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Title: All Dreams of the Soul: The Revelation 4/4

Author: Tiger Lilly

E-Mail address: Tigerlillyme@yahoo.com

Rating: R

Category: XA

Keyword: Scully Angst. Mulder Angst. X-file. UST

Spoilers: 5th season and movie

Summary: Scully and Mulder live through three 
nights of terror. Continuation of All Dreams of the 
Soul: The Numbers

          

Disclaimer: Okay Chris, this one is for you. I don't 
own them, I just borrowed them. Thank you for 
your generosity. 

          

Warning: This story is rated R for language, adult 
situations, sexual content, and violence. 

          

Author's note: This is the fourth of four 
installments. If you haven't read All Dreams of the 
Soul: Genesis, Exodus, or The Numbers, then 
The Revelation is not going to make much sense 
to you. My suggestion—go back and read them.

          

Please send me your feedback at 
Tigerlillyme@yahoo.com. Be gentle on me. It's 
my first time out. Okay to archive anywhere. Just 
please send me an e-mail so I'll know.

          


The Revelation

     

     A strange buzzing noise was slowly 
awakening her out of a deep sleep. Somewhere 
in her drowsy mind, she thought that she 
shouldn't be hearing odd buzzes in the middle of 
the night. But it wasn't until she felt the gloved 
hand cover her mouth that she jolted herself 
awake. 

     Her first reaction was panic. Someone was in 
her apartment. In her bedroom. And they were 
covering her mouth so she would be unable to 
scream. Her heart jumped into her throat. 
Instincts kicked in almost immediately, and she 
tried to force the hand away.

     "Shhh, Agent Scully," a familiar voice 
whispered. "It's Frohike."

     Her eyes focused in the dark on a face 
partially concealed by glowing night vision 
goggles. Whoever it was looked like a giant 
electronic fly. Another hand came up and pulled 
the goggles on top of his head. Sure enough, it 
was Frohike.

     Her relief was quickly replaced by another 
shocked thought. What the hell was Frohike 
doing in her bedroom? In the middle of the night? 
And how did he get in? But she couldn't ask him 
because he still had his hand over her mouth.

     "I didn't want to scare you," he continued, "but 
we can't risk letting anyone know we're here." He 
looked around the room nervously. "We need to 
get you out of here quietly."

     By now, she had managed to push his hand 
off her mouth. What did he mean, WE?

     "What the hell..." she angrily started.

     "Shhh, keep it down," another familiar voice 
scolded from somewhere to her right. "Are you 
trying to get us killed?"

     Dana sat up in the bed and scanned her dark 
bedroom. The streetlight outside glowed just 
brightly enough for her to make out the form of 
Langly, also with his night vision goggles on his 
head, nervously looking out the window, carefully 
keeping out of sight from anyone that might be 
looking in.

     "How in the hell did you get in here?" She was 
pissed, but she managed to get it out in a 
controlled whisper.

     "First, we need to get you out of here." 
Frohike's hushed voice made her swing back 
around and look at him. It was only after he licked 
his lips and silently mouthed the word "Damn" 
that she realized his eyes were almost popping 
out of his head. She looked down and realized 
what he was lusting at. She only had a silk 
nightshirt on, unbuttoned just a little too low in the 
front to be entertaining mixed company. But she 
hadn't been planning to encounter the Lone 
Gunmen when she had thrown it on and 
collapsed into bed. And when she had sat up and 
looked around the room, the covers had fallen 
into her lap, giving Frohike quite an eyeful. She 
quickly grabbed the sheet and pulled it up in front 
of her.

     "Not until you tell me what's going on." She 
wasn't going anywhere with this trio without an 
explanation. So, exactly where was Byers? 
Probably eating all the leftovers in her 
refrigerator.

     "No time," Frohike answered. "We'll explain on 
the way." Frohike was handing her her bathrobe. 
"We've got to go now."

     Something about the urgency in his voice 
made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. 
So she obediently got out of bed and pulled the 
bathrobe on, even with Frohike standing there 
ogling. And she almost started to follow him out of 
the bedroom, but then her common sense 
stopped her. This was 2/3 of the Lone Gunmen. 
And where the Gunmen were, Mulder was never 
far behind. Suddenly, her mind clicked. Was this 
Mulder's way of getting back at her for the 
argument two nights ago? Or his way of forcing a 
confrontation between them? 

     She had expected Mulder to call by now. She 
had actually gotten a few hours of sleep on the 
flight home, and she had calmed down 
considerably. By the time she spent an hour in 
the waiting room in order to be worked into Dr. 
Lipton's schedule, she had replayed their last few 
days together in her head several times, and she 
was ready to put it all behind her. She was still 
hurt by his accusations, but she needed to talk to 
him again. When she got home, she was 
disappointed not to find a message from him on 
her machine apologizing for his behavior, or at 
least admitting that she could have been telling 
the truth. But she figured that he had gotten tied 
up in Miami and would call her whenever he had 
a chance. 

     She knew that for Mulder to admit he was 
wrong was probably too much to hope for, even 
with the evidence of the truth staring him in the 
face. All this time looking for the truth, and he still 
couldn't see it even when it was right in front of 
his nose. And her pride kept her from calling him, 
even when she desperately wanted to hear his 
voice. Besides, she had left him her package, 
and the ball was now in his court.

     When the day turned into the next morning 
and she still hadn't heard from him, she tried to 
squelch the returning angry she felt. But by the 
time that evening arrived and still no call, she 
was furious once again. 

     Fuck him, she thought. He was alot of trouble 
anyway. She would be better off without him.

     And now, Langly and Frohike were trying to 
lure her to some undisclosed location for some 
unknown reason? Mulder had to be behind it. 

     Dana widen her stance for stability. She 
wasn't going anywhere.

     "Scully?" Langly, now with the goggles 
lowered over his eyes, was looking at her 
curiously. He had stopped in front of her on his 
way out of the bedroom. He was obviously 
puzzled at why she wasn't following Frohike. And 
why she looked so determined all of the sudden.

     "No," she answered, raising her chin up.

     "No, what?" Frohike said, reentering the 
bedroom. 

     "No, I'm not going anywhere. You go tell 
Mulder to go fuck himself."

     Frohike and Langly looked at each other, 
shocked by her anger and language. Obviously 
Mulder didn't tell them everything that had 
transpired between them.

     "Okay," Frohike finally managed to say with a 
gulp. "Have it your way."

     At that moment, Dana felt a sharp prick at the 
base of her neck. She spun around to see Byers 
holding the syringe he had just injected into her 
spine.

     "What the..." Dana managed to say, as the 
room started to tilt. Everything around her was 
swimming. She lost her train of thought as time 
suddenly slowed. She watched herself fall to the 
ground in slow motion, realizing that although her 
body was still in front of Byers, her consciousness 
was now across the room. She was fascinated by 
the way her body left a trail of color hanging in 
the darkness.

     She watched Frohike and Langly approach 
her motionless body cautiously and lean over to 
look at her.

     "Boy," Langly commented in slow motion, "she 
was sure pissed at Mulder."

     "Yeah, well," Byers replied looking knowingly 
to his two accomplices, also at the slow pace, 
"wait 'til she wakes up."

     Then her world went black.

     

     

     Her first realization was that her head was 
pounding. Not just a little headache, but an all out 
Indian war dance right on her left brow bone. The 
pain made the dim light tunneling towards her 
excruciating. She tried to push the tunnel away 
by squinting her eyes shut. Then she realized 
that wasn't working, so she tried to roll to one 
side to get away from it.

     That was when she had her second 
realization. Something firmly held her right hand 
bent next to her ear. The sensation of cold steel 
surrounding her wrist was a shock. She tried to 
pull her arm towards her, only to discover she 
could only move it about 2 inches in any 
direction. The steel rattled against something. 
Okay, she was going to have to open her eyes 
and glance at her wrist, only to confirm what her 
confused mind was already telling her. Here it 
goes, she thought.

     She opened her eyes and looked over at her 
hand. "Oh." The little gasp was all she could 
manage. Sure enough, one end of a pair of 
handcuffs was locked around her right hand. She 
raised her eyes and found the other end attached 
to a rusty, dirty pipe. Her gaze followed the pipe 
up to where it disappeared into the bottom of a 
crumbling sink directly above her head. Only then 
did it occur to her that she was in an old 
bathroom.

     She quickly shut her eyes again. Even through 
her closed eyelids, she could still see the dim 
light. And her head wouldn't clear enough to help 
her remember how she had gotten into this 
situation. 

     She tried to concentrate on the other 
sensations she was feeling, trying to block out the 
throbbing in her head. She could feel her terry 
cloth bathrobe and silk nightshirt, their soft, 
nubbiness and contrasting smoothness 
surrounding her. Something told her this was 
strange, but she couldn't remember why it was 
strange. And the throbbing in her head wasn't 
helping either.

     Dana threw her left arm across her eyes. The 
darkness and pressure helped her head slightly. 
She just wanted to go back to sleep, or whatever 
she had been doing before she woke up. 
Besides, she realized that she wasn't thinking too 
clearly.

     Her mind drifted back to the wild dream she 
was having. She was floating in mid-air, looking 
down on the Lone Gunmen. Except it wasn't the 
Lone Gunmen. It was three giant flies with 
glowing green eyes who talked like the Lone 
Gunmen. And they were leading her body down 
the hall of her apartment building. Only her body 
wasn't walking. Instead, it seemed to be lurching 
forward. And she was watching the whole thing 
while she floated on the ceiling.

     It was a strange, strange dream. She never 
dreamed about the Lone Gunmen. She could 
barely stand to think about them when she was 
awake. Jesus, they must have used a whopper of 
a sedative on her. 

     Her last thought sunk in and shocked her into 
opening her eyes despite of her headache. The 
Lone Gunmen. The fucking Lone Gunmen had 
been in her bedroom, trying to trick her into going 
to see Mulder. And they had knocked her out with 
some unknown substance when she wouldn't go 
with them willingly. And now, she was handcuffed 
to a sink in some old building's bathroom, lying 
on—she looked down to check—an old army cot, 
and higher than, well, than she had been in a 
long time. 

     Violence. Pure violence was all she could 
think about for a moment. The satisfaction she 
would derive from kicking the three fly-boys 
asses. She imagined grabbing Frohike by the 
throat and strangling him as he gasped for air. 
The thought of him with his eyes bugging out and 
face turning blue actually made her giggle. 
Funny, her headache suddenly felt alot better. 

     She could shoot the three of them before they 
would even know what was happening. That is, if 
Mulder didn't have her gun. 

     "Mulder." She spoke his name out loud with a 
contempt that almost caused a bad taste in her 
mouth. That bastard was behind this. Which 
meant that he probably wasn't too far away. He 
probably had been in here while she was out, 
shaking his head and feeling sorry for his poor, 
crazy ex-partner. Well, he was going to pay for 
this. The time she had shot him in the shoulder? 
That was nothing. If she could get her gun back, 
her aim was going to be much, much lower.

     A noise caught her attention. She followed it 
through the dim light and noticed the closed door 
at her feet for the first time. She squinted her eyes 
and listened.

     The noise became voices when she 
concentrated. They were muffled, but they were 
definitely voices. Male voices. And although she 
couldn't make out enough to recognize who they 
were, she was sure that one of them must be 
Mulder's. And the longer she listened, the more 
she convinced herself that it was him.

     Oh, well, she thought. Here goes nothing. 

     "Mulder!" she yelled at the top of her lungs. 
She patiently waited for him to open the door. 
After a minute passed, she realized there would 
be no reply, that Mulder would not be coming in 
to unhandcuff her. But she was certain he had 
heard her because the voices in the other room 
were now silent.

     "Mulder, get me out of here." Still no reply. 
What was he waiting for? Her to beg? There was 
no way she was going to give him that 
satisfaction.

     "Get me the fuck out of here! Mulder! Mulder! I 
swear I'm going to kill you!" She realized that she 
was now ranting out of control at the top of her 
lungs, but she couldn't stop herself.

     

     

     "Federal Agent! On the floor! Hands on your 
head! Move!" 

     Mulder's heart was racing as he burst into the 
room, sweeping the area with his drawn gun as 
he had been taught so long ago at the academy. 
Based on the muffled conversation he could hear 
through the door, he had guessed there were at 
least three people inside the room. Three people, 
probably armed. He had also been taught not to 
enter a potentially deadly situation like this one 
without backup, without his partner. But it was his 
partner he was trying to save. 

     He had panicked when, less than ninety 
minutes into his flight from Miami, he had 
suddenly become aware that Scully was no 
longer asleep in her own bed, but was 
handcuffed to an old hot water pipe in a 
condemned tenement building a few blocks from 
the Mall. Terror had seized him when the 
Gunmen didn't answer the phone when he called 
from the plane. They were too late, he had 
thought. Or worse yet, they were dead attempting 
to save her. There was no time to worry about 
them now. Scully needed help. He scanned the 
room and saw four figures dressed in black 
laying on the floor before him. Three of them 
looked very familiar. 

     A head with long blond hair hesitantly raised 
up to reveal a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses. 
"Mulder, its us. Don't shoot."

     "Langly?" This didn't make sense. Why were 
the Gunmen sitting here chatting while Scully 
was being held in the next room? 

     A pair of hands wearing biking gloves lifted 
above the balding head of the figure next to 
Langly on the floor. "Mulder, just put down your 
gun." Frohike spoke very, very slowly. 

     Mulder lowered his gun. "What's going on 
here?" God, he was confused. Had he been 
wrong about Scully's predicament. "Scully?" he 
asked uncertainly. 

     Byers was lifting himself from the floor. "In the 
next room. She's fine."

     "Handcuffed?" Mulder couldn't seem to get 
more than one word to come out of his confused 
brain at a time. 

     Frohike was speaking in a very calm tone. "We 
did if for her own good. She was resistant to the 
idea of coming with us." 

     Langly snorted as he sat on a dilapidated sofa 
in the corner of the room. "To say the least." 

     Frohike shot Langly a look as if he were 
taunting a wild animal, then continued speaking 
to Mulder in his overly calm tone. "So, we 
handcuffed her while she was out." 

     Events were beginning to become clear to 
Mulder. "Out?" A little too clear. 

     This time Byers spoke. "We had to sedate her. 
She refused to leave, and she had a few choice 
words for you."

     "You sedated her?" Mulder reached out and 
grabbed Frohike, who was the closest to him, by 
the lapels of his leather jacket. "I trusted you, and 
you sedated her?!?" 

     Frohike stood like a trapped animal. "Geez, 
Mulder, it was just a little Diprivan, nothing to get 
worked up about."

     "You idiot!" Mulder yelled as he pushed him 
away. "She's pregnant!" For a few seconds, the 
only sound was Mulder panting where he stood, 
a look of cold fury on his face. If anything 
happened to the baby because of what these 
guys had done, he would...well, he didn't know 
what he would do, but it wouldn't be something 
they liked. 

     It was Langly who broke the silence. "All right, 
Mulder. Way to work those all night stake outs." 

     Mulder and Frohike both gave him looks. 
Mulder one of dumbfound shock, and Frohike 
one that could have sliced right through him. 
Byers made a mad dash across the room. 

     Frohike turned back toward Mulder, threw 
back his shoulders, and puffed out his chest. 
"Now, look here, Mulder." Mulder couldn't believe 
it, he was actually angry...at him! "If you've been 
boffing Scully and gone and knocked her up, 
we're going to have a little talk. Mano y Mano." 

     Mulder didn't think his mouth could drop open 
anymore than it already had. "Not me. I'm not the 
father." At least he didn't think so. What Scully 
thought might be a different story. 

     Frohike seemed relieved and angrier all at the 
same time. "Well, then who the hell is? Is he 
going to live up to his responsibilities, or was he 
just in it for a good time?" 

     Mulder was starting to get a headache. This 
was not going the way he had planned it when 
he had called them for their help. If the three 
stooges had been paranoid of the government, 
big business, and anything related to the military, 
he would have swore they were standing in this 
room with him. Only Langly had more hair than 
all of the stooges combined. "I don't know who 
the father is, and right now, I don't care. All I want 
to know is if the drugs you gave her are harmful 
to the fetus."

     "Way ahead of you, Mulder." Byers was 
triumphantly holding up a CD that he had been 
frantically digging out of a bag. "Physicians Desk 
Reference," he explained as he popped it into the 
laptop Langly had just opened. Mulder went and 
looked over Byers' shoulder as he brought up the 
drug they had used. "Says here that it's use-in-
pregnancy rating is B. There is no evidence of 
risk in humans. That is, if you can trust the FDA."

     Mulder let out a relieved sigh.

     "For someone who isn't the father, you sure 
are concerned about the mother and child." 

     Mulder looked up to see who spoke and 
suddenly remembered the fourth figure on the 
floor. The man before him was tall and thin, about 
40, with shoulder-length brown hair and a three-
day growth of beard. He looked like he hadn't 
showered in that amount of time, either. He wore 
a black suit of the clergy that had seen better 
days, complete with the white collar of a priest. 
Mulder gave Byers a questioning look.

     "Mulder, this is Father Michaels." Byers said in 
way of introduction. "The priest you requested." 

     Mulder shook hands with the priest. "No 
offense, but you're not what I expected."

     Father Michaels indicated his clothing and 
smiled a slight, bitter smile. "I minister to my 
fellow homeless."

     "You've taken a vow of poverty?" Mulder 
questioned. 

     This time the bitterness was in the laugh. "Not 
by choice." 

     Byers answered Mulder's questioning glance. 
"Father Michaels was cast out of the Catholic 
Church." 

     Mulder couldn't believe what he was hearing. 
All he had asked was that they get Scully out of 
her apartment and find a priest. What they had 
done was commit felonious kidnaping and 
assault with the assistance of an 
excommunicated priest. "So, you're no longer a 
member of the Church?" 

     The priest's answer was defensive. "I no 
longer serve the corruption of the Catholic 
hierarchy. I now work for God directly." 

     Frohike stepped in. "Father Michaels learned a 
few secrets about the Catholic Church that the 
higher-ups didn't want to get out. Ends up that the 
holy brotherhood has been used by various 
world governments to carry out some of their 
alternate agendas." 

     Langly took up the narrative. "Who better to 
undertake a secret objective than the Catholic 
Church, with their churches and missions in even 
the most remote area of the world? Ever think 
about what could be done under the guise of a 
childhood vaccination program in some third 
world country? With no one there to question it 
except Sally Struthers?"

     Frohike continued. "When he threatened to go 
public, they trumped up some charges against 
the good Padre. Claimed he liked to spend a little 
too much 'quality time' with other men of the 
cloth, if you get my drift." Frohike nudged Mulder 
with his elbow. "We met up with him last year, 
featured him in our Christmas issue of the Magic 
Bullet. When you said you needed a priest, 
naturally Father Michaels came to mind." 

     The priest's eyes blazed. "The rumors they 
spread were all lies. And I'm not the only one 
they've tried to silence. But I made my vows to 
God, and even though they have cast me out, I 
uphold my vows to serve Him." 

     Mulder almost laughed. Substitute the 
Catholic Church and questionable third-world 
practices for a world wide conspiracy and alien 
abduction and this could be his religiously devote 
twin. Something about the priest, his confidence 
and pride, even beneath the dirty facade, 
convinced Mulder that he truly was a man of 
conviction. Hopefully Scully would feel the same. 
Although he could take the arrogance down a 
notch or two.

     Scully! He turned quickly towards the room 
were she was held. He had so much to tell her 
about what he had discovered on the plane ride 
back. 

     Frohike stopped him before he reached the 
door. "Uh, Mulder, just a warning. She's really 
pissed off with you. She was angry before we hit 
her with the goods, and it's even worse now." 

     Mulder grinned, "I think I can handle it," and 
opened the door. Then again, he thought after 
one look at Scully's livid face, maybe he couldn't.

     

   

     The sound of yelling from a distance slowly 
entered her consciousness. It sounded like it was 
coming from down a long tunnel. 

     "Federal Agent! On the floor! Hands on your 
head! Move!" 

     She was exhausted. She had yelled for almost 
an hour, using every conceivable four-letter word 
she could think of. And growing up on naval 
bases, she had learned alot of four-letter words. 
And she had used all of them in reference to 
Mulder.

     And all it had gotten her was a sore, dry throat 
and another pounding headache. And she was 
still suffering the effects of whatever they had 
used to knock her out. 

     She didn't know exactly when the thought had 
occurred to her that she was hallucinating. 
Maybe it was when she had panicked, believing 
millions of tiny electric-green flies were crawling 
all over her. Or that the small fluorescent lantern 
in the corner was transforming itself into two 
disembodied glowing eyes, that were still staring 
at her even now. But once she realized that was 
what was happening, she took any thought or 
belief that she had as no more than a reaction to 
the drug. That at least had keep the fear from 
welling up in her. 

     A moment ago, she had felt like she was rising 
off the mattress. And now, she was imaging a raid 
in the other room.

     She forced herself to listen to the yelling, if 
only to figure out who it was so she could tell 
them to shut up. They were making her headache 
return to its original intensity.

     "You sedated her? I trusted you, and you 
sedated her?!?" 

     Good, Mulder was the one yelling. Maybe he 
was in pain. The thought made her laugh 
hysterically.

     "You idiot! She's pregnant!" 

     Her laughing ceased immediately. Until that 
moment, she had forgotten about her pregnancy. 
She was pregnant, wasn't she? She hadn't 
imaged that. Was this her mind's way of 
reminding her that she should be concerned 
about whatever substance the Gunmen had used 
on her? That her medical knowledge needed to 
kick in, analyze the symptoms, deduce the likely 
substances, and take whatever action 
necessary? Like she could take any action 
handcuffed to a sink in the dark, she thought 
sarcastically.

     Nevertheless, it was a cruel, auditory 
hallucinating. The memory of  Mulder eluding that 
she was losing her grip on reality returned. His 
statement that she was suffering from some 
delusion caused by post-traumatic stress. 
Although she had confided in him in a moment of 
rage, it didn't diminish the pain she felt when he 
had casually brushed aside her desperate pleas 
for him to believe her. That pain once again 
swept over her. Suddenly, Dana felt very sad, 
alone, and afraid. She looked over at the eyes in 
the corner. 

     "Leave me alone," she whispered.

     But then, as if to save her from her own 
thoughts, her mind turned over the other 
possibility. In some version of reality, had Mulder 
just admitted that he believed she was pregnant? 
It doesn't explain the Gunmen's actions, she 
thought, or why I am still handcuffed to this damn 
sink. 

     She hadn't had time to fully consider this new 
possibility when the door opened. She looked up 
and saw Mulder's face. And her fury returned full 
force.

     If I am hallucinating now, she thought, let me 
hallucinate a gun. Because I want to hallucinate 
causing him to have a slow, painful death 
involving massive blood loss and genital trauma. 
And she did her best to convey that thought to the 
figment of her imagination staring at her from the 
doorway.

     She locked her eyes on Mulder's eyes and 
watched his face transform from a look of concern 
to uneasiness. Inside, she felt a great wave of 
satisfaction at his transformation. She wanted to 
make this imaginary Mulder squirm, if only to 
make herself feel better. And pass the time in this 
little room. She glanced over at the disembodied 
eyes. Yup, they were still there. Her imagination 
was definitely still in overdrive. She was at least 
going to have some fun with this new 
hallucination.

     "Scully?" the imaginary Mulder said timidly. 
"You okay?"

     She didn't answer. She wanted him to feel the 
same frustration and helplessness she had felt 
earlier when she had fruitlessly been calling his 
name. Okay, so she had called him several other 
things as well, but that was beside the point.

     Mulder entered the room and looked down at 
her. She watched him swallow, his adam's apple 
bobbing in his throat. Oh, this was a very realistic 
hallucination. The best one so far. Except for 
those damn eyes over in the corner. She took a 
deep breath to steady herself and push the fear 
back down. She could even smell Mulder. 

     "Look, Scully," Mulder continued after a 
moment. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for this to 
happen. I just told..." he trailed off when his eyes 
caught the uncomfortable way her arms was 
raised next to her body, courtesy of the handcuffs. 
"I should get the key."

     "Yeah, do that," she finally spoke through 
clenched teeth, the hoarseness of her voice 
surprising her. "Why don't you unlock these...so I 
can fucking kill you!" She punctuated the last part 
of her cresendoing sentence by half-raising her 
torso off the cot. At least as far as she could raise 
up towards him with the handcuffs rubbing her 
wrist raw.

     He gulped and didn't move. The look on his 
face reminded her of a deer caught in headlights. 
She could hear her ragged breathing as she 
glared up at him some more. And then, he slowly 
turned and went into the other room, leaving the 
door open behind him.

     Dana glanced over at the glowing eyes. Well, 
she thought to the eyes that weren't really there, I 
guess we showed him who's in charge. Too bad 
he wasn't really here, either.

     And she laid back down and threw her left arm 
over her eyes again.

     


     It had to be a side effect of the sedative—at 
least that's what he kept telling himself. He had 
seen her angry before. She had even yelled at 
him before. Their fight a few nights ago had been 
a prime example. But never, ever, had he seen 
her like this.

     He turned and left the room and tried not to 
shiver, anxious to leave those murderous eyes 
behind. This wasn't going to be as easy as he 
had originally thought. Of course, what he had 
originally thought had been a work of fantasy he 
had concocted to avoid his actual fears. In his 
fantasy, Scully began apologizing before he had 
a chance to and stopped him as he tried to 
apologize to her. They laughed it off, and she 
listened attentively as he explained his theory 
about the seven sevens of missing women. 
Granted, he knew that scenario would never play 
itself out. But even in his worst fears, she hadn't 
threatened to kill him. And even if she had, she 
never would have looked like she meant it

     The Gunmen were standing a few feet behind 
him, peering into the bathroom, as though they 
were afraid to get any closer. The priest was 
sitting on the sofa, watching events unfold with a 
curious scowl on his face

     Mulder held out his hand to Frohike. "Give me 
the keys," he demanded.

     Langly and Byers exchanged uncertain 
glances. Frohike shifted his weight from one foot 
to the other. "Are you sure that's a good idea, 
Mulder? She seems kind of....violent."

     Evidently Scully had heard him because 
sadistic laughter erupted from the bathroom. "Just 
you wait, little man. Your time will come."

     The three of them actually took a step back. 
Frohike cocked his head towards the bathroom 
and gave Mulder a look that seemed to say, I rest 
my case.

     "Give me the keys," he said in a very calm, yet 
forceful voice. He hoped the same tone would 
work with Scully. Frohike reluctantly nodded his 
head, and Byers fished the keys out of his pocket 
and handed them to Mulder. Mulder tossed them 
lightly in the air, as though he were weighing his 
options, but he had already made up his mind. It 
was time to set things right between them. He 
had decided that while he was still in Miami, as 
soon as he had seen that damn pink stick. It 
never should have gone this far. He still felt 
Scully was in danger from some unknown 
enemy, and the sooner they made friends again, 
the sooner they could get down to business. He 
had made some interesting discoveries on his 
flight back, and out of habit, he couldn't wait to 
share them with Scully. If he could get her to 
listen to him. Besides, he thought, even if she 
seemed capable of killing him with her bare 
hands, she would be too weak from the sedative. 
Right? 

     As he closed his hand tightly around the keys, 
he leaned in close to the Gunmen. "If she bolts for 
the door," he whispered, "stop her."

     The three nodded solemnly, but Mulder could 
tell from their wide-eyed looks that they hoped it 
wouldn't come to that. And so did he.

     When he reentered the bathroom, Scully was 
laying on the cot, her left arm draped across her 
eyes. The early morning light was shining 
through the small, dirty window off to the left of 
her prone body, illuminating dust fibers in the air.

     "Scully?" he said softly. She didn't respond. 
He cleared his throat and tried again. "Scully?"

     "Go away," she mumbled from below her arm. 
"I don't want to hallucinate right now."

     Obviously the drugs were still effecting her. 
"Scully, this isn't a hallucination. I'm real. I'm 
really here."

     She turned slightly and looked out from under 
her arm toward the corner where a portable 
fluorescent lantern stood. She let out a "hmpf" of 
disbelief and recovered her eyes.

     Well, he thought, no turning back now. "I'm 
going to take the handcuffs off now, Scully. But 
first..."

     She raised her head and glared at him from 
under her half-raised arm. Her look of 
amazement made it clear that she expected no 
conditions placed on her freedom.

     Mulder stood his ground and held up a 
silencing hand. "First" he continued, "you have to 
promise not to run away. Second..."

     Again she gave him a look of shock, her mouth 
actually dropping open slightly at the addition of 
a second ultimatum. 

     "...promise that you will hear what I have to say 
before you start yelling again." He finished 
quickly, preparing himself for the inevitable 
verbal onslaught.

     Instead, she let her head drop back down and 
let out a frustrated sigh. "Okay, Mulder, I'll listen."

     "And you promise you won't try to run away?" 
He hoped she didn't still think she was 
hallucinating.

     "Yes, yes, yes, I promise." She said impatiently 
as she tried to push herself up to a half-sitting 
position. "Now just take this fucking thing off me."

     Well, that was the best he could hope for. He 
knelt down and unlocked the handcuffs from the 
pipe. He figured he could always slap it on his 
own wrist if she tried to run, but she just sat up 
and slung her bare legs over the side of the cot. 
Mulder knelt before her now. 

     The mattress smelled musty, like it had been 
stored in a basement. But the smell was 
underlain by the sweet fragrance of bath oils and 
fabric softener that permeated Scully's bathrobe. 
Only on rare occasions had he smelled the 
fragrance—before on a case once when she had 
just come out of the shower, and she answered 
the door to her hotel room in her robe; when he 
had been in her bathroom at her home; in her 
bed? That didn't seem right, he thought. 

     Occasionally, he caught a whiff when she 
walked by him in the office, and it would make his 
head spin for a moment. It was sexy and innocent 
all at the same time, something forbidden yet 
exclusively his, and at this moment it brought 
back some forgotten erotic memory. He tried to 
push it into the recesses of his mind, along with 
some new thoughts he was suddenly having 
about the handcuffs.

     Holding her handcuffed hand in one of his, he 
turned her wrist and placed the key in the lock. 
The cuff opened with a small click, and he 
removed it while still holding onto her wrist, 
letting the metal links fall beside her on the cot. 
She tried to pull away, but he held her firmly and 
began gently massaging the feeling back into her 
hand. Her skin was soft to the touch, although her 
wrist was beginning to show a red welt where the 
cuffs had held her. He never looked up from their 
hands as he began to speak.

     "Scully, I'm sorry. About this mess, the fight, 
everything. You were right, and I should have 
listened to you. And I shouldn't have removed 
you from the case. You weren't doing a shitty job. 
I just wasn't ready to accept what you had to say." 
He still wasn't sure if he accepted all of it, but 
Danjou had convinced him that at least 
something about her dreams was real. He 
continued to knead her wrist and hand. "But I'm 
willing to listen now."

     She pulled her hand away, only without as 
much violence as she had before. This time, he 
let it go. He stayed squatted before her, moving 
his hand to the cot on either side of her hips for 
support. His fingers brushed the terry cloth of her 
robe. For the first time, he looked up at her.

     She had her head lowered, mere inches from 
his, watching her hand as she flexed it open and 
closed. Her hair hung down and blocked half of 
her face. She leaned in closer, and her breast 
brushed against the inside of his upper arm. She 
whispered, "Is that why you had me drugged and 
kidnapped? So you could apologize?"

     He icy voice was in stark contrast to the 
warmth of her breath on his ear. He closed his 
eyes as he clenched his fists into the blanket on 
the cot, willing the growing pressure in his groin 
to go away. It wasn't working. She has no idea 
what she's doing to me, he thought. Then he was 
struck with the even more exhilarating thought 
that maybe she did. He turned his head slightly 
towards hers, trying not to whimper as his nose 
and mouth brushed against her hair. 

     "A fucking phone call would have worked just 
as well." She practically spit the words at him as 
she leaned back.

     Mulder's eyes shot open at the venom in her 
voice. Oh, she had known exactly what she was 
doing, all right. That was just cruel. He couldn't 
believe that she actually said that, after all the 
calls he had tried to make. "I must have called 
you a hundred times yesterday, but you never 
answered."

     She rolled her eyes at what she obviously felt 
was a lie. He curbed his desire to raise his voice 
and argue the point. He thought that he almost 
had her calmed down. If he backtracked now, he 
might never get her back. "Look, if I had known 
they were going to sedate you, I never would 
have called them. You know that I would never 
do anything to intentionally endanger you or the 
baby. Its just that you were in danger, still may be, 
I think, and..."

     He trailed off as he realized Scully was 
clutching her abdomen. The anger he had seen 
in her eyes had been replaced with guilty panic.

     "Scully?" he asked. Then it dawned on him. 
The baby. In her delirium, she must have 
forgotten about the risk the drug posed to the 
baby. "Scully, it's okay, the anesthetic they used 
was harmless..."

     But it was obvious she wasn't listening. She 
suddenly stood, but from his squatting position, 
he was able to grab her around the waist and 
hold her back tight against his chest. She started 
to pull away, murder for the men in the next room 
on her mind.

     "What the fuck did you morons give me? What 
did you do to my baby?"

     "Scully, it's okay! We looked it up! It's a class 
B! Diprivan!" Mulder hoped her medical training 
would surface through the rage of maternal 
hormones he was witnessing struggle in his 
arms. Evidently it was working, because he felt 
her struggle lessen, and she began repeating the 
name of the drug herself. He could almost hear 
the gears whirling in her head as she categorized 
the drug and accessed the pharmacological 
resources in her mind. She finally stopped 
struggling all together.

     "Class B." She was mumbling more to herself 
than him. "Studies must show it's safe." She took 
a few deep breaths as Mulder continued to hold 
her. Then she began shaking with silent sobs. 
Mulder sat her down on the bed, and she 
collapsed against his chest.

     "God,...I'm...I'm... go...going...to be...a 
lou...lousy...mother." He could barely make our 
her words as she gulped air.

     He placed an arm around her shoulder, 
stunned by her sudden transformation. A few 
minutes ago, she had been ready to rip out his 
lungs through his chest cavity. Now, she was 
wiping her nose on his shirt. One of the side 
effects of the sedatives had to be wild mood 
swings, and they didn't get much wilder than this. 
He held her and patted her back until the sobs 
began to subside.

     "You'll make a wonderful mother," he said in 
an awkwardly cheerful voice.

     "No, I won't. I can't even protect myself from 
those idiots. How am I supposed to keep my baby 
safe in the real world?"

     Mulder stroked her hair in what he hoped was 
a soothing manner. "I think" he said somewhat 
hesitantly, "that's supposed to be my job."

     

     

     She was finding Mulder's 
behavior...spooky...even for him. First, he 
apologized. Apologized! Fox Mulder never, ever 
admits he's wrong. Time had taught her that 
lesson over and over again. 

     She had done her best to keep her face from 
revealing the shock she felt at his apology. 
Although, he hadn't eliminated her anger, just 
brought it down several notches. To a 
more...appropriate level.

     Okay, let's face it, she thought. Nothing she 
had done since waking up had been on an 
appropriate level. She prided herself on her 
control, her ability to remain distanced from her 
emotions in even the most tense situation. Boy, 
she had blown that facade tonight. Not that 
Mulder necessarily believed that she was the Ice 
Queen everyone at the Bureau thought she was, 
but he rarely had seen her completely lose it in 
the years they had worked together. Anesthetic or 
no anesthetic, she would like to have kept it that 
way. And now...

     Dana sat on the dilapidated sofa in the corner 
of what she guessed could be called a living 
room. If you could call the room she had been in 
for the last few hours a bathroom, then this could 
definitely be a living room. After she had 
regained her composure, Mulder had led her by 
the hand into the room, sat her on the sofa, and 
ran out to his car to get his briefcase. He had 
practically been bursting to tell her the latest 
developments and his theory on the Miami 
disappearances. 

     Great, she thought, here he goes bouncing 
ideas off of me like nothing has happened. It 
made her a little angry at him for assuming that 
she would still care about the case. And at herself 
for letting him take advantage of her so quickly 
after their reconciliation. If she had come to any 
conclusions in the past two days, it was that there 
were now more important things in her life than 
being a workaholic. And she could almost kick 
herself for slipping back into that mode the first 
time Mulder tempted her with it.

     But another feeling was overwhelming her 
even more. Now that she was quickly coming 
down, she was terribly embarrassed by her 
behavior, regardless of its causes. My God, she 
thought, she was a medical doctor and a FBI 
agent. She should be able to control herself 
better, even if she was under the influence of a 
hypnotic agent. 

     When Mulder stood up to lead her out of the 
bathroom, she had caught sight of the Lone 
Gunmen jumping back from the doorway, where 
they had been listening to the whole 
conversation. Not to mention listening to her 
ranting for the last few hours. Regardless of 
whether or not they showed her any remorse for 
their overzealousness in getting her out of her 
apartment, she still felt embarrassed. Even now 
they were busy trying to look nonchalant, like 
they hadn't noticed that the always professional 
Agent Scully had gone ballistic on them. 

     And to top it all off, Mulder had introduced her 
to Father Michaels right before running out the 
door. A priest! She had been cursing literally like 
a sailor, and there was a priest listening to 
everything! She had immediately apologized for 
her language, but Father Michaels didn't seem to 
care one way or another.

     It wasn't like he hadn't heard those words 
before, she kept telling herself. She just wished 
he hadn't heard those particular expletives from 
her mouth. But just because he was a priest 
didn't mean he lived in a cave. She knew that. In 
fact, she had known some pretty partying priests 
in her life. And to look at Father Michaels...

     Not that she doubted he was a priest. Okay, 
maybe she did have her doubts. After all, this was 
Mulder and the Lone Gunmen she was dealing 
with. Their idea of a priest was probably a cross 
between Father Guido Sardoucci and the 
Exorcist. At least she was relatively sure that was 
the extent of Mulder's exposure to the Catholic 
Church. And she never assumed anything with 
Byers, Langly, and Frohike.

     The tension in the room was smothering her. 
She sat on the sofa staring at her hands, waiting 
for Mulder to get back. No one was talking to 
anyone. And all eyes were on her.

     She raised her eyes when she heard the door 
open. Mulder walked into the room, briefcase in 
hand. She had to admit, she was curious. Hadn't 
he said something about her being in danger? 
And when had he returned from Miami? Not that 
she was going to ask him these questions. She 
knew he would answer her questions on his own, 
in his own ostentatious way. She just had to wait 
him out.

     Mulder sat down on the sofa next to her and 
popped open his briefcase, pulling out what she 
immediately recognized as the Miami case file. It 
was nearly triple the size it had been when she 
had left three days ago. Apparently, there really 
had been some developments. 

     The Lone Gunmen and Father Michaels were 
congregating around them. She glanced at them 
irritated, not necessarily wanting this 
conversation to be shared. Like she had any 
choice.

     As if on cue, Mulder turned to her and began. 
"After you left Miami, the six remaining women 
returned, completely unharmed, but unable to 
remember anything about the seven months they 
were missing."

     Dana raised an eyebrow and opened her 
mouth slightly. This was not how she was 
expecting him to start. In fact, this development 
was not what she was expecting at all. When she 
had left Miami, she was sure they would find the 
other six women dead sooner or later.

     Frohike had brought a milk crate and piece of 
plywood over from the corner of the room, sitting 
it on the floor in front of the sofa to make a 
makeshift table. Byers now placed a large brown 
paper bag on the floor next to it and began to 
unpack its contents. An assortment of muffins and 
bagels, pint-sized milk cartons, and Styrofoam 
cups of juice and coffee began to appear on the 
table. Luckily, they appeared to all be pretty close 
to the appropriate temperatures. She was hungry 
and starting to get a little nauseous again. At 
least they had planned on feeding her.

     Mulder continued while reaching for a bagel 
and a napkin. "All except one, who local 
authorities believed to be delusional. She was 
identified as Hellene Bonnelle. Only when I 
spoke with her, she claimed that was no longer 
her name. She and her six 'sisters' had taken the 
name of a single man, a man who had 'cleansed' 
them."

     She listened, not realizing that Mulder had sat 
the bagel on the napkin and placed it on the sofa 
next to her, until he motioned for her to eat it. She 
picked it up and took a bite just as Father 
Michaels cut in.

     "That's a reference to Isaiah 4:1— the sisters 
of Zion," the priest said. "And in that day seven 
women shall take hold of one man, saying, 'We 
will eat our own food and wear our own apparel; 
only let us be called by your name, to take away 
our reproach.'"

     "Yes, I'm familiar with the verse," Mulder 
replied. He was now sticking a straw into a cup of 
orange juice and handing it to Dana. "But she 
also made reference to 'seven sevens'."

     "No, no, no," Father Michaels shot back. "In the 
book of Isaiah, there are only one set of seven 
sisters mentioned. This Hellene Bonnelle has her 
scriptures confused."

     "No, I don't think so, Father. The same day the 
six Miami women returned, the body of another 
woman, Sarah James, a member of the Mormon 
church, was found in Utah." Mulder turned to 
Dana and handed her a carton of milk. "Scully, 
she was killed by a blunt trauma to the head, 
shortly after giving birth. Her baby was found a 
few miles away, also dead by unknown means. 
Sound familiar? Only this woman went missing 
exactly one month after Genevieve Baptiste." 
Langly handed her a cup of coffee, but Mulder 
smoothly intercepted it and handed it back to 
Langly with a disapproving shake of his head. "A 
data search revealed that six other Mormon 
women were reported missing in the two days 
before James disappeared." 

     "Sounds like some sort of out-of-control 
Lamaze class to me," Frohike snickered. She and 
Mulder both shot him a look.

     Mulder grabbed a muffin and began devouring 
it, still talking between bites. "Another factor in 
both of these disappearances is that both groups 
of women disappeared on or directly before the 
new moon." Bite. "That's two sets of seven 
women from two different religions all missing on 
the new moon. Another data search revealed 
seven Hindu women went missing the following 
new moon, seven Buddhist women the next 
month, and finally seven Catholic women two 
months ago."

     He had stopped, and she realized he was 
waiting for her to make a comment. Honestly, she 
had only been half-listening to him since he had 
handed her the milk. It was a perfect example of 
the second reason Mulder was acting spooky. He 
was hovering over her like a mother hen.

     Ever since he had made that comment back in 
the bathroom about the safety of the baby being 
his job, she had been quietly simmering. She 
had originally wonder what that comment was all 
about. Face it, the last thing she needed was 
Mulder taking care of her and the baby. My God, 
the man couldn't even keep fish alive. 

     About the time he had handed her the milk, 
she had realized with raised eyebrows exactly 
what he was doing. The bagel, the juice, the 
denied coffee...he was taking care of her. Not a 
partnerly kind of care, like looking out for each 
others' backs, but a nurturing, protective kind of 
care. And she was outraged by this. How dare he 
even assume that she needed his care! Not to 
mention, she had uncomfortably noticed Father 
Michaels intently eying this exchange.

     She didn't know if Mulder even had a right to 
feel this way. Yes, the conception had occurred 
when she was having the dreams about Mulder, 
but that didn't make Mulder the father, did it? This 
was a question that had been spinning around in 
her head since she left Miami. The whole thing 
was so completely surreal. She really didn't know 
how she felt about this possibility, or even if she 
accepted it as a possibility.

     Her uncertainty had made her jump at Dr. 
Lipton's advice to have an amniocentesis as 
soon as possible. The doctor had recommended 
it because of her age, but she had insisted it be 
done immediately because she needed to know 
exactly what she was dealing with. This was a 
pregnancy that she had only very recently begun 
to believe, but she still didn't assume that the 
fetus was genetically hers, or hers and Mulder's, 
or even naturally occurring. And after the 
procedure, she had managed to take a sample of 
the amniotic fluid herself. Dr. Lipton would send a 
portion out for the normal tests, but Dana needed 
a much more detailed genetic breakdown. 
Besides, the doctor would have looked at her 
incredulously if she had told her what she 
wanted.

     She had taken the sample to a friend at 
Georgetown School of Medicine, asking for a 
complete DNA breakdown. Including the data 
needed to compare genetic markers against the 
anonymous RFLPs she had provided. Both a 
maternity and a paternity test. Whether or not this 
fetus turned out to be hers, she needed to at least 
eliminate the one possibility she had for the 
father. Luckily, her friend didn't ask where the 
sample had come from. And Dana had led her 
friend to believe it was for a case she was 
working on. 

     The results would be back later today. Another 
advantage of having a geneticist for a friend. You 
couldn't beat the turn around time. Meanwhile, 
she had pushed the nervousness and uncertainty 
down to a place where she didn't have to deal 
with it. Yet.

     Dana pulled Mulder's last few sentences out of 
the air and back into her head. Quickly, she 
counted and realized she could easily debunk 
this theory he was leading up to. "That's only six 
groups of seven, Mulder," she told him point 
blank.

     "Exactly." There was that scoreboard going off 
in his eyes again. For a moment she was 
relieved. The old Mulder had made a temporary 
comeback. "So, I went back a month before the 
women in Miami went missing. A coven of seven 
Wiccan practitioners went missing in Northern 
California that new moon." Another bite of muffin. 
"No one in the area really thought much about it 
because they were a reclusive group." 

     "You know how outgoing those Wiccan covens 
can be," Byers interjected. 

     Mulder just kept going over top of him. "But last 
month, seven months after their disappearance, 
they all returned except one. She was never 
found. However, three weeks ago the body of an 
infant was found by some climbers in a 
snowbank on Mount Shasta. I'll give you 10 to 1, 
Scully, that when the snow finally thaws, the 
mother will be found as well."

     "I don't like your odds, Mulder," she replied 
dryly. Okay, she thought, maybe he did have 
something.

     "And now," he continued without 
acknowledging her comment, "the second set of 
women have shown up in Miami complete with a 
dead mother and child. Seven months after they 
went missing." He popped the last bite of muffin 
into his mouth.

     Oh, he was damn cocky all right. She looked 
over at the Lone Gunmen and Father Michaels. 
They were all eating, intently listening to their 
conversation. All, that is, except Langly, who was 
doodling on a napkin. Mulder with a captive 
audience was almost unbearable. 

     Mulder's bravado made the skeptic in her go 
into overdrive. "But Mulder, surely someone 
would have noticed this pattern before now."

     "That"s just it. The missing women have been 
from increasingly-wide geographical areas. They 
began with the coven in California. Then the 
Vodun in Miami, which is a rather small 
community. Then the Mormons, whose larger 
populations are mainly limited to the western 
United States. By the time we reach the seventh 
group, the Catholic women, they are pretty much 
spread out everywhere."

     "But why just the United States?" This 
comment had come from Langly. Apparently, he 
was paying attention.

     "A country that was founded on the principles 
of religious freedom?" Mulder asked, grabbing a 
cup of coffee. "What better place to choose?"

     "There's another flaw in your pattern." Scully 
noticed that all the eyes were once again on her. 
"The woman in Utah was only missing six 
months, not seven."

     "I was just getting to that, Dr. Scully." Mulder 
reached into the forgotten case file and pulled out 
what she recognized to be an autopsy report. He 
waved it in her face. "The autopsy report on the 
newborn indicated a low birth weight and 
incomplete development of the heart. Wouldn't 
that suggest a premature birth? Maybe the baby 
wasn't meant to born until next month."

     She took the report from him and began to 
read over it. The Utah coroner didn't made any 
conclusions based on those findings. "Four 
weeks premature would be hard to identify, 
Mulder."

     Mulder continued. "Look, if I'm right and if the 
pattern holds, we'll be seeing these sets of 
women resurfacing, with one from each group 
dead, over the next five months."

     "So, do you think the same person is taking 
these women?" She had asked this without 
looking up from the report. "The MO doesn't 
exactly suggest your run-of-the-mill serial killer."

      "That's just it, Scully. I don't think these 
women were taken. I think they left on their own. I 
think the six who returned originally left to protect 
the one who was pregnant."

     She looked at him incredulously. "Well, they 
obviously haven't done a very good job." It came 
out in a rush of air, almost on an unbelieving 
chuckle.

     "Maybe they have. At least they think so. 
Hellene Bonnelle said something—that a soul 
cannot be stolen if it is set free. I think these 
women believe they are saving the soul of the 
pregnant woman, or the child, by killing her 
before the soul could be stolen." He took a gulp 
of coffee.

     Oh, he was laying it on thick now. "Stolen by 
whom?" She made a point of returning the 
autopsy report to the folder, closing it, and 
scooting it back towards him on the sofa.

     Mulder shrugged and shook his head. "Evil?" 
That was all she needed to hear. She raised a 
hand in front of him to let him know he'd taken 
them far enough into the Twilight Zone, and she 
wasn't going to follow him any farther. He just 
scooted towards her and continued. "Look, I 
know it sounds crazy, but Bonnelle said 
something else. That death is sometimes 
necessary for life. What if these women who have 
already died, and the ones who are probably 
going to die, believe they are doing so for a 
greater good? Maybe they are some sort of 
modern day martyrs."

     "Revelation." She and Mulder both startled at 
Father Michaels' interruption. For a moment, she 
had gotten so caught up in their exchange that 
she had forgotten anyone else was listening. She 
could tell by Mulder's reaction that he had 
forgotten as well. When the priest had their full 
attention, he continued. "What you're talking 
about is a reference to the book of Revelation, 
although you seem to be combining various 
passages. The martyrs refer to the fifth seal. 
'When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the 
altar the souls of those who had been slain for 
the word of God and for the testimony which they 
held.'"

     Mulder picked where Father Michaels left off. 
"And they cried with a loud voice, saying "How 
long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and 
avenge our blood on those who dwell on the 
earth?'" Where did he learn these things 
anyway? Okay, she knew he had an incredible 
memory. But she had a hard time imagining 
Mulder sitting around reading Revelation for fun. 
On second thought, maybe she could.

     Father Michaels was obviously surprised and 
impressed with Mulder's ability to spout off 
biblical text, as if in answer to a challenge. He 
began where Mulder left off. "And a white robe 
was given to each of them; and it was said to 
them that they should rest a little while longer, 
until both the number of their fellow servants and 
their brethren, who would be killed as they were, 
was complete." They reminded Dana of some 
sort of biblical dueling banjos.

     Mulder was absorbed in thought for a half a 
second. Then she could almost see the light bulb 
go off in his eyes, and he got very excited. "White 
robes...both dead women were found covered 
with white - salt in Miami, a white bed sheet in 
Utah."

     "The missing California woman is probably 
covered in snow," Byers added. "Don't forget 
her." He was excited, too. Great, they were all 
wrapped up in Mulder's evangelical theory. Once 
again, she was the only rational one in the room.

     "I don't know if you could necessarily call the 
snow on Mount Shasta white." That had come 
from who else but Frohike.

    "Oh, yeah, and what color would you call it?" 
Langly seemed almost upset by this.

     "Acid rain gray?" Frohike offered.

     "The hougan and Bonnelle both spoke of 
completing the number. Maybe that is what they 
meant." Mulder was talking to himself under his 
breath. Hougan? Where did that come from?

     "The seven different religions may refer to 
Revelation 2 and 3," Father Michaels asserted to 
shut the Gunmen up. "The book of Revelation is 
written as a letter from the Apostle John to the 
seven churches of Asia. Many modern scholars 
argue that these seven churches actually 
represent present-day global religious beliefs."

     "If I were going to pick seven major world 
religions, I don't think Wicca and Voodoo would 
top my list, Mulder." She was ready to put an end 
to this fairy tale.

     "Why not, Scully?" He just smiled back at her. 
Obviously, he didn't share her point of view.

     "Regardless, you're basing this whole theory 
on a women who is probably suffering from some 
sort of Jerusalem syndrome caused by post..." 
She stopped herself. She had almost rubbed salt 
into her own wounds with that one. She looked 
up at Mulder and realized she had stopped too 
late. He had silently finished her sentence 
anyway and was staring at her with a "don't go 
there" look on his face.

     "But what your talking about is absurd." Father 
Michaels was shaking his head and seemed a 
little upset by this. "This is about portents of the 
Armageddon, the filling of Biblical prophecy. I 
think someone is playing a joke on you."

     "Don't you think this is alot of trouble to go to 
for a joke? Besides, this is the only explanation 
that makes any sense." Mulder was taken aback 
by the priest's dismissal of his theory. It was one 
thing for her to debunk his theories. That was her 
job. He had come to expect it from her. But she 
knew that if anyone else questioned his beliefs, 
no matter how crazy they sounded, he became 
immediately defensive. 

     "Look, I agreed to help you because I trusted 
the Lone Gunmen." Father Michaels was rising 
now and heading towards the door. "They have 
been good to me and tried to help my cause. But 
you don't need a priest, you need a psychiatrist. I 
have more important things to do with my time." 
Mulder was following the priest to the door, 
determined not to let him leave. Father Michaels 
opened the door and turned to Frohike. "Lock up 
when you're done."

     "Have you had any strange dreams lately, 
Father?" Mulder was standing about three feet 
behind Father Michaels, who had stopped dead 
in his tracks with Mulder's question. He shut the 
door and turned around to look at Mulder with a 
stricken look on his face.

     "Mulder," she asked, standing up and walking 
over to his side, "what are you talking about?" 
The only strange dreams she knew of were her 
own, and Mulder knew next to nothing about 
those. And she wasn't sure he even believed 
what little she had told him. 

     Mulder turned to her and said, "The dreams, 
Scully. You've had them, and I've had them, 
although they were not nearly as entertaining as 
yours obviously were." For a moment she wasn't 
sure if that was a jab or an acknowledgement. 
Then her confusion gave way to open-mouth 
shock as his revelation that he had also been 
having strange dreams sunk in.

     Mulder turned back to the priest and said, "And 
by the look on the good Padres face, I'd say he 
has too. Dreams are an important aspect of every 
religion. They are believed to be omens, provide 
insight and understanding, reveal a glimpse into 
the future. In the Bible alone, there are multiple 
references to dreams providing the link directly to 
the word of God." He turned back to her, put a 
hand on her upper arm, and quietly continued. "I 
met with the hougan from the Vodun ritual we 
attended." He stopped for a moment and looked 
at her as if to say you remember the hougan, 
don't you? How could she forget? "He told me 
how important our dreams were. How we can't 
ignore them, or we'll fail. If I had paid attention to 
mine, I might have been able to stop your rape." 
A look of anguish washed over his face.

     "Mulder..." She wanted to reassure him that 
she didn't hold him responsible for what had 
happen to her. She knew he lived in a perpetual 
state of guilt and didn't want this added to it.

     He interrupted her. "But I think that by 
becoming aware of them now, I stopped 
whatever might have happened to you last night. 
And whatever might happen over the next couple 
of night."

     Oh, yeah, we're back to that again. Sometime 
his thoughts skipped around so quickly that it 
took all her concentration to follow him. She had 
wondered when he was going to get around to 
why he believed she needed to be pulled out of 
her apartment in the middle of the night. "And 
exactly what do you think might have 
happened?"

     "I don't know exactly. I just know that you are 
the next woman in danger."

     "Are you implying that somehow I fit into all of 
this?" Now she was really confused. "That 
somehow this evil you're talking about is after 
me?" For a moment, she had believed him. Now 
she had to smile and shake her head. This "was" 
absurd. 

     She turned to walk away from him, but he 
followed her saying, "The new moon is upon us, 
Scully. The danger is still real."

     She turned around to tell him that he gone off 
the deep end, but only got out an exasperated 
"Mulder" before his attention was again focused 
on Father Michaels.

     "The hougan also said there is strength in 
three." Mulder's look was pleading with the priest 
for some answers to all this. She thought for sure 
that the father would just continue his departure, 
but instead he seemed genuinely affected by 
what Mulder was saying. She watched with wide, 
unbelieving eyes as Father Michaels started back 
towards the place where he had been sitting 
around the table. On his way, he took Mulder's 
arm and led him to the crate as well.

     The priest sat cross-legged on the floor with 
Mulder squatting next to him. They were 
speaking quietly to one another, and out of 
curiosity she came up behind them. She 
wondered if they were discussing their dreams, 
but when she got close enough to hear what they 
were saying, she realized that the topic was 
again back to the "seven sevens." She stood 
behind them and looked from them to Langly, 
Byers, and Frohike. The Gunmen had listened 
relatively quietly to the whole conversation, which 
was completely uncharacteristic. And now they 
were astutely listening to Mulder and Father 
Michaels with the most serious looks on their 
faces. Like they were discussing the Kennedy 
assassination instead of the end of the world.

     Frohike looked up at her and smiled. She 
smiled back and shook her head again. She 
really was the only rational, sane person in this 
room. The only one not swept away by Mulder's 
enthusiasm for a good, spooky theory, no matter 
how unreasonable it was.

     Mulder gestured for Byers to pull an item out of 
his briefcase. It was a large Miami Beach 
calendar, complete with color photos of scantily 
clad women. If they had not been in the presence 
of Father Michaels, she was sure the 
conversation would have digressed to the 
"assets" of each calendar model. Instead, Mulder 
very seriously began flipping through the 
calendar, pointing out the dates of the new moon 
that he had marked with large red "Xs." The first 
two months corresponded to the two groups of 
seven women, six alive and one dead, that had 
already returned. He then began flipping through 
the next few months, each new moon date 
marked with an identical red "X" and the name of 
a religion.

     Father Michaels took the calendar out of 
Mulder's hands and began looking through it 
himself. "All right," he finally said, "there have 
been seven months of women disappearing, and, 
if you are right, there will be seven months of 
women showing up dead. What comes next?"

     She watched as the priest flipped past the 
seventh X and turned the page to the next month. 
Despite the topless woman holding her breast 
and staring at the camera seductively, Dana eyes 
were immediately drawn to the date Mulder had 
made an notation on in black ink pen: "Next new 
moon. Does pattern repeat?" And the smirk on 
her face disappeared, along momentarily with a 
good bit of her skepticism. Even if Mulder's theory 
was total insanity, the date marked sent chills 
over her. Unconsciously, she gasped, and they 
all turned to look at her questioningly. She 
pointed down at the date on the calendar and 
found herself answering the priest's question.

     "My due date."

     

     

     

     Living with denial is like building a house of 
playing cards. As each card is piled on, the 
house becomes larger and more and more 
fragile. Take a card from the middle or bottom 
and the house will crumble. Take a card from the 
top, the house waivers but for the most part still 
stands. Until the house becomes too big to 
support itself, and it will fall regardless of how 
careful the builder has been.

     Her life was that house of cards. Denial after 
denial piled on top of themselves. Each new 
denial had become necessary to support the 
ones that were already in place. It had begun 
before her assignment to the X-files, but the 
house had increased in size tenfold since she 
had met Mulder. Now it was a necessity to 
continue building the house, for fear that it would 
crumble around her if she didn't. She kept piling 
the cards on, thinking that someday she would 
start to peel them back off, cautiously, one card at 
a time. When she had more time to deal with the 
consequences of her building. But that someday 
had never come.

     Through all the horrors she had witness, 
through all the horrors that had been done to her, 
she kept building. And the house had grown to 
monstrous proportions. Sometimes she felt it 
inside of her, quaking, ready to crumble at any 
moment. 

     She didn't realize that moment had arrived 
until the cards laid at her feet, scattered in every 
direction.

     

     Mulder was staring out the windshield, quietly 
tapping the steering wheel to the beat of the song 
playing on the radio. They had driven in complete 
silence since leaving the tenement. In fact, they 
had hardly said one word to each other since she 
had made her discover about her due date. And 
now, he was doing his best not to look at her. His 
face totally expressionless.

     She watched him in uncomfortable silence, 
wondering how she was going to bring this up. 
She was relatively sure he didn't think she 
believed him, but she wanted to make absolutely 
sure that her shock at the coincidence of her due 
date and the eighth new moon wasn't perceived 
the wrong way. She still thought this theory of his 
was totally out in left field.

     Well, he was obviously waiting for her to say 
something. She took a deep breath.

     "You know, Mulder, I think you're 
overreacting."

     "Oh, how's that, Scully?" He said it as 
unreadable as his face, his eyes never leaving 
the road.

     "Well..." She took another deep breath. "I think 
you're upset, and this whole story about the new 
moon and the missing women somehow being 
related to my pregnancy is..." She stopped, 
searching for the right word. "...Is lunacy, pardon 
the pun."

     He just kept staring at the road, slowly 
absorbing her words. They drove again in 
silence.

     She had just resigned herself to the fact that 
he wasn't going to respond when he said, "Just 
what is it that I am upset about?"

     "I don't know Mulder. Feeling guilty about my 
attack? Our fight? These dreams you claim to be 
having? You tell me." 

     "You don't think I'm telling the truth about my 
dreams?" He was now looking at her, only 
glancing at the road. It made her nervous when 
he drove like this. 

     "No, I do believe you have been 
experiencing...something. I just don't think that 
you're receiving some kind of omen from God."

     "Oh." That was all he said, and he turned all of 
his attention back to the road.

     After another long, uncomfortable silence, she 
asked, "So, are you going to tell me?"

     "What?"

     "About your dreams. What they were about?"

     "Why? According to you, they're some sort of 
psychological manifestation cause by guilt. A 
guilt so overwhelming that I'm probably on the 
verge of some kind of breakdown. Where I 
believe myself to be Joseph, you the Virgin Mary, 
and Byers, Langly, and Frohike the three magi. 
And any moment now, I'm going to start walking 
up and down Pennsylvania Avenue with a sign 
proclaiming the apocalypse is upon us. A claim I 
can only substantiate with statements from 
various delusional members of the Vodun 
community, the totally unexplainable coincidence 
of seven sets of missing women, and the fact that 
my partner, who is barren, now claims to be 
carrying my child even though I haven't laid a 
hand on her. Like you said, Scully. It's fucking 
lunacy." The only thing that had betrayed his 
emotionless demeanor was his voice. It was 
controlled fury.

     Well, that certainly explained how he felt. But 
he didn't have to say it in such a smart ass way. 
His venom had cause her to scoot as far over 
towards her door as she could without 
unbuckling her seat belt. 

     She knew she shouldn't. She should just keep 
her mouth shut, get out at her apartment, and let 
the whole matter resolve itself. But she just 
couldn't let it slide.

     "What do you mean, I claim to be carrying your 
child? I never said I thought it was your baby."

     "Didn't you?" This was punctuated with a 
sideways glance at her.

     Had she led him to believe that? Maybe. Did 
she believe that? She didn't know. Nor did she 
even want to tackle that question, especially 
when the results from the amino would be back 
later today. So, she just pushed it out of her mind.

     Luckily, they arrived at her apartment a few 
minutes later. He pulled up in front, and she 
started to hop out. Then she realized he had 
turned off the engine. For a moment, she couldn't 
believe he intended to go inside with her. She 
got out, slammed the door, and put both hands 
on the top of the car, waiting for his head to 
emerge.

     "Look, Mulder," she began slowly when he 
rose out of the car, "I know you think that I am in 
some sort of danger..." He started to interrupt her, 
but she held a hand up and stopped him. "...BUT, 
I assure you that I can make it the 50 feet to my 
apartment in broad daylight without getting 
attacked by the forces of evil." My God, how many 
times had he dropped her off here in the middle 
of the night without even offering to walk her to 
the door?

     "Like it or not, Scully, I don't intend to let you 
out of my sight for the next two days." He said it 
with a smug look and something else she wasn't 
sure of. Was it fear?

     She smiled at her first thought in spite of 
herself. "That should make going to the bathroom 
interesting." Luckily, it broke the tension. 

     He smiled back. "Ooo, I love it when you talk 
dirty to me, Scully."

     She rolled her eyes and began to walk to her 
building, with Mulder about 2 steps behind her. At 
the front door, he stepped in front of her to open it 
and led her through with his hand on the small of 
her back.

     When she had insisted that she needed to 
return home, Mulder had hesitated. Finally, she 
had told him that she couldn't walk around in her 
pajamas all day and at least would like to put on 
some clothes. But it was really just an excuse to 
get out of there.

     She had hoped that once back at her 
apartment, he would leave her to go back and 
play the Biblical prophesy guessing game with 
Father Michaels and the three techno-apostles. 
She had had enough of listening to their half-
baked theories, complete with theological 
debates on the role of evil in the twentieth 
century. Somehow, Frohike had managed to 
wrap both World Wars, the assassinations of the 
Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr., the rise 
and fall of communism, and Hanson and the 
Spice Girls into an apocalyptic package that was 
fueled by the Jewish mafia and several Fortune-
500 corporations. She still didn't completely 
follow his logic, if you could call it that, even after 
standing there listening to him. The scary part 
was, everyone but her nodded in agreement with 
his observations. 

     She knew Byers, Frohike, Langly, and Father 
Michaels were only a few minutes behind them 
driving what they referred to as the decoy vehicle. 
She called it a white service van. Not exactly an 
inconspicuous choice. With a sigh, she realized 
they'd probably invite themselves in, too.

     As she approached the door to her apartment, 
she became a little apprehensive. Her front door 
was slightly ajar. If the Lone Gunmen had 
forgotten to close the door and anything had 
been stolen, she was going to kill them.

     She was just about the push the door open 
when Mulder's arm came down in front of her. He 
silently motioned for her to stand behind him and 
pulled his gun out of his jacket. Almost as an 
afterthought, he reached back into his jacket, 
pulled out her gun as well, and handed to her. 
She looked down at it hesitantly; after all, she 
wasn't officially a FBI agent right now. But she 
took it anyway and put her back to the wall with 
her gun ready as Mulder kicked the door open.

     Mulder cautiously walked through the door, 
sweeping the room in front of him with his gun. 
She waited outside quietly until his hand came 
back out, motioning her to follow. 

     Dana rounded the corner of her front door and 
stopped in her tracks. She didn't even hear the 
sound of her gun falling to the floor beside her.

     Her house of cards had crumbled.

     


     

     Mulder looked back and saw Scully stopped 
short in the doorway. Her apartment was beyond 
chaos. Furniture was not only toppled, but was 
mangled and torn. The remnants of drawers and 
shelves, papers, and books covered the floor. 
Cushions had been slit open by what he at first 
believed was a large knife. But when he looked 
again, he noticed that the slits were in parallel 
sets, as if clawed by an animal—a very large 
animal.

     He couldn't help but fell a little satisfaction that 
he had been vindicated, and Scully had been in 
danger. The only things that kept the smug grin 
from his face were the thought of what would 
have happened if Danjou hadn't warned him and 
the look on Scully's face. It was the look of a 
person who had experienced one shock too 
many. He walked over to her and put his hands 
on her shoulders, intent on leading her to....to 
where? There wasn't a piece of furniture left to sit 
on.

     "Scully?" he asked because he really didn't 
know what else to say.

     She seemed to snap out of her initial shock at 
the sound of her name. She shrugged gently out 
of his hands. "I"m okay," she said in a monotone 
while surveying the destruction around her.

     He knew what she was doing, looking for 
anything that might have survived while mentally 
preparing for the undeniable fact that everything 
was lost. He had done the same thing when he 
had entered the basement office to find the X-files 
charred and water soaked. He watched her as 
she moved wraith-like toward a toppled 
bookshelf. She almost tripped over an unnoticed 
table leg, but she did little more than looked 
down and kept walking.

     "Holy moly!" 

     Frohike's words from the doorway reminded 
him that the guys and the priest had been in the 
car behind them. They began a sort of sweep of 
the room. Looking under debris for some clue to 
who or what did this.

     "Do you smell that?" Langly asked while 
wrinkling his nose. "It smells like wet dog."

     Byers held up the phone, tracing the end of the 
cable to the wall. "The phone is dead, even 
though it is still plugged in. Must be cut outside.  
I'll go check it out."

     Mulder heard all of this only peripherally. 
Some part of his mind registered that the cut 
phone line would explain why he couldn't reach 
Scully the day before. Most of his attention, 
however, was focused solely on his partner. He 
didn't take his eyes off her as she squatted and 
dug through the pile that had once been books. 
She picked up half of a hardback book, the front 
binding hanging limply from the pages. With an 
almost frantic motion, she rummaged until she 
found the other half. She carefully placed the two 
halves together and began dusting off the cover.

     Hold it together, Scully, he thought, and for a 
moment he thought she would. Then her 
shoulders slumped, and she clutched the book to 
her chest. He made his way over to her and knelt 
in front of her, placing a reassuring hand on her 
arm. She never looked up, but he could detect 
the slightest quiver of her chin. She lowered the 
mangled book to her lap again, and he read the 
cover. 

     Moby Dick. 

     He searched for something to say, but no 
words came.

     "Agent Mulder." Father Michaels was calling 
him from the kitchen.

     "In a minute," he said, not knowing what to do, 
but not wanting to leave Scully alone.

     "I think you should see this. Now." The priest's 
words left no room for argument.

     He lifted Scully's face to look at his own. 
Although she was obviously still upset, she 
seemed to be in control once again. He raised 
his eyebrows, and she nodded a positive 
response to his silent inquiry. Convinced that she 
was okay, he stood and went into the kitchen.

     He almost didn't see what the priest was 
pointing to among the broken dishes and 
glasses. But then, the five-pointed shape became 
clear. 

     "A pentagram," he said somewhat happily 
surprised.

     "Does this mean demons did this?" The 
priest's question was more of a plea for Mulder to 
deny what he himself was obviously having 
trouble denying.

     "Not necessarily,." Mulder said as he squatted 
down for a closer look. "Pentagrams are used in 
several non-Christian religions. The Wiccan 
believe it represents the elements and spirit. 
They enclose it in a circle to represent the 
protection of the Goddess. Satanist, however, 
invert the pentagram, just as they invert the cross. 
But even then it isn't always used to summon 
demons. It's used as a form of protection against 
evil in general."

     Father Michaels leaned over Mulder's 
shoulder and studied the pattern. "Is this one 
inverted?"

     Mulder had been trying to determine the same 
thing. "I can't tell; its been broken. Though given 
the destruction here, I wouldn't be surprised if it 
was. But it also means we might have a fighting 
chance." Through all the destruction, he was 
finally seeing a ray of hope.

     "I don't see how an inverted pentagram can be 
viewed as good news."  The priest was staring 
down at him, arms crossed.

     For some reason, the priest's stance annoyed 
Mulder. "The only reason a pentagram would be 
here is to protect the summoner from the demons, 
evil, whatever."

     "And that's good how?" The tilt of the priest's 
head was almost arrogant as he asked his 
question.

     Mulder had to check himself and not respond 
in a like manner. He answered him in a 
controlled voice. "Only a human would need 
protection from the supernatural—and the phone 
line was cut, by a human. I'm beginning to think 
that our supernatural opponent is more natural 
than super. Still, we should get out of here, and 
soon." The tingling sensation of warning he had 
experience with the hougan was slowly returning.

     Father Michaels uncrossed his arms and 
shook his head. "Agent Mulder, in case you have 
forgotten, we are humans. And just like this 
summoner, we are going to need protection from 
any demons, or whatever, that is running 
around."

     That's it, Mulder thought. He was tired. He 
hadn't slept in over thirty hours, and even before 
that, he had slept very little. He had also been 
wearing the same suit for the entire time he had 
been awake and was in desperate need of a 
shower, shave, and change of clothes. His 
emotions were raw, and he knew it wouldn't take 
much more to push him over the edge. He had 
spent most of the time awake worrying about 
Scully and when he was finally able to see she 
was all right, she had wanted to kill him. Even 
now he wanted to get her out of here, instead of 
dealing with a pompous excommunicated priest. 
Well, fine, if he wanted sarcasm, he could deal it 
out as easily as he could take it.

     Mulder placed his hand on his waist, his 
fingers resting lightly at his belt line. He shifted 
his weight, tilted his head, and gave the priest his 
cockiest grin. "Well, Father, I guess that's why we 
have you, now, isn't it?" 

     Father Michaels opened his mouth to protest, 
but he was cut off by laughter from the other 
room. It was Scully's laughter, and it was 
bordering on the demented. 

     Mulder pushed by the priest and strode back 
into the living room. Scully was nowhere to be 
seen, but the Gunmen were staring toward her 
bedroom where the laughter was coming from. 
Mulder walked past them and into the bedroom.

     The scene there was much like the one in the 
rest of the apartment. Everything was in 
shambles. Scully turned and faced Mulder as he 
entered the room. She was clenching what 
appeared to be a few pieces of silk and shear 
lingerie. She held them out towards Mulder as if 
she were proving a point.

     "Everything," she said, still laughing. 
"Everything destroyed except these." She 
continued to laugh. "When I first found them, all I 
could think was Frohike must have planned this 
so all I have left to wear is a see-through nightie."

     Mulder took her by the elbow and started 
leading her out of the room. Maybe all this was 
more than she could take. Besides, he was 
getting goose bumps from his growing 
apprehension. "We can get you some more 
clothes. I think we should leave now."

     She stopped laughing and angrily pulled 
away from him. "Leave? We're not leaving. We're 
calling the police."

     He turned back to face her. "The police won't 
be able to help. We just have to walk away."

     "Walk away?" She asked incredulously. 
"Mulder, this is everything I own. Everything I 
have worked for. This is my life."

     "Yes, it is your life, and that's why we have to 
leave. Now." He had realized that the summoner 
didn't know where Scully had been last night, 
and he wasn't going to risk revealing themselves 
by hanging around this apartment.

     She studied him for a moment and obviously 
read his anxiety to leave. "What's wrong?  What 
did you find?"

     He hadn't wanted to tell her, at least not now. 
But it was obvious that she wasn't going 
anywhere until he did. "A pentagram, on the 
kitchen floor," he said reluctantly.

     She laughed in his face. "A pentagram. 
Mulder, you're not suggesting that demons did 
this? By comparison, my theory about Frohike 
almost sound reasonable."

     Now was not the time for her skepticism to kick 
in. "The pentagram.." he started, but she cut him 
off.

     "The pentagram only proves that someone 
who believes in demonology was in my 
apartment, not that demons are lurking in the 
closet."

     He moved closer to her until he was right in 
her face. "Then how do you explain the 
destruction? Unless, of course, you have been 
keeping a very large and angry mountain lion as 
a pet. And why didn't any of your neighbors hear 
it? If they had, surely they would have reported it 
to the police. I didn't see any crime scene tape, 
Scully. Did you?" He knew he was being hard on 
her, but his urge to leave was taking over.

     Scully had crossed her arms and was biting 
the inside of her cheek. He knew that look all too 
well. It meant she didn't have a valid argument, 
but she wasn't yet ready to admit he was right, 
either. He had to keep going before she came up 
with something.

     "This wouldn't be the first supernatural 
occurrence that either one of us has experienced 
during this whole ordeal, and I don't think its 
going to be the last. The dreams, your pregnancy, 
the missing women, this, all of it is tied together. 
And no matter how skeptical you are or how hard 
you try to deny it, it won't just go away. The 
hougan in Miami knew everything, Scully. He 
knew about the dreams, the baby, your rape. He 
told me your rape was a spiritual attack, but 
physical attacks would follow. Look around. I 
think he was right."

     He could tell she was giving ground, but 
knowing her, she would come up with at least 
one more argument, even if it was a weak one. 
"Okay, let's say that he was right. Then the attack 
is over."

     Mulder shook his head. "The new moon, 
Scully. The missing women all disappeared over 
a three day period leading up to the night of the 
new moon. Last night was the first night. We still 
have two more to go, and I have a feeling things 
are only going to get worse."

     Instead of giving in, Scully got a wild look in 
her eyes. He could tell she was desperately 
looking for some excuse, some explanation. This 
wasn't like her. Usually she eventually accepted 
his explanations, even if she didn't completely 
believe them. But for some reason, she refused to 
buy into this one.

     "I said we aren't going anywhere," she said as 
she began to pick up the wreckage that used to 
be her bedroom.

     Again he tried to take her by the arm, but she 
pulled away violently and screamed, "No!" at the 
top of her lungs. Mulder instantly let loose his grip 
and backed away a step.

     Scully continued to pick up the debris. 
"Demons did not do this to my apartment 
because demons do not exist. Do you 
understand me, Mulder? This was nothing more 
than a break-in, probably by a bunch of kids in 
some stupid cult initiation."

     "Scully," Mulder said softly, "what about your 
pregnancy?"

     Scully didn't stop her futile cleaning. 
"Pregnancy? How can I be pregnant? I haven't 
been with a man in God knows how long. And 
even if I had, I'm barren. So, obviously I'm not 
pregnant." She turned and faced him now. "Do 
you understand? I cannot be pregnant, it is a 
scientific impossibility." She slumped slowly to 
the floor still holding the tattered clothing in her 
hands and softly began to cry. "I'm not pregnant, I 
can't be."

     Mulder approached her slowly and knelt down 
beside her. "Scully, we both know that's not true." 
He found it ironic that just days before he had 
said almost the same thing when she originally 
claimed to be pregnant.

     As if she could no longer deny the evidence 
before her, she buried her head in her hands and 
began to cry. "Oh God, Mulder! How can this be 
happening? It goes against everything I know to 
be true. I can't explain this. I don't know what to 
do. What am I supposed to do?"

     Mulder sat on the floor beside her and took her 
in his arms. Welcome to my world, he thought. 
"What I always do, we'll make it up as we go 
along." 

     She clung to him, crying. Her fears pouring out 
with each tear, flooding over the wall of 
skepticism and disbelief she had built against the 
unexplainable events she had witnessed in their 
time together. He held her in silence until the 
sobs had abated. When she finished, she pushed 
away and wiped her nose on the torn clothing 
she still held. Her eyes were swollen and red, but 
he could also see a new conviction in them.

     "Are you ready?" he asked as he brushed a 
tear off her cheek. His entire body was screaming 
to leave this apartment, but he would have sat 
and held her crying with one arm and his gun 
drawn with the other if she had wanted to stay.

     Scully took a deep breath before she spoke as 
though to build her resolve. "So, where do we 
go?"

     Mulder did his best to suppress a victory smile 
as he stood and helped her to her feet. 
"Eventually, we will go back to the tenement. It 
seemed safe enough last night. First though we'll 
go to my place, shower, grab a few things. Then 
we'll find you some clothes." She rolled her eyes 
in a mock thank you, but Mulder ignored it. At 
least it was a sign that she was returning to 
normal. "I'll send the Gunmen out to get us some 
supplies and food. Is there anything you need?" 

     He had meant anything special that was 
pregnancy-related, but he knew it had come out 
wrong as soon as he said it. "Yeah," she said as 
she indicated the chaos around her, "one of 
everything." 

     He really needed some sleep. If anyone 
deserved to have an attitude at this moment, it 
was Scully, but one more smart ass comment 
and he was going to have to hurt someone. Not 
that he wanted to, but his psyche needed some 
sort of release and violence seemed the most 
fulfilling way at the moment. As if on cue, Father 
Michaels walked in. The memory of their last 
conversation ticked him off even more, but he 
knew the three of them shouldn't be separated. 

     "Let's get out of here," he said over his 
shoulder to Scully. Out of the corner of his eye, 
he could see her picking up the torn copy of 
Moby Dick as she took one last look around the 
room. Mulder started out the door, knowing 
Scully was following behind. As he passed the 
priest, he slapped him on the shoulder a little 
rougher than was really necessary. "Well, Padre, 
time to go to work." 

     Yes, a shower was going to be a dream come 
true.

     

     

     He had to admit that he felt better now than he 
had that morning. The shower and change into 
jeans and a t-shirt had calmed his irritability. And 
even though his sleep had been limited to the 
short time it had taken Scully and the priest to 
take their respective showers, he had felt 
somewhat revitalized throughout most of the day. 
Now, as evening was descending and the 
fluorescent lanterns lit, his fatigue was returning. 

     He, Scully, and Father Michaels had gone to 
his apartment, showered, and packed a few of 
items. Father Michaels had refused his offer of a 
change of clothes, although he had requested a 
donation of a couple of pairs of socks and 
underwear. Mulder had reluctantly complied with 
his request. He tried not to think of that as he 
looked up from his poker hand and glanced over 
to the sofa where Scully and the priest sat talking 
quietly. 

     A pair of his sweatpants and a t-shirt, although 
several sizes too large for her, had worked well 
enough to gain access to a department store and 
buy her some new clothes. He and the priest had 
shuffled through the aisles as she had picked out 
bras and panties to go with the jeans and shirts 
he had purchased for her on the floor below. 
They hadn't taken the time to find her briefcase 
and wallet in her apartment, and given the level 
of destruction, a search would have probably 
been fruitless. Father Michaels had struggled in 
vain to find a place for his eyes to rest without 
embarrassment. Mulder, on the other hand, had 
tried to pretend it was business as usual. And he 
had actually succeeded until he had to break out 
his credit card to pay for the undergarments. The 
implied intimacy of that purchase had turned him 
into a babbling fool who was all thumbs when the 
clerk asked for his identification. That was 
something else that he tried not to think about as 
he watched the two of them across the room.

     Scully smiled and brushed her hair back 
behind her ear in response to something Father 
Michaels said. Jesus, was she flirting with him? 
Brushing back of hair was a definite flirtation 
maneuver, wasn't it? She was wearing a bra and 
panties that he had bought for her and flirting with 
a priest who was wearing his underwear. He tried 
to hide his grimace by popping one of the 
sunflower seeds from the ever-growing pile in 
front of him.

     "Mulder, are you going to bet or just eat your 
winnings?" Frohike was tapping his cards 
impatiently on the table. Mulder's cell phone sat 
on the table next to Frohike's small pile of seeds. 
He had confiscated it after Mulder had received a 
call from Agent Beaubrun in Miami. Beaubrun 
had only called out of concern for Mulder when 
he had not come into the field office that morning 
and was not at his hotel room. But Frohike had 
gone into a near rage at his use of the phone, 
claiming that by using an easily traced mode of 
communication, he might as well place a neon 
sign with a big glowing arrow directing the bad 
guys right to them.

     "Huh?" Mulder realized he hadn't even looked 
at his cards. "I fold," he said, ignoring the 
exchanged glance that passed between his 
fellow card players. He went to the cooler to get 
something to drink.

     "I'm out, too." Byers stood and followed him to 
the cooler. "Getting a little nervous about 
tonight?"

     Mulder shrugged his shoulders 
noncommittally. His growing concerns about the 
evening were yet another in the series of 
thoughts he was trying to block out. "So, how 
much do you guys actually know about Father 
Michaels?"

     Byers took a drink from his can of soda. "Not 
much more than we already told you. But I think 
you can trust him."

     And there was the problem. As much as he 
was starting to dislike the priest, he felt confident 
that he was critical to their survival. And that 
feeling of dependency was even more annoying 
than the sarcasm and attitude. 

     Scully was still smiling at the priest. 

     "Since he's no longer an official priest, do you 
think he still honors his vow of celibacy?" Mulder 
realized too late that he had actually asked the 
question out loud.

     Luckily, Byers had taken it as a joke and 
chuckled. "Geez, Mulder. Are you looking for a 
date or something?"

     Mulder went along with the joke and laughed, 
too. Just then Scully stood, said good night to the 
room in general, and went into the bathroom to 
the cot she had been held captive on the night 
before.

     Mulder grabbed the sleeping bag he had 
brought from his apartment and followed her into 
the bathroom. He began unrolling the bag 
without saying anything to Scully. Fortunately, the 
toilet and bathtub had been ripped out of the 
small room, or he would never have fit. 
Unfortunately, that meant the only thing 
separating him from the bathroom a floor below 
was an inch-thick piece of plywood where the 
bathtub had once been. Scully watched him for a 
moment as he tested the plywood. Convinced of 
its strength, he stretched out as best he could in 
the cramped quarters.

     "Mulder, I'm a big girl. You don't need to sleep 
in here for my benefit."

     Mulder wiggled on his bag, trying to figure out 
what was digging into his upper back. "Actually 
its for my benefit,' he said as he sat up and pulled 
back the sleeping bag to reveal a 3/8th inch bolt. 
How had he missed that when he lay down? 

     Scully sat on the cot giving him an all too 
familiar skeptical look. 

     "I'm serious," he said as he situated himself 
back into the bag. "Whatever this is that's 
happening here has made it very clear that I am 
not to sleep unless I know you are safe."

     He expected her to argue the point, but 
instead she asked in a quiet voice. "What is going 
on here? I mean, do you really believe all this?"

     He didn't have to ask what "this" she was 
referring to because everything was beginning to 
lump itself into one big "this." He rolled onto his 
side and propped his head up with his hand.

     All right, he had known this conversation had 
to take place eventually. And it was obvious 
Scully had known it as well and had dreaded it 
as much as he did. Now, he had to ask the 
question he didn't want to because no matter 
what her answer was, it wouldn't be good.

     "Scully, your dreams...with me... you were 
having them at the time of your conception, 
right?"

     Although the light was dim in the small room, 
he thought she was actually blushing. She 
lowered her head. "Mulder, like I told you, I never 
said that you were the..."

     He cut her off before she could say the last 
word. "You never said it, but you didn't have to 
with the implications of our last conversation in 
Miami." She didn't say anything so he continued. 
"Was there anyone else? In your dreams or...in 
your bed...." God, this was awkward.

     She licked her lips and shook her head. "No," 
was all she said.

     Well, there you have it, he thought. They sat in 
silence for a moment, neither knowing what to 
say. Then Mulder retreated into his old sanctuary. 

     "Scully, no matter what happens, I'll be here 
with you. But I have to tell you...I failed wood shop 
in Junior High. And I don't think the Gunmen are 
the frankincense and myrrh sort of guys." 

     She raised her head slightly and looked out at 
him with an amused glance.

     "I'm not sure how this happened, but I am sure 
this child is important," he continued. Almost 
every culture has myths associated with a hero-
savior. A person who appears in a time of chaos 
to stand against evil and better the world. Jesus, 
Buddha, even King Arthur and Hercules, fall into 
this category with literally hundreds of others. 
And one of the most common threads in these 
stories is the mysticism associated with the 
conception and birth of the hero."

     "And you think my baby is one of these hero-
saviors who is going to save the world?" Scully 
asked in disbelief.

     "I know it sounds crazy, Scully, but evil is 
running rampant. We see it everyday in the cases 
we investigate, on the news, even driving down 
the street. And nothing seems to stop it. Maybe 
it's only going to get worse, and it's time for a 
hero to save us from ourselves." Scully sat in 
silent contemplation, so Mulder continued. "Too 
many things have been made clear for me to 
deny that we have a major role in something that 
I cannot come close to explaining. With each 
answer, a new question arises. And the hows of 
your pregnancy become more and more of a 
mystery as I come closer to understanding the 
whys."

     "My grandmother used to say, 'Count your 
blessing, don't question them.'"

     "So you think you've been blessed?"

     "It's not a question of if, but of how. That's the 
biggest difference between us, Mulder, you want 
to know the whys, but the hows are 
inconsequential. As a scientist, I want to know—I 
need to know—the answer to how this happened. 
But for the first time in my life, I'm afraid to search 
for those answers."

     He could tell that she was genuinely 
frightened and tried to alleviate her fears. "Scully, 
whatever the answer is, we can...."

     She cut him off with a shake of her head. "I'm 
not afraid of the answer, but the risk associated 
with actually asking the question. It seems I've 
spent most of my life trying to coalesce my 
spiritual and scientific beliefs. For many years, I 
just ignored it. Which meant, as a scientist, I 
ignored my faith. But more recently, I've found 
myself in the precarious position of trying to 
balance the two. Now, I feel I'm being force to 
choose."

     Until that moment, Mulder had never 
comprehended how difficult her return to the 
church had been for her. 

     Scully's smile was a little sad. "I was almost 
thrown out of Catechism for questioning the 
Virgin Birth."

     Mulder returned the smile. "A skeptic from the 
beginning, huh?"

     "It was when we were just starting to learn 
about genetics and DNA in fifth-grade biology.  
Remember those little boxes they would teach 
you to draw to determine all the possible blood 
types you could have had based on dominant 
and recessive genes? Well, we had just 
discussed chromosomes and how a person's sex 
is dependent on the combination of 
chromosomes received from the parents, 
particularly the father, who is the only one who 
can supply the y-chromosome for a male.

     I had always assumed that God had just 
started Jesus growing in Mary's womb. But the 
science lesson had just shown me for a fact that 
male DNA had to be involved somewhere in the 
process. If it hadn't, there was no physical way 
that Jesus could have been born a male. So I 
asked Sister Agnes if God had sperm."

     Sully began to laugh. "She drug me out of 
class by my ear and sent me to confession. The 
priest told me all things are possible with God, 
but I needed something more. So I decided that 
God must have taken Joseph's sperm and 
implanted them in Mary, and I never mentioned 
my theory again. Until now."

     They both laughed softly, the implications of 
her childish idea hovering between them.

     "So, you think that's what has happened 
here?" Mulder asked.

     Scully smiled weakly. "I'm saying that maybe 
some questions shouldn't be asked."

     He gave her a confused look, so she 
continued. "The scientific method teaches us to 
logically question what we don't understand. 
Faith, by definition, is acceptance of the 
unexplainable, even though it defies logic. The 
two are mutually exclusive ideals. What if by 
questioning these events too closely, I'm 
destroying the faith that is actually sustaining 
them?"

     "But questioning the world around you is 
human nature. Most religions evolved from the 
simple questions of why and how the world 
functions. Even Father Michaels questioned his 
religion."

     Scully shook her head. "No, he questioned the 
church, the political hierarchy. But his faith in the 
power of God has never wavered. Besides, 
Father Michaels isn't your typical priest."

     Her defense of the priest raised his shackles, 
especially since she was right. "Do you think he's 
the right person for the job?" She had spent most 
of the day talking with him, maybe she could 
shed some light on why he had concerns.

     "Mulder, I don't even know what his job is 
supposed to be, and neither does he. Why? Do 
think he's wrong?" 

     He felt that she really wanted to know his 
opinion, and it boosted his ego.

     "I don't know," he answered truthfully. "There's 
just something about him that irritates me."

     She half-laughed at him. "Are you sure you 
don't mean he scares you?"

     Oh, that was just ridiculous. "Scared? Why 
would he scare me?"

     She looked at him full in the face for the first 
time. "Maybe because you see yourself when you 
look at him, and what the relentless pursuit of the 
truth can cost you. Or maybe you're afraid that 
you aren't dedicated enough to give up 
everything for your beliefs."

     Okay, she was hitting a little too close to home. 
Time to back her off a bit. "So tell me, Scully, if 
you were to have dream sex with Father 
Michaels, would it be as hot as the dream sex 
you had with me?"

     She opened her mouth to protest the idea, 
then shook her head and smiled. It was the first 
genuine smile she had given him in a very long 
time. He suddenly realized how much he had 
missed it.

     She curled up on the cot and closed her eyes, 
all the while continuing to smile. 

     "Good night, Mulder," she said in a tone meant 
to end the conversation.

     "But, Scully," he said in exaggerated 
innocence, "you didn't answer my question."

     "In your dreams, Mulder."

     "No, Scully, I believe that took place in yours." 
She had walked right into that one and by the 
smile on her face, he could tell she had known it 
all along.

     "Yes," she said mysteriously, "it certainly did."' 

     He found himself drifting off to sleep 
wondering exactly what she had meant by that.

     

     

     In the darkness, she became aware of the 
sound of sea gulls, followed seconds later by the 
roar of the surf. She could feel cool dampness 
underneath her, and the smell of saltwater and 
fresh air overwhelmed her senses. Lazily, she 
opened her eyes and looked around.

     She was lying curled up on one side, on the 
wet sand, looking out into the vast expanse of 
ocean. She lifted herself up, rubbed her eyes, 
and looked around. The beach was deserted in 
both directions, but she immediately recognized 
the landscape. The way the sand rose up to 
become a grassy hill. The black jetty of rock only 
about 50 feet off shore. The green, cool water that 
was now washing around her, soaking her knit 
shirt and jeans. The pier far into the distance on 
the right. It was the beach in San Diego that her 
parents had often taken her and her brothers and 
sister to as children. She half-expected the smell 
of hot dogs and pretzels to come wafting from the 
concession stand that had always been near 
where she sat now. But the concession stand 
was gone. Only deserted beach as far as she 
could see.

     But she couldn't really be on the beach in San 
Diego, could she? She had fallen asleep on the 
cot in the tenement. Mulder was only a few feet 
away. 

     But regardless, here she was on this beach. 
She felt it was completely real. It is happening, a 
voice in her head told her. 

     "Starbuck, the tide is coming in! You need to 
get up."

     Her father's familiar voice made her spin 
around. She was overcome by a sense of deja 
vu. How many times had she heard him say 
those words, or something similar to them, on this 
very beach? But this wasn't a memory. He was 
really there.

     He was walking towards her, looking down at 
her like she was a still a child. He positively 
glowed from the glare of the sun on his dress-
whites, complete with the medals and insignias 
she had admired so lovingly as a girl. His white 
captain's cap sat perfectly on top of his head. The 
only thing missing from his uniform were his 
socks and shoes. Instead, he was barefoot and 
had the pants rolled up above his ankles. She 
would have thought he looked ridiculous if she 
hadn't been so shocked to see him.

     Dana closed her eyes and opened them 
again, thinking that maybe he would disappear. 
But he was still there, now walking into the inch-
deep surf that was surrounding her.

     "Ahab?" she whispered. This is impossible, 
she kept telling herself. You must be dreaming.

     "Baby girl," he was now standing over her, 
holding out a hand, "you're getting soaked. Don't 
let your mother see you in those wet clothes." 

     "I can't..." Her thought trailed off. She didn't 
know what to say. I can't believe it's you? Of 
course it was him. She could even smell the Old 
Spice that he had obligatorily worn during her 
childhood because she and her siblings had 
given it to him every year for Father's Day. He 
hadn't worn it since she was a teenager, when 
the gift had finally changed to something more 
original. But he definitely had it on today. Or was 
it tonight?

     Confused, she took his hand and stood up. 
Now closer to his face, she could see every 
wrinkle and freckle. This was the face she 
remembered seeing the last time she saw him 
alive. But he continued talking like she was still a 
little girl.

     "You were day dreaming again, weren't you 
Dana?" He wrapped a protective arm around her 
and began leading her up the beach. "Let's get 
you home and in some dry clothes. The boys and 
Missy are waiting in the car."

     She was dripping wet, and her jeans and shirt 
stuck to her skin uncomfortably. For a moment 
she let herself enjoy the sensation of her father's 
warm arm around her, talking to her like she was 
seven again. His presence was something she 
had longed for desperately. She closed her eyes 
and leaned into him.

     "Oh, Daddy," she sighed. "I've missed you so 
much."

     "I know you have, baby. And I've missed you, 
too." He suddenly stopped and stepped in front of 
her, intently looking at her. He looked very 
serious and sad. "You know that I would be with 
you if I could." His hand tenderly swept a lock of 
hair back off her forehead, and then it moved to 
caress her cheek. "I know you need me right 
now."

     She nodded silently, feeling her chin quiver. 
She lowered her head to hide the tears that were 
filling her eyes and threatening to stream down 
her checks.

     "Oh, Daddy. I'm so scared."

     "I know, Starbuck." He gently surrounded her 
with a big bear hug. 

     She felt so small, just like a child swept up in 
his massive arms. She allowed the tears to fall as 
she buried the side of her face into his chest. She 
could feel the cool brass buttons digging into her 
cheek and could smell the starch on his uniform. 

     "It's okay. It's okay," he whispered as he 
rubbed her back. "We all make mistakes."

     She looked up at him, confused for a moment. 
She wasn't sure what he had meant.

     "We all make mistakes, baby girl," he repeated 
in answer to her look. "The important thing is 
knowing how to rectify them."

     She pushed away from him. Vaguely, she 
remembered an identical conversation they had 
had when she was a teenager about a 
particularly nasty argument between her and her 
mother. He had convinced her to go and 
apologize, even though she felt she was right. 
She hadn't liked the disappointed tone he had 
taken with her then, and she didn't like the one 
that was seeping from his voice now.

     "Ahab," she said straightening up and wiping 
her eyes, "I'm not a little girl anymore."

     "I know you're not, Dana." He said it gently, but 
his frown and sad eyes let her know that he was 
unhappy with her. "That's why I'm trusting you to 
fix this." With the word "this," he looked down at 
her abdomen.

     Her hand flew to her stomach, realizing what 
he must be referring to.

     He continued, taking her firmly by the upper 
arms. "Your mother and I have tried so hard to 
instill good moral values in you and Missy and 
the boys." His voice was getting louder as his 
anger became more apparent. "I know you 
understand what we expected of you, of all of 
you. I thought you had more common sense, 
Dana." 

     "Daddy, it's not what you think..." She was 
desperately trying to shrug off his hands, but his 
hold only tightened.

     "It's an abomination of God!" he said furiously. 
He began to shake her. "This child was never met 
to be. Can never be born. Do you understand?"

     "Daddy, you're hurting me!" She was scared. 
He had never talked to her like this, never treated 
her so roughly.

     He continued to shake her. His voice was 
booming. "I said, do you understand! Answer me, 
Dana!"

     "Yes! Yes! I understand!" She frantically yelled 
back at him. 

     He let go of her arms, and for a moment they 
both stood looking at each other, panting. His 
face slowly softened, and he reached out to touch 
her cheek again. "I knew you wouldn't let me 
down," he purred at her.

     She jerked away from his touch and slowly 
backed away from him. Warily, she eyed him, as 
the blood rushed through her ears, drowning out 
the noise of the surf. 

     "You are not my father," she said somberly 
without breaking her gaze. This creature looked 
just like him, talked like him, even smelled like 
him. But it was not him. He would never treat her 
so manipulatively.

     She took a few more steps backwards, then 
turned and began running down the beach 
towards the pier. She didn't know what she was 
going to do, but she had to get away from this 
creature. She felt her feet sinking into the wet 
sand, impeding her progress. 

     "You can't run away, Dana!" he yelled after 
her. "You know what you have to do! It's the only 
way! Anything else will destroy you!"

     

     Dana half-sat up on the cot and gasped for air. 
Her mind slowly comprehended that the small 
room was just as it was when she had fallen 
asleep. In the dim light, she could make out the 
crumbling sink next to her, the desolate tile walls, 
the lonely shower head sticking out from 
decaying plaster. Nothing had changed except 
that Mulder's sleeping bag was now empty.

     She pushed her legs over the side of the cot 
and sat up, resting her elbows on her knees and 
her head in her hands. Her mind was jumping all 
over the place. This was the first time she had 
dreamed like that since her attack. Where the hell 
was Mulder? It had been so real, but so unreal. 
Why her father? And why so violent and angry? 
Yuck, she felt disgustingly sticky all over. 

     She flexed her sock covered feet, and that's 
when it hit her.

     She was soaking wet.

     

     

     Mulder sat on the wide marble steps, his back 
to the mammoth image of Lincoln seated above 
him. It was well past midnight, and only the 
glowing interiors of the monument provided 
illumination against the darkness of the moonless 
night. He often came here in search of solace. 
The stony silence of the great men who 
surrounded him was usually a comfort when his 
mind and soul were troubled. But tonight the 
statues reminded him of ghosts, like the ghost of 
his earlier dream. The ghost that had driven him 
out of the tenement where Scully still slept to his 
office where he retrieved the photograph he 
carefully studied.

     He had never expected to see his father in his 
dreams. Although he had dreamed of him often 
since his death, his latest dreams had been 
almost exclusive to the events currently 
unfolding. But what was even more unexpected 
than his appearance were his words that still 
echoed in his mind.

     "Walk away, Fox. Walk away while you can. It's 
the only way. Anything else will destroy you."

     Mulder shook his head as if to dislodge the 
memory. Instead the words flooded back in stark 
detail.

     "I know you want to help her, your partner, but 
it won't work. You have good intentions, you 
always have. You think you can raise a child that 
isn't your blood, cannot possibly be your blood. 
But you can't. Try as you might, you won't be able 
to deny the fact that although the eyes or the hair 
look like the mother, the chin or the smile belong 
to someone else, another man. Eventually, you 
won't be able to concentrate on any other 
features. And soon you will come to feel the smile 
that belongs to someone else is taunting you, 
challenging you."

     Mulder closed his eyes, blocking the image of 
the photograph as his father's words continued to 
play in his mind.

     "You are lucky, Fox. You know now, before the 
child is born, that you are not the father. Walk 
away now, before the child steals you heart and 
eats it away like she did mine. All I could do was 
make the necessary arrangements to remove that 
taunting smile from my life."

     Mulder swallowed hard against the wave of 
nausea that again threatened to overtake him 
when he thought about the arrangements his 
father had made. He opened his eyes and began 
scanning the photograph of Samantha again. He 
searched for any sign of his father in the smiling 
face. The nose? Something in her eyes? Maybe 
he was trying too hard to see it. His body tensed 
as he replayed his father's final words as he lay 
dying in his arms. 

     "Forgive me." 

     Was this what he had begged forgiveness for? 
That he had taken Samantha from them and, in 
the process, had shattered their family?

     Mulder let out a sigh and looked at his watch. 
He should be getting back to Scully. His 
apprehension was beginning to overcome the 
queasiness he felt.

     "I'm surprised, Mr. Mulder. I would have 
figured you for a Jefferson man. He was such an 
idealist."

     The sound of the all too familiar voice made 
the hair raise on the back of his neck. He placed 
the photo in his back pocket and looked down to 
see a figure standing on the bottom step, just on 
the edge of the light.  A shadowed hand lifted a lit 
cigarette to thin lips. Mulder couldn't help but 
mentally compare those lips to Samantha's. 
Blocking the thought, his mind instantly went into 
defense mode.

     "I wouldn't expect you to understand the 
idealism of a man who believed in equality for 
all." Best to play the game, at least for a while.

     The man shrugged. "Lincoln was an ordinary 
man who was remembered for his extraordinary 
times. Given the same situation, anyone could 
earn a monument, even you."

     Mulder's skin was beginning to tingle, and 
although he couldn't be sure, he felt it had more 
to do with Scully than with his visitor. Time to 
move things along. 

     "Did you have a reason for this visit, or do you 
have a poli-sci final tomorrow?"

     "Very well, I'll get right to the point. Your 
partner has something that my associates want, 
only they can't seem to find her."

     Mulder's face turned to stone, instinctively 
knowing it was critical he betray nothing.

     With a flick of his cigarette, the man continued 
in a conversational tone. "It's a pity she found out 
about her condition. The plan was to harvest the 
fetus before she suspected a pregnancy. Now, 
I'm afraid the plans have changed."

     Mulder willed his voice to remain level. 
"Pregnancy? I don't know what you're talking 
about."

     "Come now, Mr. Mulder, you obviously do 
know, and you know where she is."

     Mulder's mind was racing. How the hell did he 
know about Scully's pregnancy? "Why would you 
think Scully is pregnant? After all, your tests left 
her infertile."

     The shadowed face moved forward into the 
light. Mulder could tell he was losing his 
patience. "Enough with the games..."

     "But I was hoping for a round of hopscotch 
after this." He couldn't resist one more jab. 
Besides, when he was angry he often revealed 
more.

     The voice had lost all patience. "I'm offering 
you a chance to save her life. My associates only 
want the fetus, and they care nothing about how 
they retrieve it."

     "And you?" He couldn't believe his intentions 
were anything but self-serving.

     "I went to a great deal of trouble to return her to 
the program. I would hate to see her participation 
terminated now."

     The words floated in the air like the smoke-
laden breath that spoke them. Mulder could 
almost see their shape, the meaning becoming 
clearer even as the smoke dissipated. His heart 
was beginning to pound louder and faster as he 
said, "The chip," without intending to say it aloud.

     The man shrugged noncommittally. "It played 
its part."

     If that were true, if the chip that Mulder had 
given to Scully to replant into her neck had been 
involved, then he had played as big a role in this 
ordeal as this walking malignancy had. 

     Mulder took a few steps down the marble 
stairs. "You son of a bitch, you told me that chip 
would save her life."

     "It did and will continue to do so as long as it 
remains in place." His tone was one of an 
innocent man wrongfully accused. "But is also 
serves other purposes."

     "What else?" Mulder asked between clenched 
teeth. "What else have you done to her? What 
else do you plan to do? And why always her? 
Why don't you just take a shot at me?"

     "Mr. Mulder, you're taking this all too 
personally." Mulder really wanted to slap the 
cigarette he was casually lighting. " It's not like 
she's the only one. There are many other sets of 
women in the program, as you have seen."

     His first thoughts were of Betsy Haggopian 
and the other women who had died of the same 
cancer that had almost claimed Scully. But the 
phrase "sets of women" was ringing in his ears. 
He might as well have said seven sets of women.

     Mulder felt trapped by the implications. Did all 
the missing women also have an implant? Was 
this all just another experiment using 
unsuspecting human specimens? But the 
dreams? Surely they had to mean something. But 
then, he had seen others brainwashed through 
hypnotherapy to believe whatever lie this bastard 
and his fucking associates wanted them to 
believe. And if they had access to Scully, they 
had almost as much access to him. They had 
done it before with the water supply in his 
apartment. 

     Scully had the chip and to remove it meant 
almost certain death. He had traveled that road 
once before, and he never again wanted to 
experience the slow growth of death's shadow. 
But to leave the chip meant she was little more 
than a human lab rat, completely unaware of the 
cage she resided in. The thought of that infuriated 
him as much as his helplessness had during her 
cancer ordeal.

     "How were they planning to take the baby?" 
He was shaking with anger.

     The man shrugged and took another drag from 
his cigarette. "The same way they impregnated 
her."

     "Her rape?" He wasn't sure he wanted to know 
the answer but couldn't help asking.

     "An unfortunate reaction to one of her 
sessions. She awakened unexpectedly and tried 
to escape. Her subconscience remembered the 
subsequent recapture as a rape."

     Mulder's nausea was returning with renewed 
vengeance. He fought down bile that was rising 
in his throat.  Maybe this was another of his 
dreams. If it was, now would be the perfect time to 
wake up.

     "Who is the father?" His knees were 
weakening, and soon he would have to sit down.

     "That's of no consequence."

     "Who is the father?" Mulder spit the question at 
the man.

     "A numbered specimen who's designation 
would mean nothing to you."

     Mulder looked around helplessly. How the hell 
was he ever going to tell Scully? What was he 
going to tell Scully? That her baby wasn't a 
blessing after all. That he didn't even know if it 
was human? That he didn't even know if it was 
hers? After all, they could have just as easily 
implanted a fetus in her as actually impregnated 
her. As if he could read his thoughts, the smoking 
man spoke.

     "I can help you, Mr. Mulder. Help you to help 
her." 

     Mulder said nothing, trying to control his rage 
and yet disgustingly desperate to hear how this 
man might help him.

     "I can provide a drug that will cause a 
miscarriage. Put it in her food, make a 9-1-1 call 
that will be intercepted, and the ordeal will be 
over. Agent Scully will know nothing more than 
she lost a child. A child that she was never meant 
to have. In return for this service, I will provide 
you with some information you have been 
seeking—your sister's married name, her 
address, and phone number."

     Bribery, he had actually sunk to bribery. And 
the worst part was that if this son of a bitch could 
provide the information he promised, he would 
provide it. But at the cost of Scully's child. A child 
that was just as much a specimen as Scully. The 
thought made his stomach clench.

     "And if I don't," Mulder asked.

     The man took another drag and then studied 
the cigarette. "My associates will find her and kill 
her."

     The hell they will, Mulder thought. They would 
never find her. He would take her into hiding if 
necessary and deal with the ramifications when 
the time came. He and his associates could just 
go fuck themselves. 

     "You go to hell," he spat as he walked past the 
man.

     A voice called after him. "Even if you elude 
them, and she manages to carry the child to term, 
it won't live."

     Mulder stopped in his tracks but didn't turn 
around. It was as if he knew his thoughts even 
before he did. Mulder listened as he continued.

     "Two, three years at the most. Like the girl, 
Emily."

     Emily. Scully had only known the child a 
matter of days before she died, but she still 
carried the loss with her. The voice behind him 
continued in a sympathetic tone that sickened 
him.

     "Wouldn't it be more humane for her to suffer a 
miscarriage at this stage than to watch a child 
slowly die. The helplessness is insufferable. 
Losing a child is often more than a parent can 
stand."

     Mulder suddenly thought of his mother. The 
way she had withdrawn into the pain of losing 
Samantha. It was something he would never 
wish on anyone, especially Scully, who had lost 
so much already.

     "You have 24 hours to think about the offer, Mr. 
Mulder."

     He never looked back, but he heard the 
footsteps retreating. The apprehension he felt 
was growing, and he knew he needed to get 
back to Scully. They were no longer safe at the 
tenement, and it was time to move. It was also 
time to come up with a new plan.

     

     

     The last hour had been pure misery. 

     After waking up in soaked clothing that 
overwhelming smelled like stale seawater, Dana 
was almost immediately overcome by intense 
nausea. At first, she had told herself that she was 
only experiencing another round of the morning 
sickness that had plagued her over the last few 
weeks. And she spent quite a while curled up on 
the cot in the dark bathroom quietly praying that 
Mulder wouldn't return from wherever he had 
disappeared to to find her in her current state. 

     She thought of how pathetic she must looked 
laying in a ball, holding her stomach, in drenched 
clothing. And it would be just like Mulder, in his 
current state of mind, to overreact to the situation. 
Although it wouldn't hurt if he could just not fuss 
over her and maybe bring her some crackers. 

     She wanted to be able to objectively look at 
her latest dream and try to analyze exactly what it 
meant. To apply basic Freudian principles to 
understanding it. But she couldn't do it. It was 
more than a dream, she told herself. Somehow, it 
had happen. The wet clothes and coating of sand 
on her socks was more physical proof than she 
and Mulder had on most of their cases. And 
although she usually required more proof in 
order to remotely accept extraordinary events, 
this time was different. This time, it was 
happening to her. Again.

     She was only half-way examining these 
feelings, mainly because the attack of nausea 
was so intense and demanding so much of her 
concentration. She was so tired, she thought. 
She only wanting her stomach to give her a 
break so she could go back to sleep.

     The thought had barely crossed her mind, 
when her stomach seemed to comply with her 
wish. Just as suddenly as it had begun, the 
nausea subsided, and for a moment, Dana 
thought she could just roll over and drift back off.

     Then the cramping started. Her whole 
abdomen seemed to spasm, as if some unseen 
force was squeezing her middle from the inside. 
She immediately drew her legs up on the cot and 
let out a moan. 

     Jesus, she thought. This is not normal. She 
was suddenly very frightened. As a doctor, she 
knew that she couldn't jump to any conclusions. It 
could just be a reaction to the questionable, but 
elaborate, dinner Frohike had prepared for them 
on Father Michaels' two kerosene burners. He 
had called it camp-out surprise. The real surprise 
for her had been that it actually tasted great. At 
the time, she had jokingly accused him of 
contributing to botulism. Now, she reminded 
herself, maybe he had.

     But the other, more prominent thought in her 
mind was that she could possibly be having a 
miscarriage. It was unusual late in the first 
trimester, but it was still quite possible.

     Regardless, she needed some help. It was 
pretty obvious to her by now that Mulder was not 
coming back any time soon. She wasn't sure how 
long she had already spent lying in the darkness 
since she woke up, but considerable time had 
passed. Regardless of his insistence that he was 
meant to protect her, he had once again ditched 
her to run off on some unknown quest without 
even a note or explanation. And she was 
beginning to think that she needed medical 
attention.

     Dana pushed herself over the side of the cot 
and began to crawl through the darkness out of 
the bathroom. She managed to push the cracked 
door open with her body and made it half-way 
through the doorway before she could crawl no 
further. 

     She collapsed to the floor in the darkness and 
called out, "Father Michaels? Anyone? I need 
help."

     She raised her head and was blinded by a 
flashlight. 

     "Are you okay?" Langly's shocked voice 
floated out of the darkness from behind the beam 
of light.

     "No, I'm....Ohhh!" She wasn't able to finish as 
an intense spasm overtook her. She put her 
forehead down against the cool but dirty wooden 
floor. 

     "Wake up!" Langly yelled as she heard him 
struggling out of his sleeping bag. "We have a 
situation!"

     The sound of activity and sleeping bags 
unzipping came from four directions at once. The 
creak of the lantern being turned up proceeded 
light suddenly flooding the room. Byers was the 
first to reach her side.

     "Agent Scully, can you tell us what's wrong?" 
Byers was kneeling next to her with a hand on 
her back.

     "I'm having abdominal cramps...spasms...I 
need medical..." Again she trailed off as the next 
wave overtook her.

     "Jesus, she's drenched," Byers exclaimed.

     "Call 9-1-1," Father Michaels voice came from 
somewhere nearby and above.

     "No way," she heard Frohike say. "No way we 
are calling..."

     "For God sakes, look at her!" Father Michaels 
sounded panicked and exasperated. "She needs 
a doctor!" 

     "Frohike's right," Langly piped in. "You saw her 
apartment. Calling 9-1-1 could lead whoever is 
after her straight to our location."

     There was an uncomfortable silence, only 
broken by Dana's whimpering as she fought 
wave after wave of pain. She could sense each 
of them looking at one another, trying to figure out 
what to do.

     "When will Mulder be back?" she heard 
Frohike ask quietly.

     "I don't know," Byers answered back. "He's 
been gone over an hour. Maybe someone should 
go find him."

     "This is insane!" Father Michaels cut in. "I'm 
going to call an ambulance!"

     "Grab him!" Frohike yelled.

     Dana heard the sound of multiple footsteps 
hastily retreating, followed by a scuffle. She 
heard Frohike let out an "Ow!" followed by 
several undistinguishable "Umpf!" The only 
person she knew wasn't involved was Byers, who 
was still kneeling beside her with his hand on her 
back.

     "Do you think you can walk to the sofa?" Byers 
leaned down and whispered to her. 

     She could only shake her head since the 
spasms were increasing in intensity. Besides, 
she really didn't want a front row seat to whatever 
was still happening on the other side of the room.

     Suddenly, the room was pierced by an 
irritating high-pitched electric buzz. The sounds 
of the struggle ceased as Frohike calmly said, 
"We've got company."

     "Maybe it's Mulder." Langly sounded hopeful.

     "Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't," Frohike answered 
in a loud whisper. "Regardless, I don't want to be 
a sitting duck. Kill the light."

     The lantern creaked again as the room was 
bathed in darkness. Dana managed to raise her 
head to see Father Michaels stumbling towards 
her and Byers. He was sporting a very fresh 
bloody lip and a black eye.

     "What do we do?" he whispered to Byers.

     "Help me move her," Byers whispered back.

     Byers and the priest grabbed her under the 
arms and awkwardly lifted her, turned her 
around, and drug her back into the bathroom. In 
the darkness, they found the cot by running her 
into it, and she used her remaining strength to 
crawl onto it. Byers then quietly walked back to 
the door and pulled it almost to. Father Michaels 
sat down on the floor beside her and took her 
hand.

     "Is there anything I can do, Dana?" It was the 
first time he had called her by her first name. 

     "Pray," she barely chocked out through her 
pain. She was wishing that maybe he could 
manage to ask God to magically transported her 
to a state-of-the-art medical facility who could at 
least give her whatever pain killer cocktail was on 
tap. It was obvious the Gunmen weren't going to 
take her.

     Instead he quietly begin, "I will love You, O 
Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my 
fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in 
whom I will trust; My shield and the horn of my 
salvation, my stronghold. I will call upon the Lord, 
who is worthy to be praised; So shall I be saved 
from my enemies."

     Dana realized that he was praying that 
whoever was out there didn't harm her or him. 
For the first time, she recognized the look of fear 
that resided on his face. 

     Father Michaels leaned over her and tenderly 
brushed a lock of hair off her forehead with his 
free hand. It was the same action her father had 
performed in her dream. Dana sucked in a deep 
breath at the realization and closed her eyes. The 
priest then rested his hand on her stomach. 

     "Shh," he whispered as he continued. "The 
pangs of death encompassed me, And the floods 
of ungodliness made me afraid. The sorrows of 
Sheol surrounded me; The snares of death 
confronted me. In my distress I called upon the 
Lord, And cried out to God; He heard my voice 
from His temple, And my cry came before Him, 
even to His ears..."

     Dana suddenly felt at ease. She seemed to 
enter a trance, where nothing existed except 
Father Michaels' voice. The pain was still there, 
but it was pushed into the background. She let 
herself float away on the sound of his prayers.

     "...He sent from above, He took me; He drew 
me out of many waters. He delivered me from my 
strong enemy, From those who hated me; For 
they were too strong for me. They confronted me 
in the day of my calamity, But the Lord was my 
support. He also brought me out into a broad 
place; He delivered me because He delighted in 
me. The Lord rewarded me according to my 
righteousness; According to the cleanness of my 
hands He has recompensed me. For I have kept 
the ways of the Lord, And have not wickedly..."

     "Scully?" 

     The sound of Mulder's voice calling her 
brought her back to reality. She opened her eyes 
to see the bathroom flooded with light from the 
next room. Mulder stood in the doorway with 
Frohike and Langly right behind him. Byers had 
moved away from the door and was now 
standing on top of Mulder's empty sleeping bag. 
In her trance, she had not even heard him come 
in. And now they were all looking at her and 
Father Michaels with a mixture of concern 
and...shock?

     "Scully?" Mulder repeated. "Are you..."

     "I'm okay." She didn't even let him finish. Dana 
propped herself up on the cot with one elbow. 
"I'm actually..." she searched herself for signs of 
the spasms that had given her so much pain. 
They were gone. "...feeling much better."

     "The guys said that you were practically 
incapacitated. Maybe we should get you checked 
out by a doctor."

     "No, Mulder, I'm..." she looked over at Father 
Michaels. He was now resting back against the 
wall with his eyes closed, still holding her hand. 
His face was covered in a thin sheet of sweat, but 
she was overcome by how peaceful he looked. 
"...I'm fine."

     Father Michaels opened his eyes and looked 
at her. His face erupted in a contagious grin, and 
she couldn't help but smile back.

     "Ah, yeah," she heard Mulder say. He 
obviously didn't know what to make of this. 

     Mulder walked over and conspicuously sat 
down on the end of the cot. She and Father 
Michaels broke their gaze to look at him. He 
looked confused.

     "Do you want to fill me in on what's going on 
here?" he asked. 

     "Well, Mulder," she said as she sat up, "for 
some reason, I think Father Michaels..."

     "Managed to cast off the demons," Father 
Michaels interrupted her. 

     Both she and Mulder looked at him shocked. 
No, that was not what she started to say. In fact, 
the thought hadn't even entered her mind. 
Helped her to relax. Comforted her. Yes. But, 
demons? 

     But the thought that maybe the dream, the 
spasm, all had been some sort of...attack...filled 
her brain. What was it Mulder had told her that 
afternoon? That the hougan said that physical 
attacks would follow? And that she was a target 
for the next two nights? And she unexpectedly 
found herself nodding at Father Michaels' 
interpretation of events.

     Mulder looked at her, then looked at Father 
Michaels, then looked back at her again. He 
pulled her up by the arm and began leading her 
out of the room. Reluctantly, she let go of Father 
Michaels' hand and let Mulder half-drag her into 
the living room, all the while looking back at the 
priest over her shoulder.

     "Scully," he said turning her around in front of 
him without letting go of her arm, "you don't really 
believe him? About the demons?"

     She looked up at him incredulously. Only 
earlier that day, he had insisted that she was in 
danger from some unknown evil force. Now he 
was questioning her belief in it? Why couldn't she 
and Mulder ever seem to get on the same page? 

     She shook her arm free. His seemingly 
disbelief suddenly made her feel extremely 
unsure of the evening's events, and she said, 
"No. I don't know. Maybe. Look. Something 
happened in there. I don't know exactly what 
Mulder, but only a few minutes ago I was 
dysphoric. Now I'm standing here talking to you 
without even a trace of discomfort. Regardless of 
whatever caused the pain to dissipate, Father 
Michaels seemed to be instrumental in...."

     "You think he prayed the pain away? Like he 
waved his hands over you and, woo-woo, you're 
all better." He completed the effect by 
demonstrating with his own hands. 

     "No, Mulder. He did not wave his hands over 
me. But, I think he definitely did something. It was 
like..." she paused not knowing how to make him 
understand. "Like he pushed me out of my body 
and then back into it."

     Mulder opened his mouth, as if to make a 
snide sexual comment, but Frohike interrupted 
him by walking up and saying, "We'll be ready to 
go in about ten minutes. If you're going to move 
on, I'd suggest we all leave together."

     "Move on? What do you mean," she looked 
from Frohike to Mulder, "move on?"

     "We're not safe here," Mulder replied sternly. 
Frohike backed away and quietly snuck over to 
the other side of the room and tried to look busy. 
Byers and Langly did the same.

     "How do you know we're not safe?" Could you 
be a little more vague, Mulder?

     He started to say something else. She could 
tell by the way he opened his mouth and closed it 
again. Instead, he replied, "I just know." He 
paused for a moment, his look challenging her to 
question him. Then he abruptly turned and 
walked back into the bathroom.

     She couldn't believe this. Mulder's complete 
flip-flop in the last 24 hours had her reeling. 
Since the last time she had seen him, he had 
gone from thinking that they were part of some 
sort of vague Biblical prophesy come to fruition to 
making that sarcastic woo-woo joke about her 
and Father Michaels. She was stunned.

     "Get you're stuff, Scully," Mulder called to her 
as he exited from the other room with his rolled 
sleeping bag under his arm. "As soon as I help 
Frohike unhook the alarm system, we're out of 
here." He walked over to where Frohike was 
desperately trying to touch a wire running across 
the ceiling. Mulder casually reached up and 
grabbed it.

     Dana slowly walked over to the sofa and 
picked up the department store shopping bag 
sitting next to it. Okay, she thought. I have my 
stuff. I have all the stuff I own in the world. My two 
changes of clothes, my shredded copy of Moby 
Dick, my gun, and my useless FBI identification. 
Oh, and I have a car sitting across town with four 
slashed tires. And suddenly, I have no choice but 
to follow my partner blindly wherever he decides 
to take us because I have nowhere else to go. 

     She thought about her mother. She could 
always go there. Her mom would welcome her, 
no questions asked. At least, not many at first. 
Plus, she knew she needed to fill her mom in on 
the last few weeks events. She hadn't even 
spoken to her since before she and Mulder left for 
Miami. She needed to tell her that she had lost 
everything. Left her job. Was expecting her 
grandchild. Oh, boy, she thought. That should go 
over well.

     She clutched the shopping bag and sat down 
on the sofa. Maybe going to her mom wasn't the 
best alternative right now. Mostly, she didn't want 
to deal with Bill and his reaction when her mom 
called him on the phone and told him that his 
sensible baby sister was expecting a child and 
didn't know who the father was. And wasn't going 
to find out, even though she had the results 
waiting for her at Georgetown. 

     After all, she had a little money in the bank. 
And she could cash out her IRA. It wasn't enough 
to replace everything, but it would be a start. And 
maybe if she went and met with Skinner, he 
could get her reassigned to Quantico. Another 
teaching position, something that wouldn't 
require her to spend too much time in the field. 
And with her accumulated sick leave, vacation 
time, and the Family Leave Act, she knew that the 
FBI's maternity leave would be more than 
sufficient. Then she could reevaluate what she 
wanted to do after the baby was born.

     Father Michaels walked out of the bathroom 
and began to gather a few belonging from 
around the room. Dana realized that he planned 
to accompany them wherever they were going. 
She knew that Mulder probably didn't have a 
clue where that was, that he was flying by the 
seat of his pants. That was just the way he 
worked.

     She was still lost in her thoughts about what 
she could do to get back in control of her life, and 
possibly changing her still damp and smelly 
clothes, when it happened. For a moment the air 
in the room seemed to still. Dana detected a 
slight shimmering in front of her, and then it was 
gone almost as soon as she became aware of it. 
She thought maybe she had imagined it. Like her 
eyes had ceased to focus for a second and then 
began to work again. It was probably just fatigue. 
Or stress.

     But something was different. She moved the 
shopping bag out of her lap and looked around 
the room. Everyone else was still absorbed in 
packing up. And no one seemed to notice the 
noise she was hearing.

     She could hear a buzzing in the room and feel 
a slight tingling around her body. It was like the 
unseen oxygen molecules floating around her 
were becoming electrically charged as they 
made contact with her skin. The vague taste of 
strawberries filled the back of her mouth.

     The buzzing entered her ears and increased 
in volume, blocking out all other sounds in the 
room. And she found herself completely focused 
on the sensation in her forehead. It started out as 
a slight pressure, but was rapidly becoming a 
vice gripping her head. At the same moment her 
hand grabbed her forehead, she remember 
where she had felt this pain before.

     In the last months of her cancer. The 
headaches were excruciating. The same pain, 
only it didn't build so rapidly. But she hadn't felt 
that pain in a long time, and now it seemed 
almost unfamiliar.

     She stood and was only able to take a few 
steps, then found herself immediately sinking to 
her knees onto the floor. A moan escaped her 
mouth, not loud, but loud enough to capture 
Father Michaels' and Mulder's attention. Both 
rushed across the room towards her. 

     She was vaguely aware of Mulder kneeling 
behind her, saying her name. His hands softly 
held her shoulders. But the pain was all-
encompassing, making it impossible for her to 
concentrate on anything. She bent over the floor, 
one arm supporting her, and squeezed her eyes 
shut. It was too much. Her whole head vibrated 
with the buzz, and it was agonizingly loud.

     She realized it was going to happen only 
milliseconds before. The pressure building inside 
her head seemed to pop, and then the gush of 
blood from her nose started. Not the slow 
dripping that she had experienced before, but a 
torrential spewing.

     She opened her eyes and watched it pool on 
the floor, still holding her head in her hand. 
Slowly, she became aware that she was 
chanting. 

     "No no no no no no no no no no no."

     She could feel it. She knew it was impossible 
to be aware of it, but she could feel it. Filling her 
sinus, poking into her brain, growing every 
second. She could feel the life draining out of her 
with the blood that was puddling on the floor 
below her.

     An arm wrapped around her shoulder and a 
hand grabbed her forehead, forcefully knocking 
her backwards. She toppled off balance against 
Mulder, the room whizzing by in a blur. The only 
thing her mind wrapped around was Frohike's 
face, his eyes wide with shock. Mulder was trying 
to lean her back against him, forcing her face up 
towards the ceiling . She realized she was 
panting, her mind only able to focus on one 
sensation at a time.

     Then she couldn't breathe. Blood rushed 
down her throat, drowning her. She realized that 
she needed to push away from Mulder right 
before she began to choke. Blood spewed out of 
her mouth. Her whole body shook with each 
cough. She was gasping, hoping to find the air 
that was lost. The room was spinning, and her 
vision was quickly filtering down to just a tunnel 
in front of her.

     The blood from her nose was now pouring 
down her face, down the front of her chest, this 
time soaking her clothes deep red. She closed 
her eyes to block everything out. She was afraid 
that the last image she would see on this earth 
was her body's life force covering her and 
everything around her. 

     She didn't want to die this way.

     She was spent. Tired of fighting whatever was 
happening. All the fight in her had just drained on 
the floor. She didn't realized that she had 
slumped sideways down to floor. She was laying 
on her side, in a pool of blood. Not that it 
mattered. She was covered in it anyway.

     The hand on her head was a cold shock. It felt 
like ice. The buzzing in her ears was being 
replaced by the sounds in the room. Father 
Michaels was calmly praying over her:

     "I will lift up my eyes to the hills—From whence 
comes my help? My help comes from the Lord, 
Who made heaven and earth....The Lord is your 
keeper; The Lord is your shade at your right 
hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, Nor the 
moon by night. The Lord shall preserve you from 
all evil; He shall preserve your soul. The Lord 
shall preserve your going out and your coming in 
From this time forth, and even forevermore."

     Over top of it, she could hear Mulder hoarsely 
yelling, "Frohike, give me the fucking cell phone. I 
don't care if the goddamn National Guard 
descends on this place, call 9-1-1."

     "No way, Mulder," Frohike was replying, 
forcing his voice to remain steady. "You're going 
to thank me for this later."

     "Then we need to get her out of here," Mulder 
was pleading. "Help me get her out of here."

     Her eyes opened wearily. The pool of blood 
that she had been lying in only moments before 
had mysteriously disappeared. She gasped and 
sat up quickly, practically knocking Father 
Michaels and Mulder out of the way. She looked 
down at her clothes and watched as the blood 
seemed to vanish into the garments, leaving only 
dark damp blotches where it had been.

     "The blood..." she gasped.

     Mulder wasn't listening. Instead he was 
apparently running on some kind of autopilot, 
sensory overload. He grabbed her around the 
waist, stood up and threw her over his shoulder. 
She was knocked off-balance as the world went 
topsy-turvey, and the next thing she realized was 
that she was looking at Mulder's back. She 
grabbed hold of him to steady herself.

     "Mulder!" she yelled to no avail. "Put me down. 
I'm okay. Put me down."

     "No way, Scully!" he yelled back as he used 
his free hand—the other was wrapped tightly 
over her upper thighs—to throw the door open. 
"We're leaving now."

     She raised her head the best she could to see 
Father Michaels grabbing a dirty duffel bag, her 
shopping bag, and trying to pick up Mulder's 
sleeping bag. She lost sight of him as they 
rounded the corner into the hall.

     "Mulder, I can walk. I need my clothes. 
Mulder!"

     Mulder kept walking at a frantic pace. Scully 
watched as Father Michaels came running out of 
the door, his arms full with all of their 
possessions. He practically sprinted to catch up 
with them.

     "Father," she pleaded as she turned her head 
to the side to catch a glimpse of his face. "Would 
you please tell Mulder to put me down?"

     "Not a chance, Dana," the priest replied. "If he 
so much as stops to catch his breath, I'm picking 
you up and carrying you myself."

     Dana let her head drop. 

     The last hour had been pure misery. 

     Well, she thought, I might as well relax and 
enjoy the ride.

     

     

     The gold cross was slightly scratched from 
years of wear, and she couldn't remember when 
she had knocked it against something and taken 
a small chip out of the back. Over time, she had 
replaced the chain twice. For years, she had 
wore it out of habit, not really thinking about its 
significance around her neck. Only in recent 
years, she consciously had been aware of 
wearing the cross for protection and to signify her 
returning faith in God.

     Now, she sat in the corner of the old Catholic 
church's alter holding the cross in front of her and 
intently staring at it. When was the last time she 
had taken it off? She had definitely worn it 
everyday since the first chip in her neck had been 
found. Had she unconsciously hoped even then 
that it could ward off the frightening forces that 
had invaded her life? She didn't know. 

     Dana looked from Mulder—who was lying on 
his sleeping bag studiously reading the Miami 
case file—to Father Michaels. The priest was 
sitting on the floor nearby, his legs crossed, his 
eyes closed, totally absorbed in his thoughts. In 
fact, all evening the three of them had hardly 
spoken to each other. Each only speaking 
whenever absolutely necessary. All three 
completely focused on whatever was going on 
inside each of their own heads. 

     It had been a long day. They had arrived at the 
church right at dawn. As they drove up, the 
sunrise illuminated the abandon steeple in a 
breathtakingly beautiful way. The church had 
been deserted for close to five years, Father 
Michaels had explained to them when he 
suggested it. This was his former parish, and he 
felt confident that no one would think to look for 
her here. 

     It was more than a little off the beaten path, 
that was for sure. From her place in the backseat, 
it seemed to her that they had driven through 
Maryland suburb after suburb before coming to 
the church. In fact, the church sat pretty much by 
itself, bordered on one side by a public park and 
on the other by a satellite campus of the 
University of Maryland. Behind the church was a 
graveyard, complete with weathered and falling 
tombstones that Dana guessed had to be at least 
a century old. 

     Father Michaels had wistfully told them that the 
congregation had built a new church instead of 
going to considerable costs to bring the old one 
up to current building codes. Decades of shoddy 
renovations had taken it toll on the structure. And 
the land had been officially sold to the University, 
although plans to raze the church had been put 
on hold due to complaints by local 
preservationists. Looking around, Dana couldn't 
fathom why anyone would want to destroy such a 
beautiful example of early 19th century American 
architecture. 

     Father Michaels had explained that much of 
the fight to preserve the church centered around 
the fact that it had been a way-station on the 
underground railroad. The church had 
underground passages that had been used to 
transport escaping slaves from a no longer 
existing nearby farm to the church. Ironically, 
these tunnels had been incorporated into the 
town's sewer system during the 1930s. The priest 
had told them that he had spent considerable 
time exploring the tunnels during his tenure at the 
church.

     Dana felt her eyes growing heavy. That 
morning, she had actually fallen asleep sitting up 
in the spot where she was now. She had 
awakened a few hours later, feeling somewhat 
refreshed and a little stiff, and found herself not in 
the corner of the alter but on Mulder's sleeping 
bag. She didn't even wake up when they had 
moved her. Mulder had been restlessly dozing 
nearby, stretched out on one of the old wooden 
pews. He had looked terribly uncomfortable and 
cramped. 

     She looked over at Mulder, deep in 
concentration. He looked exhausted. She didn't 
know how much sleep he had actually gotten that 
morning, but she knew it couldn't have been 
much. Certainly not enough to make up for all the 
hours of sleep she realized he had missed over 
the past three days. Now, he was running on 
pure adrenaline. She noticed that even now, 
quietly hunched over the case file, his hands 
were nervously tapping on the edge of the manila 
folder as he read. He was more than on edge.

     She had noticed it that afternoon. He 
reminded her of a rabbit, every inch of his body 
attuned to their surroundings. Even in his prone 
state, he had still looked like he was ready to 
spring into motion at the first indication of trouble. 
It was if every muscle in his body was flexed and 
ready to go.

     She had seen him like this before but only for 
very short spurts. In extremely tense and 
dangerous moments. Not that this wasn't one of 
those situations, but she honestly didn't 
understand how he could maintain it as long as 
he had. His "fight or flee" instinct was on 
overdrive.

     Not that she was doing much better. After last 
night, even a Zen Buddhist monk would have 
been edgy. As the sun had gone down, her 
tension level rose steadily. Plus, she still wasn't 
sure what had happen the previous evening. 
From the little she and Mulder had discussed 
earlier in the day, it was pretty apparent that they 
had witnessed two very different ordeals. When 
she had mentioned the mysterious 
disappearance of her spilled blood, Mulder had 
just looked confused.

     "Blood? What blood?" he had said. 

     My blood," she replied shocked. "It was 
everywhere, Mulder. You couldn't have missed 
it."

     "I didn't see any blood, Scully. All I saw was 
you on the floor, acting like your head had 
exploded."

     After staring at him in disbelief for a few 
seconds, she had merely mumbled, "Forget it," 
and walked away. It wasn't the only completely 
different perspective that she and Mulder had 
about last night. In fact, the only thing that they 
could agree on was that they couldn't agree on 
what had happened.

     Now she wondered what could be so 
fascinating about that damn case file. Yes, she 
knew the case had been what started this whole 
theory of his about the battle between good and 
evil, and the three of them now being a part of 
that. In fact, she now bought that theory even 
more than he did. But he was acting like he was 
looking for something specific. He had been over 
the victims' backgrounds and the autopsy reports 
at least half a dozen times. And earlier he had 
asked her some strange questions, vague even 
for Mulder.

     "Scully, do you remember anything unusual 
about the woman you autopsied?" The question 
had come up out of nowhere.

     "You mean other than the fact she was 
covered in salt?"

     "I mean anything medically unusual. Anything 
you didn't note in your report."

     "Nnno." She stopped to think for a second. 
Mulder knew how thorough she was. Even if she 
had chosen to leave any information out of her 
report, which she had only done once or twice, 
she would have confided in him what she had 
found. "Why, Mulder? What are you looking for?"

     "Nothing. Just wondering." He had quickly 
walked off. 

     Dana stood up and stretched. It would be 
useless trying to go to sleep, even if she was 
exhausted. It was fairly obvious what all three of 
them were doing. Even with Father Michaels' 
reassurance that no one would think of looking 
for her or Mulder here, they were waiting.

     She walked over to Father Michaels and 
quietly sunk down beside him. With her 
approach, he opened his eyes and smiled at her. 
That morning, she had found him asleep in the 
old confessional. When she asked if he was 
comfortable, he had laughingly replied that he 
had spent many hours in the past napping there. 
Now, she realized how close they had grown in 
the last 24 hours.

     "Is everything okay, Dana?" he asked her with 
a concerned smile on his face.

     "As okay as can be expected," she replied. 
"How about you? How are you doing?"

     "Shouldn't I be asking you that question?" 

     "You just did." They smiled at each other and 
both sat quietly for a few minutes. 

     Father Michaels eyes turned to Mulder, 
studying him for a moment. "Is he looking for 
something?" 

     So, she wasn't the only one who thought 
Mulder's obsession with the case file was 
strange.

     "I don't know," she answered. Under her 
breath, she bitterly added, "Usually it's 
impossible to decipher exactly what's going on 
with him."

     "He's an enigma," the priest nodded. "I 
personally don't know how you can stand to work 
with him."

     She raised an eyebrow at the priest's 
admission of not liking Mulder. So, Mulder's 
irritation towards Father Michaels was mutual. 

     "He grows on you after awhile." Her defense of 
Mulder surprised even her. 

     "His fidgeting is about to make me crawl out of 
my skin. I may have to go over there and slap him 
around." 

     Father Michaels' smile let her know that he 
was joking about the slapping part, although she 
thought he was sincere about the rest. 

     His face grew very solemn. "So, Dana, I'm 
puzzled. Exactly what is the nature of your 
relationship?"

     "Well, we've been partners for a little over..."

     "No, I mean, beyond work." 

     Oh, she thought, the $54,000 question. She 
paused, not really knowing how to answer. 

     Father Michaels quickly added, "Look, I know 
it's not really any of my business. Maybe the 
dependency and protection I sense from him 
towards you..." She looked over at Mulder. 
"...comes from being partners over so many 
years. But..." She looked back at Father Michaels, 
nervously wondering what the "but" was. "...this 
afternoon in your mother's living room, I thought 
he was going to have an aneurysm."

     Yes, Mulder had been a nervous wreck at her 
mother's house. When she had gone into the 
living room to tell them she was ready to go, all 
the color had drained out of Mulder's face when 
her mom had smiled at him. And he had chewed 
his thumbnail practically to his knuckle. But 
Mulder had been anxious all day long. Hadn't the 
priest noticed it?

     "Mulder can be a little high-strung." Why was 
she still defending him?

     "Funny, I thought it was because he knocked 
you up." 

     Her mouth dropped open, and she literally had 
to tell herself to close it again. And it wasn't 
because of Father Michaels' crude euphemism. 
Deny it, she told herself. But truthfully, she 
couldn't. Nor could she confirm it.

     Father Michaels' snickered and said, "For 
someone who claims he's not the father, he 
certainly is worried about your mother's 
impression. Maybe it's because you believe that 
he is." He looked at her questioningly. "Don't 
you?"

     "Father, I don't know..."

     "Not that I expect him to believe you," he 
interrupted. "You two don't agree on much, do 
you?"

     She didn't bother to answer. It was obvious 
Father Michaels had been closely observing 
them. 

     Finally, she felt the moment to ask him had 
come. "Father, what do you think happened last 
night?"

     He thought for a moment, then answered. "I 
think that God works in mysterious and powerful 
ways. I know that sounds trite, but that is the only 
way I can describe what happened last night. We 
saw the evidence of that."

     She let the full significance of his words sink in 
before she said, "I don't know if I can accept that."

     "Why, Dana, do you doubt your own 
experiences?" He had said it very solemnly.

     "Because, I'm not sure what I experienced. 
What I thought I saw last night. I don't know if it 
happened." She leaned her head back against 
the wall and closed her eyes.

     "Your inability to believe what you have seen 
with your own eyes weakens you." He stated it as 
if it were pure fact.

     She looked at him, unsure of how to reply to 
that. It was like he had reached inside of her and 
read her true weakness. 

     Maybe it was their surroundings, maybe it was 
the pure stress of the events. Maybe she felt a 
need to confide in him. She wasn't sure why she 
even felt she could. But she began anyway, even 
if she was unsure of her own motivations. 

     "Father, I have spent my entire life questioning 
everything. Examining everything. In my job, in 
my personal life. I have spent so much time 
analyzing every event, even the most minute 
detail, that I began to feel that it was impossible 
for me not to do it. It was more than my scientific 
obligation, it was the way that I made sense of the 
world. 

     My constant examination caused me to 
discount anything that I couldn't prove. It was like 
I was living the scientific method. If I couldn't 
quantify the results, with repetitious accuracy, 
then I couldn't accept the reality of the 
experience. Even when I saw the miraculous, 
events that defied any logic, any explanation. 
Things that were never meant to be quantified. 
And I turned my back on them because they 
didn't support my need to see the world as an 
ordered, logical place.

     A few years ago, I found out I had cancer. And 
it wasn't until I was near death that I returned to 
the belief of my childhood. It wasn't that I quit 
believing in God, it was just that I quit thinking 
that he cared about the world. That it really 
mattered to him whether we lived or died or 
believed in him or prayed or anything else. I don't 
believe that accepting God kept me from dying. 
But it did ease my mind. Ever since then, I have 
found myself struggling against myself. And 
this..." She placed a hand on her stomach. "This 
pregnancy, the events of last night, whatever is 
happening—is causing a struggle in me of 
massive proportions."

     Father Michaels took her hand and quietly sat 
examining the pain written on her face. He waited 
expectantly, knowing that she wasn't done with 
her "confession."

     She finally found the resolve to continue. "This 
afternoon, when I went to see my mother. To tell 
her I was pregnant. When I told her, her reaction 
was predictably joyful. She embraced me, and I 
didn't...." She took a much needed deep breath. 
"...I couldn't hug her back. I felt totally empty 
inside. Instead of something to celebrate, this 
pregnancy is something that terrifies me."

     "Because it defies your view of the world?" He 
was prodding her to give him the information he 
needed to understand.

     "Because it defies everything. My 
understanding of the world, my belief in science, 
my faith that God will take care of me..."

     "Why do you doubt that God is looking out for 
you? Why do you think he has turned his back on 
you?"

     She didn't answer. This was becoming too 
distressing.

     He asked again a different way. "What has 
happened to cause so much pain in your life, 
Dana?"

     It wasn't a matter of not knowing what caused 
the pain, but where to start. She decided to try to 
keep it simple and short. 

     "In less than one year, I lost both my father and 
my sister. I found out a few years later that I had 
an untreatable brain tumor. I miraculously 
recovered from my cancer, only to watch a 
daughter I never knew I had die and be able to 
do nothing. And now..." 

     "Now you won't let yourself believe that this 
pregnancy is a gift from God?" 

     "Yes. And for the first time in my life, I'm afraid 
to look for the answers that every cell in my body 
is screaming for me to find." She took another 
deep breath. No, that was not true. It wasn't the 
first time. There was still three months of her life 
that were missing.

     Father Michaels seemed lost in thought for a 
moment, then he asked, "What did you tell your 
mother? About not feeling happy about the 
baby?"

     "Not much. It wasn't that I didn't want to tell her 
everything. I just didn't know how. Or what to tell 
her."

     Father Michaels nodded his head, 
understanding that unless someone had 
experienced the last few days firsthand, they 
couldn't possibly understand. He closed his eyes 
and rested his head against the wall. 

     Dana once again looked across the church to 
Mulder. He had stretched out on his stomach and 
put his head down on top of his crossed arms. 
She hoped that he had relaxed and fallen 
asleep.

     "Dana." Father Michaels voice brought her 
attention back to him again. "I don't know if I fully 
understand what is going on here. Even I have 
my questions about why the three of us, 
especially myself, have become a part of these 
extraordinary events. But I am certain of one 
thing." He lightly touched her stomach and then 
moved his hand away. "The life growing inside of 
you is not only a gift from God, but an indication 
that God does care about you. If he didn't, he 
would not have felt a need to reward you with 
such an important role. You have been chosen to 
participate in a miracle in the most intimate way 
possible."

     "I wish that I could believe that. I wish I could 
find the faith to accept that truth without question. 
But I can't." She pulled her hand away from him, 
put her elbows on her knees, and dropped her 
head into her hands.

     "Dana, God doesn't expect you to accept this 
without question. He wants you to find the 
answers you need, however you need to find 
them. He wouldn't present you with the truth 
unless he knew you could find a way to accept it 
completely. God gave you the ability to examine 
scientifically, and he wouldn't expect you to 
abandon that ability now. He realizes that 
sometimes you have to ask questions that seem 
on the surface to contradict the answers you're 
seeking. Sometimes you have to come full circle 
to find the truth."

     Dana's head shot up from her hands, and she 
looked at Father Michaels with her mouth open. 
The statement had resonated with her when the 
priest in Ohio had repeated it to her. Now, she 
couldn't believe that Father Michaels had 
repeated the exact statement again. It seemed 
improbable to her that it was a coincidence. 
Maybe God was speaking to her.

     "Why does that surprise you?" Father Michaels 
replied to the shocked look she was giving him. 

     This is not just deja vu, she told herself. 
Instead of the vague feeling that she had 
experienced this conversation before, she knew 
that this was suddenly a replay of that 
confessional visit.

     "I've had this conversation before." She said it 
more to herself than him. It was like she needed 
to say it outloud in order to really believe it. 

     "Really?" Father Michaels said with a smile on 
his face, not sounding surprised at all. "How 
about this then? The truth is inside of you."

     "Why did you say that?" This was truly blowing 
her mind.

     "Because, Dana, God has been talking to you 
all along." He reached up and grabbed the cross 
hanging around her neck. "You're just now ready 
to listen."

     

     

     "This is the message which we have heard 
from Him and declared to you, that God is light 
and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we 
have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, 
we lie and do not practice the truth...."

     Father Michaels' voice floated around Dana. 
She closed her eyes and took solace in his 
words.

     "If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we 
have fellowship with one another, and the blood 
of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all 
sin...."

     When Mulder had sat up and remarked that "it" 
was about to happen, the priest had taken out his 
tattered Bible and began reading quietly. She 
didn't know what "it" was, Mulder probably didn't 
either, but Mulder's words had filled her with 
terror. 

     "If we say we have no sin, we deceive 
ourselves, and the truth is not in us...."

     Mulder's only response to the priest's reading 
was to look back at him with an irritated look on 
his face. He then looked at Dana as if to say, 
"can't you make him shut up?" And even though 
she knew that if someone was outside, they 
should remain quiet and turn off the lantern, she 
had no intention of telling Father Michaels to 
stop.

     "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to 
forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all 
unrighteousness...."

     Mulder had pulled his gun out from 
underneath the edge of the sleeping bag, stuffed 
a flashlight into his back pocket, and headed 
towards the church's front door. As he had 
passed her, he had indicated for her to follow. 
The best she could do was retrieve her gun from 
the shopping bag and turn off her flashlight. She 
couldn't even make the effort to put her shoes 
back on her feet. She now found herself 
crouched on the floor in her bare feet, waiting for 
whatever was going to happen to happen.

     "If we say that we have not sinned, we make 
Him a liar, and His word is not in us. My little 
children, these things I write to you, that you may 
not sin...."

     Now, she wasn't even paying attention to her 
surroundings. From behind her closed eyelids, 
Dana found herself once again drifting on Father 
Michaels voice. As her terror slowly dissipated, 
she heard the distinct sound of ocean waves 
crashing behind her. She looked around and 
found herself suddenly on the deserted beach in 
San Diego again. When she turned back, the 
church was gone.

     She was crouched at the edge of the grassy 
hill. For a moment, she was temporarily blinded 
by the sudden change from the dim church to the 
bright sunlight. Blindly, she stood and turned 
towards the ocean. As her eyes adjusted, she 
focused on two figures slowly walking towards 
her, down the edge of the surf. At first she could 
only make out their silhouettes. A woman and a 
child. But as they neared her, she knew instantly 
who they were. 

     Missy's white dress billowed out behind her in 
the wind. She was holding Emily's hand, and 
they both were looking straight ahead, neither 
speaking. Emily had on the pink smocked dress 
that Dana had picked out for her burial. 

     They had passed her before she was able to 
overcome her amazement at finding both them 
and herself on the beach and to run to catch up 
with them. The dry sand burned her feet and 
coated the bottom of her jeans as she stuffed her 
gun into the small of her back. She came up 
behind them, almost afraid to speak. But her 
need to hear their voices, for them to 
acknowledge her, overcame her fear.

     "Missy." The raw need in her voice was 
evident even over the roaring surf.

     Both Melissa and Emily keep walking, neither 
one of them showing any reaction to her. She 
knew that they had heard her. Her feet were now 
sinking into the wet sand, slowing her down. She 
quickened her pace and caught up to them. 

     "Melissa, it's me! Emily! Stop!" She was right 
beside them now, right next to her sister's ear. 
But still they kept walking, looking straight ahead. 
Both their faces held completely blank 
expressions. The surf washed over her feet and 
the bottom of her jeans.

     "Please!" Her need, her pain, was becoming 
unbearable. She once again walked faster, this 
time stepping right in front of them. "Please! Talk 
to me!"

     They kept walking. Missy actually had to step 
to one side to go around her, and their shoulders 
brushed past each other. Dana just stood there 
and turned to watch them go.

     When they were about five feet away, they 
suddenly stopped. They turned around to face 
her, with Missy placing Emily directly in front of 
her. 

     "Dana," Missy's voice sounded strange and 
emotionless, "don't waste your life looking for a 
truth that doesn't exist. You will only find yourself 
frustrated by the meaninglessness and futility of 
it. And sorry that you lost years looking for 
answers that can't be found. You're drawn to truth 
like a moth is drawn to a flame. It will only 
consume you."

     Dana sadly regarded the two figures in front of 
her, unable to reconcile her sister's statement 
with her memory. Instinctively, she reached out to 
touch Emily's face. 

     As her hand came in contact with Emily's skin, 
a searing pain shot through it. Shocked, she 
quickly pulled it back and look at her palm. As 
she focused on the blisters rising on her bright 
red hand, the beach in the fuzzy background 
faded into the church's alter. Flames rose from it, 
quickly consuming the alter and spreading to the 
decaying plaster walls and floor around it. 

     She turned to find Mulder standing at the front 
of the church, a look of total panic and 
helplessness overwhelming him. He was staring 
at the flames, frozen in place. 

     "Go!" 

     She jumped because she didn't realized 
Father Michaels was standing beside her. He 
handed her a flashlight and pointed in Mulder's 
direction. 

     "I'll hold them back," the priest promised.

     She wasn't sure who Father Michaels was 
referring to, but she obediently ran to the front of 
the church as he shouted out directions for 
finding their way inside the tunnels. As she 
headed towards the door that led to the 
passageways, she realized Mulder wasn't 
following her. She turned back around—the 
adrenalin allowing her to grab his hand with her 
burnt one—and tugged him toward the stairway.

     She pushed Mulder in front of her and looked 
back. The last thing she saw before heading 
down the stairs was Father Michaels standing in 
front of the alter, silhouetted against the inferno 
raging behind him.

     

     

     "Mulder, no, this way." Scully had grabbed his 
arm, pulling him down a side tunnel.

     He followed her lead, glad that she had 
remembered Father Michaels' hasty directions. 
They ran side-by-side, the beams from their 
flashlights bouncing along the dirt floor and walls 
as they trotted along as fast as they dared over 
the uneven terrain. With each step, it seemed his 
panic was growing, even though he knew the fire 
was well behind them now.

     Fire, why did it have to be fire? And where the 
hell had it come from? One minute he was sure 
someone was outside the front door, the next a 
wall of flames was towering behind him. Scully 
had literally dragged him from the aisle of the 
church as he stood mesmerized by the fire. 

     He suddenly had an image of the flames filling 
the tunnel behind him, racing along the walls, the 
heat radiating against his back. He closed his 
eyes at the moment he thought the burning 
tongues would overtake him, lost his footing, and 
stumbled. Scully reached out and steadied him 
before he fell. He stopped and opened his eyes 
to the cool darkness of the tunnel. 

     Scully was shining her flashlight between 
them, illuminating both their faces. 

     "Are you okay?" she asked between breaths. 
"Did you hurt yourself?"

     Scully seemed almost calm. A new conviction 
had come over her in the past 24 hours that he 
envied. She glanced down and noticed his 
flashlight beam dancing erratically on the floor. 
She stood their steady-handed while he was 
shaking like a leaf. She looked back up at him, 
concern in her eyes.

     "The fire," he said in a way of explanation, 
knowing she was familiar with his childhood 
phobia. 

     She placed her hand on his shoulder then 
moved it to his face, gently running her thumb 
across his cheekbone. 

     "Hey, you have to stay with me here. After all, 
you're supposed to be protecting us. Okay?" She 
smiled encouragement, and he weakly returned 
the smile.

     He knew what she was doing. Trying to 
distract his fears by giving him a task. And even 
though he knew she didn't really believe she 
needed protection, it worked. 

     The problem was that he didn't know what he 
was protecting them from. A few days ago, he 
had been certain that a supernatural evil was 
stalking them. But after his run in last night with 
that black-lunged son of a bitch, his convictions 
had crumbled. He had spent all day going back 
over the case files, trying to find any clues that the 
missing women had implants in their necks. All to 
no avail, and unable to directly ask Scully if she 
found anything in the autopsy. 

     He couldn't bring himself to tell Scully about 
his unplanned meeting of the previous night and 
the implications it held for her and the baby. 
Eventually, he knew he would have to tell her, but 
the immediate threat that was looming over them 
took priority. At least that was the excuse he was 
sticking to.

     Still, he couldn't shake the tingling feeling of 
foreboding that had repeatedly proven itself 
accurate. And it was vibrating through him, even 
now while he was questioning its validity, filling 
him with such dread that he found it impossible to 
ignore. It had warned him of the impending threat 
in the chapel above, and it was continuing to 
grow here in the tunnel. The problem was, if the 
attacks on Scully were the result of the chip in her 
neck, which he now believed to be true, how was 
he able to instinctively know the attacks were 
about to happen? And that was the question that 
he had really been trying to answer all day 
without any success.

     His mind slowly returned to the task at hand as 
his shaking subsided. He closed his eyes and 
took a deep breath. When he reopened them, he 
had control again. He reached up and took 
Scully's hand from his face, enclosing her fingers 
in his as he dropped them to his side. She 
winced at the pressure, and he opened her palm 
to examine it. The last of his personal concerns 
vanished when he saw her skin was red and 
blistered. 

     "Scully, you're hurt!"

     She pulled the burnt hand away, replacing it 
with her other and squeezed his hand 
reassuringly. 

     "I'm all right. Don't worry about it."

     Mulder returned the gesture but didn't let go. 
The physical contact was too comforting to 
abandon. Besides, if he was touching her, the 
tingling apprehension lessened.

     "Where are we?" he asked, shining his light 
down the tunnel.

     "According to Father Michaels, we should find 
a grated entrance on the right that acts as a 
feeder line to the sewers."

     Mulder thought for a moment. "From there we 
should be able to find access to the surface. Let's 
go."

     They found the grate and entered into the 
cemented sewer culverts. From the looks of it, the 
system was used more for storm water discharge 
than sewage, which was a major relief. He had 
dreaded slogging through waist high water. 
Instead they found a few inches at the most. The 
blackness was broken occasionally by a ray of 
light cutting at an angle across the corridor.

     "Storm drains," he indicated to Scully, "Must 
be streetlights up there."

     Scully nodded in agreement. "May be a way 
out."

     Although the panic from the fire had left him, 
the foreboding electrical charge in his skin was 
still there, and it was getting stronger. He had to 
get Scully to the surface and soon. Whatever 
delay tactics Father Michaels had used, they 
were no longer working, because something was 
definitely coming. He could feel it vibrating 
through his bones.

     They ran hand in hand down the tunnel, water 
splashing up and soaking them from the knees 
down. They stopped at the first band of light. The 
storm drain was grated. So were the second and 
third. But the third one also had a small manhole 
cover adjacent to it. He would never fit, but he 
thought Scully might.

     "All right, Scully," he said as he cupped his 
hands together for a foothold. "Up you go." It was 
then that he noticed she was barefooted. "Where 
the hell are your shoes?"

     She looked down as though she had 
forgotten. "We left kind of quickly. I didn't have 
much time for putting on socks and tying shoes."

     Damn it, he cursed mentally. He almost made 
a joke about being barefoot and pregnant but 
stopped himself. Well, he definitely had to keep 
their pursuers down in the tunnel because she 
would never be able to outrun them barefooted. 
He boosted her up, and she pushed the metal 
cover off. It was a tight squeeze, but she made it 
out.

     Her head reappeared in the hole, and she 
lowered her good hand down to him. 

     "Okay, Mulder, your turn."

     Mulder shook his head. "Scully, in case you 
haven't noticed, I'm a broad-shouldered, hunk of 
a man. I won't fit."

     Scully looked at the hole, then at Mulder, 
obviously agreeing with his assessment of his 
size. "Well then, I'll come back down."

     "No, Scully, you stay up there."

     "Mulder, I'm not leaving you behind." 

     Mulder smiled up at her. He couldn't have 
hand-picked a better partner. "You're not thinking 
this through. There's more than just you up 
there."

     She was obviously torn by what she should 
do. She scanned the street to either side of her. 
"There must be a larger manhole somewhere 
near here."

     "Don't worry, I'll find one." But not before I lead 
them away from you, he silently added to himself.

     As though she understood what he was 
planning, her hand reappeared down the hole. 
"Promise you will come up as soon as you find 
one."

     "I'll find one, don't worry," he said as he 
squeezed her hand. He was loathe to let go, and 
by the lingering pressure she returned, he 
guessed she was too.

     "Promise me, Mulder," she said again, looking 
him in the eyes.

     "I promise," he said solemnly, returning her 
gaze. With one final squeeze of her hand, he 
released it. He pulled his extra magazine from his 
back pocket and handed it up to her. "Here, take 
this."

     She hesitated just a second before taking the 
clip, standing and sliding the metal cover into 
place.

     He shined his light down the tunnel, feeling 
very much alone. He hated the thought of Scully 
running barefooted, alone through the streets 
above, but the thought of her trapped in the 
tunnel was even worse. Besides, if he were lucky, 
they would follow his trail down the tunnel 
instead of hers to the surface.

     He started jogging down the corridor, slowing 
at each grate to look for an opening. In the far 
distance behind him, he could hear footsteps 
splashing. Looking back, he could see a beam of 
light waving with each splash. Time was running 
short, and no openings were in site.

     His flashlight was working as a homing 
beacon for his pursuer, so he clicked it off and 
waited a few seconds for his eyes to adjust. The 
flashlight following him stopped for a moment, 
then continued at a slower pace. 

     He scanned the area ahead of him. The 
beams of light from the grates provided a line of 
direction, although they did little to illuminate the 
uneven ground. He started walking again, 
although much slower since he wasn't sure of his 
footing. He reached the next drain and looked for 
a way out. Nothing. The light behind him was 
gaining ground. Soon he would have to turn his 
flashlight back on and make a run for it. The other 
option was to pull his gun and make a stand.

     It was then that he saw it, about 50 feet down 
the tunnel—a small orange flame glowing 
against a bent head. The flame vanished to be 
replaced by an orange pinprick. The pinprick 
floated through the darkness down and to the 
right, then stopped.

     "You're 24 hours are up, Mr. Mulder. Have you 
made a decision?"

     The voice echoed past him, causing the 
flashlight behind him to recommence running. It 
would be on him in less than a minute. Mulder 
clicked on his flashlight and let it shine in the 
smoking man's face. The smoking man held up a 
manila folder to block his eyes from the glaring 
light. He tossed his cigarette aside and reached 
into his coat pocket.

     "I've upheld my end of the bargain," he said 
indicating the envelope. "Are you willing to 
uphold yours?" From his pocket, he withdrew a 
small glass vile and offered it to Mulder.

     Mulder couldn't take his eyes from the vile. 
The goose bumps were back, but he ignored 
them. He tried to recall something from the back 
of his mind, something about Scully, but it 
vanished. It seemed his entire existence was 
held in the vile. He took a slow step forward, then 
another, until he stood a few feet from the man. 
He could see the liquid was a translucent blue 
and was struck by how beautifully the color 
played against the beam of light shining through 
it.

     "Just take the vile, and you can have the 
information in the envelope."

     It seemed so simple. The envelope that would 
give him exactly what he had been searching for 
all these year was within his reach, and all he 
had to do was take the vile. He hesitantly 
reached out for the vile, afraid that the envelope 
would disappear like a small animal if he made 
any sudden moves. 

     There was a sound coming from behind him 
that was really starting to annoy him. It was 
distracting, and he wished it would go away.

     "Take the vile, Mr. Mulder."

     Samantha. Soon he would know where she 
was, know her children. He was a uncle! He 
could take them to basketball games....

     "Take it!"

     His hand inched closer. His mother would be 
thrilled. They would be a real family again, with 
birthday parties for the kids....

     "Take it!"

     And holidays together. Just like Scully's family. 
His hand stopped short of the desired vile. Scully, 
there was something about Scully that he should 
remember. Something important. And what was 
that noise behind him?

     "Take the vile, now, Mr. Mulder." The words 
came out a snarl and like a child chastised for 
disobedience, he moved to act on the command.

     He gasped at the charge of electricity that ran 
through his body as his fingers began to close 
around the vial. The indistinct sound behind him 
became the clear voice of Father Michaels.

     "Agent Mulder, NO!!"

     Mulder jumped away from the priest's hand 
that rested on his shoulder and put his back 
against the culvert wall. He felt as though he 
were in two contradictory world at once, and his 
mind reeled trying to bring them together.

     "If you touch that vile, Agent Mulder, you'll kill 
Dana."

     Mulder looked back at the vile. As soon as he 
saw it, he couldn't help but move slightly toward 
it.  

     Father Michaels continued, "Satan's greatest 
strength is his power to divide, to turn love into 
betrayal. If you take that vile, you will betray her, 
and it will be her end."

     Mulder felt as if his entire being was ripping in 
two. He looked at the priest who was holding his 
hand out pleadingly. "Your hesitancy is 
weakening her, even now. Listen to your heart, 
and you will know I speak the truth." 

     The same words came to him in a memory, 
only spoken in a Haitian accent. An image of 
Scully struggling against Krycek's grasp 
coalesced in his mind. He moved toward the 
priest.

     "Do you want to know where your sister is or 
not?" the voice behind him snapped.

     "Samantha," Mulder whispered and hesitated. 
How could he turn away when the answers were 
within reach?

     Father Michaels face became stern. "What 
price have you put on her soul and yours, Agent 
Mulder? What will be your seven pieces of 
silver?"

     The voice behind him changed. "Fox, come 
here now!!"

     "Dad?" Mulder turned and looked into his 
father's face. Suddenly, he felt seven years old.  
His was holding the vile and envelope, and the 
smoking man was nowhere to be seen. 

     But his father was dead, wasn't her?

     "Agent Mulder, that is not your father. He is the 
beast in the bottomless pit. Don't listen to him." 
Father Michaels had a sickened look on his face.

     His father made a sound like an animal's 
growl at Father Michaels. "This is no concern of 
yours. This is between me and my son."

     Mulder looked at the man. He looked and 
sounded just like his father, just like the father he 
had dreamed about the night before. Just as the 
smoking man that had been here had looked like 
the man he had seen at the monument the night 
before. He remembered the hougan's warning 
about trusting himself and seeing everything in 
his dreams. He closed his eyes and looked at his 
father, not with his eyes but with his heart. He 
could feel the evil, could almost smell a rotten 
stench emanating from the man. At that moment, 
he thought he heard Scully screaming a gut 
wrenching "Nooo!" in confirmation of what he 
now knew, that this man was not who he claimed 
to be. That meant that the smoking man also 
wasn't real and his associates weren't after 
Scully, that her child wasn't some twisted hybrid 
experiment. 

     He reopened his eyes with a gasp and backed 
away from the man with the vial. It no longer held 
the beauty it had before. It looked putrid, as 
though death was held captive within the glass. 
He shuddered to think how close he had come to 
touching it, to embracing the death it held for him 
and Scully. 

     "What the hell are you?" he asked, disgusted 
with the man and himself for being so tempted.

     The face of his father contorted with rage until 
it was more animal than human. "I am the 
deliverance of your death."

     Mulder was frozen in place by nothing more 
complex than wide-eyed shock as he watched 
the demented image of his father lunge toward 
him. 

     Instantly, Father Michaels was in front of him.

     "You cannot harm this man, he is under my 
protection."

     The priest's statement surprised him almost as 
much as the attack had. Besides, he didn't need 
protection, he thought as he reached for his gun 
at the small of his back. 

     The image of his father crouched as though 
ready to pounce like a cat. "What can you do, little 
priest?" he sneered.

     Mulder pulled his gun. "Father Michaels, get 
out of the way!" he yelled to get a clear shot. 

     But the priest ignored him and seemed to 
stand even taller as he began speaking in a loud, 
clear voice.

     "I am the child of God, and I am beloved. I am 
the servant of God, and I do his bidding."

     Father Michaels began taking slow deliberate 
steps toward the man, who now snarled before 
him.

     "I am the sword of God, and I will smite thee. I 
am the light of God, and I will banish the 
darkness."

     Mulder still held his gun, "Father Michaels, 
move!"

     The priest seemed to radiate a faint white 
glow, although he was nowhere near a light 
source. He continued his advance while still 
speaking.

     "I am the hand of God, and I will crush thee. I 
am the eyes of God, and I will reveal thee."

     The glow around Father Michaels brightened 
dramatically into a blinding white light that 
washed over Mulder in warm waves. The man 
cowered now before the priest. Mulder dropped 
his gun as he raised his hands up to shield his 
eyes against the intense light. It seemed that the 
light permeated through his hands, his closed 
eyelids, and filled his head with a roaring. The 
man let out a snarl of misery.

     "I am the ears of God, and I will hear only the 
truth."

     The roaring in Mulder's head became a million 
distinct voices speaking at once. Among the 
voices, he could recognize those of people he 
knew and loved blending with those of strangers. 
The voices spoke in every language, and yet he 
understood every word. Words of love, fear, 
desire, hope, pain. Words spoken in praise, 
anger, thanks, and submission. The prayers of 
the entire world flowed through him, leaving him 
disoriented by the shear volume of sound.

     "I am the spirit of God, and I will fill the 
righteous with my essence."

     Mulder staggered back sightless against the 
wall, as the cowering man's moan filled the 
tunnel  and took its own unique place among the 
myriad of voices he heard. The warmth of the 
light still vibrated through him, overloading his 
senses with emotions so raw and untame that he 
keeled forward on his hands and knees. A million 
images rushed through him to join the sound, 
one vision for each voice. The images intensified 
every thought, every emotion he felt pouring into 
him. Each image flowed through his being so fast 
that he was left gasping for breath. The sight of 
laughing children was replaced by a wailing 
woman, then a cowering man, a lost child, a 
woman giving birth, a man on his death bed.

     The ground was spinning below him as he 
pushed himself up and back against the culvert 
wall. It had to end soon, or he thought he would 
go insane. And yet, he didn't think he could stand 
to be parted from the beauty that churned in him. 
He had reached a state of euphoria so intense 
that spasms of pain wracked his body. The 
images began spinning around him in a dazzling 
spiral, and the roaring in his ears took on a 
rhythmic cadence. The spiral widened into a 
vortex of black that sucked him down as the 
cadence of the voices evolved into the quite 
flutter of a fetal heartbeat. The blackness closed 
over him and soothed the chaos in his head. As 
he slipped into welcome oblivion, he heard 
Father Michaels' final condemnation.

     "I am the voice of God, and I speak the word 
Death."

     

     

     She was running. She was outside, on some 
nameless street, in her bare feet, running. 

     She had left Mulder in the tunnel, ignoring the 
screaming voice in her head that told her not to 
leave him there. As she had closed the manhole 
cover, the last thing she saw was his sad eyes 
looking up at her.

     Those hazel eyes.

     She was running as fast as she could, shining 
the beam of the flashlight down at the street, 
hoping desperately to find a manhole for Mulder 
to fit through. She had come up somewhere in 
the city park next to the church. But she didn't 
have an accurate way to measure how far they 
had run underground, or even which direction 
they had come from. Now, she had no choice but 
to follow the road in the direction they had been 
running and deduce that the drainage system 
probably followed it as well. 

     She slowed down as she came a t-
intersection. The street she had been following 
dead ended into a playground. She squinted at 
the dark swing set, trying to decide whether to 
continue straight ahead or follow the intersecting 
road to the right or left. She honestly didn't have 
a clue, nor had she noticed when she was 
underground if the dark tunnel veered one way or 
the other. 

     "Eennie-minnie-minee-moe." 

     Okay, so it wasn't very scientific, but she didn't 
have time to consider anything else. The beam of 
her flashlight landed to the right. That didn't feel 
right, so she turned to the left instead. No, that 
wasn't right either. She spun in a circle and 
looked up at the sky, trying to see or smell the 
smoke from the burning church. Nothing. So, she 
headed up the embankment through the dark 
playground.

     As she ran through the damp grass, 
desperately searching for signs of another 
drainage grate, a foreboding began building up 
in her stomach. It became stronger and stronger 
as it filled her body, radiating to the base of her 
neck. She tried to focus on her task, to remember 
that Mulder was trapped somewhere below her, 
but it was becoming impossible to ignore. 

     She felt someone was behind her. Chasing 
her.

     As the grass emptied into a dark, deserted 
parking lot, the sensation became so strong that 
she had to glance back to see if anyone was 
there. She turned backwards, slowing her pace, 
and swept the flashlight behind her. 

     No one was there. She forced herself to stop 
for a moment and catch her breath. 

     "No one, no one," she chanted with her 
panting. 

     She leaned over and put her hands on her 
thighs, trying to convince herself that her 
screaming fears were unfounded. That's when 
she heard it.

     The sound of footsteps echoing on pavement. 
They were approaching from behind her, in the 
direction she had been running. And they were 
getting closer, fast.

     She only glanced back as she began running 
back over her path. This time, her pace was much 
faster, abandoning her search for a manhole, and 
her feet burned as they slapped down on the 
hard pavement of the parking lot.

     She almost lost her footing as the pavement 
gave way to the grass. She ran back through the 
playground, straight through the swing set, 
knocking one of the swings out of her way with 
her burnt hand. Her only coherent thought was 
that she had to get back to Mulder. With Mulder, 
she would be safe.

     She was running. Through the dark, deserted 
park, back out on some nameless street, trying to 
get away from someone. She didn't know who. 
But the terror building within her told her that it 
was essential to her survival that she get away.

     As she ran, her eyes swept from side to side, 
looking for a place to hide. On her first time down 
the street, she had been so absorbed in her 
search for a manhole that she hadn't noticed that 
it was monotonously bordered by flat green lawn 
on both sides. No ditches. No shrubs or trees. 
Nothing, not even tall weeds. The only thing 
sticking up was the gracefully curved streetlights 
alternating sides every fifty feet or so, going on 
endless down the endless street. She was trying 
to avoid the pools of light, swerving around them. 

     Her heart was beating out of her chest, and 
every nerve in her body was screaming. The 
footsteps were becoming louder and louder, 
closer and closer behind her. They resonated 
through her entire body, rising up into her throat, 
vibrating her cranium. She was running as fast as 
she could, now ignoring the pools of light. 
Whoever was there had already spotted her, she 
was sure of it.

     Shouldn't she be back to the manhole by 
now? It seemed to Dana that she wasn't getting 
anywhere. Like she was running in molasses. 
The harder she tried to run, the less her muscles 
seemed to respond. And the footsteps were 
gaining on her. 

     As she ran in what seemed like slow motion, 
scanning the road in front of her, the panic rising 
within her suddenly filled her mind with the 
images of when she had been on this road. This 
wasn't an unknown street. She had been running 
down it another night before this one. 

     In her dream.

     But she wasn't dreaming now, she was sure. 
This was real. Her legs were wet from the sewer, 
her feet painful from her running. Her hand 
throbbed. Her fear was exploding out of her body.

     Her brain was screaming to her that her 
pursuer was a man. He was chasing her, coming 
after her. It was someone she needed to be 
horribly afraid of, someone who was going to hurt 
her. 

     This can't be happening. This can't be 
happening, she told herself. 

     But it was. She knew the person behind her 
was Alex Krycek. 

     She threw the flashlight to the side and 
reached behind her to pull her gun out of her 
jeans. As she pulled it around in front of her, she 
lost her grip on it. She desperately tried to grab 
hold of it, and for a moment she thought she had 
it. Then it bounced out of her palm and flew to the 
road in front of her. She stumbled forward, trying 
to slow down enough to reach down and pick it 
up. She bent forward, reaching down with one 
hand for the gun and putting the burnt one on the 
road to keep her from flying head over heels.

     At the exact moment she grabbed the gun, he 
was upon her. His weight jumping on top of her 
caused her body to surge forward, and she 
landed shoulders first on the pavement with a 
"Umpf." The rest of her body flopped down after it.

     He was now on top of her, his weight holding 
her on the ground. Her hand with the gun was 
trapped underneath her body, and she was 
desperately trying to raise up enough to free it. 
Her burnt hand was clawing at the pavement, her 
legs kicking, trying to free herself.

     Krycek's grabbed her free hand and pinned it 
behind her back. She raised up her head to 
scream, to call for Mulder to help her, but he took 
his other hand and pushed her face back into the 
ground. 

     Her heart was beating out of her chest, and 
her breath was coming in pants. She was 
beginning to feel the rough asphalt through the 
knees of her jeans as her efforts to free herself 
ripped the material away. She needed to find the 
strength to twist around and get her hand with the 
gun out from under her. Instead, she felt like a 
rubber band, too weak to make any real effort to 
get away.

     She felt his hand fumbling for the waist band 
of her jeans, trying to force the material down her 
hips. In his frustration, he was lifting her hips off 
the ground. 

     "Nooo!" she screamed. 

     The strength she was desperately searching 
for surged through her with her scream, and with 
her hips off the ground, she was able to get her 
trapped arm out. She pushed her palm down on 
the ground and managed to flip herself over.

     Krycek looked down at her, shocked that she 
was now looking up at him. She absorbed the 
wide-eyed look on his face as she took her free 
hand and hit him as hard as she could with her 
gun's grip. He was knocked off-balance from the 
force of her blow and fell off of her to one side. 
She focused her panic into rage and pulled her 
knees up to her waist. She then hit him with both 
legs, her power knocking him backwards across 
the pavement several feet.

     Dana scrambled to her feet and stood over 
Krycek, pointing the gun down at him. She heard 
it click as she pulled back the hammer. She was 
panting, trying to desperately catch her breath 
and hold the gun steady. All the undealt-with 
emotions from her original attack flooded her. Her 
fear, her rage, her need for revenge for what he 
had done to her, all rose out of her. Tears began 
to stream down her cheeks.

     "We're not done." Dana's voice didn't sound 
like her own. It was cold and hollow and 
strangely empty of all the emotions she was 
feeling.

     Krycek looked up at her terrified and began to 
scoot away from her. Their eyes locked as 
Dana's finger squeezed the trigger.

     The force of the bullet entering his skull 
knocked him backwards. She watched as the 
back of his head exploded in slow motion. She 
stopped herself from emptying the rest of the 
magazine into his lifeless body.

     After his body came to rest on the street, she 
let the breath she had been holding out in a 
furious scream.

     "I said, we're not done!"

     She closed her eyes and managed to stop her 
tears. 

     Maybe it had only been a few seconds. Maybe 
it had been hours. She wasn't sure. She came 
back to herself, quietly backing away from 
Krycek's lifeless body, and wearily began 
walking again in the direction of the manhole. 
She was spent. She just needed to find Mulder 
so she could go home. 

     As she walked, she tried not to think about 
what had almost happen. Instead, she found 
herself blinded by the horrifying thought, 
staggering down the road. She just wanted to lay 
down right where she was and cry. To let all the 
terror and remorse and rage out. But she kept 
going forward, also needing to find the way back 
down to Mulder.

     Finally, she gave out. She stopped at the side 
of the road and fell to her knees, folding herself 
over at the waist. She could still feel Krycek's 
hands all over her, and that made her angry and 
frightened all at once. She didn't know when she 
began to chant.

     "God damn him. God damn him. God damn 
him...."

     The hand on her head startled her. She darted 
up, immediately drawing her gun in front of her. 
And it took her a moment to process.

     Mulder was kneeling over her. He looked 
relieved and worried all at once. She dropped 
her hand with the gun to her side and lunged into 
his arms without thinking.

     "Scully." He said quietly, wrapping a warm arm 
around her. He was running a hand through her 
hair. "It's okay. You're okay."

     She wrapped her arms around his waist and 
held on. His embrace made her feel safe, and 
she let out a wail as she cried against his chest.

     "I know." He said, whispering next to her ear. 
"It's over. It's all over. Everything's going to be 
okay." He rested his cheek up against her temple, 
his breath right in her ear. "Nothing can hurt you 
now." He tightened his hold around her.

     She sucked in a deep breath and relaxed in 
his arms. The hand in her hair moved down 
around her waist, rubbing soothingly over her 
back. His other hand came up to her jaw, and his 
thumb began caressing her cheek and lips. 

     She suddenly became aware of his lips 
against her ear. He was kissing her. The arm 
around her waist pressed her against him. She 
closed her eyes and mentally let go of any control 
she had left. Whatever was going to happen was 
going to happen. She didn't have the willpower 
left to fight it. 

     His lips were wrapped around the top of her 
ear, tugging on it slightly. Her hips involuntarily 
pressed up against his, and she felt him press 
back. She tilted her head up to give him more 
access.

     She lost control of her neck as his lip went 
lower, and his tongue traced her ear. She let out 
a low moan before she realized it. Now, she was 
panting again, but for a very different reason.

     The thumb on her face was tracing a path 
around her lips, and she parted them with her 
moan. He pressed his thumb into her mouth, and 
she began to suck and run her tongue over it.

     She couldn't believe she was doing this. She 
had just experience a near repeat of the most 
traumatic experience of her life, and now she was 
in the middle of a public park having an 
incredibly fulfilling sexual experience with her 
partner. Some part of her brain told her that 
maybe it was because she was almost raped by 
Krycek again, and her need to fill safe was 
allowing this to happen. But for now, she pushed 
rational  thought out of her head. She needed to 
enjoy this.

     She pressed her whole body against him and 
was just about to suggest they take this to a more 
private place when he suddenly raised his head 
away from her. The air where his wet lips had 
been rushed in around her ear and felt cold. She 
let out a little whimper in protest.

     "Scully," he nervously said. "I can hear him."

     She didn't understand what he meant at first. 
But after a moment, the fear in Mulder's voice 
registered in her brain, and she realized he was 
looking in the direction where she had left 
Krycek.

     "Scully!" He sounded panicked. "I can hear 
him. He's coming."

     She jerked around. Her gun was still in her 
hand, and she held it in front of her, scanning the 
dark road for Krycek. She didn't know how he 
had survived the shot to the head, but she wasn't 
about to let him get near her again.

     She strained to hear into the darkness, over 
Mulder's agitated breathing, and the sound of 
running footsteps slowly filled her ears. Her 
heartbeat quickened, and the terror rose in her 
throat again.

     "There." Mulder's voice was a hoarse whisper. 
His hand grabbed hold of her upper arm and 
directed the location of her gun. "Krycek. He's 
there."

     She squinted in the darkness towards the 
direction he had pointed her in. She could hear 
the running closing in. And his fuzzy silhouette 
came into view at the edge of one of the pools of 
light.

     "Shoot!" Mulder yelled. 

     She sucked her breath in and squeezed the 
trigger. Without thinking, without taking aim, nine 
shots fired off, the brass shells making a clink as 
they fell to the street and bounced in different 
directions. Her brain was blank, and she kept 
depressing the trigger long after the magazine 
was empty. Long after the silhouette fell to the 
ground. 

     As her brain began to process information 
again, she turned to Mulder for reassurance. 
Shock slapped her in the face as she realized he 
wasn't there. She quickly looked to the left and 
right, frantically searching for him. He was 
nowhere in sight.

     The figure on the ground let out a soft groan. 
Hesitatingly, she rose to her feet and began 
walking towards it. She let the empty clip fall to 
the ground and pulled the new one that Mulder 
had given her out of her front pocket and clicked 
it into place. She cautiously held the newly 
loaded gun out in front of her.

     It wasn't until she entered the streetlight's 
beam that the face of the man on the ground 
clicked in her mind. It was contorted in pain, and 
he was gasping for air. 

     She had shot Father Michaels. 

     Dana ran to him and knelt beside him. She 
placed her burnt hand behind his head and lifted 
it slightly to help him breathe. She stuffed the gun 
into the front of her jeans and began searching 
for his pulse.

     He opened his eyes and looked up at her. His 
pulse was weak, and she knew he needed to get 
to a hospital immediately. She wasn't sure how 
many of her shots had hit him, but she could see 
blood pooling out from under his shoulder and 
right leg. She ran her hand over his chest and 
also found his shirt soaked in blood.

     "Dana." His voice was only a whisper. "Listen."

     "Don't talk," she replied. "I need to slow the 
bleeding." She looked around for something to 
apply pressure with. She leaned back and 
started to rip the bottom of her shirt. 

     "No!" He grabbed her arm and pulled her back 
to him. "Listen to me."

     She hesitated. He was going to die without 
medical attention. Maybe even with it. She had to 
do something to help him. This was her fault.

     He read her face and said, "It's okay, Dana. 
I've dreamt this moment for months. I know you 
didn't mean to shoot me. But there is nothing you 
can do for me now. And I need to tell you..." His 
voice trailed off, and he winced.

     She leaned over him. "I'm listening." She 
would give him her undivided attention. She took 
his hand in hers and squeezed.

     He opened his eyes and said, "You must hide. 
The dragon will follow you. He will be waiting. 
Waiting to devour the child." He closed his eyes 
and began to choke. 

     She took her hand from his and tugged to 
loosen his collar. A single tear slowly trailed 
down her cheek. She couldn't just let him die. 
Once again she began to rip at her shirt. She 
removed a strip of material and began examining 
his chest. Finding the entry wound, she began to 
apply pressure to slow the bleeding.

     The choking stopped, and he opened his eyes 
once again. He raised his hand to her face and 
wiped her tear. She thought how ironic it was that 
he was dying at her hand, and he was trying to 
comfort her. She looked up at him, and their eyes 
met.

     "Go to the wilderness," he whispered quickly to 
her. "Only stop on holy ground." His eyes shot 
past her, and she turned her head to see what he 
was looking at. 

     Mulder was standing behind her, staring down 
at the priest. She hadn't heard him walk up.

     "Mulder," she said, still applying pressure to 
the chest wound. "He's seriously injured. I need 
you to go for help."

     Mulder didn't acknowledge her. All of his 
attention was focused on the priest. She was 
surprised at how stern he looked.

     "Mulder," she said louder. "Did you hear me? 
We need to find a phone and call the 
paramedics."

    In a single, forceful motion, Mulder 
approached, roughly grabbed her, and lifted her 
off the ground. As her hands left Father Michaels 
chest, Mulder's arm came around in front of her 
and grabbed the gun out of her jeans. He threw it 
several feet away. 

     She began to struggle as he backed away 
from the priest. His hands tightened around her 
painfully, and he lifted her even higher. She was 
straining to get her feet back on the pavement, as 
well as trying to get away from him.

     She gasped as he casually tossed her into the 
grass, like she was nothing more than a rag doll. 
She landed hard on her bottom, several feet from 
Father Michael's feet,  the breath knocked out of 
her. Mulder slowly walked towards the priest.

     Her brain couldn't wrap around what was 
going on. Mulder was standing over the priest, 
his face full of rage. A low, animal-like snarl left 
his mouth, and he straighten up, his features 
suddenly very cat-like. She watched in wide-
eyed horror as he let out an inhuman roar and 
pounced upon Father Michaels. He began to 
devour the priest, reminding her of a leopard 
attack on a lame baby elephant that she had 
once seen on the Discovery Channel.

     She was frozen in place. Somewhere in the 
back of her brain, a voice was screaming to help 
the priest. But she couldn't move. Held to the 
ground by some unseen force.

     Blood poured and sprayed the ground around 
Father Michaels. The Mulder-creature snarled 
and roared, his arms a blur as he beat and tore 
and ripped at the priest's body. The 
gruesomeness of it caused her to turn her head 
upwards. Her nails dug into the soft ground.

     Above her, the bejeweled sky contrasted the 
awful scene before her. She caught sight of 
Andromeda just as it went out of focus from the 
tears filling her eyes. She took a deep breath and 
let out a scream.

     The stars above her seemed to swirl with her 
tears, and a group of stars spiraled towards her. 
She became mesmerized by them. She watched 
totally entranced as they descended from the sky, 
each becoming a ball of light the size of a 
glowing tennis ball. They reminded her of Tinker 
Bell, enchanted with fluorescent pixie dust. She 
gazed at them as they neared her, swirling 
around her head and body. Their light illuminated 
her. Their heat warmed her, overloading her 
senses as joy and child-like wonder poured out 
of her.

     Her trance was broken by the sound of female 
voices. "Dana! Dana! Dana! Dana!" 

     They were gently calling her name, trying to 
get her attention. With disbelief, she realized that 
the lights were talking to her. Their voices filled 
her ears, their gentle whispers seeming to 
include the sounds of the ocean surf, the rain in 
the trees, the wind rushing past her ears. The 
voices caressed her.

     "A soul cannot be stolen if it has been set free. 
A soul cannot be stolen if it has been set free." 

     The chanting of the lights became a roar in her 
head. It seemed as if the whole world was now 
spinning around her. She closed her eyes and 
tried to search her memory for the significance of 
that phrase. Where had she heard it before?

     She opened her eyes as four of the lights 
danced off into the distance, leaving behind the 
echo of a little girl's laughter. The three remaining 
lights hovered in front of her. 

     "A soul cannot be stolen if it has been set free. 
A soul cannot be stolen if it has been set free."

     The three points of light suddenly became 
super novas, momentarily blinding her and 
rushing past her. In their wake, the shimmering 
images of three women stood, each radiating a 
pure white light from their glowing, white robes. 
She looked at the three faces, trying to find 
meaning in the phrase they were still chanting. 
They all wore expressions of utter bliss, filling her 
with a sense of protection and peace.

     "A soul cannot be stolen if it has been set free. 
A soul cannot be stolen if it has been set free."

     Her gaze came to rest on the face in the 
middle. She knew she recognized the woman. 
And as she gazed upon her, a name floated to 
her. 

     Genevieve Baptiste. 

     She gasped as she realized she had cut into 
this woman's cold body in Miami. Genevieve 
gestured down in front of Dana as the chant 
gently changed.

     "You know. You know. You know."

     Dana looked down to where Genevieve was 
gesturing and saw her gun laying on the street 
where the creature had thrown it. And suddenly 
her heart told her what she needed to do.

     She glanced over towards the attack. The 
creature was now standing over Father Michaels 
lifeless body. His features melting and blending, 
one second becoming Mulder, the next Krycek, 
the next her father. The priest's blood covered 
him, dripping from his clothes and hands. As if in 
response to her glance, his attention suddenly 
turned to her.

     She looked back to Genevieve and 
instinctively lunged for her gun. Her brain shut off, 
and she only heard her heart talking.

     A soul cannot be stolen if it has been set free. 
The creature couldn't harm her, couldn't harm her 
baby, if she set their souls free.

     She crawled on all fours and grabbed the gun. 
She sat back to find the creature now walking 
towards her, his face darkening into a mixture of 
a panther, and Krycek, and pure evil. Quickly, she 
put the gun into her mouth and squinted her eyes 
shut.

     Time slowed as her finger began to squeeze 
the trigger. She heard the bullet release in the 
chamber. The image of a Christmas when she 
was ten and her whole family had been happy 
and together. Mulder's face as her told her "No 
one down here but the FBI's most unwanted." 
Emily looking up from her coloring and smiling. 
Father Michaels brushing the hair off her face.

     As she felt the force of the bullet enter her 
mouth, she saw Clyde Bruckman as he told her 
how she would die. "You don't." 

     At the time, she had thought it odd. Now, she 
thought what an odd thought to have for her last 
thought.

     She felt the bullet rip through her skull and exit 
the back of her head. The pain exploded through 
her body. Her last breath left her. Her heart beat 
suddenly stop. She felt the fetus' heart beat stop 
as well. 

     She felt her essence being sucked into a black 
vortex. The blackness soothed her, enclosed her. 
For a moment, she was suspended in it.

     Dana opened her eyes. The dark, star-filled 
sky twinkled above her. She sat straight up, for a 
moment not sure of where she was or what had 
happened. She blinked down the deserted road, 
then down at herself. Her hand was still wrapped 
loosely around the gun. 

     And she remember.

     There was no sign of Father Michaels' body. 
Or the creature. Or the three women. For a 
moment, she doubted that any of it had 
happened. And if it hadn't been for her pounding 
headache, she might have never looked.

     She ran her throbbing, burnt hand behind her 
head and pulled it back. There was no blood. But 
just to make sure that she really had lost her 
mind, she took her gun and pulled out the clip. 

     She gasped at the empty space she saw. One 
bullet was missing. 

     Her brain offered the logical suggestion that 
Mulder hadn't fully loaded the magazine, but she 
wasn't buying it. She looked down, her hands 
sweeping the ground around her, and she found 
it laying on the road beside her right thigh.

     The empty shell.

     

     

     Forty-eight hours. Forty-eight hours and...how 
many states? 

     Mulder listed them off in his head in an attempt 
to stay awake. Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, 
Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and 
finally New Mexico. 

     Forty-eight hours that had become one blurred 
emotional roller coaster. It had begun in the 
sewers of Maryland and had lead them here to 
this now familiar motel in Farmington, New 
Mexico. In between had been a series of 
goodbyes, financial arrangements, and hours 
upon hours of asphalt, gas stations, and mini 
marts. Had it really only been 48 hours? To his 
mind it seemed like only 48 minutes, but to his 
exhausted body it felt more like 48 years.

     They needed to heal, both physically and 
emotionally. "Go to the wilderness. Only stop on 
holy ground," had been Father Michaels' final 
warning. So, the sacred red rocks of New Mexico 
and the Navajo healers had seemed the logical 
choice for the sanctuary they so desperately 
needed. 

     They had arrived less than an hour ago, just 
as the sun was lowering over the western 
horizon. They had checked into the same motel 
Scully had brought him to. Now, that seemed like 
a lifetime ago. 

     He hadn't been terribly surprised to find Albert 
Hosteen, the old Navajo code talker, waiting with 
his grandson in the parking lot when they arrived. 
As soon as he had awakened in the drainage 
system in Maryland, he had known that the 
previous three days had just been one set in 
many more to come. He also knew that even 
though forces were working against them, other 
forces were working to help them.

     They used their new identities to check into the 
motel, Don and Kim Lewis from Portland, Oregon. 
Byers had hacked into the Multnomah County 
DMV and obtained the new driver's licenses, 
which Frohike had printed using new 
photographs. New tags for his car would be easy 
to obtain from Oregon since there was no 
requirement to see the vehicle for registration in 
that state. New social security cards came next. 
He couldn't believe that Byers had chosen the 
name Donald for him. He definitely was not a 
Donald, but at least it was only temporary. 

     This was just the first of many tasks the Lone 
Gunmen were handling. They were also in the 
process of selling Scully's car and most of his 
belongings to gain them some more cash. What 
he hadn't hastily packed, he had left for the 
Gunmen to keep or sell as they saw fit. The sight 
of his video collection had been a near euphoric 
experience for them, and Langly had solemnly 
vowed to care for his fish in return. 

     They had withdrawn the money from both of 
their checking and savings accounts and put it in 
a separate account with Frohike's favorite alias 
as the name on the account. The problem was 
that Frohike wouldn't even tell them what the 
alias was, claiming they should have no 
connection to the account at all. It was a good 
thing that he trusted these guys, or they had just 
been conned out of almost everything they 
owned. Thank God they still had their federal 
pensions and 401Ks sitting in reserve. 

     The guys were still working on hacking into the 
Mutual of Omaha system to get them emergency 
insurance coverage when they left. He knew that 
didn't come close to covering everything that they 
needed, but it was a start and had covered most 
of the immediate necessities. Given the short time 
they had for planning, he was impressed with 
how much they actually had accomplished.

     They had entered the motel room in silence. 
Scully did nothing more than take a trip to the 
bathroom before collapsing on the bed and 
sinking into sleep, not bothering to even remove 
her shoes. 

     Mulder watched her from the other bed. The 
dimming light outside cast a rosy haze in the 
room. Scully breathed softly in her sleep, bathed 
in the warm glow of a southwestern sunset being 
filtered through mini blinds. Mulder yearned to 
close his still sensitive eyes, but he didn't dare let 
her leave his sight. 

     The low light had lessened the pain in his 
temples, which had abated only slightly since the 
night of the final attack. He had never 
experienced such an intensely bright light. It had 
only last a few seconds before he passed out, but 
the burns around his eyes looked like he had 
been sunbaked for several hours. He would have 
also sworn that Father Michaels had been 
consumed by the intense white light, and he had 
told Scully that when she had found him leaning 
blindly against the wall of the sewer. 

     He wasn't sure when he had actually regained 
consciousness because he awoke to the same 
blackness that had engulfed him. He guessed it 
must have been when the images and sounds 
had finally faded from his mind. The fluttering of 
the heartbeat had become the sound of 
splashing footsteps running toward him and 
Scully's concerned calling of his name. His panic 
over not being able to see had subsided 
somewhat when he heard her voice and knew 
she was alive. She had performed a cursory 
exam of him when she found him and helped him 
to his feet. He had tried to explain to her what he 
had experienced, but the words had come out in 
almost as great a flood as the sounds and 
images he was trying to describe. Finally, he had 
just told her what he believed was the demise of 
the priest in that horribly beautiful light.

     Scully had tearfully informed him that she had 
been with the renegade priest when he died and 
would say nothing more about it except his last 
words of advice.

     His death had been hard on both of them. It 
had surprised him how much it had effected him, 
given their rocky relationship over those few 
days. But he could no longer deny the 
selflessness Father Michaels had shown them 
both. 

     Scully seemed almost inconsolable over the 
loss. She would often weep softly on their long 
cross-country excursion, and Mulder wasn't sure 
if it was from the priest's death, leaving her family, 
hormones, or a combination of them all. 

     The whole ordeal had been rough on both of 
them, and they traveled mostly in silence, trading 
off driving so that one could rest while the other 
drove. Because of his eyes, he could only drive at 
night, leaving the majority of the driving to Scully. 
He had hated that more than anything else on the 
trip. Scully was bruised almost as badly as she 
had been after her rape, and he knew her burnt 
hand made driving difficult. But every time he 
opened his eyes during the day, the pain was so 
intense that he felt nauseous. At one of the truck 
stops along their route, he had purchased some 
large, square sunglasses with side shield—the 
type that little old ladies seemed so fond of—and 
they had helped somewhat, allowing him to drive 
from twilight to dawn.

     During their trip, they spoke only about their 
immediate plans, otherwise they were lost in their 
own thoughts. He had thought mostly about his 
mother. How he was the only family she had left, 
and how he was now leaving her alone in the 
world. Even doing what he knew was the right 
thing didn't relieve him of his guilt. They had 
decided not to say goodbye to their mothers in 
person, leaving quickly written letters to be 
delivered by the Gunmen. He had also sent an e-
mail to Skinner explaining very ambiguously how 
they were in danger from a recent case and felt 
they must disappear for a while. 

     He wondered if he returned in 20 years would 
he still be assigned the X-files? He surprised 
even himself at how easily he had walked away 
from his work. Evidently, he did have the 
necessary conviction to leave everything behind 
for what he believed in. Still, he had fought so 
hard to keep the files open, to search for the truth. 

     The truth? The truth was that he and Scully 
were running for their lives and probably would 
be for a long time to come. Even here in New 
Mexico, he knew they could only hide for a 
month, maybe two, before they had to move on to 
the next safe haven Frohike could find. He knew 
now that they could not defeat this enemy, that 
was a battle reserved for the child. But it was his 
responsibility to keep the child, and therefore 
Scully, safe until that time.

     The reality of Scully's pregnancy was finally 
sinking in, and given their current predicament, it 
terrified him. Up until know, he had handled it 
instinctively, reacting to the immediate dangers. 
Let's face it, he had only known about it for about 
a week now, and what a week it had been. Now 
the more mundane concerns associated with any 
pregnancy were surfacing. He worried about the 
lack of medical care that would be available to 
her and the baby. Although, she had assured him 
that she had paid attention during medical school 
when they covered prenatal care. 

     He also felt that this was completely unfair for 
Scully. She was actually going to have what she 
thought she never could, and she was forced to 
live the life of a fugitive. She deserved to have 
baby showers and a nursery to decorate. She 
should be worrying about her mother giving too 
much advice, cloth versus disposable, picking a 
name. Not what evil forces where lurking in the 
shadows.

     But sometimes, when she didn't think he was 
looking, she would place her hand on her 
abdomen and a look of such utter joy would 
come over her that Mulder knew none of that 
mattered as long as the baby was safe. At these 
time, a wave of tranquility would wash away the 
tension in the car, and he would be overwhelmed 
by the love he felt for this child and the woman 
who carried it inside her. It was a love that 
transcended friendship or sexuality, and he 
wondered if this is what fatherhood was like.

     That was a question that tickled at the back of 
his mind. Was he the father of this child? Scully 
seemed convinced that he was, although she 
had never come right out and said it. He knew 
she had requested a paternity and maternity test 
from the amniotic fluid, but he didn't think she had 
ever received the results. And she had shown no 
interest in getting them at this point. Maybe she 
would eventually want to know, but that would be 
her decision. But that still left him with the 
question, was he the father? Every time he tried 
to answer that question on his own, another, 
more relevant question would surface. Does it 
really matter? And the answer was always a 
resounding "No."

     Scully whimpered softly in her sleep. He 
wondered absently if she was dreaming. He 
would find out in the morning. That was one 
decision they had both wholeheartedly agreed 
on, to tell everything about their dreams. He had 
come to the conclusion that much of what had 
transpired over the past week could have been 
prevented or at least approached differently if 
they had known each others' dreams. 

     He rose from the bed and sat softly next to her 
on the other. Ever so gently, he brushed some 
hairs back from her face. 

     "Mulder?" she mumbled sleepily.

     "Everything's okay, Scully. Go back to sleep."

     She rolled over on her other side and sighed. 
"What are we going to do?"

     He knew that she wasn't talking about their 
short term plans; they had discussed those a 
number of times. She was fearing the same thing 
that he was, a completely new life filled with 
uncertainties. He slid down so that he was laying 
beside her, his chest resting against her back, 
and put his arm around her waist and rested his 
hand on her abdomen. 

     He finally understood what the hougan had 
meant when he said that three was the strongest 
number. Before he had thought that Father 
Michaels was the third, and he had lost hope at 
his death. But now he knew they were three at 
this moment and had been three all along, and 
he could feel the strength as twilight descended 
on their motor lodge in rural New Mexico. 

     "We wait," he said, as he finally allowed his 
eyes to close. "We wait together."

     

     

     Agent Beaubrun sat behind his desk at the 
Miami field office. Most of the other agents and 
staff had left for home over an hour ago. A 
cleaning woman vacuumed the next hallway 
over, so that he only heard the muffled hum of the 
machine as she ran it back and forth over the 
carpeting. Beaubrun picked up the receiver on 
his phone and reluctantly dialed the number from 
memory. He heard the phone answered on the 
other end, but no greeting was given, as usual.

     "Its Beaubrun." He said uneasily, fearful to give 
his message. "We've lost them. They are no 
longer in the D.C. area. Mulder isn't answering 
his cell phone or using his credit cards, so we 
haven't been able to trace him."  And even the 
strength of the true new moon on the third night 
would not be enough to find them if they didn't 
have at least a general idea of where they were, 
he added to himself.

     He waited for a response, but there was none. 
The silence made him nervous, so he continued. 
"I have others looking, hopefully we will find them 
in time." Although he knew that time was running 
out, and if he didn't find them soon, his time 
would definitely run out. If only she had stayed in 
Miami until the new moon like she was supposed 
to, everything would have been taken care of. 

     "Maybe if we could identify the people who 
were assisting them, but so far they have alluded 
us. Is there anything else we should do?"

     A deep voice, dripping with malice, finally 
responded. "Sooner or later they will make a 
mistake, then we will have them. Until then, we 
wait."

     

     

"All dreams of the soul end
in a beautiful man's or woman's body."

W.B. Yeats
Phases of the Moon