned an astonished face towards him. "How the heck did she get on the roof without us seeing her?" "Back that up." "Shit, we didn't catch that blind spot. See there? She must have walked along the fence to avoid the motion sensors and gone up the chimney. Shit. " "Looks like you owe your partner dinner, Mulder." Bill became aware of the fact that his wife was still standing in the doorway holding his son. He turned to find her staring at the wall. A wall which used to have a painting hanging on it but which now sported an ugly old-fashioned mirror that had been banished to the basement. It had been a gift from Tara's great-aunt so they had never been able to throw it out. The last time it had seen the light of day was the Thanksgiving two years ago when she had stayed for the week-end. It was then that other changes started making themselves known. The sofa, the chair. And where the hell had the desk been moved too? What the Hell was going on here? It wasn't until everyone stopped and stared that he realized that he had bellowed that at the top of his Navy trained lungs. Christ, they had probably heard him in South Dakota. In the silence, the sound of Mulder cracking open one of those goddamn sunflower seeds scraped along his nerves like nails on a blackboard. Reflected motion in the mirror grabbed at his peripheral vision and he turned his head to see his sister calmly descending the stairs. Angles suddenly meshed and came together in his head and he realized that not only did she have a perfect reflected view of the living room, but that anyone sitting on the sofa had a good view of the top of the stairs. Lord Jesus God, this was really happening. They were taking this seriously. This was really happening. Even as part of his mind wanted to sneer at them for playing James Bond, another part was starting to gibber in panic. This was not what he had expected. Was it? He had expected them to come down and baby-sit. That was all. Be an armed presence to reassure Tara. And maybe...maybe Mulder would even laugh at him. The profiler amused by the Navy man crying wolf. He had had no illusions that the FBI agent would be under any compulsion to be polite about his derision. Bill had expected to lose this round in the pissing contest. He had thought he was prepared for that. He had been willing to sacrifice his pride for Tara's peace of mind. Only Mulder was not laughing. His sister was playing Batgirl, five more FBI agents had taken over his basement and three men he had never met had flown thousands of dollars worth of equipment across the country simply because they had heard that his sister's family might be in danger. God, did he even know anyone who would drop everything to help him on a maybe? Someone who would fly thousands of miles not even to help him directly, but help a member of his family they had never met? Someone, he thought almost guilty, besides the people already in this room? He had people who owed him favors. People to whom he owed favors. But those were just the standard military trade-offs and sleight of hand that were the bread and butter of a career officer. Little things. Things that bent the Navy rules, but usually did not break them. Things that were easy. Tara, his mother, Dana...and now, it would appear, Mulder. Anyone else? It struck him suddenly that he was not absolutely sure that Tara's family or Charlie's brother-in- law could be called upon for any sort of no- questions-asked help. Yet he had never doubted that Mulder would show up. Well of course not. The bastard owed the Scully family and he knew it. But as much as he tried to make himself believe that that was the only reason the man had showed, part of his mind, the same part that underlay the foundations of his honor and belief in himself, ruthlessly forced him to admit the truth. He had never told Dana that he had overheard her conversation with her partner that Christmas. No need to specify which one. THAT Christmas said it all. She had never doubted once that Mulder would come. That had pissed him off almost as much as it had hurt. She never asked her family for a damn thing...not even when she was dying. But she would actually ask from him what she would not accept from her family. And the truth was something Bill had been avoiding for several years. She had not even been asking so much as granting permission. And both of them had known it. Mulder had belonged, her family did not. They did not know the secret passwords. Bill had hated him for that. When had Dana stopped being proud of him? When had a little sister's defiance turned to a woman's contempt? She did not hate him...but god,sometimes he thought she wanted to. She had stood outside the family circle and watched with that blank expression on her face. As if she had no idea who they were or why she was even there. He had wanted to grab her and shake her until she looked at him with some god damn emotion in her eyes and became his little sister again. The little girl who had loved her older brother, the teen-ager who had spoken with such passion and conviction about medicine. He even wanted the FBI agent with the defiant smile, that ridiculously shiny new gun and a tin badge so fresh the leather wallet creaked. A fresh wave of resentment tainted by guilt swept over him as he contemplated the man who had taken his sister. Had taken both of them. What the hell was it about him that kept his sister tied to his side? He could understand now that maybe the X-Files had some validity. That maybe there really were things that went bump in the night. By why was it so important to her to stay? Was she that unable to admit that she had made a mistake? Was it just that she had to make the losses in her life mean something? Or maybe it was something more unhealthy. Mulder's father had been an alcoholic. He remembered his mother saying something to that effect. Children of alcoholics were supposed to have the same symptoms as their parents even if they never took a drink in their lives. Was that it? Was she so caught up in the cycle of giving and need that she could no longer see the abuse? He could see how it could have happened. Artificially tied together by the FBI, confused by the words duty and honor, maybe she was trapped in some emotionally dysfunctional cycle she did not know how to recognize. To escape. How do you help someone who won't help themselves? Confused, resentful and hurt, Bill sunk into a sullen silence that left him mostly ignored by the US Marshal wannabes. Tara had taken Mathew up for his nap and never returned. If he went upstairs, he would probably find her stretched out on the bed next to their son's crib. She had gotten to the point where she found it difficult to let Mathew out of her sight for even a few minutes. Wanting suddenly to be a part of something. To know that he was somewhere where he was welcomed and belonged, Bill joined her. ******************************************* MethBomber Command Center - Bill Scully's Basement Day 38 1035 hours "It's official. Possibles 'F', 'K', 'LL', and 'MZ' have been accounted for. The ISU will be faxing over confirmation this afternoon." A slightly resigned sigh swept the room and the dry leaf rustling of paper echoed as pages were flipped and four more names were crossed out. Four more names that the local PD had confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt did not represent the man they were trying to find. Three years. Three years of lists, of cross checking, of having the local PD physically confirm with at least one relative or close friend that the dead man or prison inmate was indeed the man his ID claimed him to be. Three years of exhuming John Does killed in car crashes, plane crashes, bar brawls and alleyway drug overdoses to drill his teeth and check the resulting DNA strands against the known profile of one Joseph Craig Gamble. Three years out of the lives of countless police officers and federal agents as well as various medical and other support personnel. Searching, not for Gamble's whereabouts, but for confirmation of his death. A confirmation they might never get, but which they had to make every effort to obtain. Confirmation which could narrow their search dramatically, telling them whether they were searching for one madman or two. Mulder rubbed at his throbbing temples and wished heartily that his partner did not have ESP when it came to Tylenol overdoses. If he did not have a migraine-sized headache at the time, he would by the time she was done with him. Even if he was willing to put up with the lectures and the stomach pains - not to mention the potential side effects - she had hidden the damn bottle. He gave the tiny container of Lavender-Peppermint Temple Balm sitting on the table top an evil glare, then growled, grabbed it and sniffed it cautiously. Vickery's nostrils flared at the unexpected scent but all five agents had their eyes glued with satisfactory diligence on the papers in front of them when he scowled around the table. Damn fool idea. What the hell was this supposed to do that six Extra- Strength Tylenol could not do better? Ignoring Mike's stifled grin he absently rubbed the lotion into his temples and above his eyebrows as he studied the uncooperative casefiles in front of him. The tough thing about it was that he could see why they thought these new murders were being committed by the same guy. ISU was not ignoring the possibility that there was a copy cat, but all of the evidence appeared to support the theory that the person responsible for the new murders was the same man whose extracurricular activities had killed 23 people and injured dozens more when his Poe's graveyard blew a farmhouse to bits three years before. It looked like the same guy. Random victims snatched from the street, the parking lot and the shoulder of the highway across four years and at least fourteen states. Raped repeatedly. Chained in a sealed, sound-proofed basement until the victims starved or died of internal injuries created by fist, foot and blunt force trauma. It smelled like him. Bodies left to rot. The living dying amid the corpses of the already dead. Human carcasses stacked like cordwood in a sealed chamber where the putrefaction process broke dead flesh into chemical components. The stacking and banking of dirt meticulously designed to enhance and speed the anaerobic production of methane. The cautious addition of purchased methane in careful amounts. Amounts precisely calculated to leave the fuel to air concentrations just below explosive threshold. Waiting for rotting flesh to add just enough to the mixture and push it into the red zone. In the end, the already dead killed the last of the living. It looked right. It smelled right. It even sounded right. But it did not feel right. Silently he damned the years that had separated the first crime scene from the explosion. There had been too much time, too much damage. Too little forensic evidence. Most of the bones were shattered, breakage patterns due to body blows lost amidst the tiny slivers that was all that was left after the detonation. There just was not enough to be sure. All three of the recent sites contained between 35 and 60 bodies. Gamble's bunker had contained between 250 and 500. If the farmhouse explosion had triggered the recent spate of murderous explosions, the latest Methbomber was too impatient to wait for nature to take its course as it had the first time. He wanted his explosion and he wanted it now. The patterns of the murders were the same, but the addition of purchased methane was new. The methane produced by the rotting victims simply pushed the levels into the threshhold were it would explode. A form of trigger, more than anything. Mulder considered the facts of the intial explosion one more time. Five hundred bodies. The FBI agent wanted to be shocked. The profiler just wondered how many more like him hid among the statistics of the missing. Five hundred. Too many zeros to give human faces to the victims and not enough to earn the title of atrocity. Too many of the victims remaining faceless, voiceless, lost in the mists of time. Nameless forever. Overwhelmed instincts screamed that this should be seen as worse , much worse than the murder of four innocents. Eight. Twelve. Yet what defined worse? The mind balked at granting one madman the same status as that of Hitler and Himmler. But what lies between the ten of the serial killer and the ten million of the Third Reich? Bosnia. 200,000. East Timor. 200,000. Somolia. 500,000. Brazilian Indian Populations. Extinct. There was a difference between the evil of a madman and the collective madness of a nation. Economies of scale. And the fact that one FBI agent with a gun could take care of the madman. Self-defense, Your Honor. Quid pro quo. Mulder rested his head lightly against high gloss photos that recalled the aftermath of Auswich more than the bucolic backyard of the American Dream. What was the real face of evil? The madness of the predator that cannot help his own actions, or the madness of the many, that could ... and did not. He was not hunting the real monsters. Just the ones he could find. Slender fingers uncapped the bottle of lotion and Mulder sighed as gentle hands pulled his head back and slowly rubbed the minty lotion into his temples. He kept his eyes closed and concentrated on the easy rise and fall of her breathing as the back of his head was pulled against her body. "Are we fighting the wrong war, Scully?" The murmured words were soft, but he knew she heard them. She did not answer. "I should hate him. Five hundred dead, my god. I should hate him. Eight years ago, I would have." He opened his eyes and tipped his head back to see her staring down at him solemnly. "We've seen worse." Blue eyes closed briefly, then flicked to the photos on the table. For a long moment, she did nothing. Then she nodded sadly. They had seen worse. Maybe not in terms of bodies. Although god knows how high the Consortium body count was by now. But in terms of selfhood denied and indignities delivered upon the unwitting and the unwilling. In terms of choice. The serial killer had no choice. He was what he was. They could fear him. They would kill him, given the opportunity. But it was not worth the time or the energy to hate him. Not anymore. He was not even worth meditation. He had nothing to teach about the human condition. There was nothing there to learn. He did not represent the dark desires that lurked in the hearts of men. He was just broken. Could not be fixed. He was not that important. Simply a rabid dog too dangerous to be allowed to live. A bargain basement monster. They had seen worse. "So what do you think?" Scully frowned, then shrugged, "He is or he isn't." Lewis strangled a giggle when Mulder growled softly. "I was hoping for something a bit more useful, Agent Scully." "Ah." Scully's lips pursed thoughtfully," How's this then?" She winked at Landers who was watching with surprise and Vickery who abruptly sat forward, poised in eager anticipation of the punchline. Scully leaned to place her mouth next to his ear and said huskily. "It's not him." For a split second, Mulder's brain disconnected from his body as his neurons fired in a reflex reaction to her tone while independent brain synapses closed with a snap around her words. Fighting two mutually contradictory responses, Mulder just froze, mouth open, then he exploded out of his chair. Scully grinned as he clutched her shoulders. "You're sure?" "I'm sure." Mulder caught the slight emphasis on the pronoun and Scully waited patiently as his eyes glazed over and he reexamined the patterns coming together in his head. "Shit." He came to with a snap and dashed toward the whiteboard and started erasing. " Will it stand up?" Scully sighed, then indicated an unknown," It feels wrong, Mulder. But there's so few bones left. If he had used a knife I'd have scoring marks and there's not enough flesh left to make a good case either way. But now that I've seen the bodies...It's not him, Mulder. Gamble...he hated these people, Mulder." And their newest boy did not. He was methodical, meticulous and cold. The ISU profile was leaning toward a visionary killer. Someone who was doing what he had to do, punishing the transgressors of society. Oddly enough, there was no semen. Not in or on the bodies. It was one of things that had bothered Mulder. He was either getting off on pictures and fetishes, or he was that controlled. Only now it looked like they had a copycat. One who had followed the script precisely. Which meant a whole new book of needs and twisted desires. This guy was not writing himself into the script. His ego was not hanging out for all to see. So what was he getting off on? "Fuck." Scully just sighed again and nodded. The asshole had details. Really good details. Unfortunately, there had been so many people involved with this case that it was going to be hard to know for sure if the security measures had held. That was not even considering the possibility that Gamble may have had an accomplice--possibly a lover-- who was just now taking up the torch. Hell, they had not even totally ruled out the possibility that this had started as some sort of twisted Manson-type group situation. For the first murders anyway. The latest murders were definitely done flying solo. One of a defunct cult triggering twenty years after the fact? Mulder rocked back and forth on his heels as he sucked his bottom lip in between his teeth. "So there's something we haven't seen yet." Scully hesitated, "Maybe. Probably." Translated, she had not seen a large variance in the way the first of the new victims was murdered to the method and beating patterns of the last. The bastard knew what he was doing. He was either a serial copycat or he had been practicing. Either way, it was going to be a bitch to sell. The killer's obvious comfort level with his craft had been a strong selling point for the idea that it was the same guy. ISU was strongly leaning toward the theory that Joseph Gamble, Jr., who had disappeared almost twenty years ago, was either the killer or had had a close relationship with the killer. Two hundred and fifty victims took time to collect. Even if he gathered more than one at a time--and in the mid- seventies that would not have been hard--he still needed time and privacy. The twenty year time gap and the sudden cessation of activity had strongly suggested that if the newest murders were being committed by Gamble, that he had probably been incarcerated for the last two decades. Serial killers just did not wake up one morning and decide to stop. He had possibly been carrying the ID of one of his male victims; another reason for the identity confirmations. If they could prove that Gamble had ceased his murders because he himself had been killed or incarcerated, they might know for sure one way of the other about a potential copycat. Particularly if he was dead. But what if it was not Gamble, himself? Mulder had absolutely no problems with following Scully's gut on this one. If she said that they had a different killer this time around, then they had a different killer. And now they would need to look more closely at the alternate possibilities that the ISU and the primary investigative task force had only touched on. Mulder toyed briefly with the possibilities. A lover or a group member suddenly going off the rails. Possibly due to some sort of anniversary. If Gamble had indeed been incarcerated under another name, possibly he had died. Personally, Mulder felt it much more likely that the explosion itself was the triggering event. Which led right into the possibility that the copycat was someone involved with the investigation in some capacity. Someone who had access to forensic reports and autopsy data. The FBI did not exactly leave that lying around. It was possible that someone, at some level was just the pipeline. A friend of a friend, a lover or other peripheral party may have stolen the information for whatever reasons and made it available to someone else. Journalists. Supposed journalists. Producers, directors, writers, curiosity seekers. Shit. They could be bleeding the damn information from a hundred places. It would be a nightmare just trying to track down who had official access to what data. Unofficial access was even worse. But they had to try. Mathews had squawked as half the contents of the whiteboard vanished with four swipes of an exuberant hand. Now, watching the two agents draft a plan of attack, he narrowed his eyes as they fell into an abbreviated shorthand he recognized from the ISU but had not really expected to see here. A twinge of envy flared. Mike was a good profiler. He knew that. But he was a profiler in the truest sense of the word. He did character profiles. He did not ...he did not...well whatever the hell it was that Patterson and his Ghouls did and had done, Mike did not. Is that what it took? He was unaware that his expression, as he studied the two lost in their own little world, had turned wistful. A whisper of fabric at his elbow had his head turning to see, if he had but known it, a mirror of his own envy and regret. He reached out a cautious hand and touched her forearm lightly. "They've paid for it in blood, you know." His voice was gritty with rough sympathy. Agent Landers smiled slightly, eyes dark, "I'd pay." Mike shivered slightly, then turned away. So would I, he thought softly. So would I. ******************************************* He had been patient. He had waited for them to get some sleep. He had waited through Saturday as they set up their Command Center. Now, he had waited through today as they did whatever it was they had to do to get organized down in their Command Center. He never said a word. He bit back desire to demand that Mulder finally get off his ass and DO something on his case. That was the reason he had been brought down here in the first place. Not that Bill Scully doubted the importance of the other case. Not at all. But the MethBomber case was already being investigated. Hell it was being investigated inside-out and upside-down. He could only envy the number of people they had available on that investigation. Hell, the ISU itself was running the investigation for that killer. They probably had profiles coming out the ass. But he had requested Mulder. He had very deliberately gone out on a limb with the Navy brass in order to get his sister's partner assigned to the case. And Mulder appeared to be sawing it off. Damn it. He had been patient. He had every right to march in their and at least ASK the man whether he was planning to do any work at all on the case. The man did know enough to realize that the Navy was not going to pick up the food bill for their little Command Post downstairs and want nothing in return, did he? So why was he hesitating? He had been standing in the upper hallway for almost forty-five minutes as the house grew silent. Now, with all the lights out and only the flicker of the TV screen from the living room telling him that Mulder was awake, he was still hesitating. The sour fact of the matter was that he had leaned heavily on his sister's relationship with her partner in order to get them here. Neither of them had been under any obligation to come. The FBI might ask, but there was no damn way they would have ordered anybody anywhere while they were still on medical leave. No matter how much the Navy pleaded. There it was in a nutshell. The Navy pleaded. They were the beggars in this play. They were the ones dying. That thought was finally enough to get his feet moving. Reflexively moving past squeaky boards, Bill made his way on silent feet to the living room. "Jesus Christ!" The words were pulled from him involuntarily and he stared in appalled horror at a cascade of black and white images flickering across the screen. Mulder never twitched. Never even acknowledged his presence, just sat there, eyes fixed on a nightmare panoply that spoke only of the darkness of which the sane mind is capable. Auswich. Buchenwald. Dachau. The names changed, the images did not. Hulking steel furnaces and gas chambers that had been designed with only one purpose. The mass slaughter of millions of human beings. Mass burial pits containing thousands of skeletal laborers worked in forced labor camps until they dropped in their tracks or were shot for their captors amusement. And the medical experiments. Body parts frozen and then re-thawed to track the advancement of gangrene. People forced to high altitudes until they died of air embolism so that their brains could be dissected and examined. Bodies stacked like cordwood. "Human garbage. Tossed on the rubbish heap with no more consideration that yesterday's coffee grinds." Bill's horror transferred itself to the man sitting motionless on the sofa. How could anyone speak so calmly? So distantly. He wanted to reach out, turn the ghoulish images off and run upstairs and wrap his arms around his wife and pretend that he had never watched with sick fascination as American bulldozers pushed thousands of bodies into mass graves, continuing what the Nazis did not finish. He knew, in the back of his mind he knew that they would have had no choice. Cholera. Rats. Contamination of the water supply. All of the perils of a large amount of rotting flesh left lying above ground. It was the same with any natural disaster. But this was not natural. And it felt like the final indignity. Was it simply guilt? A horrified and frustrated desire to reach out and *do* something. Even if nothing would ever make things better. At least they could do *something*. Unfortunately, he knew his own history too well. He remembered what they had done. Riots. Protests. All saying the same thing. Send them back. He closed his eyes as he remembered further footage of men and women demanding that the refugees be sent back. That they were not wanted. That they would take jobs, take ...what? What could they have ever taken that would ever compare to what had been taken from them? All they had wanted was a home. And they had been greeted by those whose hatred had said only, "Send them back." "If it were not for my family, I'd say let your little green men take us all." It was when Mulder turned his head to look at him with pity and a touch of distaste that he realized what he had said. If it were not for my family... Shit. That was the cause. An inability to look past the immediate ties and feel empathy for the unrelated. The human desire to draw tribal lines that said my family, my tribe...me. That defines everyone else as outsiders and not worth as much consideration. The inability to stand up and say one simple word. Us. He managed to make it to the bathroom before he threw up. When he returned, Mulder had turned his attention back to the screen. Why was he watching this? What was he seeing? "Is that what you think he was doing?" Mulder looked blank for a moment and Bill could physically see him pull himself away from wherever it was he had gone. He tried again. "He hates them that much?" Mulder just continued to look blank. "Hatred?" Then he seemed to shake himself awake. "That's not hatred. It's not that personal." A small movement that seemed explosive after his lack of motion startled Bill enough that he involuntarily flinched. Then he stared blankly at the file folder Mulder was holding out to him. "I've gone over the profile your people have already worked up. There are a couple of early fires, before the murders that I'm not totally sure were done by the same guy, but it's hard to be sure. I've already faxed the investigative team. That's your copy." Bill held the slender folder in his hand, caught out of step by this preemptory move. When had he done this? The file folder fell open and he scanned the three pages inside with growing disbelief. "This is it?" "Hmmm?" Suddenly furious, Bill grabbed the remote and turned the TV off. He waved the folder under the agent's nose. He ignored the curious look crossing Mulder's face as the agent reared back reflexively. "This is it? This is why we brought you down here? To say that we have an arsonist. God damn it, Mulder." Blue-green eyes widened slightly in the light of the single table lamp and Bill fumed as he was forced to wait when the agent muttered a choked apology, took a hurried gulp from a nearby glass and went into a coughing fit. Bill shook the folder angrily. "People are dying. My people are dying and this is the best you can do? An arsonist? We already know he's a goddamn arsonist. Tell me where to find the bastard!" A suspicious dampness was still pooling in the corners of Mulder's eyes, but he seemed to have gotten himself under control. "It's not that easy Bill. I don't know what you expected, but I can't just wave a magic wand and give you this guy's home address and telephone number. But I can say that he is primarily an arsonist. Not a serial killer." "What the hell does that mean?" "That the first profile is wrong." Bill started to protest, then the absolute certainty in Mulder's voice told him to pause. To think. This was crazy. How could the agent have the balls to throw away the conclusions of three separate profilers and tell him that that did not have a killer on their hands. "These people were burned alive." His voice was tight. Mulder sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Take another look at the progression. The staging. He set every single one of those fires up with meticulous care. The deaths were planned with excruciating consideration given to blocking every exit, to making sure everything went as planned. Every single death...except the first one. That death was an accident Bill. It was not intended. And look at the time gap. It startled him. He did not expect that to happen so he took some time to stop and think about it. To reflect on what it meant to his art." Mulder's lips twisted on the last word. "The profilers said something about escalating." "They said that in the first profile. When they only had three fires to judge by. But look at the rest of the pattern. This guy is not escalating. Not the way they meant it, anyway. There's no evidence of it. So the time gap means something else. The Navy connection, the rest of it...that's all window dressing as far as this guy is concerned. " "But...but ...the boy..." Mulder sighed again and Bill wished that he had not brought it up. But the child had been the exception to the rule that all of the people had been burned to death. The child had escaped the flames only to find death at the hands of the killer. "That's significant. Extremely so. But not the way you think. First, that means that this guy was there. Why? It increases his risk of being caught a thousand fold. He's too meticulous to make a dumb mistake and while he's probably feeling pretty invulnerable, he's not taking stupid chances. So that's a need, Bill. He had to be there. He had to watch it all unfold. And the child ruined his careful set-up. He smashed that child's head open with a rock. Do you have any idea how many times he hit him?" Bill was thankful that he had already been sick. "Twenty-seven times. With a weapon of opportunity. This guy does not *do* opportunity, Bill. He plans every detail down to the last match. So what set him off? Probably the fact that by escaping the boy ruined his perfect little set-up. That boy, just by escaping, threatened to take something from the killer. So the killer took it back. He was out of control. absolutely enraged. " "Maybe he was upset that the whole family did not die as planned. Couldn't he have been upset that the murders did not go as planned? Why does it have to be the fire and not the murders." "Because that's what feels right." Bill opened his mouth to protest this asinine statement and then snapped it shut with a click. This was why they called him Spooky. This was why he wanted him on the case. God damn it all to hell. "So what does this mean?", he finally managed. "It means we start compiling suspect lists that fit the profile of a thrill-seeking arsonist instead of an organized serial killer. Believe it or not, it makes our job easier." Bill scowled, "Fine. But guess what." "What?" "You get to explain it to the task force tomorrow." Mulder groaned and then sighed, "Whatever." ****************************************** Mulder waited until Bill Scully had tromped back upstairs to bed before turning his head to the shadows by the patio door. "It's safe to come out now." His partner inhaled sharply, then he heard an annoyed huff as she coalesced out of the darkness. Mulder studied her consideringly. "Perimeter check all clear?" He asked mildly. Scully glared at him grumpily but did not bother to try and avoid the issue. Her edginess was getting worse. Every hour on the hour she found herself double checking windows, double checking doors. She had hoped it would get better once they were away from DC, but it was worse. "I'm not going crazy, Mulder. We're being followed. I haven't been able to find them yet, but they're out there. Everybody looks so damn loud. Damn it...can't you feel it?" Mulder just looked at his partner, caught off guard by the sudden tirade and wonder uneasily if maybe she was going a little...no. This was Scully. If she said there was something out there, then there was something out there. He finally shrugged. "No. But you know what I'm like when I'm profiling." Scully looked at him uncertainly for a moment, probably wondering if he really was convinced or if he was just humoring her. Mulder could sympathize with the feeling and had a momentary and extremely uncharitable urge to ask her how it felt. Then he took another look at the blue smudges under her exhausted eyes. He patted the empty space beside him. "Nightmares?" She sank tiredly into place and unthinkingly leaned against him. She let out a contented sigh as he reached up and dug his fingers into the knotted muscles of her shoulders. "Yeah. They have been getting worse. I don't know. Maybe I'm just too tired today. While I was going over the autopsy data today, I kept seeing...It wouldn't stop, Mulder. What he did to them. They had no chance..none. So helpless...and he did not care. Just tied them up and went about his business..." Mulder almost froze as her voice went distant. Oh shit. His hands moved automatically as he listened in dread as her soft voice continued it's litany of horrors. "Watch him...they must have watched him. Jesus, he left the eyes for last. Looking over and seeing the dead. It wouldn't help...no escape...Jesus and his eyes. He doesn't care. It's not hate. Why doesn't he hate? Nothing there. No hope...no escape." Mulder felt his breath shorten. Damn it all to hell. Patterson had been right, after all. She was profiling the victims. "He doesn't hate?" He kept his voice soft, almost soundless. Scully just shook her head." He doesn't care." her voice became an injured wail. "He doesn't care. How can he do this and not care? Just a thing. Making me a thing. Making us all things..." Mulder sucked in a painful breath and then tightened his grip and said sharply, "Scully!" When she did not respond immediately he shook her. Once. Twice. Her head bobbed loosely on her shoulders and then he let out a relieved breath as her eyes cleared and she was looking back at him with confusion. "You're too tired to do this right now, Scully." he tried to keep his voice gentle. Christ. She had no idea what she had been about to do. Shit. Maybe it was a good thing her tension was keeping him from going too deep this time. She was going to need him if this kept up. Jesus. The one thing he had prayed that Patterson had been wrong about. That Scully would have no aptitude for this type of profiling. Because he profiled the killer. And she became the victim. He could almost laugh. It was almost funny. Both of them drawn to become the thing they despised the most because it was the absolute opposite of their personalities. That he could even become the killer and emerge sane was because he actually had little of the killer's ruthlessness in his soul. He resonated with the victims too much to ever truly merge with the thing he was profiling. How would she feel when she realized the truth behind Patterson's secret? Mulder gazed down at the one person in his life who had the ability to destroy him completely. He should have walked away. The minute he had realized what Patterson had hoped for, had searched for...he should have hauled ass and run as fast as his legs would carry him. God. Too late now. Years and love and hate, too late. Because he loved her more than he feared the hidden parts of her soul. But this was the final thing that could destroy them. He was not sure what terrified him the most. The thought that she would look at him through a victim's eyes and see a predator. Or the day she looked at him with a killer's rage ... and did not. ******************************************** “Mulder!” Trapped in the never never land that existed between terror and wakefulness, Scully tried to remember how she had come to be in her bed. But the images in her head crowded out all else and her body was controlled by her mind's imperative. She launched herself into the hallway, gun drawn before the echoes of her own scream had time to die away. Driven only by horror, needing to know nothing more than that the images in her head were simply nightmares, she yelled again for her partner. She swept her gun across the hallway, searching the shadows for enemies. “Mulder!” He did not answer. The sudden appearance of her brother as he barreled into the hallway, baseball bat ready, barely registered as she banged her hand on the door to her partner’s room. “Mulder!” Ignoring the very real danger of getting herself shot if he was trapped in his own nightmares, she slammed the door inward, waited a brief second that was an eternity too long and went in, gun at the ready. He was not there. Her breath kept coming in short pants and she was vaguely aware of her own mind screaming at her to think. To calm down. But she could not. Her mind felt as if she were trying to run through syrup and all she could hear was a single phrase ringing bell- like over and over and over again. It was too late. She was going to be too late. A sob tried to strangle her and her chest seized as if being crushed by a giant hand. Her doctor’s training told her that she was doing it to herself. That her intercostal rib muscles were clamping down, spasming due to lack of oxygen and emotional overload. She had to slow down. She had to calm herself before she passed out from sheer panic and failed her partner. She had to find the FBI agent trapped beneath the fear. She could not. Not this time. It was too late. He was gone. Oh God, and what they had done to him. Why? What had she done wrong? A wail of despair tried to break free and out of reflex, she tried to hold it back. Then she forgot about it as it slipped free and she realized that it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered any more.. She was too late. The world seemed to hold its breath, waiting for her give in, give up, give him over. Fury and terror ignited. Be damned if she would. She slammed past her brother seeing nothing more than an obstacle as she threw herself down the stairs and headed for the door. She had to find him. She had to find him before it was too late. Something grabbed at her, held her back. Vaguely she became aware that these things were hands. Hands were attached to people. Annoyed she glared at the offending body that wasn’t the one that she wanted. She ordered the hands to let her go. They refused. Some portion of her brain told her that the body was just trying to help. That this was someone she cared about. For that reason she gave it a second chance. She told it that she had to find her partner. Why did it not understand? It babbled something at her and she shook her head as the words “shoes”, “clothes” and “police” were thrown at her. She growled with anger. She was going to be too late. She shouted the words. Stubborn, stupid hands. She had to save her partner. Did they know what was happening to him? Patience gone she pulled away. The hands grabbed her. Arctic rage exploded and she flung the body attached to the hands out of her way. It fell to the floor and stayed there. She stared in icy hatred at the hands which had slowed her down. Made her waste time. Time that slipped away from her as her partner was dying. As she was dying. She gave it a final warning. Then she turned away. ************************** Mulder was in pain. The muscles along the backs of his legs, his spine, his shoulders burned with the screaming cry of tissue being pushed just past normal limits. His knees ached. His feet ached. The ribs encasing his lungs ached. But his mind was clear. It felt good. Dropping back to a walk, he felt the sweat gather along his spine, the t-shirt plastered to his body too soaked to do any more good. He could feel the easy stretch of his muscles as they lengthened and loosened beneath the skin. He felt pleasantly tired. He glanced at his watch. Just past 3am. He was considering the possibility of a couple hours of sleep when he heard the sound of a front door slam. Instinct had him sprinting the last few feet to the end of the Scully driveway only to rivet him motionless as his brain rapidly processed the unexpected sight his eyes were seeing. His partner, dressed only in silk pajamas stormed down the porch stairs, hair and eyes equally wild. She was barefoot and carrying her gun. Even from where he was standing, the garish light from the street lamp picked out the tearstains on her cheeks, the torn sleeve of her favorite blue silk pajamas and the terror-driven desperation on her face. She slammed to a halt when she saw him. Horror-stricken, he could only stare at her as he waited for her to tell him. Explain to him that something had gone horribly wrong. That her brother and his family were dead because he had taken half an hour to go for a run. Half an hour he would, in that moment, have sold his soul to get back. She said nothing. The sound of the front door opening caught his attention and he drew a long shaky breath as Bill Scully stepped out onto the porch. Tara clutched Mathew and stood just behind him and Mulder could hear more voices raised in query coming from the open door. Scully still had not moved, seemingly content to do nothing more than study him with wide, fathomless eyes. Mulder frowned as he walked slowly toward her. Over her shoulder, Bill stood motionless in the doorway , his face a chaotic mixture of anger, terror and annoyance as he stared first at his sister and then at Mulder. It was when he got close enough to see the glassy expression and the way she seemed unable to do anything more than visually examine every inch of his body as if she were committing it to memory that Mulder began to suspect what had happened. Ah damn. This was his fault. He had known she was on the edge. He knew just how vulnerable she was. But he had just never...he had not really expected this. Not this soon. Shit. He should have said to hell with her brother's sensibilities and climbed into bed with her. Ignoring the gun at her side and the sudden stab of sorrow at this unexpected turn of events, he used his left hand on her right shoulder to gently turn her back toward the house, then placed his right hand in place at her back and moved towards the porch. Abandoned by conscious decision, her body fell into familiar reflex and in perfect sync they made their way into the house. He was guiding her toward the sofa, distantly aware that Bill had followed them back into the foyer and was in the process of closing the door when sirens heralded the arrival of an SDPD black and white. The stricken look on Tara’s face told him who had dialed 911. Scully did not resist as he gently removed the gun from her grasp and dropped it into the first drawer he saw. She refused to let him push her down onto the sofa, however and she was firmly planted by his side when two San Diego police officers knocked on the partially open door. Mulder let Bill take the lead, explaining that it had all been a misunderstanding. Mulder found himself impressed by the quick thinking and plausible way that Bill stated that they had been having problems with recurring missing items and when they had heard Dana scream, they had instantly feared that someone was in the house. Tara must have said something about a gun when she called 911 because both officers demanded to see the weapon which then meant that Mulder had to locate and show them their Bureau identification. Luckily, Tara had carefully hung both their suit jackets from the hall coat tree when they had thrown them off earlier in the evening. Neither officer thought it odd that Agent Landers was the one to root through the pockets since she was closest. That would have been the end of it if Scully had not snarled. Mulder suspected that her silence was being taken for acute embarrassment at having been the cause of all this confusion. Both cops had reacted by allowing Mulder to answer any questions not specifically being answered by Bill and he had breathed a sigh of relief that neither officer seemed inclined to use the incident to score points against the feds. Unfortunately, the younger officer made the mistake of approaching Mulder for his signature at the worst possible moment. Mulder had turned his head to follow the older officer as he finished his conversation with Tara and the younger officer stepped into his blind spot. Instantly Scully’s head whipped around, eyes narrowed and a low-voiced growl rumbled at the back of her throat. The officer froze in shock, Tara’s eyes widened in horror and Bill looked like he wanted to shoot his sister and drop straight through the floor. Preferably at the same time. Mathews was staring at Scully with an expression of grim recognition on his face. Landers and the others faded into the kitchen either to give them privacy or to keep the cops from feeling too out-numbered by the federally armed and dangerous. Mulder could feel the tension level in the room rising as the officer backed toward his partner with even steps. Both men had the closed facial expressions reserved for potentially hostile situations and things were rapidly reaching the point where they could easily spin totally out of control. He debated briefly with himself about the best way to get out of this situation with minimal damage. The last thing he needed was for the PD to start rumors that the FBI had lunatics on the payroll. Well, more rumors anyway. That, or the suspicion that their agents were in the habit of taking drugs. Scully’s medical background worked against her in this case. Not only did she have knowledge and motive, she had opportunity. He was about to give them a watered down version of the truth when the older officer frowned suddenly as he looked again at the ID in his hand and pinned Mulder with an unexpectedly intent stare. “You’re here with the MethBomber team, aren’t you?” Mulder hesitated, then nodded. Both officers looked at each other, eyes dark with the details of a case that was horrific even by ISU standards.. A case that had already claimed the minds of two investigators. God knows what the nightmares on the PD side of the team were like. The conflict was easy to read. The reflexive instinct to pull together, to shield another officer from prying eyes, weighed against duty and the responsibility to an unknowing public vulnerable to one of the good guys lost to the abyss. He tried to keep his reassurance simple. ”She's okay. She’s just not quite awake.” The older officer studied Scully consideringly, ran his eyes over Mulder’s running gear, evidence of recent and prolonged exertion , then finally Scully’s dirty bare feet and protective stance. “She came looking for you?” Mulder studied him just as carefully, then nodded cautiously. “Hell of thing, those kind of nightmares.” the officer's voice was non-committal. Staring back into eyes too old for his face, Mulder suspected this man had an intimate acquaintance with the type of nightmare that would send you out into the night with nothing but your gun. The kind that could have you calling your partner at three in the morning just to hear her voice, to know that she was safe, that the nightmare was dream not prophecy. A split second of darkness shadowed the older man’s eyes and Mulder had the feeling that for this man, one of his nightmares had come true. The officer looked at his partner and shrugged lightly, deliberately casual. “Profilers.” The tone was dismissive, slightly derisive with a faint hint of interdepartmental disgust. It said that they were crazy, but then, weren’t they all? An in-joke. An out. It pulled both agents in under the blanket of law enforcement normality and tucked them safely behind a solid line of blue. Let it be. The younger officer met his partner’s eyes, then nodded slightly. He was not totally convinced and Mulder knew that at least one member of the SDPD would be keeping a close eye on any further weirdness coming from the Scully residence. Considering the reason they had originally come to San Diego, that was probably a good thing. The door was shut and the officers pulling out of the driveway before Bill finally found his voice. “What the hell is going on here?” Mulder ignored him as Scully’s hands started to shake. Not completely sure how she would react, he reached a hand slowly out toward her. Her eyes dropped to it, some measure of reality returning. Her body shuddered as she drew in a long sharp breath before she grabbed his hand in a painful grip. At his involuntary grunt, her grip gentled and she twisted and flexed the bones and muscles of his hand, her fingers telling her what she no longer trusted her eyes to do. That he was safe. Whole. Unbroken. In an unintentional imitation of a mother with her new-born she touched fingertips to his palms, stretched and counted fingers, traced tendons and muscle. Mulder kept his breathing shallow and even as he stared down at the woman intent on denying imaginary injuries. It was sensual without a hint of sexuality. Erotic only in the suggestion of potential. But it was one of the most intensely intimate things he had ever experienced. Her hands smoothed the skin of his arms as they skimmed upward, delighting in the simple textures of warm skin over hard bone. His T-shirt frustrated her as she tried to examine his collarbone and he stood unresisting as she tugged it over his head and dropped it at her feet. Later, it would occur to him that her brother was standing in shocked silence not twenty feet away. For right now, all he saw was the catalogue of horrors swimming in his partner’s eyes. She had seen him die. Horribly. As her hands swept across the unbroken skin of his stomach she suddenly lifted her head and met his eyes. Finally…finally she was able to find tears. One hand reached out blindly and he caught it, placing her palm gently against his face. “I was too late.” Her whisper was broken. His own was hoarse and low. “I know.” She cried then because he had not tried to tell her that it was just a dream. That it had not been real. That it was just imagination. He understood too well. The Abyss was a construct of imagination. Born of terrible reality, created in nightmares, a tool of prediction and divination, the abyss was a reality of the imagination. In it, she had seen him die. As she brushed her fingers lightly over his eyebrows, tracing the shape of his eyes he let his own tears fall. For her pain. For his. Because now she knew. And neither of them could ever go back. ****************************************** He was not sure how long he had watched her sleep. When her sobbing had finally quieted, the two agents had stood wrapped around each other until the soft even sound of her breathing had clued him in to the fact that his partner had fallen asleep against him. Standing up. Grinning momentarily at the thought of Skinner's reaction were he to see this, Mulder had stepped cautiously towards the sofa. Sleepily, chasing his retreating warmth, Scully's body had mirrored his own. Five minutes after he had settled them on the couch, she had dropped into a deep exhausted sleep that might have worried him if he had not expected it. A quick glance at his watch told him that it was nearly 6am. As if on cue, a soft footfall on the stairwell alerted him to Bill Scully's imminent arrival. The man's haggard appearance was also expected. Mulder had heard the sounds of argument and crying for almost an hour after Scully had passed out. It was one of the reasons he had been unable to concentrate on the files spread across the coffee table. He could guess at the context. Mulder eyed the blackening bruise marring her brother's jaw and decided it did not look swollen enough for the contact to have come from the side of Scully's gun. Still, she had probably put him on his ass with the blow. He wondered how much of a surprise that had been. Something told him that Bill Scully was not used to thinking of himself as vulnerable where women were concerned. As Bill settled himself cautiously into the chair across the table, Mulder was surprised at the depth of pain and sadness filling his eyes. Finally, Bill met his eyes squarely, " Whatever she needs - drugs, therapy- anything the Bureau doesn't cover, I'll pay for." Mulder was unable to keep the contempt from his voice. " Wouldn't it be better to ask what happened first before you start prescribing electroshock?" The reply was biting. " I know what happened. She had a fucking nightmare and she lost it. She's a danger to herself and to others." His voice faltered " It's not anybody's fault she couldn't take it. But she needs help." It was not anything he had not heard before. Hell, usually it was directed at him. As comments go, this one was even supportive in a civilian sort of way. He tried telling himself that the man was a Commander in the US Navy-that he was used to seeing people snap under the pressure of long days at sea. He tried…and he failed. It did not take a genius to realize that Scully had scared the hell out of her brother last night. Nor did he doubt that the Commander had come a lot closer to serious injury than was healthy. It had been a mistake. Mostly on the part of an idiot who had obviously tried to restrain an armed and agitated federal officer. An almost tragic mistake. But Bill did not even want to look beyond the symptom to the cause. Did he honestly think they could fling themselves into the abyss and escape without injury? That they could solve the case like normal people, have normal lives while it was going on and then have quiet breakdowns after it was all over. What the hell did he think the minds and lives of the investigators looked like during the weeks and months of an active investigation? He wanted his nice safe house, and his nice safe family, but God forbid he should ever have to recognize the cost of that safety. Mulder's voice was a low snarl and he saw Bill recoil in shock as he let the man see the sliver of darkness he usually tried to hide from prying eyes. "You want to catch the monsters…this is the price." Bill swallowed, but refused to back down," She pulled a gun on me, Agent Mulder." His voice deepened as he put more heat into the words, as if he could pound understanding home by volume alone. " My own sister pointed a gun at me. Tell me she wouldn't have pulled the trigger. Tell me that she wouldn't have killed me, or Tara or anyone else who got in her way." Hurt and fear and anger almost made his voice unrecognizable. "I can't." Bill shrunk down into his seat and Mulder realized that he had wanted the agent to protest. Convince him that he was wrong. He could not do that, but maybe the truth would do almost as well. "Dreams have their own reality. When we profile, we essentially create a waking dream. An imaginary world which we accept as a version of reality and people with imaginary actors consisting of the victims and the killers. And we do it over and over again. Do you understand? We train our minds to fantasy and imagination and hone our ability to add detail and depth and color to that vision." Bill's voice was pained. Resigned." You lose the ability to distinguish dreams and reality?" Mulder grabbed at the air in a gesture of aborted explosive frustration." No. We're sane. But the sleeping mind doesn't distinguish dream from reality. As far as your mind is concerned, the dream is the reality. Normally it doesn't matter. Our dreams are ordinarily so removed from tangible reality that you have no trouble convincing your conscious mind that it was a dream It's easy to see the edges. But when we do what we do, our dreams echo the intangible world of horrific reality that we've trained our waking minds to create. Our sleeping minds conjure nightmares using the details and very real fears of our waking reality. There are no edges anymore because the dreams are plausible, detailed and do nothing to contradict reality." Bill was trying. If it was possible to listen with your body, every cell in his was focused on what Mulder was saying. But he could not make the connection. It was too far from his own reality. "It's like False Memory Syndrome. " A quick flash of something almost like understanding lit Bill's eyes. " The reason those memories are so hard to disprove is because they are essentially real to the subconscious mind. A dream without any means to tell the brain that this isn't a real memory. The mind becomes an active participant in the deception by filling in the details that convince the brain of the memory's reality and as far as the mind is concerned, that memory happened. Complete with emotional context and all." Now for the tricky part. Mulder drew a deep breath. " She had just seen one of her own worst nightmares come to life. Understand me. She. Saw. It. Happen. If I'd been there when she first woke up, it probably would have been enough to snap her out of it because it would have shown her the edges. But I wasn't and that was the basis of the nightmare. In that moment, she thought her dream was real. She thought the killer had me and was doing everything that she had seen done to me in her dream. It was real, it was immediate and she reacted accordingly" Bill was silent as he absorbed Mulder's words. "You're telling me that she would be willing to kill anyone who got in her way. To rescue you. You don't think that's crazy?" Mulder gave a short laugh, "Welcome to our world, Commander Scully. You have to understand that there are mitigating circumstances. She's been having trouble sleeping, the mind is already susceptible to disassociative behavior under those conditions. Shock, sleep deprivation, a mind trained to view fantasy as vividly as reality…and your bad luck in trying to restrain a trained FBI agent who perceived her partner in danger. You are lucky that all she did was hit you. " Bill swallowed sharply and a confused expression crossed his face as he studied the sleeping form of his sister. Was he trying to see her as a killer? Somehow, Mulder got the impression he would have preferred to see her as mentally incompetent. "Scully's pretty good about eating and sleeping. This is the first time she's gone this deep. She'll be able recognize it in the future now that it's happened. The rest of us now know that it can happen, so we'll be watching for it as well. Ordinarily we would have been staying with other people who know what not to do." "And what would you have done if it had happened there instead of here?" Mulder smiled grimly," Bandaged up the wounded and send her to bed for a good eight hours sleep." Bill was silent. Horrified at the casual callousness of it perhaps. Or the reality of their lives. But maybe he was finally figuring out that his sister inhabited a world where normal had long since packed up and relocated. Either way, his world would never be the same again. None of their worlds would. *************************************** Bill Scully's Residence Day 39 6:20 am They cornered him in the kitchen. He had managed to avoid explanations the night before. Harris and Lewis had been rattled enough not to push, Landers was willing to wait a few hours before going on the offensive and Vickery...who the hell knew with Vickery? She had been doing a good imitation of a corpse by the time he had gotten downstairs. He had been tempted to put a mirror up to her nose just to make sure she was still breathing. He glared back at the four sets of eyes cutting off his escape back into the Command Center. "I don't know, okay? I just don't. Patterson and his ..." He caught himself just before he could say the word "ghouls". "...profilers pushed the envelope. That's all I know. " He shifted from foot to foot as they stared at him. Landers and Vickery did not even pretend that they believed him. Damn it, this shit was supposed to be dead. Locked away with Patterson. What the hell did he know about it anyway? He had met some of them. Seen them in the halls. Been booted to the rear of the bus on a few cases when Patterson and company swept in with their white horses, nervous twitches and haunted eyes. But he had never been one of them. Mike sighed as he turned to stare blindly out the kitchen window. In the living room he could hear Mulder's voice edged in bitter anger as he defended his partner to her brother. Defended actions that would have gotten any other agent sidelined instantly. On the couch, hand over your weapon, do not pass "Go". His coffee cup hit the table top a bit harder than he meant it to as he sank into the nearest chair. Harris and Lewis nervously followed suit only after Landers did the same. Vickery just narrowed those eerie eyes and propped herself up against the wall near the entrance to the living room. Mathews struggled to find the right words. "There were rumors." He said finally. " We all knew that Mulder was Patterson's golden child. The one he had the highest hopes for. The things Mulder could pull out of that mind..." Mike 's voice trailed off as his memories were thrown back years and investigations. Then he shook his head. " About a year after Mulder joined the ISU, Patterson tried to team him up with several profilers. Most of us thought he was trying to keep him grounded. Whatever he might have wanted, they all psyche-evaled out within weeks. Mulder looked like death warmed over and no one ...I mean no one was talking. But Mulder pulled some seriously spooky shit they couldn't completely hide. He was so far into the killer the cops were scared to come to the hotel." Mike noticed Lewis staring at his hand and looked down to find the surface of his coffee quivering as his hand shook. He placed the cup back on the table. "Patterson stopped trying to team him up and things settled back to just weird for about a year. Then he tried again. It...got bad. " Mike swallowed several mouthfuls of coffee too fast and started to cough. Vickery had a thoughtful look on her face he could not interpret as she drifted over to the table and claimed a chair. Lewis just handed him a glass of water. Despite the wide eyes, he found the expressions facing him to be more pensive than terrified. He almost resented it. Badly. Mulder had scared bad-ass profilers. Agents who spent their time locked in a bunker in windowless rooms and hunted monsters for a living. And they had been spooked by the one they kept on a leash. He had been terrified. And this felt like an accusation. "He ran to the X-Files after that." Harris flinched and Mathews realized his tone had come out strident and bitter. He drew in a harsh breath and held it, then released it slowly. Gently. Softly. They needed to understand. And maybe, so did he. " Six months after Mulder left, Patterson sent us a character profile for people he wanted us to look for. Possible recruits. We ... thought he was joking at first. And he had one absolutely non-negotiable point. The person had to be female." He waited for their reaction. Then waited some more. Finally Landers glanced at the others around the table and then looked back. "And...?" He barked a brief frustrated burst of laughter. "Don't you get it? Scully wasn't an accident. She was the end result of two disastrous experiments and almost three years of searching. Mulder's former partners weren't the runners...they were the rejects. And now it's happening again." They still were not getting it. But maybe that was because they had not seen the profile Patterson had created. Mathews looked around the table, mouth drawn in a grim line. "This is Bill Patterson's legacy. This is what he wanted all along." ******************************************* Mulder's cellular woke his partner. He was focusing on her eyes even as he hit the button to connect the call and he saw the instant she remembered what had happened. Her eyes closed and when he reached for her hand she gripped it tightly. His attention was only half on the call as he barked his name but whatever reflexes she was running on were unimpaired by the events of the night before. Her eyes popped back open almost before his muscles locked. She knew. Even before he ended the call and let his hands dangle limply, she knew. Her brother nearly leaped out of his skin when she abruptly rolled to her feet and ran for the stairs. Bill was still standing slowly, forehead creased in confusion and worry when the pipes shuddered and the second floor shower came on full blast. Mulder was already at the kitchen door. Five sets of eyes looked up in surprise and some oddly shaded curiosity he did not have the time to think about. His gaze gathered them together. "Grab your gear." Blank incomprehension followed by bleak resignation swept across Mathews' face. Landers looked over at him for a moment, then back to Mulder. "Which one?" she asked quietly. Mulder felt his face clear itself of expression as he heard footsteps behind him. He turned his shoulders slightly so that Bill Scully was at least part of the conversation rather than overhearing it. It was all he could offer. Disconcertingly familiar blue eyes filled with pain as they read his answer. "The Navy." ******************************************* San Diego Suburb Day 39 7:05 am Early morning fog softened the harsh glare of the emergency lights, giving the scene a pulsating, surreal glow. Blackened timbers poked twisted fingers through the enveloping shroud, the fuzzy edges and muted sounds giving an eerie feeling that the world stopped just past the curb and anyone foolish enough to venture past the lines of dirty canvas hose risked stepping through a doorway into unreality. The acrid stench of dead ash lay heavy and bitter in the nose and throat, carried by the humid warmth still radiating outward and upward from the scorched wood, melted metal and singed concrete. Mulder shivered slightly as he looked back towards the onlookers gathered just past the ring of emergency vehicles and FBI fleet sedans and found them vanished. Swallowed up by a blanket of gray. Artistically, the arsonist had done one hell of a job. Dramatic. Spine-chilling. The video would look great on CNN. Mulder stared at the videocameras and newspaper photographers and felt an atavistic prickle creep past his shoulders and down his spine. This was no visionary. This guy was in it for the glory. The attention. He had purposely broken his own pattern and taken a hell of a chance in order to set this fire close enough to dawn to get exactly the effect he was getting. Damn it. They were giving the bastard exactly what he wanted. And there was not a damn thing an FBI agent could do. Mulder cursed under his breath as the nearest reporter suddenly stared hard at Scully, an expression of dawning surprise and recognition lighting up his face. Before the reporter could do more than lick his figurative chops, Mulder grabbed his partner and dragged her deeper into the blighted ruins and out of the line of sight. Scully just gave him one quick, confused look before turning back to the task at hand. There really was not all that much for them to do. Not here. The Forensic Evidence team knew what they were doing. Scully would be responsible for going over and interpreting the autopsy data, but someone else would bag and tag the bodies. Lewis, Harris and Landers were assisting the local PD with the witness statements. Not something they would normally do, but this was hardly a normal investigation, and it might help with the follow-up interviews. Mike was introducing himself to several members of the task force they had not yet had time to meet. Vickery had spent almost twenty minutes staring dry- eyed at the burned and brutalized corpse of a five year old girl before stalking off to intimidate witnesses with the rest of the gang. Anyone looking at either Mulder or Scully would probably have seen no more than aimless wandering. Profilers rarely visit crime scenes. Definitely not ones this fresh. But the X- Files had always existed in that nebulous position created by having a trained profiler in a standard investigatory capacity. Mulder would worry about reading the witness statements and studying crime scene photos later. For now, he wanted to see what the killer wanted him to see. To feel the ephemeral effect he had risked capture to achieve. His partner stepped through the remains of broken dishes and melted toys, her detached absorption signifying the reconstruction of the last few minutes of the lives of the dead. Two hours later, the bodies had been removed and the morning sun had burned away the last of the fog. Surreal and otherworldly gave way to blunt ugliness. Wet cardboard, soppy clothes, and half-burned rubble were stripped of emotional hugeness in the glare of day and reduced to a pile of splintered wood and garbage. For the agents there was nothing left to see. The ME's department was more than adequate to the autopsies, so Scully decided to accompany Mulder to the Naval base to start a round of preliminary interviews with friends and co-workers of the victims. She left a message for her brother that they would meet him after lunch on the base so that they could go over any information he would be required to go through channels to acquire. Mathews and the others headed back to assist the rest of the task force with compiling the witness statements and initiating standard background research into the history of the house, the family and the neighborhood. They did not expect to find anything, This had all been done eleven times before with no success. But it was all they had. ******************************************** Naval Cafeteria - San Diego Base Day 39 1235 hours Bill would never have noticed except for the fact that he recognized the faces. Nominally they were CRT. God knows what they really did for the government. His boats had transported more than one SEAL team, and these guys had stood out. Elite soldiers or not, SEALs were just as likely as the next guys to be assholes. Not Bravo Team.. The same five soldiers, they mingled easily with the crew , but superficially, never taking it too far, but never being obvious about being exclusive. Generally it just seemed rude to push into their midst. They never got into fights with the crew members and as a matter of principle they left their female shipmates alone. In fact, Bill had never seen any of them exhibit anything less than total respect for women - either military or civilian. Which is why their attitude toward Dana sent alarm bells ringing. Had it been anyone other than his sister, he probably would never have noticed. If it had been anyone other than Bravo Team, he would have ignored it. But unobtrusive observation, whispered comments and the resulting smirks that accompanied the banter just was not this team’s style. Three of them had a table to themselves in the cafeteria and all of them were, as far as he could tell, focused on Dana. Bill frowned. Not that he did not think Dana was not pretty or anything, but her hairstyle looked like it had been approved by J.Edgar himself, her clothes were rigidly businesslike and she looked...well to be honest she looked exhausted and fairly lackluster. Without even trying he could spot three females, two military, one civilian, who beat her hands down in the looks department. The room was filled with intelligent, competent, athletic women. So what did these three SEALs find so fascinating about his sister? He drifted up behind them just in time to hear their commander’s latest comment to his companions, “...kind of like to know whether or not she’s a terrorist before she starts blowing things up.” “Especially boats we happen to be standing on, huh?” “Oh especially…” the voice broke off as Bill abruptly made an impulse decision, pulled out a chair at their table and sat down. He forced himself to take a nonchalant bite of buttered green beans before allowing his gaze to deliberately drift to the Commander’s, then across the room to Dana and back to the men at the table. While none of the men had ever been less than polite, he had never garnered more than a disinterested nod. He had also seen the odd soldier entranced enough, brave enough or stupid enough to pull the same trick he just had. Bravo Team generally reacted politely, but fairly obviously freezing the interloper out of their midst. Not this time. He glanced back over to see if Dana was still in line and then looked back at the intensely silent SEALs. He intercepted a strangely familiar three-way exchange of glances that tickled the back of his mind like a memory .Before he could try to analyze the feeling, the Commander’s eyes narrowed slightly, glanced for a thoughtful moment at his rank insignia and then directed a question at him. “Pretty, isn’t she?” A tip of the head indicated Dana, but it was the inscrutable expression on the soldier’s face that told him that he was being asked a very different question. His thoughts raced as he kept his face blank. He shrugged casually and, hoping to keep the conversation going, framed his answer carefully. “Pretty packaging is a dime a dozen. It’s what lurks beneath the surface of calm waters that will sink the boat.” He was proud of himself for managing a nice ominous sounding nautical metaphor while staying comfortingly vague. Their intensity had his primitive brain screaming in hysteria that maybe he had stepped into something he did not understand, and please God, please don’t let these men think he was threatening them. The unexpectedly cheerful grin that broke across the face of the baby- faced SEAL furthest from him left him with his mouth half open and his fork hanging in the air two seconds longer than it should have. The man slapped the man next to him on the back, ”I told you she was one of ours, Doc. You ever see a red-headed Israeli terrorist?” Bill choked on his squash.. The SEAL commander groaned, then shot Bill a wry smile.” You’d think he’d at least consider the IRA.” Doc protested,” Well look at the way she moves, Cap. Most of the IRA are nothing more than well-armed thugs. Who else trains their women in spec-ops?” “The Canadians.” “Huh?” Both Cap and Doc looked at the smug youngster at the end of the row . “The Canadians. Counter-terrorism. ” Cap looked thoughtful. “JTF2? ” Doc munched on his own dinner as he contemplated ,”I never thought about them... Maybe if they went through training together.” “Dive buddies?” Doc shrugged,” Maybe. Especially if they’re also sleeping together. We’ve never seen that dynamic before. How the hell would we know what it would look like?” Cap mulled that over, then looked at Bill consideringly, “Do you have an opinion, Sir?” Bill decided that his food was out to get him. It had certainly tried to choke him often enough this meal. Opinion? Not one he wanted to share. Dive buddies? Spec ops? Canadian Special Forces? Where the hell were they getting this stuff? It was just Dana. Locating his sister he tried to see whatever it was that these soldiers thought they were seeing. They were just two people getting lunch. Mulder was holding the open glass door for the top shelf of the salad cooler. Bastard. He could have gotten the salad for her too. Instead, he let her stretch up and reach for it herself. The fact that it forced her to brush against him and gave him a straight look down the line of her throat was just too high school for words. Bill almost grunted aloud when Dana nailed her partner with a sardonic tilt of her eyebrow. Yeah, that’s right buddy. Busted. Now what are you going to do? Obviously, all he was going to do was give her a smart-ass grin. Bill watched in satisfaction as Dana said something to him that caused the grin to flicker nervously. Now what? Mulder hesitantly reached out and opened the top door for her again. Bill found himself holding his breath, waiting to see what she would do Stretched out as he was, Mulder was wide open for just about anything she cared to inflict on him. Dana sauntered over and repeated her earlier salad grab, only this time she casually leaned back as she slowly – extremely slowly - returned to her feet. As far as he could tell, she did not touch her partner, but she was so close he had to be feeling the heat coming off her skin. Not to mention the agony of suspense. Bill felt the air in his lungs leave with a whoosh. He did not know if he should be outraged on his sister’s behalf, marvel at her ingenuity or be pissed that she had just tortured and seduced a man in the middle of the goddamn naval cafeteria. These were people an honest to God bunch of elite soldiers suspected of being some foreign type of SEAL? Mulder would be lucky if he could spell his own name right about now. Not to mention the fact that neither of them were paying any attention to anything else around them. The guns? But these SEALs would have seen CIA or other federal agents before. So what the hell was it? He found that he could not force himself to ask. Not just yet. He wanted to see. He wanted to know. No... He needed to know. He was not blind. He had seen his sister slipping away from him. The awkward visits. The abrupt pauses in conversation. The cancelled holidays. Little by little, year by year, Dana was slipping away as completely by her own design as by the cancer which had almost stolen her life. He needed to see what it was they were seeing. He managed a more or less good- natured smirk. ” Wouldn’t want to spoil your fun.” The SEAL gave him a long look then winked and put his hand to his ear. Bill had seen the discreet ear-piece and tiny mike, he just had not realized there was anyone on the other end.. “Yo, Devon. You wanna go rattle his cage for us?” The SEAL listened for a moment, ” A little bit dangerous I think. Let ‘em see who you are.” Doc threw a wry glance at his commander.” You sure that’s wise?” Cap widened his eyes with mock surprise,” You think we’ll get a reaction?” Doc sighed. Cap glanced past him to the third SEAL at the table,” Badger?” Expecting another grin, Bill was brought up short by the analytical expression that settled into the young man’s eyes. Staring into that cool gaze he was abruptly reminded that this was a blooded CRT specialist and not some eighteen year old middie shipping his first open water. Badger cocked his head slightly,” Hard to tell. Depends on whether they’re sleeping together.” “You’re joking, right?” The words were out before Bill could stop them. “Why?” Bill could not help his glance over at the line-up. ”You mean that peek-a-boo stunt at the lunch counter? They’ve been doing shit like that all morning. There’s never any follow- through. I can’t decide if they keep dropping out of character or whether it’s just the normal shit with a twist because she’s female. They are way beyond just about anything I’ve ever seen, in or out of the field-but they seem to be focused pretty damn tightly on each other. I don’t think they’re part of a larger team, but...I just don’t know.” These SEALs had spent the whole morning chasing after Dana and her partner? God. For all he knew, this was their day off and they were spending it making sure that the Navy ships had a home port to come home to. He drew in a deep breath, considered his options, then tried to give in gracefully. “She’s an FBI agent. That’s her partner.” Three pairs of eyes slammed into him. Badger started to grin,” HRT? No shit? I guess that explains it.” He looked at the man next to him who was still frowning and nudged him. Doc started, then met Cap’s eyes,” It could be possible. ” ”But?” ”We know better than anyone that who you are isn’t always what you are.” HRT. Bill frowned. Hostage Response Team. All-purpose fast-response teams under federal jurisdiction if he remembered his memos correctly. Quasi-military, generally bad-ass Special Agents with a license to kick butt, take names and otherwise shoot to kill. The image of Dana as one of their number was both hilarious and terrifying. At least, the thought of tiny Dana in SWAT black surrounded by similarly dressed agents twice her size should have been funny. But none of these men were laughing...and that was scaring the hell out of him. They were acting not only as if it were possible, but that it was actually an answer that made some sort of sense to them. That thought was more than scary, it was flat out horrifying. Because if that was true... He had made a terrible mistake. “They’re not HRT. She’s a doctor.” He might as well have been speaking ancient Mongolian. It was not that they did not believe him. They believed that he believed. They just thought he was wrong. Really wrong. As in “you just fucked up and sank your battleship” wrong. “What else?” Cap’s voice was unexpectedly hard and flat. Navy trained reflexes nearly had him calling the SEAL out for his tone of voice before common sense caught up with it. That and the fact that he probably did not outrank the SEAL. Annoyance held him silent long enough to get a really good look at the man's eyes, then his hind brain went into polite, Navy authorized hysterics. Despite where they were, who they were, shit...who he was, he suddenly had a gut deep feeling that he had just said something...ill advised. "Who are they?" Cap's voice was soft and excruciatingly polite. Bill tried to pull back, preparing to stand up. His mind screamed for him to run. To escape. Badger’s hand was suddenly wrapped around his wrist, fingers and expression equally hard. Bill stared at the hand dumbly, then up at the face of a child with the eyes of a killer. He had not even seen him move. Cap leaned forward. “Take a good look at those two, Commander Scully. You see how she turned her head when he came up behind her with the coffee. There are over one hundred people in this room and she knew it was him from ten feet away. You see those unnecessary glances at each other? The ones where the other isn’t looking back? Do you see how they check out everyone approaching the other’s back? None of these are standard issue FBI reflexes, Sir.” He tried. He honest to god tried. But all he saw was his sister. Helplessly he looked back at the SEAL, unaware that his frustration and confusion were writing themselves clearly across his face. “I’m beginning to get a very bad feeling about this. So I’ll ask one more time. Who are they?” Bill closed his eyes, suddenly tired of it all. Tired of the melodrama, the heightened sense of personal drama that everyone seemed to be playing with these days. He was just damn tired. He wanted his wife, he wanted his son and he wanted his life back. Because he did not know the rules to this one...and he very much thought he was losing. “They’re nobody special. Believe me. He’s a burnt out profiler who was shuffled off to his own little department in the basement where he chases little green men.” The grip on his wrist tightened and Cap’s face closed over. “Say again.” “He’s a fuck-up. He chases mutants and monsters and ET . He sees shadowy conspiracies, talks about confidential government informants like he’s chasing an extraterrestrial Watergate and drags my sister around the country because the Bureau needs someone to sit on him if he gets too nuts. You guys think they’re so great? Take a look at their medical records. Someone should have taught them how to duck.” “Your sister.” If anything, Cap's voice flattened further. Bill winced as Badger’s hand tightened again. He could feel a tell tale tingling in his fingertips and he expected that they were probably turning blue. “She’s not a threat. She’s just a doctor.” Doc rolled his eyes, ” You are a fucking moron, you know that?” Cap was cursing under his breath as he fumbled with his ear-piece,” Shit. I knew I should have waited until we had an ID before trying this stunt. Doc, remind yourself to shoot me next time I get bored. Damn it!” He abandoned stealth and openly adjusted the tiny mike. “Devon, this is Cap. Abort. I say again, abort. His head shot around as he tried to locate his missing soldier. He spoke into the mike again. “CJ? Do you see Devon? Can you intercept him before he makes contact?” Bill stared at the three SEALs who were suddenly acting like this was a live-fire test exercise. “What the hell’s the problem? She’s not going to shoot him” Cap flinched as he got something that looked like bad news from the other end of the headset. “Shit. Okay this is what... negative. Whatever you do, do not under any circumstances approach the targets. I mean it CJ. I don’t care what goes down. Confirmed target ID as Agents Mulder and Scully of the FBI. Copy?” Bill froze. Mulder? Sudden chills that had nothing to do with the air conditioning wrapped icy fingers around the base of his spine. How the hell did the SEAL know that name. His name and not his face? What the hell had he stumbled into? This was beyond cloak and dagger. This was insane. ”Look, I don’t know where you guys get your melodrama medication, but these are two FBI agents. FBI, get it? They’re not going to shoot anyone or blow anything up, so what is the problem? ” Cap bit each word off slowly, as if trying to explain the obvious to an especially annoying and not-too-bright child. “ I'm not worried about them. I...shit...will you sit still? You're going to start drawing attention soon. Jeez. That's the problem. We have no legitimate reason to be talking to those two and if the people watching them get the idea that we're hooking up with them...for any reason at all, they are going to start asking questions. Those are questions we can't afford to have asked right now. " Bill just gaped. ” You expect me to believe this bullshit? Why the hell wouldn't you have thought of this sooner?” Cap snarled at him,” Because they are supposed to be in DC and believe me when I tell you they do not look like the photos I have in my...shit...heads up.” All three men snapped their attention back to center stage. Catching a glimpse of a face he recognized, Cap’s reasoning became crystal clear – and so did his concerns about the potential for an eye-catching scene.. Devon was the one member of Bravo Team who tended to play least in sight. He was good at effacing himself, but when he was not paying attention to how his personality overflowed or when he had it purposely turned on, he was one of the most aggressively magnetic men Bill had ever met. He was the sort of man you instinctively tried not to introduce to your happily married wife let alone your unmarried sister. Reflexively he reached up and fingered the thinning spot on the top of his head until he noticed Badger’s quick grin. Shit. Mulder was likely to shoot the man just on general principal. Devon was a Hollywood director’s wet-dream. The stereotypical special forces soldier. Tall, lean, well- muscled, the man had the grace of some large jungle cat, the eyes of a wolf and the dangerous edge of a man who walked the shadows for truth, justice and the dark side of honor. The fact that he really was all those things just made it worse. Dana did not have a chance. Mulder spotted him first. He studied him for a long moment before doing one of the most unbelievably stupid things Bill had ever seen a straight male do. He nudged her shoulder to get her attention and directed her gaze across the room. Glancing at three dumbstruck soldiers he concluded that he was not the only one who thought Mulder was an idiot. Maybe he really was gay. The minute Devon saw that he had Dana’s attention he began a slow stalk forward. Bill saw his sister’s eyes widen in shock at the slow heated prowl. Mulder’s eyes bounced twice between his partner and the man making his way across the room before he stood abruptly and grabbed his coffee cup. His sudden move startled Dana into taking a quick glance at her partner’s face. Amazingly, the man gave her a wry grin, tapped his finger against his teeth for some reason before holding up his coffee cup in enquiry. Bill could see the back of her head shake a negative answer and then she turned her attention back towards Devon. For one brief second, Mulder’s face altered as he stared down at his partner. The cast of his features told them absolutely...nothing. All expression had slipped away and Bill shuddered slightly as he found himself remembering comments about Mulder being only “mostly sociopathic”. The three SEALs stiffened as Mulder turned slightly to meet Devon’s gaze head on and Bill’s jaw nearly hit the table when the agent’s jacket accidentally fell open as he turned away from the table. Devon got a good solid glimpse of his weapon. Then Mulder completed the turn and walked away. Jesus Christ, the idiot had just threatened a SEAL. Fuck. Should he be giving Mulder points for guts or deducting them from his IQ? “CJ? You still got Mulder? Keep an eye on him…we can’t see him from this angle.” He relayed CJ's answer to the others,” He’s about eight tables back. Direct line of sight.” Cap looked at Bill, "Once everyone is nice and relaxed and we've established the fact that this is just another attempted pick-up, would you be willing to play big brother and tell Devon to scram?" Bill studied his sister, then nodded. The thought of this little set-up was beginning to make him sick to his stomach. As soon as he had seen Devon, he had expected a little flirting, a lot of macho posturing – he had not expected his sister’s jerk of a partner to run off and leave her unprotected. He hoped to God that Devon knew how to tone things down when he was not serious. He would be damned if he was going to stand by and let his sister get hurt. Devon visibly turned on the charm. Dana initially looked startled and a little uncomfortable. Whatever he was saying, however, was obviously working. If he asked her for a date, Bill thought grimly, he would have the shore patrol arrest him. He was in the middle of a nice fantasy sequence involving broken bilge pumps and a sealed room filling with water when Cap abruptly contacted CJ, asking him how Mulder was reacting. Whatever answer he got obviously worried him because his next look pinned Badger. “Well?” Badger raised his palms in confusion, ”I don’t know. He had her for the first ten minutes.” He glanced at Doc to confirm this interpretation. Doc nodded agreement. “Devon notice?” “I think so. I don’t think he knows what he did wrong though.” “Well shit. Did he move in too fast, move too close?” Badger just shrugged,” He didn’t do anything. I don’t...what was that?” ”What?” “She just...there, she did it again. See it?” The earpiece squawked. Cap snarled. Doc’s voice was flat, ”Let me guess. Mulder’s on the move.” Bill decided to pick on Badger seeing as how the kid was still attached to his wrist. He poked the SEAL on the back of the hand until he dragged his attention aft. “What’s going on?” Badger glared, then gave in when Bill glared back. “ We’re about to get that reaction that we wanted.” “I got that part. What happened?” “She made him. Now she’s signaling her partner.” Jesus, it was like pulling teeth. “How?” Badger jerked his jaw in Dana’s direction. “Check out her left hand. Also, when she turned to bring her right arm into Mulder’s field of vision, she deliberately opened his line of sight for a kill shot. ” Bill mulled that over. “Does Devon know that?” Badger rolled his eyes. Obviously a dumb question. It took a minute for him to find the signal the SEALs had spotted. Then he had to wonder if they were just being paranoid. Her left arm was draped comfortably across her chest as she casually leaned back in her chair and she was absently moving her fingers in a lazy circular motion on the side of her right upper arm. Otherwise, she appeared relaxed and attentively listening to the man flirting with her. A hazy memory drifted up from the recesses of his brain. Circular motion. What was it about circular motion. A circle? A wheel? A wheel turning...Bill’s mind stuttered to a halt and he quickly reevaluated his earlier assessment of his sister’s likely actions. He coughed lightly. “Cap?” The SEAL ignored him. “Commander.” He laced his voice with all the command steel he could muster. Cap’s head snapped around even as his eyes flashed angrily. Bill swallowed.” She thinks he’s a serial killer.” Two more heads snapped around and Bill had the ungodliest urge to laugh at the flummoxed expressions on all three faces. Jeez, where to start? “Several years ago Dana was in Philadelphia on assignment and got picked up by this guy. She ended up getting a tattoo at the same place this guy had just had one done.” He was losing them, but this time they needed to know what he was seeing. “ This guy...he turned out to be a psychotic. Claimed his tattoo talked to him...told him to kill women. He almost killed Dana.” Funny, but he had thought they would look more shocked. They were definitely waiting for a punch- line,” His tattoo was on his right bicep and hers is an oraborous.” Badger blinked, “A what?” “A snake eating it’s tail. A circle. And the reason they’re here in San Diego is because we think there is someone stalking my family. “ The penny dropped. “Mulder said something about some types of serial killers liking to make contact with the investigators, insert themselves into the investigation. I think she thinks this is it...him.” Cap drew in a sharp breath, “Okay. This is moving from insane to a fucking goatscrew. We’ll have...” “Too late, Cap.” Bill was astonished that no one had intervened yet. Surely Cap was not that worried about some government spy connecting the whole team to Dana and her partner. Was he? Mulder, meanwhile, had bludgeoned his way into the soon to be crime scene with all the finesse of a sledgehammer. Slamming two cups of coffee down on the table he smiled and shrugged as if in apology for forgetting to get a third. Devon reared back, then came slowly to his feet. Even from where he was standing, Bill could almost taste the testosterone rising. If the sudden male posturing on Mulder’s part was a surprise, the fact that Dana had not cut him off at the knees was a bigger one. He supposed she had to wait until after they caught their suspect, but Christ, if this was how Mulder acted in the field, he was astonished they were still partners. His jaw ached in phantom memory of the one time he had pushed Dana out of the way in order to confront a neighborhood bully. At least she had dropped the bully first before she had nailed him. Cap looked over at Doc and raised an eyebrow, “I’d be impressed if I wasn’t too busy being appalled.” “You think we could convince BuPers to overlook that pesky double x chromosome and let us adopt them?” Badger smiled, eyes oddly remote. “ The Assassin and the Dog. ” Doc looked amused. "I take it he's the yapping mutt?" Well, okay. Bill could agree with that. From his body language the agent was being condescending, arrogant and pompous as hell. Dana seemed to be trying to play peacemaker and apologize for her partner at the same time. Meanwhile, the two men were becoming more and more intently focused on each other and both appeared to have forgotten about Dana completely. “But while you’re kicking him from the front...” Just as Devon moved around the table, Mulder stepped forward as though he were about to wade into the waiting SEAL. Devon stiffened, then surged to meet him. “She’s cutting your throat from behind.” Devon’s second step placed him squarely between the two partners. Without hesitation, Dana stepped right into his back and shoved her automatic into his lower spine. Bill had not even seen her draw the gun. Neither, he realized, had anyone else. He ignored that uncomfortably accurate observation and continued to survey the other cafeteria patrons. There were a few curious glances, but no one was pointing, or running or screaming. Now what? “Commander Scully?” Cap’s tone was light, almost conversational, but Bill’s spine stiffened automatically at the note underlying the words. “Commander?” “Would you be so kind as to go rescue my SEAL from your sister?” *************************************** The trip to the SDPD headquarters passed in strained silence. At least this time, it was not him that Scully was pissed at. Unfortunately, the one she was frothing over was steadily digging himself deeper. It was just a matter of time before the hole got big enough to start sucking in innocent bystanders. Mulder contemplated whether or not warning big brothers of imminent catastrophic meltdown by a younger sister fell into FBI jurisdiction under its Weapons of Mass Destruction mandate. If only the idiot would quit looking at her. Mulder himself could clearly see his face in the rearview mirror every time he turned his head. Unfortunately, Scully could not. Of course, in the mood she was in, the fact that Bill seemed more confused than over- protective probably would not save him. After unexpectedly crashing their impromptu collar, Bill had slapped their prisoner on the back like they were old friends and made a point of reintroducing Scully as his sister. She had not missed the emphasis or the sudden switch from Devon, Stud on the Prowl to gender-neutral Friend of the Family. Mulder would have thought that it was just some Navy tradition about not scoring on your shipmate’s sister if he had not seen the sudden flash of shock in the man’s eyes and Bill’s awkward glances across the room. Devon had taken polite leave of Scully, then - making some throwaway comment about having a drink later - left the cafeteria. Mulder noticed that he had left from the door opposite whoever it was that Bill had glanced at. Whether they had simply been an object of curiosity, the subject of a bet or something more sinister, it would have to wait. Three more victims had been found in the ashes of this morning's fire and everyone connected to the investigation had been called in to sort through the data. The command center was a madhouse with boxes of crime scene reports, photos, background checks of the victims, their friends, co- workers and immediate family. Added to that were all the copious other bits of paperwork that were part and parcel of an active murder investigation. Mulder and Scully merged into the ebb and flow of the bodies swarming the halls of the field office. Bill had a bit more trouble as he dodged boxes, elbows and feet. Just as he was reaching his personal boiling point, he felt a painfully tight grip just below his left bicep. His lips curled in rage. He was getting damned tired of people leaving bruises on his arms today. He whirled toward the unfortunate transgressor, almost glad to have an excuse to let lose some of his pent up frustration and came face to face with the grim features of his sister's partner. "Don't." Mulder's command was soft, but Bill shivered anyway. The tone was enough like Cap's had been the moment he realized who the FBI agents were that the similarity shocked the Navy commander away from the edge of his anger. His lips tightened and he glared with hostility at the former profiler, breathing harsh as he pulled air in through his nose. Mulder just shook his head, eyes dark with warning. "You are in THEIR way, Commander Scully. And their nightmares would give your nightmares, nightmares. So...don't." Then he walked away and was swallowed easily by the chaos. Bill just stared after him, unexpectedly fighting the shocking urge to sit down on the floor and cry. He did not understand this shit. He did not understand, and he did not belong. And more people were going to die. The noise level in the hallway seemed to double, then double again and the people dashing to and fro disintegrated into a confusing mass of colors and unfamiliar faces. They jabbered. They ran. They dashed past him in a flurry of business he did not know how to comprehend. He could command a battleship through raging waters, red lights and alarms blaring, men racing to and fro, but he understood that world. He knew those patterns to his bones, they welcomed him, they supported him, they told him what to do. The chaos was only chaos to the outsider. Bill shivered as he suddenly wondered if this was what it felt like to be alone. *************************** He finally managed to track his sister down in one of the conference rooms. Some familiar faces dotted the crowd of FBI agents, police officers, arson investigators and the other specialists who made up the investigatory task force. Dana and Mulder were a tiny island in a sea of people, oddly isolated by the sideways glances and openly assessing looks they were receiving by the rest of the team. Some of the looks were curious, the owners obviously unfamiliar with either the agents or their reputations but sensitive to the undercurrents around them. Others were calculating, narrowed eyed appraisals that searched for something Bill could not begin to guess at. A few people looked dismayed, others affronted. One or two just looked on in contempt. It was the fact that almost everyone in the room had an opinion that shocked him. Most of these people should not even have known who Dana and her partner were. And those that did know, most should not have cared. Not this directly. Not this personally. But they did. Uneasily, Bill tried to wrap personal experience around the fact that his sister and her partner meant enough to these people for them to have opinions. He tried to tell himself it was just the case. Murmured comments drifted around the agents and Bill's head shot up as a trick of acoustics suddenly thrust several pieces of overlapping conversations his way. "...heard about him...absolutely crazy..." "...not much better than a killer himself..." "..attacked an AD? You're kidding..." Bill watched warily as his sister's shoulders twitched and tightened with each muttered comment. He noticed the rest of the X-Files team throwing concerned glances toward the pair and Vickery was glaring furiously around her causing several of the task force members nearest her to take cautious albeit confused steps away from her. Harris looked frustrated, Lewis had her head down and although Mathews seemed oblivious standing next to the lead arson investigator, a muscle in his jaw twitched. Finally one comment surged up out of the roiling masses. "...goddamn sociopath needs to be kept on a leash..." Dana's head shot up and her head whipped around. Bill was tensed for an explosion and started pushing his way through the crowd toward her just as he heard Mulder's amused voice. "The grapevine seems to be slipping, Scully. They forgot that I'm supposed to be Patterson's *domesticated* sociopath." Dana's head swiveled slowly as she peeled her lips back from her teeth. “Gee Mulder, did he manage to paper-train you too?” Her voice was hard-edged and mocking and Bill sucked in a quick breath. Jesus. He stared at her in shock. He did not think he liked Mulder anymore than these cops seemed too, but he had thought…he would have had to be blind not to realize that on some level the man cared about her. He never would have thought she could be so carelessly, deliberately cruel. His eyes slid toward her partner. Surprisingly, no hurt showed on that emotionless face. Bill was mentally congratulating the agent for his sang-froid when something heated flashed in Mulder’s eyes and he leaned in slightly. ”I suddenly had the oddest vision of you whacking me over the head with a newspaper while I peed on your living room floor. “ “You better have missed the carpet, Mulder. I just finished getting the blood out.” Bill almost stumbled as he forgot to watch where he was going. “So what do you think it means , Agent Scully?” Mulder’s voice was low and provocative “It means you will resist any urge to start marking territory unless you want to get stuck with the dry-cleaning bill.” her voice was dry, but the look in her eyes... What the hell was going on here? That was not what it looked like. Well, maybe in part. He had finally picked up on the fact that half their jokes were edged with some serious sexual innuendo...and they seemed to do it just for fun. He was beginning to think they did it just to mess with heads of those around them. But that look. He did not think he had ever seen that look before. She was…what? Daring him? Warning him? About to go screaming down the warpath tearing steaming chunks from beating hearts with bared teeth and bloody hands? Just exactly who was holding who back? The eyes clouding over with angry darkness were not Mulder’s.Christ. This was not Dana. This was not the sister he knew. This woman, he realized slowly, scared the shit out of him. Bill glanced around quickly to see if any of the cops were reacting to this-odd- exchange by the pair of FBI agents in their midst. He was floored to see that no one else had noticed. What the fuck was wrong with these people? Didn’t they see? He suddenly realized that only her first comment and none of his had been uttered loud enough for the rest of the room to hear. And looking at them, he had a disorientating vision of what the rest of the room was seeing. They saw a tiny woman with a mocking smile and a hard angry look in her eyes staring down an expressionless man leaning in just close enough to intimidate with his closeness, his height and his eyes. These cops thought they were taking shots at each other. And Jesus, they thought Dana was the victim. They did not have a clue. He flat out surprised the hell out of himself when he started laughing. It was too bloody ridiculous. His sister. Her partner. The melodrama. The astonished looks on both their faces just made it worse. Finally he looked his sister in the eye and managed to gasp,” They’re idiots, but they don’t deserve to die.” The confused look on Dana’s face set him off again, but the thing that kicked him in the gut was the absolute blinding grin that swept over Mulder’s face as he stared down at his irritated partner, then glanced over at Bill, sharing his appreciation of the dark humor in the situation. Jesus, the man had emotions after all. It was also, Bill suddenly realized, a grin that no one else in the room could see. Jesus. After eight years, he finally got the joke. It was not on him, and it was not funny. Not in a million years. Like a whisper he heard the echo from another conversation. A conversation he was finally beginning to understand. *While you’re kicking him from the front, she’s cutting your throat from behind.* The Assassin and her Dog. May God have mercy on them all. ******************************************* The meeting ran about three hours. The X- Files team was introduced to the rest of the task force. There was a bit of an uproar when Mulder presented the updated profile, but Bill was surprised to find that after the yelling died down, everyone more or less started to discuss how the new profile impacted the already gathered evidence. Dana headed off to review the preliminary autopsy data while Mulder and the others headed off to do whatever it was that they did. He was left standing holding a copy of his handouts from the meeting and nothing to do. He supposed that he should head back to the base. If the agents needed him for anything, they would let him know. Mostly his job was simply to co-ordinate any resource requests the task force might have for the Navy. But when it came right down to it, the FBI did not really need their help. He tried to leave. He really did. But curiosity and a desperate need to be part of the solution had him studying crime photos and looking over shoulders. Somehow, he found himself quietly bringing coffee and sandwiches to the exhausted investigators. The assistants being run off their feet as they organized the papers spewing from fax machines and photocopiers just looked at him gratefully as he plucked boxes of food from their hands and headed around the room. He was about to gather up a load of donuts when the assistant suddenly grabbed two plates and hurriedly searched for two specific donuts before sending him off. He assumed the donuts were reserved for her boss, so he was astonished when the woman quietly slid them onto the table beside Mulder. The agent was so absorbed with what he was doing that he never even looked up as crumpled napkins and empty bottles were replaced with fresh ones. Bill just stood rooted to the floor as the woman headed off to the rest of her job, not seeming a whit put out by the fact that she had not even received a thank-you. Bill watched as Dana suddenly appeared next to her partner, face buried in an autopsy report. Sitting beside Mulder she absently grabbed one of the donuts - her favorite, Bill suddenly realized- and started relaying some incomprehensible data from the report that probably made perfect sense to her partner. Mulder did not even appear to be listening, but when Dana picked up the second donut and held it out, he took it. For one brief instant, he had the terrifying urge to run over and dash the sweets from their hands and pour the iced tea down the nearest sink. Was the woman's gesture a kindness or a plot? The fact that she cared about two agents out of hundreds was something he would think about later. It was his newly minted paranoid impulses that shocked him. Almost as much as they terrified him. Was this how they lived? For the next three hours Bill wandered through the center, helping where he could and learning with grim sobriety just how much work went into a murder investigation. It all looked so easy from the outside. As he watched one agent after another painstakingly sift through pages of data, lists and witness statements he was suddenly struck, not by their failures, but by their success. How in the hell did they ever manage to fit all the pieces together. How did hundreds of people ever manage to communicate all those tiny pieces of seemingly unrelated information across departments? How did anyone know what was relevant to the person sitting beside him? But they did it. And that, he realized, was an amazing feat all in itself. He had been unconsciously looking for Mulder for almost an hour when he found him by himself in the lunch room. A couch and chair arrangement had been placed in the corner near a TV and he supposed that this was to provide the agents with a place to relax and talk. He was surprised to find that Mulder sat with his head tipped back, throat vulnerable, eyes closed. The uncharacteristic defenselessness caught him off guard until the glint of reflected light warned him that Mulder was watching him through lowered lashes. He’s letting me see him like this. Bill thought abruptly. Why? Without a word, Bill moved to the opposite chair and sat carefully, never taking his eyes off the motionless agent. Why did this man do anything? He remembered Melissa commenting once that Mulder had the talent and training to mindfuck a man five ways from Sunday. That was the word she had used. He had been so shocked at the unexpected obscenity he had forgotten to ask her what she meant. Now he wondered. That his pose was deliberate, he did not doubt. But again, why? In his confusion, he found himself reverting to training. When in doubt, attack. “ You attracted the attention of some of our SEALs today.” The agent frowned without opening his eyes, ”We noticed.” Comeback? Defense? Bill dropped the second can of root beer on the table close enough for Mulder to grab. “They had a rather colorful way of describing you two.” Sighing theatrically, Mulder opened his eyes and leaned forward just long enough to snag the soda. Popping the top he took a swig and gestured broadly for Bill to bring it on. Bill considered the half sneer on his face and realized that the agent was waiting for something stereotypically obscene. “The Assassin and her Dog.” For a split second Mulder looked genuinely startled. The sneer faded and for a long moment his face lost expression as his gaze turned inward. Bill resisted the temptation to pat himself on the back for recognizing that fact. He wanted to know why. “Why what?” He must have said that aloud. “Why did they call you that?” Mulder took a swig of soda and eyed Bill for a long thoughtful moment before swallowing,” Because it’s a surprisingly accurate description all things considered.” Anger and fear churned in conflicting directions, but he managed to keep his voice level as he glared hard at the man who his sister seemed to think knew her better than anyone else in the world," My sister is not an assassin.” Mulder stared at him and for a second, Bill was afraid that he was going to disagree with him. Then Mulder sighed, “No, she’s not.” Considering that he had not believed it, Bill was surprised at the level of relief he was feeling. “She’s not a cold blooded killer for hire any more than I’m some love sick puppy trailing along in her wake.” Mulder seemed genuinely amused by Bill’s wide-eyed silence, and his voice was gently mocking,” What? You didn’t think I’d admit it?” He eyed Bill with a sudden keen-eyed gaze that abruptly reminded him that this was a fully trained, extremely intelligent federal agent. “or you didn’t think I knew the rumors?” Bill wondered if they were talking about the same thing. His throat was dry as he forced the question,” Then how is that statement accurate?” Mulder was quiet for so long that Bill was beginning to think he was refusing to answer. Then he realized that the agent was just trying to decide if he really wanted to know. And then it was too late. The Assassin and her Dog. What was a dog anyway? A loyal friend. A faithful guardian. A loud-mouthed early warning system. Bill frowned as he tried to correlate these definitions with his already constructed impression of Mulder as a self- indulgent self-centered obsessive loser ready to run off half-cocked at the earliest opportunity. They did not fit. Absurdly, his mind conjured the image of a grinning canine as it joyfully threw itself single-mindedly into the hunt for nothing more than the sheer joy of the chase. It was not bloodlust, and when necessary, the most deadly of the K-9 canines could be brought back to the job at hand with the lightest of restraints. Nothing more than a command from their handlers. They even came willingly. For love. That is what they were made to do. To hunt. And under control, their abilities focused to a deadly degree. He recalled a German Shepherd he had known as a child. The dog had let himself be mauled by childish hands with no more than a slight growl if the games became too painful. Yet that same animal would have instantly torn the throat from anyone stupid enough to threaten what was under his protection. Passionately, in sheer rage. Nothing cold about it. Intelligent, passionate, protective...and at his best when one half of a working whole. So far from the sad-eyed hound dog mooning about that Mulder’s earlier words had conjured that he wanted to laugh. Because the man was right. That was the first image that had come to mind. The pathetic image of a man trailing along behind the object of his desires, desperate for any crumbs of affection she might throw his way. “That really isn’t why you work with her.” The words were wondering, spoken before he could censure them. A statement , not a question. Mulder just tilted his head in mute enquiry. “You don’t...you don’t expect her to save you.” "Every day, in every way." The words were quiet, accepting. They held none of the self-pity, embarrassment or desperate need he would have expected. Meeting the agent's calm gaze, he realized that for Mulder, they were nothing more than a statement of fact. A grim acceptance of very real dangers. Seeing none of the emotional histrionics he had expected, Bill felt a chill as he finally admitted - if only to himself - that maybe it was a two way commitment. All this time he had had some twisted image in his head that Mulder was this battered and broken velveteen rabbit waiting for the love of a child to make him whole. To make him real. And somewhere in the depths of his heart he had truly believed that no matter how much Dana insisted that this man loved her-as a partner, as a friend - that it really could not be a valid form of love. That it had to be a twisted form of lust or obsession and need, but nothing more. So what if he was willing to die for her. That was the easy part. He found himself in a position of trying to define an emotion that he was not absolutely certain he understood. You loved or you were in love. And each form of love came with certain responsibilities. Certain obligations. What kind of love was this? Did he truly want to understand? And if Mulder was the Dog, was Dana the Assassin? He was ashamed to realize that he no longer knew the answer. Could not begin to guess. He could guess more about the man in front of him simply from his confirmation of a nickname than he could guess about the sister he had known all his life. His next words were an angry challenge. “How cold does she get when she kills?” If Mulder was startled by the question, he did not show it. His eyes were sad, but Bill had a sneaking suspicion that the sadness was for Bill himself. For his ignorance. And maybe, for the fact that Mulder knew the answer to the question. “What makes you think he has any idea?” Bill choked and dropped his root beer. How long had she been standing there? His eyes narrowed as he studied the lanky body sprawled out on the sofa across from him. And how long had he known she was there? He watched as Mulder stretched his arms out along the back of the sofa and lengthened his body. If anything, the move had the duel effect of increasing his apparent vulnerability and strengthening a certain canine resemblance. Bill watched open-mouthed as, ignoring her brother completely, Dana paced into the room and stopped when her knees hit her partner’s outstretched legs. Bill had just enough of an angle to see most of her face in three-quarter profile. “The Assassin?” Her tone was dry and Bill searched carefully for any sign of hurt. Mulder just grinned up at her. “Woof.” Dana collapsed onto the sofa beside him and snagged the soda can in his hand. When his hand went with it, her right hand darted out and danced fingernails across his stomach. Hissing like an offended cat, Mulder jerked forward, arms and knees retracting in instinctive protection. Dana ducked as his left arm swept forward and came to her feet clutching his root beer triumphantly. Mulder glared at her narrow-eyed,” Cold, Agent Scully. Very cold.” Dana downed the last of the soda, then smiled provocatively ” I thought dogs liked to have their bellies scratched.” “Well actually that wasn’t the itch I would...” She mock-fired a pistol at him with thumb and forefinger. He smiled up at her lazily. Open-mouthed, Bill could only watch as the stranger inhabiting his sister's body smiled back. Christ. No wonder people thought that they were sleeping together. And suddenly he realized what they had done. In one fell swoop they had taken a potentially hurtful topic and turned it into a joke. A private joke. One that excluded everyone else in the room. Even the sexual overtones were an aggressive slap in the face. A blatant narrowing of the universe to a world of two and a rejection of everyone else. It was an obvious exception to normal conduct, an exception that they granted to each other and no one else. He wondered if they even realized that they did it. *************************************** Scully was exhausted. Her eyes hurt. Her feet hurt. Hell, her hair hurt. And Vickery was missing. Her watch had stopped , but she vaguely recalled eating something she thought was supposed to be supper. The sky was black outside the windows so all she knew was that it was late. Mulder and Mathews were working on one of the earlier profiles. Mathews still had some reservations about the new profile and the argument had ceased to interest her two hours ago. Deciding that if she was ever going to see her bed before sunrise that she would have to get the wagon trains rolling, she headed out to gather up the rest of the team. Landers was the first she found and the two women sent Lewis off to find Harris. Vickery was harder to locate. It was the music that finally led them to her. They found her in the gymnasium, lights off, the floor lit by the light of the full moon shining through the windows. The eerie music throbbing through the floor was a haunting, aching wound to the soul. In the cries of the woodwinds Scully could hear the screams of children and the groans of the brass laid bare the agony of a parent's worst fears. Scully thought at first that the dancer danced naked. Then she realized that the cast of the body suit so precisely matched the hue of her skin that she might as well have worn nothing at all. Bare feet pounded across polished floorboards as muscled limbs twisted and swayed, contorting with the music in a partnership that seemed to drive the dancer to the heights of sanity...and then pushed her over the edge. Landers was silent at Scully's back and when Lewis trotted up with Harris in tow, the male agent took one look at the dancer and paled. Then he rapidly beat a hasty retreat, wanting nothing to do with the rage pulsating in that room. But Scully could not look away and Landers and Lewis both fell into step behind her as she slipped out of the hallway and into the shadows. The music seemed to wrap itself around them. Not in welcome, but in screams of outrage demanding to be heard. They stood in silence even after the dancer folded in on herself and the last strains faded into the moonlight. Her panting breaths were harsh with emotion and when she finally raised her head, a silver web of tears glowed on her face. Whatever the nature of this dance, this ritual, it was private. Defensive anger momentarily twisted the dancer's face as she registered the intrusion. She looked away briefly, then rose and walked toward them. By the time she reached them, Agent Vickery was in control and the dancer was gone. Something flared in the agent's eyes as she met Scully's searching gaze, but she offered no explanation, no piece of herself until Scully's soft, "Satinka?" reached her ears. She flinched. For herself, Scully was unsure why she was pushing the issue. Nor was she sure why she had used the agent's first name. But something about the lost dancer seemed to demand it. Vickery drew a sharp breath, then let it out slowly. Her voice was low, reluctant, but she actually answered the implied question. "It is an old...ritual. A dance of mourning. Of grief." Of anger. Satinka flexed her hands and her face was suddenly alive with the same rage Scully had seen this morning as the agent had viewed the heat blackened remains of a five year old child. The dancer abruptly turned fierce eyes towards them, "I dance so that I do not forget." Scully understood the distinction. Not to remember...but so that she did not forget. The red haired agent studied violet eyes which slipped away from the three women facing her. Fellow agents, Scully realized, that she did not expect to understand or appreciate what they were being shown. In a world of her own, even when in a crowded room. Was it as simple as that? Scully hesitated for just a moment, then remembered how she had felt when she had fled to her partner's apartment the night they had returned. A world of their own, but at least a world they shared together. Her words responded to the need, the hunger she saw lurking in the dancer's eyes. Such a simple gift to give. It did not take from that which she shared with Mulder. It grew from it. For the first time she felt as if she had finally come home. This was truth. They could do more than simply survive, she and Mulder. Their partnership had more to offer their world than strength and protection for two agents alone. Their partnership engendered a responsibility they had yet to claim. That knowledge coiled in her eyes and threaded steel through her voice as she held out her hand. " Must you dance alone?" Shock. Fear. Then tentative hope. Violet eyes searching for the acceptance that she did not expect to find. The hope that she did not have to face the demons all on her own. Finding some measure of the security Scully had always found in Mulder's eyes by knowing that he saw her, who she was, and the world that she lived within. She was not alone. Satinka took the smaller agent's hand and led her to a space on the floor brightly lit by the moon. Her smile was cautious as she turned to look at the other two agents. Without hesitation, Landers stepped forward, Lewis close behind. The three agents waited patiently, time suspended in the moonlight as Satinka considered several CD's in her collection, then slowly dropped one into the player. Her voice was a smoky promise tinged with ritual, a feral-edged prophecy that recalled primordial instincts as it came out of the darkness. "First we mourn...then we hunt." The first few steps were awkward, without understanding and they giggled as they tripped over their own feet and stumbled through the primitive dance. Satinka laughed easily and showed them again. It was on the third way through that something clicked and the four women found themselves falling into the moves more naturally. Whirling reflections of each other, each shadow dancer was both leader and follower as they circled an imaginary point on the floor. Yet even as she danced, Scully could feel something missing. Frustrated, she concentrated on the moves, falling into the rhythm with more surety as her body learned the patterns. It was as she drifted into a lazy turn that memory suddenly assaulted her. A flash. A shadow moving in the corner of her eye that recalled other shadows stretching across snow as Mulder threw arms wide in a physical depiction of story. Was that...? The center point was no longer imagination but a fire. Living flames chasing back the night and the dancers became storytellers. Cave painters. Hunters. Unconsciously she turned her face into the remembered warmth and her hair was suddenly flying back, not from exertion but carried on heat and smoke and flame. Scully fell into the dance as understanding finally bloomed and her body acquired a new confidence as it found recently learned patterns that it understood. A turn. A reach. Was that a deer? Wait. Wait. Now lift your head, find your prey and go. Scully met violet eyes across imaginary flame and Satinka grinned in wild delight as she mirrored the hunt. The music grew faster, more demanding and the two dancers unconsciously tightened their circle to pick up the speed. Blue eyes and violet flashed feral understanding and the other two dancers were pulled along in their wake. And yet... There was something else in the music. Something that lurked just inside the shadows of the notes and tones. Something that whispered to her. Talked to her. Reminded her... Something that called to the dark side of her soul. Prey? Who was prey? Reflex denial roared into being. The dancers were not prey. But oh yeeessss... The prey was human. As she stared into violet eyes she saw them widen, saw recognition and surprised satisfaction. Saw that this was what Satinka had been waiting for. With a triumphant laugh, the dancer flashed stark white teeth in the darkness and released the reins of the dance. For a split second, Scully almost stumbled. Time froze as rhythm faltered. Then knowledge exploded into being and she reached for the pattern... ...and made it her own. As if a catalyst, dark rage, hidden, denied, born of callous offense and offended honor spilled over into the fire. The pattern took it in ,swallowed it and was reborn. Scully pulled the other dancers into the pattern with her. Gave them new identity. They were the mothers of the murdered children, sisters to the slain and the daughters of deadly Artemis. They were not prey. She danced conviction. Not victim. Not sacrifice. The throb of the drums defined them. Hunters. The screams of the wind carried them. Chased demons into the darkness. Angry bare feet stamped defiance. Muscles flexed, bodies whirled, heads snapped. They danced Life. They danced Death. They danced the endless patience of the predator. They would find. They would follow. And then they would feast on the hearts of their enemies. In the shadows of twilight, four FBI agents danced blood to a Hunter's moon. *******************************************